He doesn't give the name element enough credit. It's huge. Mint is one of the two examples I give of best brand names ever.
Not kidding. Ever. Silk Soymilk is the other example I use.
Mint's a killer brand name, I think it'd be literally impossible to beat Mint on natural branding in personal finance, it's the most perfect name I could imagine. It has double, good meanings - "Mint" as in a place where coins/money are minted, and of course the plant/candy. Then the plant/candy is associated with being fresh, clean, safe, and it's colored green, again like money.
It's just genius. It's also only four letters, easy to remember, relevant, and they got the domain name for it. It's really, really good. The only other name so good is "silk soymilk", for basically all the same reasons. (soymilk -SoymILK - easy to remember, silk is clean/smooth/elegant/upscale, four letters, hard to forget, etc).
Seriously, Mint might be the best named/naturally branded online company ever. I'm not joking. If I ever had to do a lecture on naming and branding, I'd 100% for sure use Mint as an example.
I think people attribute success to a name because that fits the mental model people have for success: You just choose the right name! And then you win!
That's nonsense. Winning is a long series of decisions that have to go right far more often than not. I pulled out the decisions I thought really were critical and irreparable turning points -- hard decisions that required a lot of analysis and a lot of work to fulfill, both for us and for Mint.
You'd like to believe the name is all that matters because then the path to success is so short and so clear. It just isn't so. (And there are counterexamples galore that you're emphatically ignoring -- companies with fantastic names that never got anywhere.)
To be clear: they did have a better name. I say so in the article. But that's not enough to win.
> I pulled out the decisions I thought were really, critical and irreperable turning points -- hard decisions that required a lot of analysis and a lot of work to fulfill, both for us and for Mint.
Buying mint.com was a hard and critical decision for Mint - they paid $2 million for it in equity during their series A. I think you massively underestimate it as a reason they won. I think if the names are flipped - if your company was named mint.com, theirs wesabe.com, then quite possibly you win. I did enjoy the article a lot though and thought it was very honest and good reading and insightful. But maybe you underestimate the power of their name and branding? Mint might be the best naturally-branded website of all time (edit: maybe ask.com is better, which also proves that branding and name isn't everything). But that was a big advantage.
I thought the rest of your post was very good and insightful and I agree with a lot of it, but I do think you underestimated the name effect. It's big, it has a multiplier on everything - more press, more PR, more virality, more trust, more conversion, more desirability, more user retention, etc, etc, etc, etc.
> I think if the names are flipped - if your company was named mint.com, theirs wesabe.com, then quite possibly you win.
Whoa there, you're jumping to extreme, unsupported conclusions. No one disagrees that Mint's branding is great. But to count that as the main reason why they won? Even top 3-5 reasons? That flies in the face of the wisdom given by every successful startup veteran: it's all about execution. If Mint.com hadn't provided the instant gratification that got people talking, if they hadn't won TC50, if they hadn't spent heaps of money on marketing, they would have been dead in the water.
Don't get me wrong: branding is important. But if your product+marketing is inferior, you'll probably lose, and if it's superior, you'll overcome all but the most disastrous names. (Nobody knew what a googol was, most people still don't, and look who's running the show.) You're focusing on the name to such an extent that you're ignoring most of the factors that lead a business to success or death... it's like MBA guys who've never built a product in their lives, yet say things like, "Oh I'll just outsource it, it's not important." Yeah right.
Two years back I tried Mint, Wesabe and the new Quicken online.
From those three sites, only Mint could retrieve data for my WellsFargo visa. So I stayed.
Quicken was the worse - they actually made changes to my account (for which WF notified me by email) and their support was basically useless when I asked them about it.
So, the name had almost nothing to do with my decision - if Wesabe had the same scrapper as Mint, things would have been different.
(I misspelled Wesabe twice while writing this post - so maybe the name does matter... but I still maintain that a working product matters more)
> > I think if the names are flipped - if your company was named mint.com, theirs wesabe.com, then quite possibly you win.
> Whoa there, you're jumping to extreme, unsupported conclusions.
I never used wesabe, but assuming that the products were anything close in quality, the difference in naming/branding could've made the difference between winning and losing.
Yes, everything else matters too, but if you get even a small short term edge in press articles, signup, and customer retention due to naming, then it has a snowball effect on everything. Press begets more press, signup and happy customers begets positive word of mouth, and so on. It might've made the difference - it might not have, but it's not so crazy a thought.
You're also discounting the notion that competitors don't "execute". Even if you're not "executing" everything as well as your competitors, people will come back to an easy to remember name (easy to remember, spell, say, repeat, etc).
The name, imo, was/is a huge factor (as one of the OPs wrote) that I think helped snowball the other aspects of execution - being able to build on customer feedback - precisely because it was such an easy pass along name. Having loads of people come to your site gives you a lot of valuable info that a 'better executing' but poorly visited site doesn't get.
While I agree execution is important, it actually doesn't matter if no one can remember your products name or website. I could see how a name could break a company regardless of how good the product is. Why did I choose mint? Because it was the site that I actually remembered months after discovering it.
Replying to a (very good) counter argument with your original argument does not make your argument better nor does it bring the discussion forward. For my part, I'm very grateful to Marc for sharing his experience and thereby providing us with knowledge.
If the most important thing is getting people to start using a site, a weird name (sorry) is a definite barrier.
Imagine a website is behind a locked door, like a 1920s speakeasy. You have to hear, remember, then say (maybe even spell) a secret codeword to a grumpy doorman to enter. This is pretty much the user reality.
A startup could easily test domain name memorability using Mechanical Turk, I think, which would make this a far more objective exercise. Briefly show panel members a short list of websites and descriptions, then quiz them.
If you get your numbers from 30% to 60%, maybe paying a few thousand dollars for a domain name isn't so bad. I know many (myself included) still have a 1990s level of spite about paying for resold domains, but maybe we can get over that if it's quantified.
Finally, I'm not saying mint.com is necessarily worth two million dollars, but I quickly add that if it's worth two million dollars to anyone, it's to a financial-services startup.
mint.com was 2 million for the domain? Do you have a source for that? Is there a source for general cost of domain names owned by companies as of today?
As a startup entrepreneur I think it's tremendously helpful. By the way, when you mentioned about the $1 user acquisition by Mint, I couldn't but help think of Andreessen Horowitz's (as championed by Ben)'s view of "fat" startups - "sometimes you got to eat" (his counterpoint against being "lean").
I know this is all speculation since it's already played out, but suppose you decided to outspend Mint and when they spent $1, you spent $2 per user. How do you think that would have changed things in the equation for you?
Very simple: if they had spent $2 per user, they would have run out of money faster. Their problem seemed to be that they didn't convert as well as Mint, for the reasons explained in the blog post. Spending more to get more traffic would have just emptied the savings faster. However, if you could make $2 of profit from each of those visitors, then yes, it would have been a game-changer. The problem wasn't spending more, it was converting enough people to make reasonable profits.
Marc, thanks for the post-mortem. We make the best decisions we can w/ the info we have at the time - this is definitely a useful piece for other founders to read. Hopefully airing things out like that serves an "expunging" purpose and helps you clear it and move on. Best of luck in whatever your next pursuit is.
But it's a lot better than "Wesabe". "Wesabe" looks like "wasabi", which is completely irrelevant. (You can pull off irrelevance if you spell the name right--"Apple"? But misspelling plus irrelevance is pretty bad.) And I don't know how to pronounce it. How do I tell my friends about it? Google doesn't sound like anything (except "googol", which trivia buffs and nerds know is a large number but is otherwise unknown) and you know how to pronounce it, even before it got popular.
It sounds like goggles, and goggling - ie looking. It also means the large number 'googl' 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - vast scale. It's not meaningless, and does relate to their product.
The google brand and message - with its single input box, and 'just search' focus was awesome.
Wesabe is a completely wrong name on so many levels for a financial company. Any decent branding consultant would have told them that.
Google sounds like goggles? I'm not sure I have heard someone suggest that, nor do 99% of Google users know about the mathematical significance of the name. I think it is a good name because it is simple, unique, easily spelled and the name of the best search engine for the last 10 years.
Pointing to Google is such a non-argument, in my opinion. What does it prove? That you can succeed with a mediocre name, not that picking a good brand doesn't matter. I don't like it when people say "Google does X, so it must be fine". Google is a much better name than Wesabe, anyway. Of course picking a good brand helps. Will it make or break your company? No.
I agree that brands are overrated (not with their complete irrelevance), but the Google argument doesn't prove anything. There is a huge difference in people's willingness to try a new search engine, compared to many other applications. Particularly when it comes to sites that deal with your money. That makes people conservative and want something recognizable.
> There is a huge difference in people's willingness to try a new search engine, compared to many other applications.
Sure people were willing to try new search engines... until Google came along and built a better one.
Point is, branding takes a back seat to product quality, and the companies in question were clearly leagues apart in terms of quality. If they were of a similar quality, or if instead of "Wesabe" it was called "xXxVirus39" you would have a point. But that's not the case, so you've got your work cut out for you if you want to make a convincing argument that the brand played a relatively significant role here.
I've never understood why people tend to bring this up. If anything it shows that the misspelling was a more natural way to transcribe that specific string of sounds. Perhaps had the person who registered the domain looked up the proper spelling, word-of-mouth marketing would've been impaired, and people might have generally had a tougher time spelling the name correctly in their address bar.
I suspect that if Mint had executed poorly, they would still have gotten enough customers hanging around just due to the great name that they could have fixed it, recovered, and gone on to success.
Wesabe. I have no idea how to pronounce that. Wasabi? WI-SAYB? WI-SAY-BEE? WEEZ-A-BEE? What the fuck is that? That is the bottom 10% of possible company names. Bottom 5%. It's awful. No one can pronounce it, no one can spell it, and it bears no relation whatsoever to personal finance.
When one company is being boosted by their name every day, and the other is dragging a giant anchor behind them...
how did YOU think wesabe should be pronounced? I pronounce it like it was spanglish.
"we" like in english
"sabe" sa (sayonara) be (better) sabe = "know" in spanish
follow up comment. I signed up for wesabe EARLY on, but didn't get what it was supposed to do. none of my friends could easily explain it to me "its supposed to help save money" whereas mint was VERY clear on its value proposition early on. great post btw, commendable to write a post-mortem like that.
This is an amazing post. Thanks for laying out your version of the story which I feel is definitely more accurate.
Why did you not decide to not pursue Wesabe for the long term ?
As I understand, Mind did well in some places like immidiate gratification but was bad in accurately aggregating financial statistics. You could have reworked your UI to provide the immidiate gratification and over time also made a more robust aggregator.
Also, the fact as you state is that Mint/Wesabe both did not really make a dent in the market. Additionally, the fact that Mint has got acquired, most likely they never will. It is extremely unlikely that Mint after being acquired will be able to keep pace with Wesabe. More so the fact that you guys had substantial revenue , you could have cut the fat and dumbed down for a long haul easily.
Good article, thank you for that. What exactly is 'Wesabe' and how did you come to that name? Is there a worthwhile backstory to it? What other names were on the whiteboard before you settled on Wesabe?
Were you the first owner of the domain in April of 06 according to archive.org, or did you have to negotiate the domain name from someone else?
Do you think there is value in the name being a zero hit on a google search? In other words, invent a word entirely, making sure that at least for your company/product name, regarding the domain name space, you have a complete monopoly on the name.
I agree with both the fact that Mint is a great name and also that it's not a determining factor of success. But especially in this case, it played a bigger part than normal. "Mint.com" instills a lot more trust than WeSabe - clearly, money was spent on the domain "mint.com", and people understand that. WeSabe could be a fly-by-night operation, and when the biggest hurdle is the trust issue (this is your bank login!), you need EVERY advantage you can get for people to trust you - so design and domain name are a huge element.
Yeah, a name like mint.com has a truckload of authority, while wesabe sounds like some foodie's blog.
"I think the examples of Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Google, and plenty of others make it plain that even ludicrous names (as all of those were thought to be when the companies launched) can go on to be great brands. "
None of those names are "ludicrous", nor were they when they started. They don't have much to do with their function, but as names go, they're solid. All of them are spelled the way a normal person would guess (even google is more guessable than googol), which adds a little functional value, but more importantly adds to comfort and trust.
All else being equal, would you be more likely to entrust financial access to mint.com or myntt.com?
'Wesabe' sounds like a foodie's blog... if you know what 'wasabi' is, in which case you might think the spelling should be 'wesabi'. If the 'wasabi' connotation isn't triggered, you might think the 'a' is long and 'e' silent, 'we-sayb'.
'Wesabe' is a passable name for something mostly discovered by reading or direct links, but a big drop from 'Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Google' (for syllables/familiarity/multiple ways to pronounce&spell), and each of those is one notch below 'Mint'.
One reason Mint left me with a bad taste as a brand was that Shaun Inman had been using the same name for his analytics webapp for at least a year (at haveamint.com). The duplication felt tacky, to say the least.
Common words don't do well as names when they are words that describe exactly what the company does. Common words can be better used when they have nothing to do with what the company does.
For example, Apple is a much better name for a computer company than "Computer", would be. Same Amazon is much better for an online bookstore, than "Bookstore.com" would be.
The reason they are better is because they can be uniquely associated with that company. How many Apple companies are there that sell computers? How many Amazon's that sell books?
They use a common word to actually turn it into an unique one.
Sex.com like names are usually highly valued as domains because of the perception people have on them, thinking that a name so descriptive MUST be valueable as a brand.
It's actually absolutely worthless as a brand name, and if you follow the track records of the companies that have used domain names like that you'll see that most of them have failed. Sure it might help a little bit with SEO, but that benefit is not nearly enough to compensate for how bad a brand like that is and how easily people will forget it.
As for what Marc said, I agree with the fact that their approach was not about the automation is probably the biggest factor in their eventual failure. However, the Wesabe name did create some friction as opposed to Mint.
When you have a bad name is like trying to drive a car with your foot slightly pressing on the break pedal. No matter how fast your car (product) is, your speed will still be dramatically reduced.
I was being facetious, but I do partly agree with you. A bad name does hurt. Wesabe isn't a good name; it comes off as syllable salad. Mint is a much better name.
On the other hand, plenty of successful companies have terrible names. 'Google' is just as bad as 'Wesabe' - and Google's early adopters had to find them without access to a good search engine! I'm sure that Wesabe could have succeeded in spite of their name if their product had been competitive.
There was a stock trading startup with the domain trade.com (this was 10 years ago, when day trading was en vogue and E-Trade was going to put Schwab and Merrill Lynch out of business, etc.).
They also spent a lot of money acquiring the domain, thinking it was perfect.
But they executed poorly, and was gone in a few years.
Until this comment I exclusively associated it with the plant and thought it was retarded (other than being short) name for a finance app. [disclosure: I often miss the blindingly obvious]
I used mint cause coworker raved about it and when I tried it the UI was slick and it auto catergorized my purchases with 95+% accuracy.
I know there are counter examples like Yahoo and Google that don't impact their name but I also have to mention
flickr
Dropbox (good name) didn't even own their own domain name for a long time.
The name has a valid impact, but it's not make it or break it. The people who saying "oh man if you switched names you would be ahead" are putting way too much into a name and not enough into a product.
I don't think the developers of a personal finance app targeted at US consumers is too worried about UK consumers that don't monitor their finances in US$ and won't use any of the US financial services they profit from recommending. The cost of having to rebrand if they ever decide to launch localised versions for other countries is outweighed by the strength of the brand in the domestic market where the rich pickings are available.
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Despite it's huge popularity and domain mint.com is down on page four of a google.co.uk search for "mint" which suggests Google has done a good job of realising how useless it is for Brits. I suspect that UK service comparison site confused.com (another brilliant domain-based brand) doesn't rank too well in the US version of Google either...
Something about Mint struck me as refreshing; I thought it was mostly their home page design because I always thought their name a little generic. But you're completely right -- it's a great name and their website design really reinforces the feelings associated with the plant.
I'd love to hear what you think makes a really good name. What about playful-type/kinda-made-up names like Google and Yahoo and Reddit?
I spend a lot of time starting up new projects, so I'm always looking for good names and it'd be cool to hear what you think, since you obviously spend a bit of time thinking about this sort of thing.
Recently I was thinking about starting a lesson sharing site for teachers called Lessonauts. It's a silly name, I know, but it stuck in my head. I also considered LessonNotes, Educape, and ShareLesson.
Let me tell you, choosing "historio.us" as the name was a bad decision (for two reasons). People are surprised by the extension and it takes some explaining to get them to spell it as ".us" (here, something like historious.net would help a lot), and they always spell it "historius". We might just rename it to historius and redirect to historius.com just to get rid of all the hassle...
The moral of the story is that you should try to minimise homophones of your name, so "lessonauts" would basically be impossible to tell people, they would parse it as "lessonnauts", "lessonnotes", "lessonotes", etc etc. Unambiguity is a big advantage.
You made me laugh as I setup breadandcirc.us and had the same sort of issues you highlights. I also own the name ben.to - which I've been considering for use on a company I'm working on, but I have that same concern. Opinions?
After my experience with historious, I wouldn't do it. People are just not used to it, they can't parse "historio dot us". They expect a ".com" or something, so they might even mangle it as "historiodotus.com".
There also seems to be great resistance in parsing "historio". "ben dot to" might do better in that regard, but "bento.com" would always win because people are just used to it.
Thought I might leave this feedback even if I am an odd one out in the case you might be interested. But the first way I read that was Less 'O N(a)uts.
> Mint is a great name agreed but what's the actual impact? 5%? 10%? 50%? Possibly not even 5%
Impossible to measure that, because you can't do controlled experiments. But if you're asking, "Why did Mint make the first blockbuster web-based personal finance product?" I think you'd have to have their name/branding in the top 3-5 reasons.
Edit: But if you put a gun to my head and demand that I guess - then 35%. Totally arbitrary, but that's: The increased signup/conversion rate, increased trust, increased media/PR, increased word of mouth, and increased prestige/exposure/desirability for acquisition. I think it produces huge benefits in all of those areas.
He thinks 35% of Mint's success was based on their name. That is exactly what he said and it seems like you're trying really hard to lay out some flame bait.
He said the 35% was completely out the top of his head. That is a guess. He has little information and really what he is basing such guess is on his opinion that the name has such a great effect as to count towards 35% of the success, which, no offence to lionheart whatever because he is an esteemed contributor and I really like his comments, is ridiculous.
The name might and does have some advantages, especially if it is short and relatively easy to remember, but the 35% should possibly go towards the two things mentioned, that is design, and user experience in filling in the form, 20% possibly marketing and the name would at best have a 5% effect.
I also disagree with his downplaying of the importance of branding and design. I definitely remember stumbling across Wesabe a few years ago when I was starting my first job and looking for a personal finance tool on the web. One look at Wesabe made me hit the back button. First, the name was strange and foreign. I didn't know how to pronounce it. Second, the logo (which is the same today, apparently) uses thick, bold strokes that just made it seem less like a legitimate finance product. I don't think I ever made it past a few pages on the Wesabe site before abandoning it.
Mint, on the other hand, had a very direct value proposition to me. As soon as I hit the landing page, I instantly knew what they were offering. The design was pretty, colors were soothing, and the font made me want to read the copy. It was good enough for me to get through the signup process, even though I eventually balked when they asked for bank account login information.
If my experience is anything like anyone else's, I can imagine Wesabe having lost many, many potential customers simply by virtue of having a less desirable site. Even right now, as I look at their current logo, I feel the same way. It's one case where a log actually significantly turns me off towards a service.
The post talked about product design flaws as the second biggest contributing factor to Wesabe failures. I think aesthetics and branding need to be grouped into that. If the appearance of a product isn't good enough to draw potential customers past the landing page, then the design is the bottleneck and the biggest culprit, bar none.
A websites name is extremely important. Anyone that doesn't think that has never started a company. It needs to be simple, easy to say, easy to spell, and unique/meaningful.
Take eBay. This name actually has nothing to do with Auctions if you have ever read about where it came from, but it is perfect because it is unique, easy to say/spell, and brandable.
Don't underestimate a good name, it is an absolute necessity now with all the millions of websites out there.
I agree with many of the other respondents that you are grossly overstating the role the names played. Additionally, while I agree wholeheartedly that "Mint" is the better name, when considering the role the company names played (however large or small) in the eventual outcome, I think one needs to weigh Wesabe's poor choice of name at least as equally significant as Mint's good choice if not much more.
Having an appealing brand name is a part of the way a company positions and messages itself to potential customers, but I wouldn't isolate a brand's catchiness to the detriment of a conversation about marketing. Positioning/messaging is tied to sales, but URL choice was just one of Wesabe's marketing failures.
As opposed to Google? I'm pretty sure everyone has spelled it gogle at one point. Whereas Ask.com is the possibly the best domain name in the world for the search business.
There's a word that describes this process: friction. Mint, the name, the website, and flawless yodlee integration, completely eliminates friction. Most importantly, it eliminates viral friction. A web savvy person will seek and find out any name, but telling my grandmother over the phone, in a rush? No way in hell she'd ever remember wasabe.
I don't think the name is that great, to be honest. Not a native speaker, though.
I had to hear the name several times before I could remember that it is a company related to money management.
Wesabe is just extremely bad, though. I keep thinking it might be the scripting language of FogBugz, which is probably horrible (as most proprietary computer things are).
I agree the name matters a lot. Good names are really hard. I write down company names all the time, and have a list of well over 100. The hard part is also getting one that can translate to an affordable domain name.
A perfect company name may have to be rejected because the domain name is unavailable. While all domain names are available, for a price, it may be better to use a different name if you feel new competition could pick up your ideal domain name because it is out of budget.
There is also the issue of the founder realizing that the name is not as good as a competitor. At that point, it is game over, as you will never be able to mentally think about your own business in a way you are 100% passionate, and it will show.
When you are the only kid on the block, any name will do, and you have the advantage of first to market. Sometimes #2 comes along with a better name, and side steps every mistake you made because they had a chance to watch your mistakes. At that point, having the stronger name is going to be very important.
I remember Mint, Silk, WordPress, and a several others immediately. Those names are simple to remember. Those are great names to start with, and it is a huge advantage for a user who is told a website they will need to remember.
Company names that evolve into a brand, must be a brand that is significantly more worthwhile to the user. It is hard to build a brand; much easier to start with a good name, and the brand building may build itself.
Wikipedia used to scream out to me as a terrible name. I can't think of a better name any longer, as it has been branded, signed, sealed, and delivered. Amazon was another I thought was terrible, and MySpace, was on my list at the top of my list. Then again, I discounted MySpace as a stupid idea. Repetition and time can fix anything, determining if you can afford that time is the rub.
Wikipedia had lots of time. They are a non profit, and a large scale idea. Not many will come to compete with something that large, and it is even harder to compete with non profit. This is another factor to consider when naming. Wikipedia could afford to be much more idealistic about their name.
Mahalo is one of the worst currently in my book. I have heard it was not a cheap domain to buy, and Calacanis loves it, believing it is a great name. That alone is worth a lot, that he loves it and believes in it. I think the name sucks, it tells me nothing, is hard to spell for some, and in general, has no relevance at all to the product or service.
Company names are indeed a challenge, and a very important one at that. It would be a very interesting article to read about the process of company naming from the likes of Amazon, eBay, Flickr, Delicious, MySpace, FaceBook, Digg, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, Bing, and all the rest of the big guns.
Nor does he seem to understand the difference design can make. He hints that he understands, but I don't think he really gets just how much of a difference the stunning first impression of Mint made. It's like the difference between meeting your favorite actress, and meeting some b-list reality star like Paris or Snooki.
Per your assertion, I think Nike (greek goddess of victory) is the best brand name of all time, and Apple would be second. But Mint is definitely right up there.
I think you mean that _you_ pronounce them differently. I've heard 'Nike' pronounced in more ways than any other brand name; I myself pronounce it in at least two different ways.
Not kidding. Ever. Silk Soymilk is the other example I use.
Mint's a killer brand name, I think it'd be literally impossible to beat Mint on natural branding in personal finance, it's the most perfect name I could imagine. It has double, good meanings - "Mint" as in a place where coins/money are minted, and of course the plant/candy. Then the plant/candy is associated with being fresh, clean, safe, and it's colored green, again like money.
It's just genius. It's also only four letters, easy to remember, relevant, and they got the domain name for it. It's really, really good. The only other name so good is "silk soymilk", for basically all the same reasons. (soymilk -SoymILK - easy to remember, silk is clean/smooth/elegant/upscale, four letters, hard to forget, etc).
Seriously, Mint might be the best named/naturally branded online company ever. I'm not joking. If I ever had to do a lecture on naming and branding, I'd 100% for sure use Mint as an example.