If it means that trademark filing goes ahead smoothly without the trademark being contested I guess some people would see that as useful spend of money.

It really depends on the stage of the company, IMO. The cost of switching out the name of a company with no in-market traction is pretty minimal, when you think about it. In our case, we went through this whole naming process on Day 1, with all hands allocated to the task. Product development was, if not entirely halted during this process, than certainly placed on the backburner.

If we'd had an MVP out in testing, people were loving it, and we'd been preparing to go big with a launch of some sort, sure, $50k in exploration toward securing an awesome name would have made a lot more sense. But $50k, right off the bat, felt pretty absurd at the time.

And to reiterate, this was just one symptom of a much more insidious disease: the need to consult lawyers about everything. I'm using only the mildest of hyperbole here. We did not make a single decision without a legal weigh-in. Eventually we were able to convince the CEO of our financial and strategic inability to sustain this approach. But a lot of damage had been done before we got to that point. It was a very expensive lesson.