Take two of the four most-valuable American companies: Apple and Google. The first named itself after a fruit and pioneered personal computing. The se

How Startups Stopped Being Fun

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2024-11-04 17:30:05

Take two of the four most-valuable American companies: Apple and Google. The first named itself after a fruit and pioneered personal computing. The second picked the silliest-sounding number and revolutionized online search.

Scores of others have also at some time secured large-cap valuations with offbeat names and branding strategies. Yahoo launched the search engine race with a “Chief Yahoo” as CEO. Lyft drivers once adorned their cars with pink mustaches. And Twitter (now X), embraced silly from the start.

Not long ago, startup naming was often a competitive exercise in absurdity. In 2017 and 2018, we devoted columns to tracking the trends.

A few years ago, we began to notice a shift toward more staid, serious and spellable names. This accelerated with the pandemic and has persisted in the current AI unicorn era.

Looking at the most heavily funded startups of the year —  a list that includes  OpenAI, xAI,  CoreWeave and Safe Superintelligence — none has a name one could describe as “fun.” It’s as if they had asked an AI chatbot for something that would score hefty investment but amuse no one.

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