Forever ago, maybe fifteen or twenty years back, my friend Kristen introduced me to her dad.
He was a big deal in private equity. Nice enough guy. Negotiated like a brawler. Mad respect.
I don’t even remember the name of the app I was trying to get funded at the time. It was a graph-based prediction algorithm for online retail markets. It did thousands of tiny calculations the hard way in order to estimate, with some level of accuracy, the retail value and movement velocity of any given truckload of goods from a manifest.
Think stock trading, but for scented candles and side tables. A lot of the same kind of math.
The name was poetic, I think.
And he hated it.
Hated it.
His rule was that a product name should always explain, in some way, what the product does.
The way to think about it is that a product name is essentially a micro-value proposition.
A stapler company that sells rusty staples? Tough Bind.
A car lot that sells ice cream? Creamy Wheels.
You get the idea. I can go on like this for hours.
That conversation made an impact on the way I name things, but I don’t think I fully understood why the rule mattered until much later.
Fast forward to six months ago, when a friend and longtime collaborator realized he had enough skill to write competent AI apps using vibe coding tools.
Then fast forward again to last night, when I was looking through some of the projects he wants my help with.
There was this long hallway of repos.
I’m looking at 230 new ones.
All named poetically, or with metaphors I am not privy to.
And I have no freaking idea what any of them are.
Yep.
This is why things, even if only internally, should be named for function rather than form.
A name does not have to be beautiful.
But if it doesn’t communicate at a glance to collaborators or investors, your product naming hasn’t done its job.