En Route to Saenthood: #4 The Damn Name

This series is about what I’m learning, observing and experiencing while building my startup Saent (pronounce “Saint”). The good, the bad and especially the ugly, each time in under 500 words.

Slide 1 of the first draft of the business idea. Date: 28th of August 2014.

So you decided you want to launch a startup and have overcome your fear of past failures. Now you need to give “it” a name.

In August, I came up with the name Sane.

My core idea: a productivity tool which helps you tame the digital distraction jungle. Sane seemed appropriate.

Unfortunately, being Sane came with problems:

The domain name was not available, in any shape or form, not even with the most obscure extensions.
Some felt Sane had negative connotations.
Too broad a term to claim a trademark on.
Hard to find through search engines (common word).

Still, I liked the sound and shortness of Sane, so went hunting for alternatives.

Which brought me to Sant. A combination of:

Sane.
Sand (as in an hourglass, time).
Ant (hard working).
Saint (virtuous, dedicated, person with clear goals).

But even a Sant turned out to have issues:

It’s Spanish for saint, so in search results you’re doomed.
Like Sane, no available domains.
Not everyone has a positive image of ants.

Note: by now, it’s late September. We’re already one month into the Name Game.

Around this time, over a casual coffee, my friend Pieterbas half jokingly made a suggestion: as opposed to merely developing a software solution, why not add a device to put on people’s desks?

Push button for focus!

The thought stuck and a pandora’s box of new potential names opened. What follows is curated from a much longer list. Selection criteria: brilliance, craziness, badness.

hocusfoc.us
Tranqubus
SANTbox
Beacalm
Tranqure
Tranqurious
Focube
DnDUrb
Focush
Spirate
Absorb
Undistorb
Immerze
Beecan
Sandant
Immerzone
Enmerse
Beesturb
Beebsorp
Flowbee
Beemore
SaneMind
MindSane
Saned
Antidistract

With this list in hand, I ran these names through Namecheap (awesome customer service, and, of course, they’re cheap).

Most of them were not available, even the crazy ones. In addition, I felt most were not good enough as an overall, long-term company name, except maybe Tranqure or Tranqurious. Still, those evoke images of deep space exploration, not productivity.

Which brought me back to where I started.

Sant.

To solve the issues, why not add a letter and turn it into a non-existing word?

Please welcome SANNT.

Title slide from one of the first versions of my productivity training deck. Most people rolled their eyes at the name, except tech geeks for some reason (Windows NT anyone?). Date: 24th of October 2014.

From early October till late November, I carried around SANNT as my company name. It felt OK, but not great. Then I started having my first meetings with Russell.

Hailing from New-Zealand, Russell is the former Chief Product Designer of Lenovo and now runs his own design studio out of Beijing. He also happened to be the one who dropped that “Where do you want to be, five to ten years from now?” question back in May. He would go on to design our first product, and become my business partner in the process.

But that’s all later.

His first major contribution was improving the name. If it wasn’t for Russell, we might still be talking about SANNT here. Luckily, he suggested to swap an N for an E, and that’s how, after a three month ordeal, the damn name was finally born:

Saent.

The first logo sketches from that initial meeting, in which Russell suggested to swap an “N” for an “E”. Date: late November 2014.

Ready to give Saent a try?

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