How Startups Stopped Being Fun

Among the most well-known startup success tales function firms adept at being each critical and ridiculous.

Take two of the 4 most-valuable American firms: Apple and Google. The primary named itself after a fruit and pioneered private computing. The second picked the silliest-sounding quantity and revolutionized on-line search.

Scores of others have additionally at a while secured large-cap valuations with offbeat names and branding methods. Yahoo launched the search engine race with a “Chief Yahoo” as CEO. Lyft drivers as soon as adorned their vehicles with pink mustaches. And Twitter (now X), embraced foolish from the beginning.

Not way back, startup naming was typically a aggressive train in absurdity. In 2017 and 2018, we devoted columns to monitoring the traits.

Then, issues obtained boring.

Not enjoyable anymore

A number of years in the past, we started to note a shift towards extra staid, critical and spellable names. This accelerated with the pandemic and has persevered within the present AI unicorn period.

Wanting on the most closely funded startups of the 12 months — an inventory that features OpenAI, xAI, CoreWeave and Safe Superintelligence — none has a reputation one may describe as “enjoyable.” It’s as if they’d requested an AI chatbot for one thing that might rating hefty funding however amuse nobody.

“They don’t have a lot playfulness,” stated Bruno Benedini, a founding father of branding consultancy Taillight, concerning the final universe of AI startup names. “You may have mainly each phrase you may consider with AI tacked on to the tip.”

The sentiment about startup names getting critical is echoed by Michael Carr, co-founder and managing director of Austin, Texas-based consultancy NameStormers. He attributes a few of the shift to a notion amongst founders that “foolish, whimsical names aren’t going to get the identical traction with enterprise capitalists.”

Market cycles probably additionally play into this. In latest quarters, shopper services and products startups have raised a smaller share of complete enterprise funding than has traditionally been the case. That issues, as these are firms more likely to choose edgy names so individuals will bear in mind them.

All the plain names are taken

One other issue dampening adoption of many whimsical names is that they’re merely not obtainable.

At this time, there are hundreds of thousands of registered logos, which means that a lot of the apparent, quick, real-world names a founder may contemplate are already taken, per Carr. “Basically, it’s quite a bit more durable to provide you with a reputation that cuts by the litter,” he noticed.

To make trademark issues extra difficult, founders are additionally in search of a reputation that’s viable in a number of nations. And even when they discover a humorous possibility that’s legally obtainable, it won’t resonate with a few of their viewers.

“It’s a bit tough to get names that straddle that line that’s considerably whimsical, however not so foolish that you simply disregard it,” Benedini stated.

Some are sticking with foolish

Furthermore, whereas many startups with offbeat names have made it massive, there are many failures too. The record of well-known venture-backed flops contains such names as Quibi, Washio, Wonga, Juicero, Beepi and Fuzzy, to call a number of.

True, startup traders have additionally made plenty of shedding bets on firms with boring names. One benefit, nevertheless, is that persons are much less more likely to bear in mind them.

Today, whilst offbeat names are much less in favor, we do nonetheless see some startups going this route. For example, we used Crunchbase knowledge to place collectively a pattern record of 15 such firms based up to now two years which have raised hundreds of thousands in funding.

Personally, I’m a fan of Greptile: memorable, evocative and, as far as I can inform, fairly distinctive. It doesn’t precisely scream “AI code startup,” however, hey, you may’t have every little thing.

In a world the place AI startups need to stand out for his or her brilliance, Bland AI can also be one to recollect. It makes some logical sense as effectively, given the function AI is predicted to play in automating away a few of our blander enterprise duties.

Benedini, in the meantime, favors CopyFrog, an AI-powered content material creator that has nothing to do with frogs. (Except you had been particularly searching for frog-related content material, I suppose.)

For now, it’s not clear what it is going to take for bizarre names to make a comeback en masse. Maybe the most effective we will hope is that oddly named startups will elevate a ton of cash, thus permitting others to really feel assured that this will in reality be a viable branding technique.