Athol Foden of Brighter Naming is our guest speaker Friday May 8 for the Bootstrapper Breakfast™ at 7:30am at the Omega Restaurant in Milpitas. Athol has over 16 years of experience helping clients name companies, products, services, and taglines. Athol’s opening remarks will be followed by a question and answer session on developing the right name.
His website has a number of excellent articles on name generators, characteristics of good names, and naming biases and influences. His “Top 10 Characteristics of Good Name” is an excellent place to start. Brighter Naming offers a jump start program for early stage startups that takes into account their limited resources and need to move quickly, it’s worth contacting them. They also offer a self-service approach that you can follow if you need a good methodology.
The Omega Restaurant is at 90 S. Park Victoria Milpitas, CA, 95035. Turn to the right after you walk in, we are in the back room. To RSVP for the event sign up here: https://www.123signup.com/register?id=zdgrx We start promptly at 7:30am.
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- Dec-15-08 “Last Full Work Week of 2008”
If you are stuck trying to pick a name we suggest you contact Athol Foden at Brighter Naming, his team has a clear process that’s startup friendly outlined on his website. You can pick which steps you would like assistance on and which you want to do on your own. - Dec-7-2007 “One Name or Two for Product and Company”
Your startup is in competition for prospects’ awareness and attention. The reality for bootstrappers is that you do not have a lot of resources available to enter their awareness much less gain their attention. It’s twice as expensive to teach people two names instead of one…and to do name searches / trademark searches for two names. Pick one name for both the company and the product service. You can always rename the company or add a second product name later, but establishing the name in the prospect’s mind takes an enormous amount of effort: don’t double your workload. Also, finding one good name and agreeing on it is a challenge, finding two that are somewhat related and both acceptable is much much harder. - Nov-30-2007 “If You Think You Have a Great Name, Think Again” an interview with Athol includes this exchange:
Q: What do you think is more important, a name or a logo?
In retail, a logo (or even more importantly a color scheme) are the most important when you are selling “off the shelf” via packaged goods. For items where the logo cannot be seen, for example fashion clothing, the name recognition is more important. In high tech, when selling via the internet or phone, the name is more important. In some cases, the icon (mini logo) may be also very important e.g. embedded in a website, cell phone, etc.