Name Game

Recently my friend Alex concluded that he needed to rename his startup. The business had changed direction a little, and the name they had had them metaphorically boxed in. He and I decided to have a casual afterhours brainstorming session and invited folks from the Ithaca entrepreneurial community over to my house. Alex provided the food and brought along some fancy spirits to sample too.

From one of my EIR lectures at Cornell, I had a few slides on company names:


What's in a name?

Alex put up on the walls large PostIts with some of the ideas he had been working on. From there, we added, critiqued, and debated the ideas late in the night. Probably a little too late, but we were having fun. Though it was just a name change, it felt like we were helping the company out of their box so they could explore new products, markets, and marketing opportunities.


Call it Rose? Nah, won't smell as sweet

The result is a company name that makes a lot of sense for what the company has evolved in to, and where they're going. He's not yet announced the new name, so I'll not spoil the fun. Suffice it to say, when he went back to his team with the recommendation, they loved it.