Person 2 :
Is a startup like a child? Why are you asking others to name it? Pick up something you feel passionate about, and move on!

Person 4 :
Exactly! Why waste time thinking of a name, would it actually matter that much? Your product/service matters more than the name. PayTm - what a strange name, it still is successful. What about KPMG? There is nothing special there.

Person 3 :
But, there must be something special, or else why would businesses change names?

Person 4 :
Well, I don't know about businesses, but people change names because of marriages.

Person 3 :
So, let's say a company is married when it merges, or it is acquired!

Person 1 :
You are right. Let's take it to a deeper level: I think they change names to decontaminate. Hitler's dad had 2 siblings, Paula and Alois. But after World War 2, guess what they did? Paula Hitler changed her last name to ‘Wolf’, and Alois Hitler changed his last name to ‘Hiller.’

Person 2 :
An intelligent move. I don’t think you wanted to go round the world telling the world, your last name was Hitler.

Person 3 :
Just like the tobacco company, Philip Morris! It decided to change its name to Altria. Tobacco has become a contaminant, and they just distanced themselves from it.

Person 4 :
That's a good way to get rid of the negative effect to protect its other businesses.

Person 3 :
Yes, at that time it owned a Kraft and Miller brewing. It was so afraid that tobacco was pushing down the value that they changed its name.

Person 2 :
This strategy seems good on paper. But did it actually work?

Person 3 :
I don't know, but that was a classic example of a name change to get away from your past. Even Apple was known as Apple Computers a decade ago. But it has changed to Apple Inc. now.

Person 1 :
It makes no sense to retain the name 'computer' for a company where the majority of revenues come from smart phones and other devices. Fun fact: Apple earns $3 billion every year from Google ust to keep Google a the default search engine! So yeah, the revenue stream is quite diverse.

Person 3 :
Wow that's news to me. So who has heard of this old company International Harvester? I'm sure no one as in 1985, this agricultural machinery company decided to change its name to Navistar.

Person 2 :
I've read about it while I was researching diesel engines. It had sold off its agricultural machinery business and wanted to enter the diesel engine business. Again a paradigm shift in business lines.

Person 4 :
But these name changes are more for operating reasons. I thought name change was a marketing/branding department thing!

Person 3 :
Yes, it also is! Do you know Google started it's life as ‘BackRub’? I'm glad they changed their name. The new one is somuch easier to type in your browser!

Person 2 :
Yes, it makes it easier for people to remember. I also remember Sony's name being something weird not many years ago!

Person 3 :
Haha, yeah! It was called Tushan Tokyo! Such a typical Japanese name. apanese sounds good for my company. I think an exotic name could help me charge higher prices. What do you think?

Person 1 :
Why not? If you're in the US, using Italian words will help you charge a premium, just like Starbucks.

Person 4 :
But Starbucks is not an Italian name; nor does it serve anything Italian. It is a very typical American brand.

Person 1 :
Not the name, the sizes. If you walk into a Starbucks store; you don't see small, medium, or large. You see grande and venti. Doesn't it sound classier? In fact, the baristas correct you if you say small or medium.

Person 3 :
Now that's funny of US. I also remember this German in the US who kept changing names. He ended with a name Clark Rockefeller. Has anyone heard of him?

Person 2 :
I think I have. Was he an artist? Rockefeller organization is also very powerful. Is he a part of it?

Person 3 :
You can call him an artist, but he was a con artist!

Person 4 :
Oh, the last name allowed him to get into premium clubs he otherwise would not have been able to enter and then lure the rich patrons there into investment schemes that he otherwise would not have been able to promote.

Person 3 :
Haha, the same guy! Ultimately he got arrested, but he had made millions of dollars just with that last name.

Person 1 :
Names are an excellent way to make money. In the 1990s, when companies added .com to their names, the value was up by 50%. Since you have an e-commerce startup, why don't you try this out?

Person 3 :
Gone are those dot-com days, nowadays everyone wants to sound a social media company! Even if they aren't a social media company, they want to do this to fool investors and customers. That's the craze.

Person 2 :
If adding .com helped; after the dot-com bubble, when the companies took the dot-com out of their names, their share prices must have gone up, too!

Person 1 :
Yes, they did. But the impact on stock prices is just one thing. If you ask me if the true value of the company would change, I'd rather look at the effect of the name change of revenues, cash, and profits.

Person 4 :
While scrolling up, I read about Google! So I never knew it had some other name when it started. But even some time back, I read about it. They formed a holding company and now call it Alphabet.

Person 3 :
Yes,The search engine will remain Google. The reason you form a parent-subsidiary is that Google has all these start-ups, the electrical car business, the medical devices business - all these would now become individual companies under Alphabet.

Person 2 :
Yes, they have phones, glasses, internet services, online marketing, cloud - so many businesses under them!

Person 4 :
Yes, but why? Isn't it strange, I mean it's anyway so successful and popular! It has built its advertising business, and it has been incredibly successful with the business. Why change?

Person 1 :
There may be many reasons. But I feel that they're doing this to diverify the evenue source. However, the troubling aspect of Google’s success over the last decade has been that the other stuff that it has tried has failed badly.

Person 2 :
Yes, it has been that everything else they have tried outside of advertising, doesn’t seem to have worked in terms of generating revenue and profits.

Person 4 :
Let's step into Larry Page's shoes. Would redesigning to Alphabet change that? Doesn't the brand actually help in selling other products?

Person 3 :
If it did, why change? But I think Google is a sugar daddy problem. The sugar daddy (advertising business) and the young start-ups (kids). These kids have had access to sugar daddy with more than required capital. Because they have access to so much capital that they can fall-back on, they have become irresponsible in the way they make investment decisions, and the choices they make.

Person 2 :
That's really good reasoning. Jack Ma once said, 'the problems with startups today is that they have too much of money.'

Person 3 :
In spite of all its successes, the way I would describe Google is that it has been run by a benevolent dictatorship. Larry Page and Sergei Brin dominate the company.

Person 4 :
But the CEO Sundar Pichai is an Indian, na? His name does come to the forefront.

Person 3 :
Yes, but when was the first time you heard of him? The fact that most of us hadn’t heard much about him before he took the position proves that it is always about the founders…

Person 2 :
So maybe that’s getting in the way of these start-ups doing the right thing. But I think time will tell how much effect the name change had.

Person 1 :
I'd want to see the start-ups behaving like start-ups – lean, mean, hungry, looking for new products, looking for those pathways to revenues and earnings. Google should behave like a traditional venture capitalist who is looking for the best use for his money. If the output isn't good enough, they should go to the next project.

Person 1 :
Thinking from the other point of view, I would like to see more independence. Independence given to the people running the subsidiaries at Google. To do what they want to do.

Person 4 :
So you'd want Pichai to do something which is contradictory to Lary and Sergei?

Person 3 :
Yes, if that happens, there has been a substantial change and that substantial change perhaps will pay off as Google’s other businesses succeed.

Person 1 :
The odds are pretty low seeing the history of Brin and Page.

Person 2 :
Well, I give them better odds than I gave Ron Artest, for those who don’t remember, he was an NBA player with anger management problems. He changed his name to World Peace.

Person 3 :
Yes, coming back to the name - please suggest something good.

Person 1 :
I'd recommend that you hire an upcoming brand builder - they shall help you with name, logo, appeal, colors, brand niche, website, marketing - in short everything.

Person 2 :
Yes, brand builders are the right professionals for such a task. And there's a reason why people pay them.

Person 3 :
Okay, I'll hire services of a brand builder then. Thanks a lot for your valuable help.

Person 4 :
Yeah, this was fun. Got to know a lot many new things.