$25k Naming Agency Results

Shaan tells a story about his expensive and ultimately unsuccessful experience hiring a naming agency.

"I hired a naming agency once and paid them $25,000. Three people came in for the meeting, and I felt immense pressure pitching to these creative people - they're very skeptical and see through corporate BS.

The interesting part was their process. This guy moved our table to the side, sat on the floor with a whiteboard, and started writing long sentences. We were doing a dating app at the time, and he wrote in first person, venting as the customer: 'I don't download a dating app, I download dating apps - all of them. It's embarrassing. I've tried them all, I use them all, and I hate them all. I hate them because it's mostly me sitting there sending messages not getting replies. At least if I go up to a girl at a bar, she rejects me to my face. Online, these women are cowards.'

They did all these exercises with flashcards - Branson, Elon Musk, Einstein - saying 'pick two that fit.' Then Corvette, Rolex, Louis Vuitton - 'pick two.' I hated the whole process. The name ended up being forgettable, and the app failed before we even implemented the name.

The people who work in naming agencies are actually awesome though. The real move should have been to just hire the most interesting person from the agency to run our brand in-house."