photo credit: wili_hybrid

The task of naming a startup may sound easy, but believe me; it requires a lot of thought and brainstorming.

What’s in a startups name? Everything – the branding and marketing stems from the name. It is not only important but crucial for a startup’s success.

Compare Lycos and Vidoop with Brightmail and Paypal - the latter clearly standout and are easy to pronounce and remember. You can notice the difference yourself. Looking at many successful brands today, there are two things we can find in common;

1.The name relates to what the company actually does. It establishes (a direct or indirect) an association between the brand and product/services of the company

2.The name is not ‘literally’ related to the product/service but it creates a differentiating characteristic or feeling

Other points to be kept in mind when naming a startup:

•A name that can be remembered easily

•Refrain from being too creative with the names

•Think about acronyms (like AT & T for American Telephone and Telegraph, Inc.)

•Do not trade on existing business names (using parts of other well-known brands)

•It should be scalable (think long term growth)

There is a great post on ReadWriteWeb where it talks about naming of mint.com.

Patzer and Mint went through this very process themselves, first purchasing mymint.com at roughly $3,000 before inking a deal with the owner of mint.com