Nova
Y Combinator 2018 · Acquired Fintech novahq.com
Digital subscriptions that delight investors.
Y Combinator's description, shown to identify the company. We rate the name, not the business.
Formerly Abacus Protocol, Abacus
- Evocativity EVOC : red
- Nova gives no clear investor-subscription cue
- Brevity BREV : green
- 4 letters, 2 syllables. Up to seven letters is green, eight at two syllables too; up to ten yellow, eleven or more red.
- Greppability GREP : red
- Found inside 55 other dictionary words.
- Googlability GOOG : red
- Nova is an established astronomical word and widely used name
- Pronounceability PRON : green
- The familiar word reads clearly
- Spellability SPEL : green
- The conventional spelling is straightforward
- Verbability VERB : red
- No natural subscription-investing verb
- Nominology
- 50
- All seven dimensions and .com ownership, weighted as set out on Methodology.
- Fluency
- 100
- Brevity and pronounceability only: the subset with published outcome evidence behind it.
- PG grade
- 2 / 4
- Graham's own four-step ladder.
- Exact .com
- Not owned
- Shape
- real word
- Length
- 4 chars, 2 syllables
- Distinctiveness
- arbitrary
Rubric version 2026.10.20-1, judged by gpt-6.1-sol (agent).
This scores the name only. See Methodology.
These judged dimensions came from an AI agent working through the judging queue in a chat, on the same rubric the scoring pipeline sends. The agent passed the calibration exam before its work was accepted, and each batch it judged hid two names with known answers as a check. The model is named as the agent reported it.