Never did we think “Abstrakt” would become the name initially.
Some of the requirements were ambitious and some of them were kind of silly. Honestly, to put it plainly, some of those decisions have caused us some problems.
But when you’re starting a company, hindsight is always 20-20. Finding the perfect name is nearly impossible, but having a good name vs. a mediocre name can make a big difference.
If you’re in search of a startup name, hopefully, this article can help you.
What we wanted…
1) We wanted the name of our company to be the same noun used to describe the most valuable feature.
2) We wanted the name to be at the top of any list when sorted alphabetically.
3) We wanted the name to represent the “why” behind our company. *One of Abstrakt’s primary goals was to automate call scorecards and QA*
4) We didn’t want a name that had to end in “ify”, “ial”, “nal” or “uri”.
5) We wanted a name that was, for the most part, recognizable in the crowded sea of B2B technology.
6) We didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for the domain
What happened?
For the most part, no one knows what an Abstract is so the meaning behind our “why” is usually left having to be explained.
Our name is commonly misspelled, leading to prospects not being able to find us. Hence the word ‘abstract’ is popular for scientific papers – not a software company.
More times than I can count we have lost investors because they were concerned about the long-term brand recognition implications of a misspelled word.
Why Abstrakt?
Well, the most important parts of a scientific paper, the summary if you will, are called out at the beginning of any peer-reviewed, scientific paper.
We wanted the conversational intelligence component of our application to reflect that.
“I’m going to review my Abstrakt” was the language we wanted folks to use when interacting with the post-call report.
It called out, and highlighted, everything you needed to know about that call in a single pane of glass.
The second piece tied to our name was my favorite artist, an Abstract artist by the name of Jackson Pollock.
And, since most would agree that sales is equal parts science, and equal parts art it made sense to combine the two.
Three years in, we don’t have the noun goal quite accomplished yet, but we are getting there.
We’ll report back in a couple of years if our name really did hinder us, or if it opened doors because of how awesome our product truly is.
Until then, if you want to learn more about how we start Abstrakt and all of the rollercoaster rides along the way, we think you’ll enjoy these: