Choosing and Registering a Company Name for your Startup

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Tip #1 - Are you the brand or is your company going to be the brand?

One of the questions I get asked the most often is about whether you choose to use your own name, i.e. Robin Waite or you create a new and distinct company name for your brand. The answer is that it depends on how you're going to market yourself.

If you're planning on building a business which requires scalability and you're planning on growing and selling it later on, then perhaps you should come up with a unique name for your business. If you're happy being a freelancer and you want to be known for what you know, then you should focus on using your own name as the brand name.

Tip #2 - Do you want to create a unique brand name and identity?

The second question which I often get asked is – do you want to get the keywords for your business into your company name? For example; ABC Plumbing. Again, it means that if you have a very specific product or service which you offer, your business’ name and products will be just that little bit more instantly recognisable and easy to find. And yes, it will help with the search engine optimisation side of things too. It makes it very clear and explicit what you do.

The final type of company name is the big brand. These tend to be the unicorns, the Apples, the Microsoft's, the BMWs, the Audis, the Google's – the very large organization that we talk about when we discuss brands. Many of these companies have taken a significant amount of time to gain clarity over their brand, their products and their services.

Most of the unicorns have been around for a number of years if not decades, some of them even for a couple of centuries. As a brand name Apple, for example, offers no explanation about what they do or who they are or what they sell. Nowadays they're just known for being Apple. It takes a very long time to build that level of brand awareness up, but there's no reason why you can't create a brand now with that in mind if that's what you want to aspire to.

Tip #3 - Register the company name via Companies House (in the UK)

Once you decide on what the focus of your brand and your company name are going to be, you then want to think about how you're going to protect that name. One of the first things you need to do is register the company name. As a freelancer, you can just trade as yourself under your own name. But it looks more professional if you've got a registered Limited Company. In the UK, you can register your company name through Companies House (http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/). You can either do this yourself or work with a chartered registered accountant who can register your company name on your behalf and set up the shareholdings and such like.

Tip #4 - Check the availability of Domain Names and Social Media handles which will be associated with your Company Name

You need to check is whether there are domains names available, which correspond with your new company name (https://www.fasthosts.co.uk/domain-names). You should also check whether the social media handles are available because you don't want to go registering a company name only to find you then can't register a suitable, appropriate domain name or social media handles. It is worthwhile checking whether those are available right from the word go.

Tip #5 - Check if your proposed Company Name is a registered Trademark with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO)

The one of the things that gets overlooked most often is Trademarks; has your proposed company name been trademarked by another entity already? Luckily I have a friend who is an IP lawyer who was able to provide some good advice to me, on this part of the book (Shireen Smith – AZRights). She recommended checking whether the company name was actually trademarked; and you can search a list of trademarks through the Intellectual Property Office website (https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmtext.htm). If another company has already registered a trademark that you intended to use as your company name then you can't actually use that name to trade with.

Tip #6 - Ask yourself, "Will I still like the Company Name in 5 years?"

My final piece of advice when registering or coming up with a company name for your business is ask yourself the question, “Am I still going to like this company name in 5 years?” You need to identify the core values that you're using to develop your company name with. A lot of people get lulled into talking through a business idea when they're down at the pub. Eventually coming up with some names written on the back of a beermat and have a good laugh over it. At the time it is funny but maybe in a year or so you will look at your company name and realise that your business has now grown into something bigger than what you expected. Now your company name isn’t actually that funny, it's now quite embarrassing. Think about your company name's longevity and the core values which you're hoping that your company, name or brand are actually represent for your business.

Ensure that the value of the company name, core value and other business assets are all correctly aligned with your end goals, aims and objectives.

If you want to know more then please do not hesitate to get in touch with me; robin@onlinebusinessstartup.co.uk or for a complete strategy to starting up a business online then please do go to Amazon and purchase my book, Online Business Startup.