TechCrunch50 says this about itself. They have a “simple goal: find the best start-ups and launch them in front of our industry’s most influential VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press. For companies who raise a gazillion dollars in venture funding, you would think they could fork over some money on a name. But, noooooooooooo. These are names that only a mother could love. That is, if that your kid came up with sucky names like Atmosphir, Bojam, GazoPa, PlaYce, Tweegee et cetera. Here are the 50 worst offenders out of the 52. (We spared DropBox and Footnote, which at least are whole word names.)
- Adgregate Markets
- AdRocket – so dot com sounding
- Akoha
- Alfabetic – see number 6 (below), same goes here
- Ångströ – oddly enough this company is based in Palo Alto, so what is with all the letter decorations?
- Atmosphir – silly silly misspelling – also unacceptable are Atmosfear, Atmosphear, Atmosfeyr and Atmosphyr
- Birdpost
- BlahGirls
- Bojam – unless this has something to do with Bo Diddley……
- Burt
- Causecast
- Closet Couture – for all the best dressed closets
- Connective Logic
- iamnews– iambored
- Devunity – finally someone brings all the dev’s together
- DotSpots
- Emerginvest – a four-syllable suckvest
- ExchangeP – don’t just exchange the P, the whole name needs to go
- FairSoftware
- FitBit – NitWit
- Fotonauts – Polaroids in Space!
- GazoPa – a subsidiary of parent company GazoGrandPa
- GoodGuide – BadName
- Goodrec – WorseName
- GoPlanit
- Grockit – Grok doesn’t have a “c” but nice try anyway
- Hangout Industries
- iCharts – which decade is this again?
- Imindi
- LiveHit
- Me-trics – me-sick
- MIXTT – MIXXTTUP
- Mobclix– really…why not just say MobClicks?
- Mytopia – mytopia?, keep it then, we don’t like it anyway
- OtherInBox – it’s at least better than one of our favorite train wrecks Xobni (inbox backwards in case you didn’t know)
- Personalria – Everyone needs a Personal Ria (a submerged coastal landform)
- PlaYce – whY?
- Popego – Pope Go?, Pop Ego?
- Postbox
- Quant the News
- Rinen
- Shattered Reality Interactive – who wants to interact with a shattered reality?
- Shryk – Shriek?, Shrek?
- Swype – someone swyped the i and rePlaYced it with a y
- Tingz – tingz makes us twingz
- Tonchidot – already forgot how to spell it, don’t know what it means, so to find it on Google…..
- TrueCar – FalseStart
- Tweegee – sounds like something a one year old would say and no one would understand, and neither do we
- VideoSurf
- Yammer– best name here and perhaps not coincidentally the winner this year at TechCrunch!
Most of these miserably fail the Eat My Words world famous SMILE & SCRATCH test. We stand available to these companies to spend some of that TechCrunch VC money on a brand spanking new name. With our ROI, you’ll get it back many times over.
