6 Tips For Naming your Computer Company

What’s in a name? A whole lot, in fact. And this very question is one that puzzles computer business owners time and time again. I’ve been asked about it via email from Technibble readers on more than one occasion, so I know it’s something that prospective business owners are thinking heavily about.

While I wish there was a science that I could ascribe to naming your computer business, there, unfortunately, isn’t. It’s an art that requires some careful thinking, research, and consideration. Too many computer repair professionals who want to start a business want to make the golden rookie mistake of naming the business after themselves, or tacking a limiting description behind their name to create something along the lines of “Mike’s Computer Repair.”

Starting your new business on the right footing, with a solid descriptive yet short name, will allow clients to imprint a lasting connection to your brand. While steering towards a name that relates to technology is natural for the computer repair field, boxing yourself into something that will forever cast your business in a single light is definitely not advisable. What’s the perfect recipe for a new name?

Before I go over some example IT business names that I really happen to like, I’m going to share some tips that I’ve gleaned over the years, both from naming my own company (FireLogic) and talking with others who have gone down this road.

#6: Don’t Name Your Business After Yourself

This is definitely one of my cardinal rules. Naming your company after yourself is a dangerous proposition. I was very close to making this same mistake just over four years ago. It requires little thought, allows you to build off your good name in the industry, and is likely easy to trademark unless you have a very common name.

But naming after yourself has a lot of downsides. For example, if I named my business after myself, I would be forced to correct everyone that mispronounced my name (as it is spoken with a silent “w”, contrary to how most people attempt to state it). This is a huge potential problem. Even in my local area, a huge electronics retailer that is called Abt has more than half of the people I speak with mispronouncing its name. And this is a major established brand that is nearly a household name in our neck of the woods!

Another reason you should stay away from using your namesake for your business name is that distancing yourself from your company at some point will become very tough to do. If your business becomes known well enough and has brand recognition, you may be able to retire or sell it without issue. But the chances are more likely, that unless you grow to the size of an Abt as mentioned above, future owners may be inclined to rename the business.

Long story short: don’t paint the future of your business in your own name. The days where the Fords and Sears of the world can build and thrive are almost over. And even in practice, the biggest tech companies have no mention of their founders in their names – Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.

#5: Don’t Let Your Name Frame You Into a Box

Another big mistake that I see being made in our industry is that so many technicians want to pin their futures on one aspect of what they do. Or, they name their companies on what got them into the industry, without forethought about what they may be doing 2-4-6 years down the road.

Computer repair isn’t going anywhere in the next five or ten years. But perhaps twenty years from now? There may be a time where computer repair turns into what TV repair folks are considered now: a legacy, dying breed. It’s not something I want to see, but inevitable with current trends moving as they are.

My own business has seen this move start already. The bulk of our business today is not fixing dead PSUs or replacing hard drives. Much of this is from a general upward trend of technical reliability getting better and better, as I wrote about in a previous post. In turn, our commercial consulting, managed services, and cloud services are booming to the point where traditional computer repair makes up a mere 15-20% of what we do now.

Do you want to posture your business for the future? Leave “computer repair” or “pc repair” out of the name entirely. Use a generic phrase entailing technology or consulting or something that doesn’t box you into a single service offering. My own company uses the tagline “Technology Services” which allows us to tell others what we do, but keep it broad enough where we can move into other offerings as the industry changes.

#4: Can’t Get the Dot Com? Don’t Sweat It

Too many technicians are so concerned about grabbing the dot com for their name that they waste oodles of time-wrenching over decisions about a name. While this is nice to have, I do not believe for one minute that it is a requirement by any means. The days where not being on a dot com domain was considered heresy are long over. Some like Jay Baer are even going as far as saying that domain names are irrelevant already, in light of how connected the web is without having to memorize a domain.

While I don’t agree with that entirely, I do feel that you shouldn’t base an entire name decision on whether you can get the dot com for it or not. I know numerous industry colleagues and have clients who are very happy with .us, .org, .info, and other less common names. Heck – my company uses a dot net domain as our primary (and we haven’t lost any business because of it).

Most people these days aren’t getting 404 blank pages when they type in the incorrect domain or took a wild guess when trying to find you. What browser these days don’t use an integrated search bar/address bar combination? Google and Bing are so entrenched in people’s lives and lexicon these days that even a mistype only takes a Google search to iron out.

#3: Long Names Stink in More Ways Than One

The biggest problem with long names? They usually come with long domain names unless you are willing to butcher your name into hyphenated pieces, or just shorten it all together (one good example I just ran into today was Ubiquiti Networks, makers of the Unifi access point, who used to adopt the shortened ubnt.com domain name and have recently shortened it further to ui.com). I don’t think this is an ideal approach. A name should be coupled with a similarly comparable domain name that follows the flow of your namesake.

Domain name length and memorability come into play when people have to type their email address into the address bar of their email client. I helped a law office transition from an ungodly long .com domain over to a cleaner, descriptive .us domain which they have been very happy with. Aside from letting their customer base know about the change, going forward, this is making the business much easier for them.

Think about all of the other marketing material you may want to make for your business. Shirts? Business cards? Handouts? The longer your name, the smaller you can blow up that logo and/or name on marketing material without eating too much space. Shorter names allow for you to incorporate the name into a logo, which we did for our business. This graphic goes on our website, business cards, shirts, and everything else that faces a client. And we never have any regrets on sizing/spacing as it is clearly visible in nearly any print or digital scenario.

#2: Can You Trademark Your Name If you Wanted To?

Many computer repair techs never think twice about it, but did you know that if you want to trademark a name down the road, you need to have no possible issues with overlapping trademarks by others in the country? This is especially true in the United States and I am guessing similar in most other modernized nations.

While starting out small and fresh may not have to trademark on the top of your priority list, it’s something that may become necessary down the road as you grow. As you start to bring on workers, gain more business, and potentially expand into multiple locations, you want to be able to secure your business branding as the sole authority that can profit from your established likeness.

Choosing a name that has been either trademarked, or a close derivative has been trademarked, puts you into a tough position for winning a trademark down the road. Two good avenues to use in researching who else may have your name in the United States are Trademarkia and the USPTO. While the searches you can do on these public databases are relatively simple, you would likely want to invest in a small business lawyer who can help do an exhaustive search across the country to ensure you aren’t stepping on any other trademarks that may exist.

If your company does grow to the size of something much greater than what you have at the outset, you will be able to guarantee that no one else can profit from your sweat and labor.

#1: The Web 2.0 Name Craze Is Over

Flickr? Twitter? Pownce? The deluge of media-centric Silicon Valley names that are iconic of many large tech brands (or former brands, in the case of Pownce) is just as risky as the businesses they represent. They’re meant to be catchy and sweet, but without a huge marketing budget to educate the public, can ruin your brand’s publicity uptake (especially locally) since they are tough to remember and hard to spell, among other things.

It may be interesting to tag your business with one of these Web 2.0-ish names, but I would personally recommend you steer clear. You will be constantly questioned about the name by clients; they will have a tough time remembering your email address, and the pronunciation name-game will be a never-ending problem.

Leave the goofy names for Silicon Valley. They have the marketing prowess to take the kind of risks we small guys shouldn’t bother with.

So, What’s a Good Name Look Like?

I looked no further than the Technibble forums to peruse for some names that I thought resembled clearly distinctive brands. While asking someone for an opinion on a name is almost as risky territory as debating the merits of antivirus program choices, the following names follow many of the principles that I outlined above.

Codegreen Technology: A small computer repair company out of Canada that has one of my recent favorite names that I can remember. The primary company name doesn’t scream technology, but the ending makes this decidedly clear and succinct. Clever in every way. Kudos to whoever coined this one.

Pacific Computer Services: Another computer consulting firm out of California. The play on the coastal term Pacific which ties into the area of the country they are from was very ingenious, short, and memorable. Easy to remember and write, yet easily descriptive of a business. I like it.

Calm Computing: A very catchy tech-driven name that doesn’t pin them down into a 1990’s geekiness. The term computing is very open-ended and can mean computers, training, software, etc. Their logo is to the point and also thought out nicely. I think their domain could have been shorter, but that aside, the name rocks.

Data-Medics: Using a term like Data in a name would otherwise be a non-starter for me, but the fact that they are a business focused on data recovery bends the rule a bit. It’s a playful combination that speaks to what they do, yet doesn’t paint them in an overly technical light.

LifelineIT: I love well-done name mashups – the problem is that so many computer repair shops tend to have a love affair with the words “PC” or “tech” and these are way overdone and so 1990’s. This company took a word that would otherwise be associated with healthcare and mashed it with a familiar term for our industry, “IT”. It flows well, isn’t that long, and is quite memorable in my eyes. It just works.

Picking a good name isn’t that hard with the right research. Get some insight from those around you, and look for names that have decent domain name options available. Keep your brand relevant for the long term by sticking with the best practices I mentioned above, and you will definitely avoid the hassle that comes with changing a name down the line. It’s a pain in the rear; just ask anyone who has had to go through it for their company.

Note: I have no personal or business relationship with any of the companies I mentioned above. All of these businesses were plucked from posts that were made on the Technibble forums by representatives of these companies.

Do you have any advice for naming a computer company? What kind of tips did you follow when naming your business? Are you in the market for finding a name and looking for some advice? Feel free to post away in the comments section! We want to hear from the rest of you.

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