What’s in a startup’s name? A lesson in tough changes from Tara Hunt of Buyosphere

• May 06, 2011

By Alexandra Reid

Startup entrepreneurs have a lot on their plate already without having to decide on a fabulous name. And who cares about the name anyway? You can always change it later. Surely angel investors don’t care about it. All they care about a business model that will turn them a profit. And even if they hate the name, you can change it once you’ve received their investment to keep them happy, right?

Sure, this works, but it isn’t in your startups’ best interest. Settling on a bad name can damage your brand, jeopardize investment opportunities and discourage customer support. Author, speaker and CEO of Buyosphere, Tara Hunt, went through this rather chagrining experience last year when her company’s original name, Shwowp, was dubbed the Worst Brand Name of 2010.

In this interview, Tara explains her experience and offers some advice for startups who:

1. Don’t know they have a bad name
2. Know they have a bad name but refuse to or are too lazy or uninterested to fix it
3. Are ready to change their name

How did you know a company name change was needed?

We’d known for a while that the previous company name wasn’t popular. We just didn’t know HOW unpopular it was. Then one day Google Alerts notified me that there is a blog post about us. And that blog post was written to bestow an award … for the worst brand name of 2010. All of a sudden, I completely understood how bad our previous name was. So I decided to take action.

When Cass, Jerome and I first got together under the name Shwowp, none of us were gung-ho about the name. It was a name. It seemed to do the trick. Jerome owned it. It could be fun, right? Wow in Shop? Get it?

Interestingly enough, I didn’t think too much about it and I’m the marketer of the group. Even when we had some early criticism for the name, I dismissed it. Most of the criticism seemed to come from guys who I knew didn’t identify with the word ‘shop’ anyway. I remember sitting across from a potential angel investor who leaned forward and bluntly said, “You’ll have to change the name. It’s awful. I can’t stand it. I can’t even stand to look at it let alone type it.” I had an inkling from that conversation, but I was still unconvinced.

What’s in a name? A site by any other name would…

But wait. A name CAN be an issue. And as time went on, I realized how MUCH of an issue it really was. More and more I heard murmurs and protests. We had several conversations in the office that went something like:

“We need to change the name.”

“Yes, I know, but it is too distracting to rebrand now. Let’s wait until we get funding and do it right.”

“But I think it may be too distracting already. It may keep us from getting funding.”

“That’s silly. We can change the name.”

“Then why don’t we?”

Silence.

And then IT happened. The award. Our first honor: The Worst Brand Name of 2010! What? Oh my. The accolade opened up with, “Putting the Wow in bad spelling…” It was time for us to do something.

So we put out a little survey and collected some suggestions … over 1300 of them! Nothing really jumped out at us. Then Alexandra HERSELF from EatMyWords approached me and offered to help brainstorm because I had been such a good sport (and she really likes the idea). Within a couple of emails back and forth, she sent me one that knocked the wind out of me: Buyosphere

Only issue? The url was taken. Nothing was up on it, but the person who owned it had done so for several years. Was he building something? Was he going to ask for a big bag of money? (Which we didn’t have)? I sent him an email explaining out situation: bootstrapped startup that was born to rock the name Buyosphere, blah blah blah.

To my surprise and delight, the lovely Simon Warner who owned Buyosphere.com accepted my meager offer!

Step by step, how did you go about the change?

1. Shock
2. Acceptance

… kidding! Sort of.

As soon as we realized we needed to change the name, I jumped into action:

1. Created a Google spreadsheet with a questionnaire
2. Posted it to our blog, Facebook and Twitter then emailed it to our beta testers and some advisors
3. Waited for the entries to come in
4. Nothing was jumping out at me as ‘the one’, so I was feeling a bit discouraged – we chatted about a few possibilities and next steps in the background with the team
5. Then Alexandra Watkins, who gave us the famous award, called me with the offer to help
6. Within a couple of exchanges, she sent me Buyology, which was taken (a book written by Paco Underhill), but I started playing around with it because it completely stood out for me as THE ONE and came up with two alternatives, Buyosphere and Buyometrics
7. Sent emails to the owners of these domains with a measly offer of $500
8. Sent out a message to our VIP Beta group to test the name – got great responses!
9. Heard back from the lovely Simon Warner of Buyosphere, who sold it to us right away for our asking price (thank god, cause we had no more to give!)
10. Filed a trademark
11. Hired a third party to do the redesign/rebrand as our teensy team had features to build and I wanted the new name relaunched within 6-8 weeks.
12. Revealed the new name through a TechCrunch post 8 weeks later!

How did you prepare your existing customers for the change?

Lots of teasers. Blog posts. Tweets. Teaser emails … saying we had a new name, but couldn’t reveal it. There was an in-group, though … the VIP Beta Group, who knew and were sworn to secrecy. These were the 50-odd people who we deputized VIPs because of their awesome feedback in the early days of private beta. They were awesome in keeping quiet, but provided great support for the name change.

How did you spread the word about the change?

We used Twitter, did some new media interviews (TechCrunch, WowElle and Robert Scoble), used our blog, Facebook, emails to users … less traditional stuff. We still have a $0 budget

What other pieces of advice would you offer startups going through this process?

While I’m a big fan of balancing your users’ needs with your company vision, recognize when something is holding you back that isn’t really a big part of the vision. We weren’t listening about the name. Though it didn’t seem important to us, we realized it was holding us back unnecessarily. I should have listened more intently.

What’s the worst startup name you’ve ever heard? Do you have any additional questions for Tara? Any points to add?