名字决定命运，公司也不例外？

    取名字是开公司最困难的事情之一。这个名字必须得到每位创始人的认可，还要买得到相关域名，也许最重要的是，投资者得喜欢它，因为初创公司的第一个字母会对公司能否轻松募集资金起到重要作用。

    无论如何，不要选择以J、K或Q开头的名字，而要优先考虑以T、O和A开头的名字。

    下面的表格是2013年在首轮资金募集中，由于首字母选择不当而失败的IT公司所募得的资金量。我们对不同首字母的初创公司数量进行了标准化处理。以T开头的公司在首轮募集中，获得了两倍于平均水平的资金，之后是A开头的公司，获得的资金比平均水平高出50%。另一方面，错误地选择了J开头的公司，在2013年募集到的资金只有平均水平的一半，这在市场上非常不利。

    Naming your startup can be one of the hardest things to do when starting a company. Each founder must agree. The domain must be available to buy. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, investors need to like it because the first letter of startup's name has meaningful impact on how easily the company will be able to raise money.

    Whatever you do, don't pick a name that starts with the letter J. Or K. Or Q. Instead, favor names beginning with T, O and A.

    Below is a chart showing the share of capital raised by startups broken down by the first letter of their names for Series A rounds of IT companies in 2013. The data is normalized for the number of startups with each letter-name. Startups with T-names raise 100% more capital during the Series A than the average startup. Startups with the letter A garner 50% larger investments. On the other hand, founders who mistakenly chose J-words raised 50% less capital in 2013, quite a disadvantage in the market.

    这些数据清楚地证明，给初创公司的名字选择一个正确的首字母，对它在首轮募集中能获得多少资金存在关联。

    不过这里面的问题是：这并不是因果关系，只是相关关系。所以，一切关于选择正确字母的建议……好吧，都是没用的。

    所以名字有什么意义呢？即便分析公司Looker叫了其他名字，它也一样能很出色地分析数据。（免责声明：没错，这是我投资的一家公司。）

    多亏了@milesgrimshaw，它提醒了我们：不要全盘相信看到的一切，就算似乎有一堆数据能证明观点。（财富中文网）

    托马斯•汤古兹是红点投资公司的合伙人。

    The data clearly proves picking the right letter for a startup's name is correlated to the amount of money the company will raise in its Series A.

    But here's the trick: the relationship isn't causal, just correlated. So all that advice about picking the right letter... well, it's useless.

    What's in a name, after all? Looker by any other name would still analyze data elegantly (disclaimer: yes, it's one of my portfolio companies).

    Thanks to @milesgrimshaw who inspired this reminder not to believe everything you read, even if there's seemingly cohoret data to support the argument.

    Tomasz Tunguz is a partner with Redpoint Ventures.