Choosing a name is one of the most crucial decisions when building a company. It’s the cornerstone of your brand identity, the first impression for potential customers, and a word your team will say thousands of times. With millions of registered domains and trademarks, finding something meaningful, memorable, and available is increasingly challenging.
When developing our sales automation platform, we embarked on a journey to find the perfect name that would encapsulate our mission of converting visitors into customers through personalized automation. From exploring dictionary words to creating compound terms and ultimately inventing something new - our naming process was both methodical and creative. Here’s the story behind how PluriFlow came to be.
The core requirements
When we started our naming process, we established two non-negotiable requirements:
- The name needed to reflect our core mission of helping businesses close more sales
- It had to be available as a .com domain
As Paul Graham wisely noted:
“If you have a US startup called X and you don’t have x.com, you should probably change your name. The reason is not just that people can’t find you. For companies with mobile apps, especially, having the right domain name is not as critical as it used to be for getting users. The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals weakness. Unless you’re so big that your reputation precedes you, a marginal domain suggests you’re a marginal company. Whereas (as Stripe shows) having x.com signals strength even if it has no relation to what you do. Even good founders can be in denial about this. Their denial derives from two very powerful forces: identity, and lack of imagination. X is what we are, founders think. There’s no other name as good. Both of which are false.” - Paul Graham
For a sales automation platform aiming to serve e-commerce businesses globally, having a .com domain wasn’t just preferred—it was essential.
The dictionary approach
We began by exploring single-word domains related to sales, conversion, and automation. Words like “convert.com,” “closer.com,” and “autopilot.com” were on our initial shortlist.
Unsurprisingly, these premium domains came with premium price tags. Most were either unavailable or commanded six to seven-figure asking prices—far beyond our budget as a startup that had only secured seed funding.
We needed to pivot our strategy.
Creating compound words
With single words largely unavailable, we turned to compound words. We created two lists:
Primary words: Terms related to our core functionality (close, sale, convert, chat, talk) Secondary words: Suffixes and modifiers that could complement our primary words (hub, pro, now, go, box)
We generated a spreadsheet with hundreds of combinations:
- CloseHub
- SalesPro
- ConvertBox
- ChatNow
- TalkSales
While some options were promising, many were already taken or didn’t quite capture the essence of what we were building—a platform that seamlessly unified multiple channels to help businesses close more sales through automation.
The “ify” inspiration
During one brainstorming session, someone mentioned how transformative platforms often used the “-ify” suffix (Shopify, Spotify, Zendeify). This suffix, derived from “-fy” meaning “to make or become,” perfectly aligned with our mission: we were helping businesses turn visitors into customers—essentially “closing-ify” their sales process.
This led to our eureka moment: what if we combined “close” with “ify”?
“Closeify” was our first attempt, but we discovered the domain wasn’t available, and it felt too literal anyway. We needed something more distinctive that maintained the meaning but had a better ring to it while ensuring we could secure the .com domain.
After playing with spelling variations, we landed on “PluriFlow”—replacing the ‘C’ with a ‘K’ gave it a modern tech feel while maintaining the phonetic connection to “close.” To our delight, pluriflow.com was available.
Testing our finalist
To evaluate “PluriFlow” as our potential name, we assessed it against four key criteria:
Spelling: While it uses a ‘K’ instead of ‘C’, the spelling remains intuitive when heard. Most importantly, pluriflow.com was available.
Pronunciation: The name is phonetically straightforward and works across different accents. When we tested it with potential customers, no one struggled to pronounce it correctly.
Competitiveness: There were no significant competitors or established brands with similar names, and we could secure matching social media handles.
Feel: The name had a modern, dynamic quality that resonated with our target audience of digital-first businesses. It felt like it could scale and grow with us.
Making it our own
Once we settled on PluriFlow, we immediately secured the domain and registered the trademark. But as we’ve learned, a name is ultimately what you make of it. Companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon weren’t inherently meaningful until their founders filled them with meaning through their products and culture.
Today, PluriFlow has evolved from a made-up word to a recognized platform helping e-commerce businesses transform their sales processes. The name perfectly encapsulates our mission—we help businesses “pluriflow” their sales by turning visitors into customers through personalized automation across multiple channels.
The combination of “klose” (our playful spelling of “close”) and “ify” (to make or become) reflects exactly what our platform enables: making the closing of sales automated, efficient, and seamless. It’s no longer just a name; it’s the embodiment of our promise to customers.