TechCrunch - hopefully the products are waaaay better than the names

TechCrunch50 says this about itself. They have a "simple goal: find the best start-ups and launch them in front of our industry’s most influential VCs, corporations, fellow entrepreneurs and press. For companies who raise a gazillion dollars in venture funding, you would think they could fork over some money on a name. But, noooooooooooo. These are names that only a mother could love. That is, if that your kid came up with sucky names like Atmosphir, Bojam, GazoPa, PlaYce, Tweegee et cetera. Here are the 50 worst offenders out of the 52. (We spared DropBox and Footnote, which at least are whole word names.)

1. Adgregate Markets
2. AdRocket - so dot com sounding
3. Akoha
4. Alfabetic - see number 6 (below), same goes here
5. Ångströ - oddly enough this company is based in Palo Alto, so what is with all the letter decorations?
6. Atmosphir - silly silly misspelling - also unacceptable are Atmosfear, Atmosphear, Atmosfeyr and Atmosphyr
7. Birdpost
8. BlahGirls
9. Bojam - unless this has something to do with Bo Diddley......
10. Burt
11. Causecast
12. Closet Couture - for all the best dressed closets
13. Connective Logic
14. iamnews- iambored
15. Devunity - finally someone brings all the dev's together
16. DotSpots
17. Emerginvest - a four-syllable suckvest
18. ExchangeP - don't just exchange the P, the whole name needs to go
19. FairSoftware
20. FitBit - NitWit
21. Fotonauts - Polaroids in Space!
22. GazoPa - a subsidiary of parent company GazoGrandPa
23. GoodGuide - BadName
24. Goodrec - WorseName
25. GoPlanit
26. Grockit - Grok doesn't have a "c" but nice try anyway
27. Hangout Industries
28. iCharts - which decade is this again?
29. Imindi
30. LiveHit
31. Me-trics - me-sick
32. MIXTT - MIXXTTUP
33. Mobclix- really...why not just say MobClicks?
34. Mytopia - mytopia?, keep it then, we don't like it anyway
35. OtherInBox - it's at least better than one of our favorite train wrecks Xobni (inbox backwards in case you didn't know)
    
36. Personalria - Everyone needs a Personal Ria (a submerged coastal landform)
37. PlaYce - whY?
38. Popego - Pope Go?, Pop Ego?
39. Postbox
40. Quant the News
41. Rinen
42. Shattered Reality Interactive - who wants to interact with a shattered reality?
43. Shryk - Shriek?, Shrek?
44. Swype - someone swyped the i and rePlaYced it with a y
45. Tingz - tingz makes us twingz
46. Tonchidot - already forgot how to spell it, don't know what it means, so to find it on Google.....
47. TrueCar - FalseStart
48. Tweegee - sounds like something a one year old would say and no one would understand, and neither do we
49. VideoSurf
50. Yammer- best name here and perhaps not coincidentally the winner this year at TechCrunch!

Most of these miserably fail the Eat My Words world famous SMILE & SCRATCH test. We stand available to these companies to spend some of that TechCrunch VC money on a brand spanking new name. With our ROI, you'll get it back many times over.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Alexandra selected as a finalist in Make Mine a Million $ Business Program sponsored by American Express

Out of 400+ women entrepreneurs who went through an arduous application process, I was chosen as one of 20 finalists for The Make Mine a Million $ Business Program from Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence. Their goal is to inspire one million women entrepreneurs to scale their businesses to annual revenues of $1MM by 2010. I plan to be one of them.

On September 18, I will join the finalists in Albuquerque to compete for business development packages that include money, marketing, and mentoring. Described as a cross between "The Apprentice" and "American Idol," each of us will have 3 minutes to pitch our company to a live audience and panel of business experts. Ten winners will be chosen. Based on what I've heard from previous winners, including our client Allison Evanow of Square One Vodka (who encouraged me to enter), I have an excellent chance of winning. My playful personality, polished public speaking skills, interesting business, amusing anecdotes, and potential to scale are all things that will give me an edge. Plus, considering I bootstrapped the business in two and a half years without a college education or any formal business training, I am living proof that if you follow your passion you can do anything. Please cross your fingers for me.

Tasty Tidbits from the past week...

Sometimes we find juicy news not worthy of a full blog post, yet too darn good to not share with you. These "Tasty Tidbits" are digestible bites of news about new names and the naming industry and what we think of them here at Eat My Words. Bon Appetit!

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Bengal Star Receiver Ditches Old Name (but fails at math)

Bengals receiver Chad Johnson (he is number 85) has legally changed his name to Chad Javon Ocho Cinco. The reason is that he wanted Ocho Cinco to be on the back of his football jersey, but the team would not permit that since their policy is to only have the players last name listed. Spanish is not our native tongue, but ocho cinco translates to 8, 5. 85 is ochenta y cinco.

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Titan Prisons Rebranded as "Cluster Prisons"

Seems the English populace thinks the Titan Prisons (so named because extra large jails holding up to 2,500 prisoners) are not appropriate for proper rehabilitation. The solution? The Ministry of Justice is "rebranding" them as Cluster Prisons. Mind you, it is not changing anything but the name. It sounds like a cluster something. Other "rebranding" names considered were Crumpets, High Tea, Banger, Cheeky, Pish Posh and Mary Poppins.

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E-namers - is №1 worldwide interactive naming-center, or so they say.

Um, we doubt it. E-ven their name sucks.

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You know where the heart of the continent is? No?...... It's Winnipeg, as evidenced by their new slogan:

Welcome to Winnipeg – Heart of the Continent. Proving once again that Canadians should give up on slogans that go nowhere. Runner up was Winnipeg - Spleen of the Continent.

Looks like they drew quite a crowd. What's with the random VW racer?

Beautifull Disaster

Beautifull! is the name of a new " upscale takeout and delivery food for busy, health-conscious professionals." We think this name is awfull. Really. What does adding an extra "l" get you besides confusion? We get it, you get "full" eating this beautifull food. However, we know anyone who hears the name and tries to find them online will type beautiful.com into their web browser. That's great if they are in market for liposuction or laser hair removal. Not so much if you are trying to order dinner.

We hate to sound like a bad client, but when we first heard the name with the emphasis on "full," it made us think of one of the worst names of 2008.... a real dog:

What brand experience does Beautifull communicate? Is the food just good looking? To paraphrase Fernando Lamas, maybe it is better to look good than taste good. Certainly they weren't referring to the beautifull cost. Two days of three meals each for one person will cost $87.90; a week’s worth, delivered in two batches, goes for $307.65. A year's worth will set you back nearly $16K. That's painfull. Especially these days when people are tightening their belts.

beautifull! (we are guessing the spoon thing is a stylized exclamation point, yet does not excite us) fails the EMW SMILE & SCRATCH test on several SCRATCH criteria (and spells a new acronym!):

Random – disconnected from the brand / service of food delivery
Annoying – the exclamation point at the end makes us cringe and the lowercase "b" is dated not to mention annoying to journalist, who don't want to be accused of making a typo when they don't capitalize a proper noun
Tame – no energy or excitement (you can't count a forced exclamation point!)
Spelling-challenged – they will forever have to say, "that's beautifull with TWO L's"

From a business point of view, we think it unlikely that beautiful will use their stated capacity of up to 20,000 meals a day, or get 20,000 people to shell out the clams.

We wish beautifull! lots of luck and rich customers. But don't be surprised if the backers of beautifull! that put up $15.5 million end up being remosefull.

Have Your Cake and Invest It Too

Our 2007 "Client of the Year," Cake, is the subject of a gushing write up in today's TechCrunch. It also introduces us to the latest Cake name extension Cakedex.

If you get a chance, also stop by and take a nibble at The Slice, Cake's weekly video market wrap-up. It's kind of like a smarter, hipper financial Ren & Stimpy.

Here is the TechCrunch article in its entirety -or if you have really good eyesight, you can read it below: