Richard Liu, Co-Founder at Yought, talks for our “Names With Stories” series of interviews about his brand, its name, and why domain names are so important for the business.
What is the story behind Yought?
As a marketer, I use survey tools regularly to gather feedback. This is mainly used in events, and when you need to go through 200 surveys with multiple open-ended questions regularly, it becomes time-consuming. Coupled with those who do user research and product feedback, I realized there was a market for a new generation of survey tools focused on qualitative feedback and the creation of better surveys.
Hence we started Yought for this gap in the market with so many tools out there focused on making it ‘pretty’, we want to make it smart and efficient for both user and responder.
When did you start thinking about your brand name, and how did you settle on Yought?
We wanted a catchy name that stuck without too many syllables. We also wanted something a bit meaningful and unique, so we started putting words together (like Microsoft and Facebook). We finally ended up with Yought, which combined the words ‘your’ and ‘thought’ together into a one-syllable word.
How did you get the domain name Yought.com for your brand? Why did you select that one exactly?
Since Yought was a unique name, buying the .com was straightforward and was one reason we wanted to go with something unique. As a marketer, I understood having a .com presence would be beneficial in the long run, especially as a SaaS product.
As a marketer, I understood having a .com presence would be beneficial in the long run, especially as a SaaS product.
Richard Liu, Co-Founder at Yought
How has owning Yought.com affected your business? Do you own any other domain names?
It has allowed us to have an international presence without needing to buy out a .co or .ai domain, which is significantly more expensive. So far, this is the only domain we need, even if we reach a bigger audience.
Who is your target customer, and how is your brand name helping in reaching them?
Our target market right now are user researchers or designers and anyone who works in the product space. We want to hit a wider audience, which consists of marketers eventually, but we wanted to start off in a niche.
How do you keep your brand consistent across different channels online and offline?
As a marketer by trade, I understand the importance of having a consistent brand. Even when we first started, users still remember us from our early days (when the product was still an idea) due to the consistency.
This means a few things:
- Having a consistent color palette
- Sticking to the same logo (at least for now) and look and feel
- Creating a consistent vision throughout the product
Has the pandemic affected your company in any way? What has changed since?
As a relatively early SaaS company, our costs have been low. In addition, we’ve had the benefit of being in a startup program that has provided us credits early on in our startup journey, which has given us access to tools like AWS and other marketing software for relatively low to no cost.
For us, the most significant thing the pandemic has affected us is how we work. In the past, we’ve had weekly catch-ups in person, but since the pandemic, we’ve rotated to an only remote working set up, and it has worked well for us.
What do you do to make sure your marketing is effective?
One of the most important things is to establish a multi-channel presence. Specifically, I make sure we have a presence on search, startup websites, and social media.
We still have a lot of work to do, but since we’re very early stage and still testing our product, we still have a lot of time to establish a good marketing presence.
What would your advice be to entrepreneurs who are just starting out, in general, and when it comes to branding and naming?
Always keep it consistent and have a grand vision you’re trying to share with your users.
Where do you see your business in the future, and how does your brand name fit into that vision?
Hopefully, grow the startup into a bootstrapped business and hopefully get Yought’s brand across all product and marketing users.
We hope the above information will help you in making informed decisions about your brand. If you want to say hi or have any questions about naming, branding, and domain names get in touch, we’re always happy to hear from you.
Find out more about Yought.
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