My friend, Kevin Wallace, and I are building an iPhone application. We’re getting close to launching, so it’s about time for us to incorporate an LLC so that some bad-ass lawyer doesn’t try to take our houses when his client trips while looking at our app and walking at the same time. We know the name of the product (we’ll tell you that later), but we need a company name, since “TBD LLC” is already taken.
We spent a few days on a “buy every domain name that sounds halfway decent” binge. Kevin says his goal is simply to watch me spend lots of money, but in reality, he has standards, too. Like “don’t pick a name that people will laugh at”, and “don’t pick a name that sounds like an erectile dysfunction drug”. If he weren’t a brilliant engineer, he’d be working at Landor.
So like any CEO in engineer’s clothing, I decided to run a survey to get some data. And given that this is 2009, I thought I’d post it on Facebook to ask my friends to help me. Thanks to you all for your help.
Here are the results of the survey.
I used SurveyMonkey (a fine product) to publish the survey, and posted it via a tinyurl link to my status. I kept the survey open on Sunday through Tuesday, ending up with 40 total respondents. I included some discourse on brand aspirations, and also noted we didn’t want the company name to connote a particular application area.
Here are the results of the survey:
| Name | Very Good + Good + Acceptable | Poor + Very Poor |
| Acturi | 73% | 28% |
| Aviolo | 70% | 30% |
| Wowja | 65% | 35% |
| Abvio | 58% | 43% |
| Aveezo | 58% | 43% |
| Alygo | 55% | 45% |
| Afasti | 53% | 48% |
| Ukoku | 48% | 53% |
| Ahalu | 45% | 55% |
| Voyse | 43% | 58% |
| Imporeum | 40% | 60% |
| Abvira | 35% | 65% |
| Noool | 30% | 70% |
| Avioa | 28% | 73% |
This doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Of the first 20 respondents, 8 of them chose “Wowja” as their top choice. I was beginning to think it was going to be a rout. But apparently people who answered on Sunday were more favorable to Wowja, while those at work on Monday were looking for something less like the exclamatory chorus to a 1970’s Commodore’s tune. Wowja fell back in in the standings.
The hard part was using this data to decide a name, because after all, we’d have to live with it. Here was our decision process, in order of the list above:
Acturi – REJECTED – Too much like “Atari” or the name of a Roman Gladiator.
Aviolo – REJECTED – Nice, but more appropriate for the Napster of classical music, or for a antioxidant olive oil.
Wowja – REJECTED – Tempting, but kind of like an AMC Pacer, fun to drive around for a few weeks, but after that, it is just embarrassing.
Abvio – CHOSEN – 5 letters, no implicit meaning, and about as close to the beginning of the alphabet as you can get without naming your company “Aardvark”.
So that’s it, we chose Abvio as our company name. Thanks to the 40 of my friends who spent the time to take the survey. And thanks to Doug Kent for suggesting abvio.com, he is now named the official godfather of the company.
Some final notes:
- Two of my friends, Jay and Nate, offered up their own cool domain names if I wanted them. Thanks!
- One of my friends, Jarid, nailed the fact that the company name really doesn’t matter for iPhone apps, anyway. The product name will be the primary brand, and what the customers will typically see.
- Abvira caused Kevin and me to laugh for days: “Abvira, for those special moments”.
#1 by Terry on August 8th, 2009 - 1:01 pm
Oh brother – can I relate this to story! Especially what I like to call “domain name registration day.”