What’s In a Name? Plenty When You’re Launching a Startup

Although the premise of his new venture was fairly well formed in his mind, when it came to naming the company, Kevin Gadd admits he experienced a few sleepless nights.  Gadd, previously the director of IT commercialization for TechColumbus, has recently launched Venture Highway, an online learning system to help aspiring entrepreneurs be more successful in creating and growing a business. 

“I never realized how difficult, and costly, it is to get a good domain name these days until I started Venture Highway,” says Gadd.  “Originally, the company was named 24-7 Ventures as a placeholder to get the corporate stuff set up quickly.  We knew we needed to change the name and it was our first task once we had the basics set up and the investment in the bank. 

Jason Calacanis, moderator of This Week in Startups put it in a very interesting way -  “Great entrepreneurs tackle and solve challenging issues like naming their company well, and if you can’t name your company well, you’re simply not worth investing in.”

Gadd says he used sedo, a domain name broker service to investigate various words and various domain names that might be for sale.  He finally settled on Venture Highway which he says got resounding approval to everyone he shared it with.  He paid $4,000 for the name, but says it’s been an investment well worth it.

For more insights on naming your company, read Gadd’s blog on new venture naming:
http://blog.venturehighway.com/startup/new-venture-naming/