Just because a company is successful doesn't mean it has a good name (just as a good name doesn't make a company successful.)
Ebay is a terrible name, but they had other advantages.
Braintree is a poor name, which may explain some of their struggles with entering the broader market. PayPal and Stripe are much better - emotive and associative.
If github were called snaggletooth, they would have struggled much much more.
Regarding your experience, the point where you lose customers is generally before they talk to you. You would not know that you were losing them.
I don't know what Matasano does, and truthfully if I am honest with my emotions, I care less because I don't associate with the name and initially discount the company because of the naming choice. This is a base emotive response btw, not a conscious judgement. You may have a fantastic product that I would ultimately select if I were in the market, but you are starting at a disadvantage.
Most of us aren't really in businesses where customers find us by Googling relevant-sounding names and following one of the first 2 links on Google.
The point of my comment isn't that there are names that are better than other names. There clearly are. My point is that the difference is unlikely to be determinative of success. Again: Heroku is meaningless. There are many companies in Heroku's space with much "better" names that do not manage to outcompete Heroku.
I am now repeating myself, but because this is worth repeating: there is a long list of things that "founders" procrastinate on that won't really help their business. They include logos, designing replacement web frameworks so they don't look like they're using Bootstrap, finding the optimal company name, business cards, attending SXSW or going to meetups... the list goes on and on. Most founders would be well served to at least note that these are likely to be unproductive tasks.
That doesn't mean you can't engage in those tasks. If you love web design, vent some steam by replacing Bootstrap. Just don't con yourself into thinking you're doing something vital by doing that.
Okay, I don't think we are too far apart. We probably just disagree on how strong an impression a name can make. Similar to bad design and user experience, a product can be successful with a bad name. That doesn't mean user experience, design, or the name is not important.
Ebay is a terrible name, but they had other advantages.
Braintree is a poor name, which may explain some of their struggles with entering the broader market. PayPal and Stripe are much better - emotive and associative.
If github were called snaggletooth, they would have struggled much much more.
Regarding your experience, the point where you lose customers is generally before they talk to you. You would not know that you were losing them.
I don't know what Matasano does, and truthfully if I am honest with my emotions, I care less because I don't associate with the name and initially discount the company because of the naming choice. This is a base emotive response btw, not a conscious judgement. You may have a fantastic product that I would ultimately select if I were in the market, but you are starting at a disadvantage.