Naming Your Business: Why the Perfect Name Doesn't Exist

I spent three weeks naming my first side project. I brainstormed hundreds of options. I checked domain availability obsessively. I ran my favorites past friends who had conflicting opinions about every single one. I eventually picked a name, registered it, built the thing, and launched. The name turned out to be completely irrelevant to whether people used the product. This is the dirty secret of business naming: the name matters far less than founders think it does. Google is a misspelling. Spotify means nothing. Stripe is a common English word with no inherent connection to payments. These names work because the companies behind them built something valuable, not because the names were inherently good. That said, a bad name can genuinely hurt you. So the goal isn't perfection. It's avoiding the pitfalls. What makes a name functional A business name has practical requirements that matter more than creativity. It needs an available domain. Not .io, not .co, not a hyphenated version. Th