Some of the most famous startup success stories feature firms that may be each serious and funny.
Let’s take two of the 4 most dear US firms: Apple AND Google. The first was named after a fruit and pioneered personal computers. The second one selected the stupidest-sounding number and revolutionized Internet searches.
Many other firms have also hedged large-cap valuations at some point with unconventional names and branding strategies. Peasant began the search engine race with “Chief Yahoo” as CEO. Lift drivers used to brighten their cars with pink mustaches. And Twitter (currently X), I accepted it stupidly from the very starting.
It wasn’t that way back that startup naming was often a competitive exercise in absurdity. In 2017 and 2018, we devoted columns to tracking trends.
Then all the things became boring.
It’s not fun anymore
A few years ago we began to notice a shift towards more staid, serious and easy to spell names. This situation has intensified with the pandemic and continues in the current era of AI unicorns.
Looking at the best funded startups of the 12 months – the list includes OpenAI, xAI, CoreWeave AND Secure superintelligence — none of them have a name that may very well be described as “funny.” It’s as if they asked an AI chatbot to do something that will provide a significant investment but would not make anyone laugh.
“They don’t have much fun,” he said Bruno Benedinifounding father of a branding consulting company Tail lightsregarding the general world of AI startup names. “You basically have every word you can think of, and the AI is attached at the end.”
The opinion that startup names are becoming more and more serious is shared by Michael Carr, co-founder and managing director of a consulting firm based in Austin, Texas NameStormers. He attributes a part of this alteration to the founders’ belief that “silly, whimsical names won’t get the same attention from venture capitalists.”
Market cycles likely have an impact as well. In recent quarters, consumer products and services startups have obtained a smaller share of total enterprise financing than in the past. This matters because these are firms that usually select sharp names so that individuals remember them.
All obvious names are taken
Another factor that makes many whimsical names difficult to adopt is that they are simply unavailable.
There are currently hundreds of thousands of registered trademarks, which implies most of the obvious, short, actual names a founder might consider are already taken, in line with Carr. “Generally speaking, it’s much harder to come up with a name that cuts through the clutter,” he noted.
To further complicate the trademark issue, the company’s founders are also looking for a name that may be used in multiple countries. Even if they find a legally available humor option, it might not appeal to some audiences.
“It’s a little hard to find names that cross that line, that are a little bit outlandish, but not stupid enough to be disregarded,” Benedini said.
Some people cling to nonsense
Moreover, while many startups with unusual names have succeeded, there are also many failures. The list of famous venture-backed flops includes names corresponding to Quibi, Washio, Like, Juice, Beep AND Blurredsimply to name a few.
It’s true that start-up investors have also made many losing bets on firms with boring names. The advantage, nonetheless, is that individuals are less more likely to remember them.
Nowadays, despite the fact that unusual names are less popular, we still see some startups going this route. To illustrate this, we used Crunchbase data to create a sample list of 15 such firms founded in the last two years that have raised multi-million-dollar funding.
Personally, I’m biased Greptyl: memorable, evocative and, so far as I can tell, quite unique. It doesn’t scream “running AI code”, but hey, you possibly can’t have all the things.
In a world where AI startups need to stand out for their brilliance, Benign artificial intelligence is also something price remembering. It also makes some logical sense given the role artificial intelligence is expected to play in automating some of our bland business tasks.
Meanwhile, Benedini favors CopyFrogan AI-powered content creator that has nothing to do with frogs. (Unless you are looking for frog-related content, I suppose.)
For now, it’s unclear what it can take to make strange names come back en masse. Perhaps the best we are able to hope for is that startups with weird names will raise a lot of cash, thus giving others confidence that this could, in fact, be a viable branding strategy.