When naming your company, ‘engage with creative individuals from across the globe’: Squadhelp founder

Choosing a name for a business can be difficult. Even the geniuses behind some of the world’s most successful companies had seeds of doubt surrounding the name of their business to begin with. According to Business Insider, Amazon was originally called “Cadabra,” as in “abracadabra,” but CEO Jeff Bezos’ lawyer told him the reference to magic was too obscure. As a result, Bezos began browsing through the “A” section of the dictionary where he discovered the word “Amazon,” which seemed appropriate since it was earth’s largest river and he was building earth’s largest bookstore.

Moreover, the story behind how Apple acquired its name is not too dissimilar to Amazon. According to Walter Isaacson’s 2011 book, “Steve Jobs,” Jobs said, “I was on one of my fruitarian diets.” He added, “It sounded fun, spirited, and not too intimidating.” In addition to this Jobs had realized that Apple would be listed ahead of “Atari” in the phone book. Jobs told Steve Wozniak, an Apple co-founder, that if they didn’t think of a better name by the following afternoon, they would go with Apple. Evidently, nothing better came up.

However, thanks to the power of the internet and modern technology, naming a company no longer needs to be such a complicated and risky task. That is where companies like Squadhelp can come in handy.

Squadhelp is the largest naming platform across the globe. Squadhelp allows companies to host branding competitions to engage with the most creative people across the globe and get high-quality results, fast. Thousands of creatives compete with each other, suggesting great name ideas. At the end of the collaborative contest, a winner is selected. The winner gets paid, and the company receives a strong brand name that will help with success! It’s quick, simple, and costs a fraction of an agency.

To get a better idea of Squadhelp and its offering, we spoke with Darpan Munjal, the founder of Squadhelp.

What was the main motivator to solve this problem, for example, did it arise from a personal experience or something you recognized others having issues with?

Back in 2011, I was struggling to come up with a name for my startup (unrelated to Squadhelp). Every good name that I thought of was already taken. I sought help from several of my colleagues and participated in discussion forums to brainstorm different name ideas. This is when I realized that I am not alone in struggling to come up with a great name – most entrepreneurs face this problem.

Short of hiring a very expensive agency, there were not really any credible options available for companies to get help with naming. As a result, I decided to launch Squadhelp as a resource to allow other entrepreneurs to engage with creative individuals from across the globe to get help with name ideas. This was never intended to be a serious business – more of an experiment of crowdsourcing. However as more and more companies started using it, I realized that this idea had a strong potential and I decided to jump into it full time.

How did you come up with the name Squadhelp?

Since I did not have the luxury of a platform like Squadhelp, I had to come up with the name myself! I did engage with some of my colleagues and friends to brainstorm different ideas. I believe the name Squadhelp conveys the core promise of our platform, which is about engaging our large community of experts (squad) to get immediate help for naming and branding projects.

Can you give an example of a company or case study that has really benefited from Squadhelp?

We have helped over 16,000 companies so there are many examples. From naming a potato, to naming one of the largest Aircraft parts manufacturer, we have helped companies across many diverse industries and geographies. One of the recent examples is a company called LightBridge corporation (NASDAQ: LTBR). They are one of the world’s largest Nuclear fuel technology developer and they were looking for a name for their new venture. After running a naming contest with us, they received over 1000 submissions from more than 100 creatives across the globe. We worked with them to test several high-quality names, and in the end, they decided to move forward with the name “Enfission”, which is a great fit for their brand and mission.

What is the funniest or most unique submission you have seen for a name which was successfully accepted?

We love several “play on words” names that have been created on our platform. These styles of names are not necessarily a good fit for all brands – in fact, we do not recommend them if you are looking for a more classic or preeminent brand. But these styles can work great if you are looking to build a fun brand. Here are few examples:

“Sole Mates”: For a Fun Socks Brand

“Let Loos”: For a Portable Toilet Company

“Alpha Mail”: For an eMail and Calendar App

We showcase thousands of name examples on our website that have been created on our platform.

I understand Squadhelp also provides an option for logos. Do you foresee Squadhelp entering other areas to help companies source ideas?

We provide Taglines and Logos in a similar contest format, as our naming contests. Almost 1 out of 3 companies who use us for Naming also end up using our services for Taglines and/or Logos. In addition, we offer a fairly unique Audience Testing service which allows companies to test their top choices with their target customers before finalizing a name, logo or tagline.

What do you consider Squadhelp’s greatest achievement within the past 6 months?

Our greatest achievement has to be how we have leveraged technology (such as AI and Machine Learning) to compliment the amazing creativity of our community. We have invested significant time and resources in classifying millions of names so that we can now match the unique brand preferences of our customers with some of the high quality names from our community.

Customers not only get ideas directly from our naming community, our AI technology further assists them in discovering some great ideas that would be a perfect fit for their business or brand. Furthermore, our ongoing investment in validation services such as Audience Testing and Trademark research allows us to offer the most sophisticated tools to our customers in building a great brand. We are disrupting the traditional agency model, and are able to offer a large breadth of high-quality ideas, with agency-level validation processes at a fraction of the cost.

What is the main focus for Squadhelp over the next 6 months?

We have recently launched a Premium Domain Marketplace and a Visual Name Search that allows companies to discover high quality name ideas which they can purchase instantly. We plan on continuing to invest in our marketplace as well as the underlying technology over the next 6 months with a goal to offer the best collection of highly curated names that companies can use for their business, brand or product.