1
3 Comments

Should I rename my early stage SaaS?

I launched my latest project, Scrumpal, in February and have been slowly making progress on it since. My strategy has been not to jump into development right away, but instead write some blogs, get people on a waiting list and to do some user research first. I've started ranking on Google for some keywords, but I'm still super early stage. However, that's not what this post is about.
Recently, I've been questioning if Scrumpal is a good name for the project or whether I should change it. Let me break down my thoughts here.

What am I trying to build?
I want my product to be a set of tools to help software team to self-organise in their day to day work. Additionally, I see some opportunities to solve problems for engineering and product leaders in software organisations.

Why I chose Scrumpal?
The typical modern software organisation uses Agile methodologies in their software teams (Scrum or Kanban). A typical team has a scrum master, which could be a dedicated person or a team member who takes an additional role.
I chose Scrumpal with the idea that my product would function as a virtual assistant helping the team like a scrum master would. On top of that, the .com name still being available, was a huge plus of course.

Why am I questioning Scrumpal as a name?
There's two main reasons. Firstly, the name might suggest the tool is only meant for teams using Scrum instead of Kanban of the Agile approaches, which could be a touchy topic in product and engineering organisations.
Secondly, I found out that the Scrum Alliance, the largest certification and membership organisation for agile and scrum, has a certification called Professional Agile Leadership, which they abbreviate will PAL. This makes for interesting competition on Google Search, which could both be an advantage (existing, relevant traffic) and a disadvantage (competition that runs paid adds for certification).

What alternative do I have in mind?
I like how some startups build a brand by pairing a key word for their product with the name of an animal. I'm thinking about Banner Bear, Hostgator, Chargebee, Mailchimp etc. Hence, I tried to find one that would go well with Agile. I came up with Antelope Agile, which I think works well because Antelope's are pretty agile animals that live in groups that could symbolise a team. The domain antelopeagile[dot]com was also still available, and I picked it up for a couple of euro's last week.

What do you think?
So with that information, I'm super keen to hear your thoughts to help me make a decision to rename or not.
Do you like the name Scrumpal? Is Antelope Agile a better name? Any other thoughts?

on March 21, 2022
  1. 1

    How about ScrummerPlus? "Plus" is added b/c your obvious intent is not limiting to just Scrum as a framework, but also include Kanban.

  2. 1

    Antelope agile doesn't really roll off the tongue like a scrumpal. The animal doesn't really have relevance except that the name should be easy to remember.

    Do bears like banners, do bees have strong numeracy skills? No. What matters is a memorable name.

  3. 1

    You could go even shorter, Antelopeagile.com -> Antelope.io.

    Btw using blog and this email list is unlikely to get you 10 active users. I can help you get more sales and scale, DM me on Twitter.