What’s It Called?
It’s been 3 months since I publicly shared that I would be leaving Panache Ventures and a few weeks since my official departure. I’ve started to discuss my next project with a small group of people close to me. After the initial wave of excitement and feedback, one question inevitably comes up:
“What’s it called?”
The honest answer? I have no idea.
Sure, I’ve written down a couple of names and several concepts that randomly popped into my head but, other than that, I haven’t spent more than a few minutes thinking about names.
Some founders and investors I know (particularly repeat founders) immediately get it. But many others don’t. They respond with quizzical looks or eye rolls, as if to convey a begrudging willingness to go along with my charade (while deep down being annoyed that I’m not willing to tell them).
Sure you don’t have a name…
When creating something brand new, many people start with the name — and I get it. Coming up with a name is exciting. It’s creative. It’s just plain fun (at least, until you run up against an army of domain squatters). There’s something about naming things that makes it real for a lot of people. But putting too much thought into a name preemptively can end up with the cart ahead of the horse.
In many asian cultures, it’s considered bad luck to name a baby before it’s born. Even after birth, a child’s name traditionally wouldn’t be shared outside of the immediately family until after 100 days, when the newborn had survived it’s crucial first three months of life.
Getting a name wrong - whether for a tiny human or a business - can have long-lasting implications and be difficult and costly to fix. Organizations are increasingly recognizing this, particularly in sports. Both the Washington NFL franchise and the Utah NHL franchise adopted temporary names rather than rush to create a brand.
The debut uniforms of the “Utah Hockey Club”
I have absolutely no negative feelings about anyone who starts a new project with the name. At the same time, I personally gravitate towards founders who in their earliest days either don’t have a name or use a temporary name for their project. It’s kind of like the interim pet names many parents come up with to refer to their not-yet-born babies. To me, deferring the naming exercise reflects a recognition that there are more important tasks to be done at the start and a lot of details still to be determined. Customer discovery needs to occur. Prototypes need to be built and tested. Pivots might lurk around the corner.
My youngest son was lovingly referred to as “Captain Barnacles” before he was born. His older brother was angry for months after learning that this wouldn’t be his real name
When Jeff and I co-founded DataHero, we incorporated the company as “2 Bettas Labs, Inc.” We chose that name both to reflect our mutually stubborn natures and to guarantee that we’d have to dedicate meaningful time to picking a “real name” down the road. When we started beta testing and raising our first round of capital, we were using the temporary name Glean. A year later, we came out of stealth and publicly launched our product as DataHero.
We put an equivalent amount of effort into our initial logo
I recently wrote about Project Stag, a short-lived marketing analytics company that I co-founded after DataHero was acquired. That company was incorporated as “The Engineer and the Designer Labs, Inc.” (again, a simple and straightforward reflection of the founders). Project Stag never reached production and, thus, we never went through the exercise of coming up with a proper name. I wonder how many hours we saved by forgoing that exercise..?
In the early days of a new project, there are many tasks that can — and likely should — be deferred. Most of these fall into the category of “things you think you’re supposed to do” to get a new company off the ground but which don’t actually matter if the core idea doesn’t hold water. For me, naming is one of those things.
So what am I doing?
As we speak, I’m heads down in the Canadian wilderness working on key early details of my new project. I don’t plan to build in public (that’s not my personal modus operandi), but I will certainly share learnings and lessons that I encounter along the way. In the meantime, rest assured that I’ll continue to post my weekly musings on startups, the business of venture capital and the founder journey.