How To Name a Brand Part 1: How We Named Our First Company- TrackR

I’ve recently been advising several companies that are pre-launch and the topic of naming has consistently come up. Despite these startups being data-driven technology companies, the naming of a company or product usually is seen more as an art vs a scientific endeavor.

Here is a story from my first company

Naming my First Company — TrackR

I started my first company, TrackR which helped people find lost items (A precursor to AirTags), while still a student at UCSB in 2008. We were a bunch of surfers so we the first name of the company was named after a surf spot we all loved, Drake’s beach — “Drake Security”.

This is a common mistake for founders (and especially VC firms) to name their company after something they are personally passionate about. While passion is good, the name of your company should be about your target market’s passion, not yours.

We lost the original college business plan with this name and while I think the name had little to do with our defeat vs our timing (apps on the phone weren’t a thing yet) and complete lack of traction. The judges did have feedback on our name and that we sounded pretty old school. We thought about what we want to do is help people find lost items so we came up…