You’ve got the next breakthrough in the real estate industry. The product idea has been bubbling around in your head for months. You’ve validated it with customers. You’re 75% SURE (nothing is ever 100%) it will work.

Maybe you’ve even built a MVP (minimum viable product).

But you still have no brand name for your real estate startup. Or you have one, but you know it’s far from great.

What on earth should you name your real estate startup?

Naming your product/company. One of the hardest, but most crucial, aspects of building a startup. As some know, I’m working on a new mobile app, outside of the real estate industry, and going through this exact naming process right now. It’s not easy. It’s time consuming. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s outright painful.

Here are a few naming tips I’ve learned over the years…

1. Put together a concise description of the primary problem you are addressing, and how your product solves that specific scenario. Describe important aspects to focus on short term, but also know where you want to get long term.

2. Get brainstorming…

3. Ask women. It’s a generalization, sure, but usually females are better at coming up with creative names than guys are. Not always, but from my personal experience, it holds true. Round up a few of your trusted female friends, tell them your concept and a little bit about what aspects you think are important, and have them brainstorm names. If you can get multiple women together in the same room at the same time, even better.

4. Create a massive word bank related to your core value proposition. Spend several hours on this, at a minimum. If there are 2 or 3 primary components to your product, then write down words describing all aspects — both individually and in the aggregate.

5. Go deeper on #2, by scouring the web for synonyms for all of those words.

6. Keep it short and sweet. Longer names inherently mean a greater likelihood someone will forget, or misspell, it.

7. Don’t rush it. Great names don’t often just come to you overnight. In some cases, sure, that happens. But it’s certainly not the norm.

8. Can you (easily) win the SEO fight for your brand name?

9. Narrow in, but allow for long term flexibility. The initial product you build will be much narrower than the long term vision for that product (side note: if that’s not the case, you’re thinking too small) — but be cognizant of the fact that you can pigeon yourself in a corner branding wise fairly easily. A name specific to the focus of your first product iteration will likely make early adoption easier, but could slow you down in the long term. A re-brand is extremely expensive, and something you’ll want to avoid if you can help it.

I’ve named 4 projects/products. I’ve fared okay, but not great…

1. Geek Estate – I actually think this one is pretty good, as it blends technology and real estate together by simply replacing Real with Geek in the term “real estate”. That said, it’s two words and sometimes I have to repeat the name twice when I tell people what the real estate technology blog I run is called. Both of those facts are not ideal for a great brand name. Since you are reading Geek Estate right now, I’m curious what you think of this name?
2. myKRO – myKRO.org originated from a combination of English and Bengali words (Bangladesh is where microfinance was started). The phrase “Khudro Riner Ontore” means “Inside Microfinance” in Bengali, which abbreviates to KRO. To demonstrate the importance of the personal nature of microfinance, the “my” was added. Of course, the fact that myKRO happens to sound like micro didn’t hurt. When my friend Jerry and I decided we wanted to start a microfinance blog back in 2008, we brainstormed names on our own for several hours. Fortunately for me, I worked closely with numerous creative PR/marketing folks at Zillow — and I pulled a favor to get 5 of them all in a room with Jerry and I to brainstorm for 45 minutes to come up with the final name we ended up with, myKRO. Though it’s often misspelled, this is probably my favorite name of the 4 due to the meaning behind it.
3. ESM Exec Designs – ESM stands for “Elegant. Simple. Memorable.” Executive indicates its a high quality service, and designs relays the fact that the firm is a design firm. “Meh” is what I think about this one. Okay, but far from great.
4. Oh Hey World – It’s really a slang way to say “Hello world”, meaning that it’s opening up the world around you. This brand has good potential because it’s broad and worldly, but is missing the mark on a several fronts. First, it’s three words. Second, it’s easily misspelled. Third, “oh hey” is a slang term that is not known throughout the world.

Like everything else, there is no silver bullet when it comes to brand names. If all else fails, hire someone smarter than you. I’ve never taken this route (though I have leaned heavily on others in my trusted circles), but I know there are extremely creative people and agencies (like 1000watt) that specialize in creative naming exercises. Of course, they don’t do that for free.

Naming is one of the hardest tasks to tackle in the startup process. But it can make the difference between a breakthrough success and a flop. Of course, the greatest brand name in the world will completely flop if your product sucks.

Related Reads:

• Rich Barton, Zillow’s co-founder, wrote a detailed article several years ago detailing how he thinks about creating brand names. This is the best analysis on the topic I’ve read anywhere, straight from the hand of someone who has gone through numerous successful branding exercises. The high level takeaway: make up a word for your (consumer) product.
• Sam DeBord has written about this topic here at Geek Estate. As he notes, B2B and B2C are two different ballgames, and you have to lot more leeway with a B2C focus compared to a B2B endeavor.
• Seth Godin says try Wordoid.

[Graphic via http://www.themarketingchefslive.com/]