One thing we’ve learnt after being in the entrepreneurial ecosystem for a while: starting and running your own business is no easy feat. You can have the best developers on your team but if no one pays attention to your product, then you’re still going to have problems.
We’ve seen a lot of startups and SMEs and we think we’ve gotten pretty good at guessing what a startup does, just based on their names. But once in a while, we come across a few that make us stop in our tracks.
As a fun little exercise, we ask a bunch of millennials who are not involved in the startup ecosystem whatsoever to guess what these businesses do based purely on their names. How many do you think you can guess right, given no indication besides the name?
1. VRgini
Emily: An app for prepubescent teens. You key in your age, sexual orientation and crush type and it will tell you when and how you will lose your virginity.
Mary: It’s a restaurant! The first few letters seem to come from the word ‘Virgin’ so I equate it to virgin olive oils, that means cooking.
Vin: Are they trying to rip off the Virgin brand?
Results:
- 4/9 thought it was a product related to virgins.
- 1/9 thought it was a feminine hygiene product.
Almost half thought it was definitely virgin-related.
What it actually is:
It is a real estate VR platform for property agents and developers to market their properties and for potential buyers to view the property better.
Reactions:
Emily: I get why it starts with VR, but gini doesn’t do much for me. There’s no connection whatsoever to property!
Soraya: Aw man! With a provocative name like that, I really thought they’re involved in something a little more risqué than property.
Lyn: They need a better name cause it just reads as “virgin” more than anything else.
2. Papa
Emily: An app that helps you deal with your daddy issues.
Mary: Security firm. Papa equals father. He takes care of security of the house.
Vin: An app connecting you to maintenance services (plumbing, car mechanical issues), activities usually associated fathers or men.
Soraya: I thought it might be sugar daddy-related because, well, “Papa”. But also maybe a pet-owner matching service because “Papa” could refer to you becoming the “parent” of a pet, and the word “Papa” is close to “Paw”. But I’m probably overthinking it.
Alicia: A food company that delivers lunch to your office door step.
Jiar: A self-help guide for new fathers.
Results:
- 4/9 thought it was a sugar daddy app.
- 4/9 thought it was a product related to fatherhood.
- 1/9 thought it was a pizza company!
We’re not sure what it says about millennials that they either assumed it was related to sugar-daddies or just plain fatherhood.
What it actually is:
Papa is community-based parking app that helps you look for parking spots easily with real-time information.
Reactions:
Kara: Wouldn’t that promote driving while using the phone? Malaysians are ruthless anyway when it comes to parking, ain’t no app gonna help.
Lyn: I can imagine their thought process. “Pa-pa-pa-parking? Can’t think of a good name, let’s just take the first two alphabets and repeat them… Papa.”
3. CARDPOW!
Vin: An online wallet for cards. No need for physical cards anymore, just store all of them on Cardpow and scan it when needed. KAPOW!
Soraya: A website that remembers all your loved ones’ birthdays and sends them cards, because nobody has time to do that anymore.
Kara: Either an online gambling site or an international sim card service.
Results:
- 3/9 thought it was a card design company.
- 2/9 were close, thinking it was a platform to store or sync card details.
What it actually is:
A comparing website that stores all credit and debit card discounts and promotions. It also provides cashback.
Reactions:
Vin: Kapow!! Makes sense.
Kara: There’s so many similar platforms, they need a stronger branding because the name isn’t telling me anything.
Queennie: Oh, like card+angpow!!
Lyn: The name doesn’t suggest that you’ll get anything back at all, more like your card would be ruined instead.
4. Werebits
Mary: Bits equals bytes. A tech company or computer support.
Soraya: Wear and Fitbits? An underwear that covers your ladybits?
Lis: A navigation app.
Results:
- 1/9 thought it was vegan pet food.
- 1/9 thought it was an app to collect points from vendors.
Werebits clocked a relatively high rate of correct guesses from our millennials, so props to them for getting their name on point.
What it actually is:
Werebits is a digital studio specialising in designing and building mobile native apps for iOS/Android and responsive websites. They also identify as rabbits because the company was founded in the year of the rabbit.
Reactions:
Vin: This makes the most sense so far.
Queennie: The name really does not sound like a company designing websites at all.
Lyn: So…. they think they’re rabbits. I’m curious about their art direction now.
5. Catjira
Emily: One of those photo filter apps that turns your cat pictures into ninja-cat pictures.
Soraya: An app that lets cat owners watch over their cats. If your cat behaves like Godzilla/Gojira and claws your sofa to shreds, you might want to watch what it gets up to on a daily basis.
Alicia: A business providing cat services such as pet hotel, grooming while selling cat-related products. Did they forget the N to make it jiran?
Results:
- 8/9 thought it was a cat-related product or company.
- 1/9 thought it was a dating app, which was possibly the closest guess.
What it actually is:
Catjira is a platform for social media influencers and marketers to find each other for campaigns.
Reactions:
Vin: Somebody must have lost a bet and decided to name the startup after a drunken night watching cat videos and Godzilla (original Japanese version).
Soraya: What do cats have to do with influencers??
Lyn: Is the team dominated by cat lovers?
Lis: I feel like I’ve been lied to.
6. Greenroom136
Emily: A website that comes up with a list of available hotel/hostel/AirBnB rooms for when you go on vacation.
Vin: Video editing app.
Kara: The new MySpace but it sounds like a peep show app. Green rooms are usually artiste waiting rooms before a show but the number that follows makes it like a dodgy ICQ username.
Lyn: An app that projects your image onto a green screen then automatically superimposes you in live action scenes, allowing you to check out how you’d look like being a superhero.
Lis: It’s gotta be a bar or a nightclub.
Alicia: A startup that focuses on making the world a greener place, one room at a time. But the name provided an unfortunate association with shady chat rooms though. But hey, better green than red, right?
Results:
- 2/9 thought it was a nightclub or a bar.
- 2/9 thought it sounded dodgy and shady.
- 3/9 thought the company had a eco-friendly mission.
Another one that not a single person got right, and none of the guesses even came close.
What it actually is:
Greenroom136 is a Malaysian independent bag company with a vast range from messenger style, backpacks, wallets, camera inserts and more.
Reactions:
Emily: Urban bag?? Urban sure as hell ain’t green!
Queennie: Oh my goodness, I never thought it will be an apparel shop, it really sounded like a restaurant to me.
7. WebMedic
Emily: An app that replaces your doctor. It diagnoses your health condition/illness symptoms to gauge roughly what’s wrong with you.
Alicia: A platform that provides medical assistance through apps such as calling the ambulance or hospice nurses to make medical aid more available and accessible.
Results:
- Everyone thought it was a platform for online medical services. To be honest, when we first came across this, we also thought the same.
What it actually is:
WebMedic was created to improve the look and feel of websites for established businesses.
Reactions:
Mary: I really don’t get these startups and their names.
Vin: Oh. A doctor for the world wide web. Cheh.
Kara: Makes sense, sounds expensive though.
8. Lemon
Vin: A fashion boutique app. Or a food app.
Soraya: A newsletter that sends you depressing news stories from around the world so you feel better about your own. “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Except that you’re making lemonade for yourself from other people’s lemons.
Alicia: The rival of MBG? Selling fresh fruits at a cheaper price? I have no idea. Just taking a blind shot.
Results:
- 3/9 thought it was a platform to source lemons.
- 1/9 thought it was a newsletter of depressing news.
- 1/9 thought it was a dessert shop.
Because of the simplicity of the name, every one had no indication of what it could be, and the guesses were all over the places (besides the obvious).
What it actually is:
Lemon is an app that displays menus of restaurants and cafes and the occasional display of calories of food items. It also connects to Waze to help users locate the restaurant.
Reactions:
Emily: Lemons equals menus now? Are they the fruit whisperer?
Soraya: This was my favourite reveal. I love the randomness of a name like Lemon for a service like this.
Kara: Wow. Just wow. Why not just name themselves menu? Why Lemon?
Queennie: Ooh, ok I’m downloading it now.
Lyn: Cute name but I feel sour cause I didn’t get the answer right.
9. HalalBuddy
Emily: Tinder for the Syariah compliant.
Queennie: A super mart that sell all halal products.
Alicia: An app advertising halal eateries all over the world. I think it is really needed to help ease some travel plans.
Results:
- The majority thought it was an app to help source halal products.
What it actually is:
Halal Buddy is an app dedicated to check all ingredients in every product’s ingredient label.
Reactions:
Vin: Finally a name that is somewhat representative of the service provided!
Queennie: For some reason, this sounded more like a calorie checker app.
10. Tejavoo
Emily: An app to remind you of things you have not done (including your life’s failures).
Vin: A buddy app? Looking to meet somebody over tea? Yumcha yumcha? A tea rendezvous? Tejavoo it!
Soraya: An app that lets you keep a record of all the meals you eat. You can save pictures, videos, lists of dishes you ate and you can revisit them again and again.
Queennie: It’s TOTALLY a streetwear store!
Lyn: I really don’t know anymore. A car rental service?
Lis: An app that helps you store your memories like photos and videos.
Alicia: A radio that predicts and plays songs that the listener might like. It’s déjà vu but with a T which stands for Tomorrow.
Results:
What it actually is:
Tejavoo is an online fashion mall that emphasises on selling local brands from around Malaysia only.
Reactions:
Vin: Ni mesti untuk budak-budak hipster kot (Translation: This must be for hipsters).
Kara: We already have Zalora for that!
Lyn: Wha? The name sounds foreign for something that’s suppose to be for local brands.
Shakespeare’s Juliet famously did ask, “What’s in a name?” and follows that with “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”.
However, when it comes to branding and making yourself known to the general public, perhaps a name really does matter more, particularly when it comes to making first impressions.
That being said, established international brands like “Google”, “Amazon” or even “Apple” don’t really tell you very much about what they are or do purely based on their names. Catchiness and ease of reading could be other factors that matter more, or just being unusual enough that users will stop and take a second look.
So how many did you guess right? What other names made you do a double take when you first heard them? Let us know in the comments.
