{"id":411,"date":"2011-11-17T19:08:56","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T18:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rudebaguette.com\/?p=411"},"modified":"2019-05-17T18:23:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T16:23:41","slug":"coockly-the-worst-french-startup-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2011\/11\/coockly-the-worst-french-startup-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Coockly, the worst French startup name?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now, you all know that I&#8217;m not one to usually criticize French startups or entrepreneurs. And I&#8217;m not about to criticize what anyone is actually <em>doing<\/em>\u00a0(well, at least not in this article). But every now and then I come across a French startup name and giggle to myself, thinking &#8220;uh, really?&#8221; But recently I came across one startup name and I just couldn&#8217;t let it get away&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.coockly.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Coockly<\/a>. Yes, c-o-o-c-k-l-y.<\/h2>\n<p>Oh yeah, you read that correctly. And before I tell you what the company does, you&#8217;re probably thinking it has something to do with, er, the inappropriate. Because the name is only one &#8220;O&#8221; away from &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=cockly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cockly<\/a>&#8221; (not sure why adding a &#8220;C&#8221; to the name was necessary, but hey).<\/p>\n<h2>Get ready to take a <em>bite ? <\/em><\/h2>\n<p><em><\/em>(Yes, French speakers, that sentence is <em>en franglais<\/em>). But in all seriousness, this brand new <em>recipe<\/em> platform has somehow managed to to distract from the fact that it is actually about <em>food<\/em>. Still relatively under the radar, Coockly offers a variety of recipes and functions to help their members better prepare and plan for cooking (I realize this is a foreign concept to any American readers &#8211; but if you have to cook several dishes for a dinner party, this can be rather helpful). Plus, if you only have onions and broccoli in your fridge, Coockly will show you what you can do with them.<\/p>\n<h2>Internet meets your fridge.<\/h2>\n<p>Even though it may not sound like a million dollar business (or heck, maybe it does!), there are a number of online food and cooking-related companies in France. I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/techbaguette.com\/2011\/07\/23\/the-new-13-hot-french-entrepreneurs-under-30\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">already told you<\/a> about how <a href=\"http:\/\/www.super-marmite.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Super-Marmite<\/a> rocked the LeWeb pitch finals last year. But to really understand how important cooking is to the French, look no further than recipe database <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marmiton.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marmiton<\/a> that sold to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aufeminin.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AuFeminin<\/a> for 3.75 million euros in 2006 &#8211; or Le Figaro which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.journaldunet.com\/ebusiness\/le-net\/le-figaro-rachete-isaveurs-com-1111.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recently bought<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.isaveurs.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iSaveurs<\/a> for 1.2 million euros. There are also a number of companies that want to simplify cooking, getting take-out or going to a restaurant, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alloresto.fr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AlloResto<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.qooq.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Qooq<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/1001menus.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1001 menus<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.storific.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Storific<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maspatule.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ma Spatule<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vousavezchoisi.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vous Avez Choisi<\/a>. One of my favorite food-inspired startups is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tribugourmande.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tribu Gourmande<\/a>, which allows you to make a personalized recipe book \u00e0 la <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blurb.fr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Blurb<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Other names that make me wonder&#8230;<\/h2>\n<p>Obviously, there are other names out there that have made me wonder &#8211; including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scoop.it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Scoop It<\/a>\u00a0(err&#8230;), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artbeating.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ArtBeating<\/a>\u00a0(ouch!), <a href=\"http:\/\/go4out.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Go4Out<\/a>\u00a0(huh?) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beansight.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Beansight<\/a> (has nothing to do with beans). Picking a name for your company can be tricky &#8211; especially when you want a name that works in both English and French. You can of course give the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dotomator.com\/web20.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dotometer<\/a> a try, but don&#8217;t rely on it to find you a fool-proof name.<\/p>\n<h2>Tu t&#8217;appelles comment?<\/h2>\n<p>But just because there are some French startup names that I can&#8217;t wrap my head around doesn&#8217;t mean that they aren&#8217;t doing cool things &#8211; in fact, most of them are. Plus, it also doesn&#8217;t mean that all French startups struggle with naming. There are startups that boast some really awesome names, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jolicloud.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jolicloud<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.netvibes.com\/fr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Netvibes<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deezer.com\/fr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Deezer<\/a> (much better than the original name, BlogMusik), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/fr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">DailyMotion<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/fr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Allocin\u00e9<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bluekiwi-software.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bluekiwi<\/a> and many more..<\/p>\n<h2>How to tell a French company by the name.<\/h2>\n<p>Now, you may think that the only way to tell if a startup is French by its name is if there is a &#8220;le&#8221; or a &#8220;la&#8221; in front of the actual company name. But this is true for hardly any French companies. Instead, look for an &#8220;eo&#8221; stuck onto the end of the company name &#8211; as in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.regioneo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Regioneo<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.companeo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Companeo<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.viadeo.com\/connexion\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Viadeo<\/a>, etc. And there you have it, my friends!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now, you all know that I&#8217;m not one to usually criticize French startups or entrepreneurs. And I&#8217;m not about to criticize what anyone is actually doing (well, at least not in this article). But every now and then I come across a French startup name and giggle to myself, thinking &#8220;uh, really?&#8221; But recently I came across one startup name and I just couldn&#8217;t let it get away&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":64796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[8201,8478,8327,8536,8848],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance","tag-dailymotion-en-2","tag-deezer-en","tag-internet-en","tag-leweb-en","tag-viadeo-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}