David Placek, Founder of Lexicon Branding, wrote an article called "Crafting unforgettable startup names that resonate, inspire thought, and make competitors wince" on Techcrunch+
I've summarized it below.
Names Should Stimulate Thought and Imagination:
"The best names free your audience to imagine. Brand names should be created to generate interest and suggest a story... When you make it easy to imagine, you make it easy to purchase"
The Importance of Memorability:
"Simply put, if your brand name is forgettable, you will lose. To influence a consumer’s choice, you must control what they remember... Memorable names make it easier for consumers to buy your product"
Popular Names Might Not Be the Best Choice:
"The most popular names are usually the most comfortable, and there is no power in comfort when naming. Oscar Wilde once said, 'An idea that isn’t dangerous is hardly worth calling an idea at all.' In branding, this follows suit — the best names involve some risk."
Names That Challenge Competitors:
"Since a registered brand name is the one thing your competitors cannot take away from you, it must make them wince every time they see it. If you think they’ll shrug it off or create something better, take the name off the list. Be unique, disruptive, and calculated when taking risks with your name."
On Embracing the Startup Adventure:
"They don't realise you're offering Adventure, you're offering the unknown. An adventure isn't here's my idea for a social network for dogs, will you build my website? No, let's build a company together. That's adventure."
On the Necessity of Great Engineers in Tech-Enabled Businesses:
"The more that we're exposed to seeing what these companies look like at the earliest stages, even if they don't look like strictly tech businesses... there's no way these things would have gotten off the ground without having a really great person who cared as much as a co-founder cares."
On the Compounding Effect of Hiring:
"When you start with a team of business people assessing engineers... all of your future engineers are... it compounds bad."
On the Value of Recruiting Skills:
"There are a lot of very successful non-technical people in our network that do amazing work, and one of the things... they're great recruiters... they find a way to get that person to work with them."
Paras Chopra, Founder at Nintee (digital health startup), points out that Supercell (the company behind the massively popular Clash of Clans game) is valued at $32M per employee, reminding us of how important prioritising long term revenue opportunities at the expense of short term are.
Here’s a summary:
"They seem to be killing 9 games for each game they release. Some of these games have been in development for years."
"Why are they killed? It’s because these games don’t meet their internal benchmarks (primary of which is 30-day retention)."
"Supercell’s mission is to make games that players play on forever (decades), so if the 30-day retention figure isn’t getting met, they get killed."
"The killing decision is not made by the leadership, but in fact by the team that’s working on it.
When teams are communicated clear benchmarks to beat, they keep asking themselves this question: should we continue to iterate on the game and try to beat the 30-day retention number, or should we work on the next idea which would have better potential?"
"By the way, the name supercell comes the way the company works. They’re groups of lots of small game development teams (each 10-15 people max). They’re given freedom to do whatever they want to – but success or failure is defined clearly in terms of metrics."
"Building hit products with a team of just 10–15 people requires hiring absolutely the best people possible."
Why your solution needs to be 10x better than the incumbent:
"Your solution needs to be so amazing that, even if you collapse in eighteen months, nobody will question the decision to buy from you."
"The purchaser can look everyone in the eye and say, 'Considering the massive advantages we gained from adopting this solution, it was obviously worth it, even if we only used it for a short time.'"
I've summarized it below.
Names Should Stimulate Thought and Imagination:
"The best names free your audience to imagine. Brand names should be created to generate interest and suggest a story... When you make it easy to imagine, you make it easy to purchase"
The Importance of Memorability:
"Simply put, if your brand name is forgettable, you will lose. To influence a consumer’s choice, you must control what they remember... Memorable names make it easier for consumers to buy your product"
Popular Names Might Not Be the Best Choice:
"The most popular names are usually the most comfortable, and there is no power in comfort when naming. Oscar Wilde once said, 'An idea that isn’t dangerous is hardly worth calling an idea at all.' In branding, this follows suit — the best names involve some risk."
Names That Challenge Competitors:
"Since a registered brand name is the one thing your competitors cannot take away from you, it must make them wince every time they see it. If you think they’ll shrug it off or create something better, take the name off the list. Be unique, disruptive, and calculated when taking risks with your name."