“Perfect is the enemy of good”

Voltaire

I’ve heard my brother (a Google engineer) say this so often that I thought it was a Google adage. Turns out, the French writer and public activist Voltaire quoted an Italian proverb in one of his poems. Reflecting on my most recent Tech School talk, I was thinking about this idea in the context of selecting your company name.

You do want to take some time to make sure no one has your company name already, because that can be confusing and could possibly be a legal infringement of some sort. A great resource for doing such a search is opencorporates.com.

You do not want to take an inordinate amount of time on name selection because 1) you have a lot of important things to do to get your startup going, and 2) you don’t know how your idea or product is going to evolve.

When I started my small manufacturing company, I chose a name that incorporated my own name. And when I designed my branding, I didn’t really think about a logo that would work as an icon or be stamped onto my products. As my company evolved and grew, we outgrew the name and we needed a practical logo. So, two years in, I renamed my company and rebranded.

You may find yourself rethinking your company name down the road a bit on your journey, and that’s ok. It’s a startup, and it doesn’t have to be perfect right from the beginning.