Most of what they ship is food... guessing belly is just a stomach/food reference. I don't see any confusion between the two companies. There are plenty of other companies that use belly. Potbelly and Jelly Belly come to mind
Jelly Belly has been around for YEARS and was named after Lead Belly (a musician). I've never heard of Potbelly, but that's a pre-existing noun (potbelly pig). If anything, they should have chosen something more unique given the abundance of "-belly" names.
Plus -- it doesn't allude to anything having to do with "influencers".
Global would allude to influencers and belly to food. So food influencers.
I'm not saying there isn't a better name out there - naming things is hard - and finding a .com for whatever name you come up with makes it that much harder.
I don't think their business customers are finding them with SEO - likely direct sales over Instagram and email. Their consumer customers are getting sold to directly by the Influencers so again the SEO and naming is not all that important.
Are you a likely customer? That is, are you a current influencer looking for a platform to sell things?
My general experience is that feedback from people who aren't in the target market has negative value. When entrepreneur friends ask me for hot takes, I used to just tell them whatever came to mind. Now, though, I refuse to that unless a) I have a lot of experience on the topic, or b) I'm in the target market.
I think that's especially true with branding and other style-related choices. A brand needs to work well for the people it's aimed at. But it's fine if it doesn't work for other people. Indeed, that's often better. E.g., nobody should ask me my opinion on branding youth fashion. If they make their product more appealing to me, it will almost certainly be less appealing to their actual customers.
> Are you a likely customer? That is, are you a current influencer looking for a platform to sell things?
I'm sure the majority of people on "Hacker News" wouldn't fit into the archetype of an "influencer" using this platform as a publisher. If you frame the question more fairly: Would I be on the consumption end of this platform as a customer? Perhaps, but I don't know about quality control.
With Goldbelly, I can trust that the restaurants have been vetted by public health agencies. Likes and follower counts don't entice me to ingest some muffins from some random Instagram "influencer".
Why do you think you aren't allowed to ship product from your home under the California cottage law?
To help with the understanding around the name, as we mentioned above, we actually launched Global Belly with a different concept. It was our own food brand, direct to consumer food products to help you make global cuisines at home. We pivoted over the last 6-8 months into this current model and we felt that the name still worked but it could be something to explore in the future.
Thanks for the extra info! Curious how you are reaching the influencers - Instagram DMs and emails must be a black hole for accounts that size and I am sure a lot of them have a team actually managing inboxes for them.