The Thinking Behind It

PremiumBrands.com exists to put premium names in front of the founders who will build on them. Each name in the collection is shown with a starter site and a few business directions, so a buyer can picture the company behind the address before deciding. Aileen.com earned its place for a simple reason. Most names in AI software are built to sound technical, and this one is a human name that happens to begin with AI.

Lessons from Newswire.com

Most of what I believe about names comes from the press release business. I acquired it in 2007, when it ran on i-Newswire.com, and secured iNewswire.com in 2013. The bigger decision took longer. For more than a year I negotiated for Newswire.com and consulted SEO professionals before moving anything, because changing the name of a working business means changing everything customers already know it by. In February 2015 the business moved to Newswire.com.

The morning of the switch, a prospect told one of our sales agents, “Oh yeah, Newswire.com. I’ve heard of you guys.” That was impossible, since the name had only just gone up, and nothing else about the business had changed overnight. That call is still the clearest lesson I have about names. People meet the name before they meet the product, the team or the price, and a good one starts the conversation on your side.

Buying before the plan

That is why I bought PremiumBrands.com before I had a plan for it. Premium names matter to me, and waiting would probably have cost me this one; by now it could belong to someone building on it, and a name in that position is most likely not for sale at all. I buy names as an end user, with one test: would I build on this? The names I have not built on yet are the ones I am open to selling, and Aileen.com is one of them.

Aileen passes that test for me because of where software is heading. The way I see it, more people than ever can build a working assistant, which makes the product the part a competitor can reproduce, while a recognizable name is one of the few things nobody can copy. The usual advice is to launch on whatever name is free and upgrade once the business has made it. I understand why founders follow it, but an AI product spreads its name quickly: into the chat widget on customers’ sites, the onboarding emails, the invoices and the contracts. By then the better name may belong to someone else. I would rather a founder made that decision once, at the start.

What a name can and can’t do

For Aileen.com the directions are a support product, a client-service assistant and a company knowledge platform, each starting from one moment in someone’s working day; my strategy and development studio, OnlineBusiness.com, put those presentations together. Aileen could grow into any of them, or into something none of them describe. Which one becomes a company is the founder’s call, and so is the work that follows, from the first version of the product to the first customers who rely on it. A great name won’t save a bad business. What it gives a good one is a head start.

If Aileen is the name for what you are building, tell me what the first version will do and who it is for; the page about the name sets out what the sale includes. If the name you want is a different one, say that instead; I also help founders acquire the name they have their eye on when it is not in the collection. A premium .com is a trust shortcut.