#catoya

How a stain remover, fertility clinic, international dispute mediators, and our company have the same name.

Picking a name for your company or product is a herculean task. First you need to arrange a group of letters whose job is to lead a collection of vastly different and idiosyncratic peoples from vastly different and particular contexts towards exactly identical happy places whenever they think about your company or product.* After completing the copy-editing equivalent of herding cats, the next step is to make sure your assemblage of letters looks just right. You’ll need to feel your way through deciding if your composition has the right balance (vertically and horizontally), weight, and other art school considerations like white space. If all else fails, add an umlaut and pretend to be European.** Almost there, consider: does your name verb? It’s extra viral and shows that you’re clued-in to new media marketing.*** Lastly, the you need to answer: has some other doofus previously taken your carefully crafted labor of love, your magnum opus (so far in your burgeoning business venture), the well thought out name and identity of your company?****

Motherfucker.

Originally, rsolv, was Resolve. We believe this is a great name. You need resolve to stand up for your convictions. You resolve disagreement. You further resolve an image to see in more granular detail. It conveys what we plan to do for group conversation with our technology. You post in direct agreement or disagreement so as the group discussion continues and evolves, you see exactly where the division lies and can work to sort out the differences.

The other key component is to first show an overview of the group conversation to relay the general gist because group conversations can have a lot of content, yet are primarily composed by factions of similarly minded people. If a particular facet of the conversation draws your attention, you can explore that branch in further detail while having context as it relates to the overall picture.

Resolve is a good name yet we needed to switch the name of our product.***** If you search “resolve” you’ll find:

A stain remover

A fertility clinic

An international dispute mediation organization

Their usages of "resolve" make sense. Infertile couples, someone scrubbing laundry stains, and international negotiations require a level of perseverance. These are also problems you want fixed. Most importantly, resolve conveys a lot of meaning quickly, which is exactly what you're trying to do when you're branding--reduce searching costs for potential consumers. This is why dissimilar companies like ours and these others all want to use it.

The power of a good word comes with a cost. There's risk of confusion with dissimilar companies and uses. The state of Delaware will not allow you to incorporate with a name too similar to others in completely different lines of business. Then there is also issues with trademarking and infringements. For example, Facebook is constantly litigating other companies using "X + book" naming conventions and it is difficult because facebook is a common term. Moreover, a webdomain of a powerful common word could be a fortune to buy from a domain squatter (another issue/gripe altogether).

Like a game of reverse Wheel of Fortune, we removed vowels and landed on rsolv and rsolv.com. Adrik also points out that five letter domain names are pretty sweet, and I have to agree. “rsolv” I think also has a better visual balance. Sometimes, throwing a monkey wrench into the system reveals better options and decisions to make.

-Chris

  *Ask 10 people what is their idea of Heaven, a universally known concept. You may find yourself on the receiving end of a one-sided argument you were surprised halfway through was, in-fact, dead serious as you jokingly nodded in agreement.

** Looking at you Haagen Dazs.

*** Some examples: “I googled that yesterday.” “Yeah, I facebooked them before the date. They were definitely hotter a year ago.” “LinkedIn my boss’s boss’s boss, so I guess that means I’m due for a promotion soon.”

**** A doofus only because they’re impeding your progress, just like that car driving a completely reasonable speed in front of you, but you’re in more of a hurry than they appear to be in…look at them oafishly lollygagging all over your road.