Your story sounds inspiring. I'm just about to pull in some money from an angel kind of like you are. We are in a very similar boat. My start up in not software related though.
In the spirit of helping you to make your business better, I was much less inspired by your name. officezilla? Really? Maybe one problem of working by yourself is that there is no one to tell you when you are making a huge mistake you are blind too. Officezilla? You are pouring your life into something you are calling officezilla? You want that on your tombstone? The thing that was your life's work is officezilla? You can't find a better name for what will be your customers primary way of mentally representing you? This will have more of an impact on what people think of your product initially than almost anything else you do. I would suggest you use a little bit of the money to find a good person to help you pick a better identity for yourself. This is just an unacceptable name. I'm sorry, thats what I think. It's not the same skillset as the work you do for a website. But it's important enough you should change it, before your next round, in consultation with an expert, even if it's a really big pain in your ass to do.
Good luck with your funding and your business. You sound like the type who will be successful. I hope you change the name though. It is really bad. I'm sorry for being so harsh, but it really is an epic fail, and you really should recognize your limits and hire someone talented to help you change it. Good luck.
That's a start. The next step is to not present officezilla to anyone you want to think positively of your project. You look like you are doing very good work and are going to get a good shot at making it. It'd be a shame to have it unfairly tainted by that bad name. This matters a lot to how people perceive you.
sharecircle is much better, BTW. Like a million or billion or million million or million billion or even billion billion times better.
i'll defend the name, as it passes a few of my tests (here is another list):
First, the name suggests something about the product. When many people hear "office", they think "business" and "MS Office". When i hear zilla, i think of Mozilla, and the connotations are "free" and "quality". these connotations are perfect for a free calendaring and collaboration tool. "sharecircle" wouldn't provide the same associations with business and quality.
Second, the name is spellable without explanation.
Third, its memorable/differentiated
Fourth, you can grow into it. its not "calendarzilla"
It's officezilla. The cadence is all wrong. Say it over and over again. Too much at the end. It flows like a boulder swims.
Normal people, when they hear office, think "I hate the office.", and normal people, when they hear zilla, think godzilla, which is not so pleasant in it's associations. Why would I want a bigger office thats like a giant dinosaur that messes stuff up? Officezilla sounds more to me like the way a therapist would label the kafkaesque reoccurring nightmares of a middle manager who wants to quit and live by a lake and paint, but whose soul is being consumed by recurring office work that takes all his energy in the same hopeless, pointless ritual he lives over and over again, the only change day to day being the slowly and constantly mounting frustration, then an inviting place I want to go each day to try and make something creative.
The way it works isn't does it pass a few tests. There is no set of rules such that meeting the rules is a necessary and sufficient condition for the name not sucking. The way it works is, consider the totality. Does it suck or not. This name sucks. Really strongly.
In the spirit of helping you to make your business better, I was much less inspired by your name. officezilla? Really? Maybe one problem of working by yourself is that there is no one to tell you when you are making a huge mistake you are blind too. Officezilla? You are pouring your life into something you are calling officezilla? You want that on your tombstone? The thing that was your life's work is officezilla? You can't find a better name for what will be your customers primary way of mentally representing you? This will have more of an impact on what people think of your product initially than almost anything else you do. I would suggest you use a little bit of the money to find a good person to help you pick a better identity for yourself. This is just an unacceptable name. I'm sorry, thats what I think. It's not the same skillset as the work you do for a website. But it's important enough you should change it, before your next round, in consultation with an expert, even if it's a really big pain in your ass to do.
Good luck with your funding and your business. You sound like the type who will be successful. I hope you change the name though. It is really bad. I'm sorry for being so harsh, but it really is an epic fail, and you really should recognize your limits and hire someone talented to help you change it. Good luck.