Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Gerry Langeler
- Those that never changed their name
- Those that did (once or multiple times)
The sample size here is over 50 start-ups, so it can be argued to be statistically significant.
- You are a very technical team and thought a very technical name for your company made sense. ( You think Marketing is for sissies.)
- You are a very clever technical team and loved the idea of a series of letters that were available as a URL that sounded like a real word, but spelled differently. (For an off-the-wall example: “ghoti” as “fish”. gh as in enough, o as in women, ti as in the suffix -tion). I know – no one would be that crazy, but you get the point. You think Marketing is about clever letter and word-play, even if no one can find you with a web search.
- You started life with a company name that was either too broad (Enormous Enterprises), or too narrow (Ruby-on-rails templates.com) and need to reposition to what you do now.
- Your product name, which was different than your company name, became more well-known than your company name – and you yielded to market forces.
- You hired a new CEO, or new VP of Marketing or Sales, who decided they just had to put their mark on the company.
I think a case can be made that in every bullet item above there is a business flaw or weakness that is getting reflected in the name change. And so those that didn’t make those mistakes may have had a higher probability of success.