Its not always about tech

Brand’s place in a tech start up…

Seeing this article on Hacker News yesterday prompted me to think about recent developments in my company.

People approach businesses with an inevitable bias. If you sharpened your teeth in marketing, you’ll always be thinking of how to position a product; if you’re a developer your typical reaction will be to start to build as quickly as possible. But what I have come to realise is that each area of the business as a whole will also take its turn in ‘having its day’ at different points in your business lifecycle.

Hassle.com has been going nearly two years but we’ve been known as Hassle.com for approximately 14 days. Previously we were called Teddle. Non-offensive right? But once we had finally got our product right and were growing pretty impressively we realised Teddle wasn’t doing us any favours!

We chose the name when we started out as we weren’t quite sure what local services we would end up serving (its cleaners in London for now) and we didn’t want to limit ourselves. We thought ‘oh well Google meant nothing when it started’ and we certainly didn’t want a functional name like Services-Are-Us.com so Teddle seemed fine. Except we constantly had to spell it (t-e-d-d-l-e), correct pronunciation (not Tiddle, Teedle, Tweedle) or explain what it meant (nothing). We also came to feel that it was a bit soft and fluffy!

And so we took the brave decision that despite having good traction in London, a considerable amount of press and a good network in the start up world, to change our name. With the help of the A-mazing Daren Cook, we didn’t just chose a name. We finally figured out who we are and what we are trying to be.

Sounds dramatic I know, but in trying to get to the heart of what we wanted to be when we grew up, we were forced to ask ourselves difficult questions (and agree on the answer) and finally create our 5 year road map and grand vision. Getting this right before we had nailed the product wouldn’t have made sense.

Being lean has been at the heart of what we have done for the past 2 years and after constant product iteration and testing, we had to consolidate and clearly communicate to our potential audience why us, if we were to take our company to the next level. And that’s not really tech. You can have an amazing product but if no one gets it or you don’t stick in peoples mind then you won’t reach your potential.

And so brand just had its day in our company and I am pretty proud of the result: Hassle.com | Sorted.