Naming A Company Right Can Spell Success


RENEE MONTAGNE, host: And despite the wild swings of the world’s stock markets, there are still a handful of Internet companies preparing to go public and others hoping to catch the eye of investors. Venture capital firms have been pouring tens of billions into tech startups. But even before a new tech company can capture some of that cash and get off the ground, the founders face an even more fundamental challenge: a name.

From member station WNYC(紐約公共之聲),Lisa Chow and Jim Colgan explain.

JIM COLGAN: Here's a question. Would Google be as successful if it didn't have the name Google, but instead had the name Backrub(背部按摩….真是囧)?

LISA CHOW: That was the name that the company started with in 1996.

COLGAN: So instead of googling say your ex-boyfriend, you might be backrubbing him, right?

CHOW: Hard to know. We got a hold of Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, to pose this question: Did he think Twitter would have been as successful under a different name?

Mr. JACK DORSEY (Founder, Twitter): It depends on the name.

Mr. DORSEY: Twitch certainly, probably not.

COLGAN: Twitch was actually a name that Jack and his co-founders were considering for the company but obviously they went with Twitter.

Mr. DORSEY: I like the word Twitch but I felt really bad about it. I didn't feel bad about Twitter at all. I wrote it down a bunch of times. I drew it out and it just felt great, so I knew that if I felt great about it then I could convince others to feel great about it too.

CHOW: It wasn't the name Twitter, per say, that made the company what it is today, but it was Jack's relationship to that name. He liked it. He could sell it to investors, to the public, and this gets at what we're looking at. Every day companies starting up have to come up with a name.

COLGAN: And the name is so important because it's how those companies connect with consumers, investors, and other businesses. And we decided to test out a couple of names of tech start up companies with Gailanne Grosso, who's helped a lot of Fortune 500 companies come up with names.

So the first one is .

Ms. GAILANNE GROSSO (Author, The Other Side of Nice): ? No.

COLGAN: What's wrong with it?

Ms. GROSSO: Well Dump is a word that traditionally is associated with a rather not too thought through activity. It just sort of seems like something that a dog would do.

Mr. RYDER RIPPS (Co-founder, ): People love dogs.

COLGAN: That's Ryder Ripps. He created the company with his co-founder Scott Oster.

Mr. RIPPS: Does she think it's a soft drink? Because it's not. It's a website.

COLGAN: She knew it was a website.

Mr. RIPPS: I don't know. Branding websites is different because it's not selling a product that people really have to buy in much to.

CHOW: So Ryder goes on to try to explain that he's selling experience and not a product and that in the right context, dump works.

COLGAN: And the context here is that Dump is a site that lets you communicate through images, kind of like what's called an image dump.

CHOW: But either way, Gailanne didn't like it so we tried out another name.

COLGAN: The next one is called Honestly Now.

Ms. GROSSO: Honestly Now. I like the name. I don't know what it would be. But if it's something where someone is in some way casting light on something or exposing something or like a consumer report, or something where there's some information that's being given and its meant to be coming from a credible source, then I think Honestly Now is a great name. So you're probably going to tell me it's a car or something.

Ms. TEREZA NEMESSANYI (Founder, Honestly Now): No yay, am I allowed to be completely excited on air? I'm so excited, because that's exactly what we are.

COLGAN: That's the founder of Honestly Now, Tereza Nemessanyi. And Honestly Now is an app where you pose a question to a group of friends where you get feedback anonymously(匿名的).Something like, did these sunglasses look good on me? And we decided to actually use her app to try out a question for this story.

Ms. NEMESSANYI: So these reporters from WNYC want to know...

CHOW: We asked: What do you think about the name, ?

Ms. NEMESSANYI: What's the name?

COLGAN: .

Ms. NEMESSANYI: ?

COLGAN: Yeah.

Ms. NEMESSANYI: All right, so I'm going to submit it.

Mr. SCOTT OSTER (Co-founder, ):This is like a live unveiling of the results.

CHOW: Okay so. This was as of 12:22, 91 percent said no to .

Mr. OSTER: Oh, that's funny.

Mr. RIPPS: Maybe we'll change the name now.

CHOW: So Gailanne liked one name, she didn't like the other. But it's still hard to know whether either company will be successful. They're still really young.

COLGAN: So we decided to reach out to a company that isn't so young, but is very successful. And that company is Apple. We wanted to find out what was it like when they were coming up with their name back in the 70s, what kind of reaction did they get.

CHOW: So we caught up with Apple's co-founder, Steve Wozniak, at a gadget show(配件展示) in downtown Manhattan, and he told us what happened after he and Steve Jobs decided on that name.

Mr. STEVE WOZNIAK (Co-founder, Apple): We hired a publicity agency, and they, you know, they give you an image for your company and they said, you got to get rid of the name Apple. It just doesn't suggest enough power. Your computers can do a lot of stuff. And Steve and I had to say no, no, no, no, no. Computers are now going to be in the home. Apple is a good name in the home. And so we had to fight to hold it a bit, but, you know, just it was a good name. We knew it.

COLGAN: So maybe the lesson there is you shouldn't listen to your branding consultant. But in all seriousness, the Apple founders knew that their name had really positive connotations. And maybe that's what it's all about - that first impression.

CHOW: And that's exactly what Jack Dorsey of Twitter said. You have two seconds to open the door with the name. After that, it's down to the product.

For NPR News, I'm Lisa Chow.

COLGAN: And I'm Jim Colgan.?

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