Naming Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur
This past autumn, I decided to take a look at the startup landscape for our annual Burning Ears event—an exploration of the best and worst in company and product names with the A Hundred Monkeys team. This year we decided to focus our collective energy on specific industries, and I elected to look at startups. In order to limit my scope from the tens of thousands of startups that are in various stages of funding the world over, I decided to use one of the industry’s elite startup competitions as my directory: TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield.
Startup Battlefield is a competition where early stage startups compete for prize money, and the attention of the media and investors. TechCrunch hosts it every year at its Disrupt events — where “everyone is a startupper — no matter if you’re a founder, investor, hacker or tech leader.” You get the idea. “Silicon Valley” jokes aside, Disrupt has actually been an important stop on the journey for some very well-known startups, including Dropbox, Fitbit, Getaround, and Mint. So I decided to focus my search on the past competitors at Disrupt so that the names that I might find would have already met with some public scrutiny and have the viability of being a real company or product.
Once I had compiled my list of startups, it was clear we had some valid entries on both sides of the divide. I was curious to see how some creative colleagues and friends in attendance would cast their ballots on the “glorious” and “ridiculous” names that I had found.
One name that the A Hundred Monkeys team liked wound up being a fan favorite. Layer is an enterprise conversation platform that helps companies with customer engagement, sales conversion, and customer service. We had selected the name because it seemed to hit on several meanings that could be applied to the company’s missions. We thought of Layer as representing the complex and varied layers of the relationships that companies have with their customers, and how all customers are multi-dimensional in some way.
After seeing how much our team and guests were drawn to Layer’s name, I wanted to get in touch with someone who helped bring Layer to life and learn how they had named the company. So I did what anyone would do, I tweeted at their CEO. And, happily, he replied.
Ron Palmeri is founder and CEO of Layer and has led other companies (including Prism Skylabs and Grand Central, which would go on to become Google Voice) and VC funds (including MkII Ventures and Minor Ventures). He has played a part in starting and shaping eight companies in a variety of markets. Palmeri was very generous with his time and below you can find some of his thoughts about naming in the startup world. Having founded or helmed companies for nearly 25 years, I was curious to learn about how he viewed naming and branding from the other side of the boardroom.
How involved have you been in naming the companies you’ve help found?
Ron Palmeri: Very involved. The branding has to do its part in communicating what it is you’re trying to build. The brand promise has to have real value, real equity. The brand is ultimately the sum total of the ongoing experience that a customer has. You can create a brand that says, “this is a secure thing,” but if the consumer experience is that it’s not secure then it doesn’t matter how much branding you throw at the issue, or whether your name says “we’re secure.” You want a name that conveys the core values that you imagine the company or the product will deliver over the lifetime of a customer relationship, but it’s only one piece. The ongoing cumulative experience matters too. Initially a lot rests on the name because it helps with differentiation and avoids confusion. Long term, companies that deliver well on their product promise and deliver for customers have the ability to imbue their name with a lot of positivity. The name can’t carry the company, but it can certainly help the company stand out.
How did you come up with the name for Layer?
RP: The original idea was an open communications “layer” for the internet — the internet doesn’t inherently have a communications layer. I liked businesses that were based on horizontal layers of the internet that were not present at the time [in 2013]. The idea was to communicate that this was about trust and transparency, but it wasn’t going to be open in an “open source” way. We wanted to communicate an intent. This was something that was going to be transparent, open, and safe. Layer was a good name in the sense that it really went to one of the core things we aspired to be — which was this new concept. We had other names that were more literal and related to communications like “Wire,” but the naming exercise became a question of how much does it capture the hopes and dreams, and ethos of the company. You want something that’s big enough and flexible for the long term, but you also want it to make sense.
In regards to companies you invest in, how much does the name of the company matter?
RP: I’m not your traditional VC. Since 2005, I’ve never really invested in things where people came to me and pitched a business. I like to help “start” things. Typically when I’m having a conversation, I’m not evaluating whether or not I want to invest based on the name of something. I have made small “angel” investments, but that has entirely been a function of me investing in people that I think are trying to do something interesting. Obviously, I’m conscious of the name [of their project] and might even have an opinion on the name, but any support I’ve given a company has been exclusively because of the person, not because of the name. When you get into the value of the name at an early stage, you’re asking: Is the name consistent with what the founders are trying to build? How legitimate is the name? Is it a real word? Is the name easy to understand? Does it capture the aspirations of that team or what they’re going to build? For me, it comes back to seriousness and legitimacy. Some companies are forced to use certain names because they’ve run out of “good” domains and that can start to feel really derivative. That’s when people start to feel that maybe a project will become something, but it certainly doesn’t feels like it right now — if feels derivative. And that starts to communicate that maybe this isn’t a legitimate project. Whereas if it has a really great name that does actually capture the project in a really solid way, then people think that’s cool and they like to understand why something is the name. A great company will grow into its name regardless of what its name is, and a great name doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a great company.
How many people are involved in final decisions when it comes to naming?
RP: If you’ve got founders, those people are around the table. You might be testing names with early investors. If you have a founding team, those people should be involved if only to get reactions or impressions. I think it’s helpful to include people who’ve already internalized what the company is trying to do. They may not be decision makers, but it’s important to have those people involved in the process — they might have great ideas. People feel more invested in processes that they feel a part of so it’s very helpful to include the initial team. I don’t think it’s 100 in a boat, but it’s helpful to be inclusive because you’re going to end up putting a lot of energy into what that name is.
Were there any issues in coming to agreement on Layer’s name?
RP: No. When we thought we were going to be able to get the domain we were excited about it and that pretty much sealed it. Other names were equally good, but when we knew we were able to get the domain we were done. One of the other contenders ended up being a pretty good name for a communication company and messaging app. Some were more literal to communication, but that’s why I really like Layer. You don’t think expressly about communication.
Thanks again to Ron Palmeri for taking the time to have this conversation with me. It was very interesting to hear how his thinking aligned with a number of core tenets of our process and naming philosophy. If you’d like to hear more from him you can follow him or Layer on Twitter. If you’d like to read more about Burning Ears or our other resources check out our Field Notes on Medium.
