Comments on: Naming your Internet startup

By: joseph

joseph — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:47:16 +0000

@ Maya: or is it because that’s how it’s pronounced in half the country?

By: Maya

Maya — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:29:40 +0000

Movie MAZIC: Wondering why AZIC in MaZIC and not AGIC because AZIC stands for A-Z of Indian Cinema.

By: Ramesh

Ramesh — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:33:09 +0000

@ Pranav: Yes, Indians bargain big time. Know that with experience I am only focusing on a global market and will be taking up only serious enquiries. The challenge is also not to sound like a Domain name seller!

@ Nishi: My plan is to have a site and list some initial brand names upfront. Customers can either chose them or order for a customized name. Some non-refundable advance money needs to be charged and the number of options needs to be limited. Or else it’s going to be a never ending process.

By: Nishi

Nishi — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:05:31 +0000

Ramesh, will your company keep suggesting domain names until the clients like one? What if they don’t like any of the suggested names? Just curious!

By: pranav

pranav — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:34:52 +0000

@rabi – good luck with the search

@ramesh – if this is from the Indian market, you might want to do a trial and error approach to get the pricing correct. Indians are bargain hunters and they should really see value in the $2k they’ll spend. good luck with your company and let us know your experience.

By: Ramesh

Ramesh — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:11:22 +0000

Yes, right timing! I am soon starting a new website promoting brand/company naming services with .com domain availability. I am thinking of pricing approx $2000 for the name plus the .com and .net domains. Do you guys think the pricing is right?

The names won’t be like Nixtr, Fixtr, Sextr or Juxtr – I promise!

By: Rabi Gupta

Rabi Gupta — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:36:52 +0000

Hi Pranav,
it’s amazing that your blog came just at the right time when we ourselves r dying to find a good and relevant domain name for our website.
Good work done! thanks…i’ll reply to u if i find a gud domain name .

By: dhingana

dhingana — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:59:51 +0000

interesting read…lots of good points to keep in mind…thanks for the insight!

By: Raghu

Raghu — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:31:48 +0000

Pranav you made me remember the month-long brainstorming i did with my team to choose our name And the result was worth it!

Our business idea is to provide an Internet portal to the city community for its day-to-day collaboration which could help reduce its everyday local commuting.

The constraints for choosing the brand were kept really strict..
- it should unambiguously convey the concept to the reader/listener/viewer, because we believe that businesses where customers are already educated (food, apparel, cosmetics etc.) can have exotic or alluding or cool names, but not us. Customer education should start with the brand itself.
- Since our ambition is to expand in 30 cities across India and cater to the urban middle class, the brand should be unambiguously recognized by non-English speakers of all Indian states (this was the toughest one!).
- it should meet the other obvious constraints of domain names like as-short-as-possible, easy to spell etc.

We did a survey among family and friends asking them to rank their choices among 30 options.. (by the way NONE of our potential competitors in the city portal domain today meet the above criteria!)

and the result was “CITYWALA”