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Believe it or not, one of the hardest things to do when forming a company is naming it. I know what you’re probably thinking. “If you had such a hard time naming your company, why would I trust you to help me solve some of my business’s biggest problems?” But that’s just it…the problem-solving thing…that’s what we do, it’s what we’ve done for the past 30 years of our careers. It’s how we have supported small startups to Fortune 500 companies, it’s what comes naturally, it’s the kind of people we hire, and it’s our commitment to our clients.
Now, naming a company…how often in your life do you have a chance to do that? And when you do, why is it so important? Let’s start with the simple criteria. Easy to remember, short, not frequently misspelled, catchy, timeless, not used by anyone else, matching web domain name available (this is one of the hardest things, believe it or not. Read on.) But then, there is the most important criterion. We want the name to tell a story about what we do so well. Every time we thought of a name that represented this, it was either already taken or (more often than not), the .com version of the web domain name was unavailable.
During our startup, Rod was scouring the Dropcatch site daily, looking for something that might make sense. Then, he sent me this Signal message…
BAM! The perfect name. Just in case you jumped right into our blog and haven’t spoken with us yet or taken a look at our website, you be wondering what we do, and why this name fits so well. Or, as the “Bob’s” asked in the movie Office Space…”What would you say ya’ do here?”
The short answer is “we solve x”. For the math nerds like me, remember “x” in of our math formulas? “x” is the variable and “y” is the result. When you improve “x”, you improve “y”. While your “y” might be a small handful of very important things like profitability, client satisfaction, or employee engagement, there may be hundreds of “x’s”.
Rod and I learned early in our careers that in order to fix the symptom, you must fix the cause…or the variable…or the “x”. That’s what we do, we solve “x”. We thrive on solving the “x’s”, and we always have. And as we have solved the root-causes, the performance improvements have followed…for 30 years.
So, when you see our name, we want you to remember this story, or at least the key takeaway. A company’s name might have nothing to do with what it does, like Apple. If you don’t know how they named their company, research it. However, we’re not a juggernaut like Apple (maybe someday). So in our case, we want you to remember our name, but most importantly we want you to remember what we do. We solve “x”.
More to come…
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