What’s in a Name (and a Brand): Naming, Positioning & Brand Building for Early-Stage Founders

Event Details: 🗓️ Date: Wednesday, November 11th, from 2pm to 3:30pm 📍 Location: StartX @ 2627 Hanover St, Palo Alto, CA 94304 📌 Attendance: This event is open exclusively to the StartX community. Overview: Join us for a strategic session on naming and positioning craft for early-stage founders. Led by the A Hundred Monkeys team. Brought to you by .tech domains. Most founders treat naming and branding as a box to check on the way to building the real thing. Pick a name, grab a domain, move on. Then reality hits: people can’t remember you, can’t tell what you do, or don’t care enough to find out. Join us for a working session on how brands get built, starting with the name. Led by the A Hundred Monkeys team and brought to you by .tech domains. You’ll also have time for Q&A, the chance to claim your .tech domain, and the option to apply for office hours with Rose afterward to work on your naming and brand. Why a human approach A Hundred Monkeys builds brands the way people build relationships. When we meet someone, we quickly read the social cues: how they look, talk, and carry themselves, and what they say. We then decide whether we want to know them better. Your company gets judged the same way, often in seconds. This session shows you how to design those cues on purpose: a name, a point of view, a voice, and an aesthetic that makes the right people want to be friends with your company. What you’ll walk away with Positioning: knowing what you’re really deciding Rose will walk through how brands work the way relationships do. People size up a company in seconds, the same way they size up a person, and decide whether they want to know more. So we’ll cover how to shape those first impressions on purpose. Positioning: how to see your company the way a stranger does, and get clear on who you’re for and why you matter, so your name, voice, and look all have a job to do. Naming: why starting with bad names is easier than waiting for a great one, how good names are found rather than invented, and the two traps most founders fall into (waiting for the eureka moment, and naming too close to what you do). Brand building: how to give your company a personality, with a voice and a look that makes the right people want to work with you or buy from you. Making the call: how to evaluate your options, get your team to agree, and use AI where it helps without handing it the decision. Through a handful of real case studies, Rose will show what the successes and the mistakes had in common. You’ll leave knowing what you’re actually deciding when you name and position a company, and how to make that call with confidence instead of second-guessing it for years. Claim your .tech domain This session is presented by our partners at .tech domains. You’ll be eligible to claim a name and premium domain of your choice on .tech, valued up to $1M. 1:1 time with A Hundred Monkeys Beyond the session, founders can book one-on-one time with Rose to work through their positioning, brand, and naming. These sessions are open to everyone, and .tech Domains sponsors them in full for founders building on a .tech domain. Steps to Redeem ➔ Go to http://startx.startup.tech. ➔ Search for your domain name to check availability. ➔ Enter your name, email, and LinkedIn profile ➔ Select if you would like a 1:1 engagement with Rose (A Hundred Monkeys) ➔ Fill out this form here if you selected for office hours ➔ We review and approve the request within 24 hours About .tech domains startup.tech is a program by Radix, the registry behind .tech domains. We are partnering with StartX to give early-stage founders their exact-match domain free for 10 years with access to top naming and positioning expertise for their startup About your speaker Rose Linke is the Creative Director at A Hundred Monkeys. She's been running naming and messaging projects for some of the world's biggest and smallest companies since 2009. She started keeping a list of favorite words when she was ten and hasn't run out yet. Her real subject, though, is the part nobody warns founders about: finding a good name you can own is hard; getting everyone in the room to agree on one can be even harder.