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I honestly have trouble deciding if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Good: It's less ego-centric. Bad: It's more idea-centric.

I mean, the YC mantra is that founders matter most, no?




I think on balance it's bad.

Naming an enterprise for the founder/founders helps wire in more of the critical DNA, but in a way which doesn't tie you to a specific product or service. It's tricky to do this with a more generic name. This gives both an anchoring identity and flexibility to grow. It tends to imply a long-term view by the founders as well: why attach your name to something for which you've got an explicit exit strategy?

By way of counter-examples, "IBM" (International Business Machines) turns out to be a really good, generic, but still applicable and adaptable, name. "Apple" has worked fairly well. "Xerox" is tied to a specific duplication method. "Polaroid" grew and died with a specific photographic process (though "Land" doesn't seem to have helped much in this case).

From recent tech memory, "VA Research" (later "VA Linux") was named for its cofounders.


I personally like this in some... aesthetic?... sense. I mean, I like names that mean something more than just who started the company.




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