You’re scrolling through Product Hunt, skimming TechCrunch, and suddenly it hits you: everyone sounds exactly the same. ElevenLabs. TwelveLabs. ThirteenLabs. You blink, thinking you’ve misread the headlines. But you haven’t. The AI industry has collectively decided that the best way to signal cutting-edge innovation is to literally number itself like a string of bad movie sequels.
When everyone tries to be a unicorn, the most predictable outcome is that they all end up looking like identical horses.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t a coincidence. It’s a blatant case of branding arbitrage masquerading as cleverness. When a startup names itself ‘ElevenLabs,’ it isn’t just picking a number out of thin air. It’s piggybacking on the cultural cachet of Ocean’s Eleven—that slick, high-stakes, Vegas-cool heist vibe. It’s a shortcut to instant recognition, a way to borrow legitimacy without doing the hard work of building a unique identity from scratch.
Then comes the copycat effect. If ElevenLabs can raise a billion dollars, then TwelveLabs must be worth a billion and one, right? Suddenly, you have an entire ecosystem of startups that sound less like a tech revolution and more like a malfunctioning periodic table. As one commenter rightly pointed out, ‘There’s always some kind of popular dumb naming scheme. I remember when it was prefixing Zen- to your startup. Some things never change.’
A clever name isn’t a substitute for innovation. It’s a smokescreen for the lack of it.
The real tension here is the massive gap between what these founders want to achieve and what they are actually doing. They desperately want to be seen as disruptors, pioneers, and iconoclasts. Yet, by flocking to the exact same naming pattern, they are actively commoditizing themselves. They become indistinguishable. If you swapped the UI of TwelveLabs with ThirteenLabs, no one outside of a pitch meeting would even notice the difference.
This isn’t just an aesthetic gripe. It’s a symptom of a deeper creative bankruptcy in the tech space. When the brightest minds in AI spend their time chasing a viral naming trend rather than solving actual problems, you know the bubble has stretched too thin. The 29th startup to register a number-labs domain isn’t a company. It’s a punchline.
If the only thing differentiating your startup is a sequential integer, you don’t have a brand. You have a barcode.
For anyone building a company right now, consider this a warning. Stop looking for shortcuts. Stop trying to arbitrage attention with quirky prefixes and predictable numbers. The real competition isn’t in the domain registrar; it’s in the substance of what you build. If you create something genuinely indispensable, you could call it ‘Boring Corp’ and the world would still beat a path to your door. But if you’re just another number in a long line of clones, you’ll be forgotten before the sequel even hits the market.
FAQ
Q: Isn't this just a harmless naming trend?
A: No. Trends like prefixing 'Zen-' or numbering your labs signal a herd mentality. It shows founders are optimizing for perceived cultural fit rather than actual differentiation.
Q: What's the practical implication for a new startup?
A: Stop trying to arbitrage attention with a clever name. If your core product doesn't stand on its own, a slick numerical reference won't save you. Focus entirely on substance.
Q: Doesn't a recognizable name pattern help with SEO and recall?
A: It helps you blend in, not stand out. You might get a slight initial bump from familiarity, but you ultimately dilute your brand equity by making yourself indistinguishable from the pack.