My absolute favorite website for booking domains is godaddy.com.
I visit it as often as I get an inspired to reserve a Domain name.
Why is it called ‘Godaddy’??
I have no clue!!
The ‘Godaddy Girls’ (see home page of godaddy) facscinate me and the business is one of the most profitable and successful in the world in the domain parking and reselling space.
This discussion is really casual and intended to find out the ‘naming’ inspirations and ideas used by businesses all over the world to describe themselves.
Let me start:
In 1998, I had this bright idea to do a contesting site and for good or for bad called it ‘contests2win.com’. It has become my personal identify since then.
A year later a gentleman called Ashish Kacholia met me and looked at the domain and said ‘Alok, like Music Television became MTV, contests2win.com should become c2w’.
Believe it or not, I managed to buy a 3 character domain called c2w.com just after he told me – a year later after starting contests2win.com
In 2001, Softbank – one of our c2w investors said ‘Lets do contests2win.com in China but on Mobile’.
Since their board was comfortable with contests2win.com as an investment, we called that Company Mobile2win (Acquired by Disney in 2006)
In 2004, Sam Balsara and I agreed to do a media JV for Internet. Since it was my idea, I pressed Sam to allow me naming rights. He agreed. I obviously called in media2win. The JV fell out, but the name stayed.
In 2007, Games2win was created coz by then 2win had a nice sound to it; it was lucky for me and VC’s knew of our exits in China and India.
So….2win continues.
In New York, on Obama election celebration night, I saw Obama just as the messiah of the world and said to myself ‘wow – he is a thinker and a doer’ – I remembered Rodin having sculpted ‘The Thinker’ and also Robin Hood the doer – then rushed to Godaddy.com (where else) and booked ‘rodinhood.com’ for myself…
Therodinhoods.com is obvioulsy a logical extension.
So that’s my story.
Can you please share what made you name your Venture; Enterprise or the Company you work for?
What’s the story behind the name?
It doesn’t matter if you work there as an employee – if the name has a reason behind it, it will be nice to share here!
Daman Anand
Okay, I have a website http://www.indiafloristdirect.com which facilitates flowers delivery in India. So why not indiaflorist, because it was already booked (in 1997 when we booked our name). Direct is added because most people (specially in US and Canada) prefer this word (it is widely used in searches).
Daman Anand
Himanshu Mody
tekno point was recommended as a name by my younger bro. [ he was 14 then ] his logic was because I was doing something in technology. ‘Techno Point’ was the orignal recommendation but i anticipated trademark issues and hence spelled it as Tekno. its a nightmare to spell it out everytime i have to give my id. 🙂
kanchan.kumar
My first venture is called Fluous. Fluous is derived from fluid. Fluid, as everyone knows has 2 important characteristics:
1. It always takes the shape of wherever you keep it
2. It always finds it’s way – no matter how rough the terrain.
# 1 relates to the most important characteristics of our HR s/w product (meant for large enterprises) – Flexibility, it’d work just the way the organisation would want it to.
# 2 relates to the most important characteristics of the kind people we hire (for for that matter any startup looks out for!) – Tenacity
My second venture is called Emportant – Employees are Important! – It’s a HR Software-as-a-Service meant for small and medium business.
Kanchan
Pramod Chaturvedi
Hi Alok,
Interesting conversation. Who says whats in a name? we feel all’s in a name.
We named our brand of remanufactured/compatible cartridges as EKTOS. The name which always arouses curiosity amongst our clients essentially means “to save” in Greek, exactly what we stand for at CartridgeWale!
Pramod
Vasudevan Uppili
Hey Alok,
Haritham – It was way back in 1998, when myself and Sugu.com where planning to get into our own business chances that we decided that our Corporate color would be Green as both of us had an inclination for the color. Moreover, Green is always a symbol of Growth and positivity.
In 2003 when we started our small time Hardware sales and service venture it was Sugu who came out with the name “Haritham” a symbol of Green, Greenish, Growth, Prosperous, Never ending, Everlasting.
I do have few domains that are both meaningful and at the same time brandable as well.
As many of you mentioned Godaddy is my favorite too.