Choose a bad name for your next project
When I start coding on a new pet project, I usually start by creating a new Git repository. The first - and only thing - that’s really mandatory is entering a name:
In 2019, I co-founded data startup Marple . We sat down around a whiteboard in the library of the University of Delft, and got inspired by Agatha Christie’s character “Miss Marple”. If you googled “Marple” at the time, she popped up. But we figured we would quickly take the #1 spot on Google once our startup took off.
Four years later, Miss Marple is still sitting stubbornly at the top of the “Marple” search results on Google, although we have quite some traction in our niche of automotive and aerospace R&D.
Our solution: we changed our domain to marpledata.com, and people now often refer to us as “Marple data”. It’s a bit like saying ReactJS instead of React, or Dunkin' Donuts instead of Dunkin'.
What can be worse than picking a bad name? Picking a mediocre name. And the danger of a mediocre name is that it might stick.
