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Name Your Startup

It might seem a bit odd that we’re writing about this, but we believe that sharing some of our experience might help others. As a startup, we had to deal with lots of the common startups' problems and any help we could get was a big thing for us. Although we mainly write about web editing and web design, we decided that we should also cover some startup topics.

What to look for

After we put down our vision, we hit a wall trying to find an appropriate name for the “new thing”. Usually, entrepreneurs think that this won’t take more than one hour and the startup name will come naturally. Yeah, keep on dreaming.

I remember that settling on the “Froala” name took us a bit over 2 months. Creating the first fully working prototype took half of that. We were looking for a new name available on social networks and that is short enough. We wanted a maximum of 8 characters, to be an original name and something that no one else is using. I bet you want to be at the top of the page when someone searches your business name on Google. That's why I recommend avoiding common names.

Social networks

I have to admit that finding something that you can use for the domain name, Facebook, Twitter and every other social network is for sure a challenge. We got lucky with Froala because only the Twitter username was taken. It was an inactive user with very few tweets.

After going back and forth, we decided to go with the Froala name, purchased the domain name and created an account on the other social networks, except Twitter where we chosen froala_labs. Only 2 years later, we managed to actually get the @froala username after reaching Twitter to see if maybe they can release it. They don’t have a username policy, but if the username you’re asking for is inactive for a very long period of time then you might get lucky.

Google Translator helps

We were using all sorts of tools that generate startup names without any results. Lately, we decided to focus on a phrase and see how it sounds in other languages and maybe choose from there. We started with “For everyone” in English and tried all kind of translations and combinations until we got to “For alle” in Danish. We played a bit with it and came up with Froala. It was short enough and we were able to pronounce it easily in English.

This worked for us, I don’t know if it would work for everyone, but it took us less time and was producing better results than other tools which generate a startup name for you.

Make fun of it

People will misspell it. That’s not a problem if it doesn’t happen too often. From time to time people call us Forala, but as long as this is happening only once or twice a year, I really don’t see why we should worry about it.

A month ago, there was a tweet that made our day: “What do you get when you mix a frog and a koala?” Never thought about that until then, but indeed Froala name might make you think of a weird animal combination. Just try to imagine. You’ll definitely not forget our name again. 🙂

We’d love to hear from you what you thought of when you first heard the Froala name. If anything comes into your mind, share it in a comment below.

1 Comment

  1. Great name, short and memorizable, thanks for sharing this interesting approach on how to come up with a good company name. Yes and it definitely made me think of koalas right away … the fact that koalas have a high “cuteness factor” doesn’t hurt when you want your brand name to evoke good vibes!


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