Finding a perfect name is tough, sometimes the startups pivot and need a new name. Sometimes the first name is just a failure. We have changed the name twice, failed twice. And therefore our advice for a name is the following:
- Use name which can use .com domains. We started the company with the name of Wizard Finance and registered a domain wizard.finance. You can only guess how many times people asked us to repeat the website address. Also, unknown domain extensions do not give you any trust from your clients (and also they are seen as bad links inside your emails).
- Local name? Firstly we changed the name from Wizard Finance to Tsekk.ee - in Estonian it is “receipts”. Very clear for all the Estonian people, but a nightmare to try to go outside of Estonia. Yes, you can use a localized name (like kuitti.fi or ceki.lv), but imagine having to publish app in all the local languages on Google play store or AppStore - you would need to keep tens of apps updated (because apparently, you can only have one name for an app on AppStore/Google play store and if you choose to have “tsekk.ee”, then no Latvian, Finnish or English speaking person will download the app, therefore the need to have multiple versions of the same app).
- If you plan to change the name, then just do it! We were overthinking most parts of it. There is never the one and the perfect name available, you will just choose one and get used to is (read about NIKE story for example).
So how did we do the name change from Tsekk.ee to CostPocket:
- We set requirements for the name. Ours were: .com available (it is trustworthy to have .com domain and email address); it has to give some indication of what we are doing; the team members need to like it
- We all put down names on Google Sheets, each one put down at least 10 names (some of us had way more creativity and wrote down tens of names). In addition to individual sessions, we also had 2 group brainstorming sessions
- behind each name we looked up the availability of .com domain (sometimes with a 4-digit price tag).
- The list got a lot smaller after step 3. Some names were modified.
- All team members had to pick 3 names that they liked, and after that, we had a list of 12 names
- We read out names loud to hear how they sound
- We had a voting session and CostPocket got the most votes.
The process took us 4 months in total and it was definitely not an easy one. After that, we had a long process of communicating the name. But here we are, almost 2 years later, happy and satisfied with the name!
s