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How to name a startup and check the domain without losing a week

Name a startup in one sitting by generating forty candidates in three shapes, batch-checking availability before you have a favourite, and screening the final three for trademark and handle collisions. Give it two hours with a hard stop. Naming is the most enjoyable procrastination available to a founder, and the evidence for its importance is thin — recall matters at the margin, while the problem you solve decides the outcome. Buy a one-year registration, not a ten-year identity.

2 hours $15 to run6 stepsUpdated 2026

The workflow

0/6 done

  1. Say it on a phone call without spelling it; type it without ambiguity between letters and numbers; avoid a meaning that traps you in one product. Three constraints, written down, so that the process is a filter rather than a taste contest. Most naming sessions stall because nobody defined what disqualifies a name, so every candidate stays alive forever.

  2. Real words used metaphorically, invented two-syllable words, and verb-plus-noun compounds. Forty, in twenty-five minutes, no filtering while generating — judging as you go produces eight safe candidates and no good ones. The hit rate on availability is low enough that a short list is the same as no list.

  3. All forty at once, across .com and one alternative. Checking one at a time is how founders end up in love with a domain that costs four figures on an aftermarket listing. Cross off anything parked with a broker immediately — that is a negotiation, not a purchase, and it does not belong in a two-hour process.

    Domain CheckerFull tool
    Input
    40 candidates for a rota-planning tool for restaurants — .com, .app, .co
    What comes back
    5 available on .com, 14 on .app, 9 on .co. 7 are broker-parked (skip). Two of the five .coms are hard to spell aloud — cut them under your own constraint and you have three real finalists.

    Run it yourself — free, no signup:

  4. Search the bare name plus your category, check a trademark register in your main market, and check the handle on the two platforms you will actually use. Ten minutes for all three. An available domain says nothing about whether a company in your category already trades under that name, and that is the discovery that forces a rebrand eight months in.

  5. Say each finalist in a sentence: "Hi, this is Marc from ___." The one that does not need spelling wins. If two tie, pick either — the difference is smaller than the hour you would spend deciding, and the deadline is doing more work here than your judgement is.

  6. One year, privacy on, auto-renew on. Do not buy defensive variants, do not buy the ten-year registration, do not commission a logo. If the business survives long enough for those to matter, it will also have revenue to pay for them — and if it does not, you saved the money you were about to spend on a name for something that never launched.

    Idea ValidatorFull tool
    Input
    Rota-planning tool for independent restaurants — worth registering a domain for?
    What comes back
    CAUTION. Real problem, but a crowded category with free spreadsheet templates as the default incumbent. Buy the one-year domain, then spend the next week on five manager conversations before anything else — the naming decision is not what is standing between you and an answer.

    Run it yourself — free, no signup:

    Who it's for, what it does, what they pay. The more specific the sentence, the sharper the read.

Questions founders ask about this

How long should naming a startup take?
Two hours with a hard stop. Naming rewards decisiveness rather than deliberation, and the marginal difference between your second and third favourite name is far smaller than a week of delay costs you.
Do I need the .com for my startup?
It helps with direct navigation and credibility, but a clean alternative TLD is fine for validation. Prefer a different name with a free .com over a compromised variant like get- or try-, which leaks visitors permanently.
How do I check if a startup name is already trademarked?
Search the public trademark register for your main market plus the bare name and your category. It takes minutes and catches the collisions that would otherwise force a rebrand once you have traction.
Should I buy multiple domain variations?
Not before you have customers. Defensive registrations are a recurring cost protecting a brand nobody is yet trying to copy — buy one name for one year and revisit when there is revenue.
Does a startup name affect success?
Marginally. It influences recall and word of mouth; it does not determine whether people pay for the product. Pick a name that is easy to say and spell, then spend the saved time on customer conversations.

Next, founders usually do this

The tools used above have their own pages — Startup Name & Domain Checker and Idea Validator — and the SOP SOP: Name your startup and secure the domain runs the same ground in more depth. Also worth reading: the Nine Lives Doctrine, and real verdicts from ideas kitty has run this workflow on.

kitty.build runs this entire workflow for you

Every step above — the research, the competitor read, the numbers, the honest verdict — is what nine specialist AI boards do automatically when you feed her an idea. She will tell you to kill it if it deserves killing. First idea is free.

Feed her an idea — free

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