Why We Chose Second Nature As Our New Name
It was 2013 and I was sitting in my Hammersmith flat. I was a single 25-year-old spending most of my time coding away the next big thing.
I’d just finished submitting an application for my ‘next big thing’ to a startup accelerator under the working title DiabeTech.
Naming wasn’t my strong suit.
“You need a new name,” said Tom, my flatmate. “You want people to go on a journey… how about Path?”
“I love it!” I cried out. I was on a high until we started Googling Path. There was a social network with the same name.
We needed a twist…something that would take people on a journey. “Our Journey”.
OurPath was born.
I emailed the owner of ourpath.com to purchase the domain. I offered them $100.
So offended they were with my offer, they replied with four words: “Never contact me again”.
So we settled on ourpath.co.uk. Tom mocked up a logo and off we went.
Fast forward a few years and there were a few problems.
No one could ever pronounce it. Every social event had the same interaction.
“Oh, you run a startup,” a curious person would say. “What’s the name?”
“OurPath ” I’d reply. There was a pause.
“YourPath?”
“No, OurPath.”
“The letter R, then path?”
“No, OurPath.”
Ad infinitum.
An American once confused us as ‘OwlBath’ — which let to us launching an April fools joke in 2018.
But beside the pronunciation issues, we sounded like a cult. Even people on our programme were calling us out on it:
“Your name makes you sound like a cult.”
“If I didn’t know someone doing it, the name would probably have put me off finding out more.”
“You really need a new name, sorry! No one knows what it means and they think it’s weird.”
Having a strong following and people that love your product is great, but perhaps cult is going too far.
So we needed to change it.
We spent a lot of 2019 doing a bit of soul searching and working out what we stood for.
It became clear that our ethos is helping people build healthy habits — in a way that’s effective, energising, and empathetic.
We realised that what we do as a company is help people make healthy habits…Second Nature.
Looks like we’re finally growing up.
I couldn’t be more excited about where the new brand will take us. You can see more at www.secondnature.io.
You can read our formal announcement on our blog here.
p.s. The joke’s on them. We ended up purchasing ourpath.com years later on the cheap.
Sadly it’s now going to waste...Anyone want to buy it? I’ll give you a good price.
