Tend is the name of the budgeting app I’ve been working on for the past 3 years. In fact, seeing the word Tend in a book somewhere was the spark that got me working on it in the first place. I saw the word, loved it, then found tend.cash as a domain name. I was holding my new daughter in the middle of the night as I bought the domain and felt a zing of excitement for what it could mean. It’s been a great name. People loved it, I loved it. But its time is almost over.

I paid $350 to apply for the trademark. I saw some other live marks, but they weren’t using them in the market. Turns out, that doesn’t matter to the examiner. They just check marks for likelihood of confusion. I would need to file a “hey you’re not using this” document, then they get a chance to defend themselves. Too expensive.

There are 3 other trademarks for the exact word “Tend” in the exact same space: finance, SaaS. One is live, and the other two are pending. It gets an F grade for likelihood of approval.

A budget app needs clear air in three classes of goods and services: 009 for software, 036 for finance, and 042 for SaaS. Since I’m just now feeling like the software is ready for a big marketing push, my wife says this is the moment to re-brand.

The obvious, easy names are saturated. I’ve had to get more and more obscure. Today I got out a gardening book, a religious devotional, and The Psychology of Money and thumbed through the pages looking for inspiration.

I’m trying to make it easy to say, “I use name for budgeting,” and “did you check name?” and “is that tracked in name?”

The current shortlist of candidates is: calipty, terrain, and posy.

It’s exhausting. I’ll be happy to just pick one and be over it.