We continue our What’s in a Name? series with tech companies Bitfusion, Gong and Mintent.
These companies incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to power their software offerings, and one pushes "marketing with intent" in its content marketing software and programs.
Bitfusion
Founded: January 2015
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Number of employees: Less than 20
CEO: Subbu Rama
Specializes in: Software that makes managing and using deep learning and artificial intelligence infrastructure easy, elastic and efficient
Was this the original name? Yes
Who named the company? Rama and his co-founders (CTO Mazhar Memon and COO Maciej Bajkowski)
How and why did the company take on this name? To symbolically account for the fusing of bits across multiple hardware types such as CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, other ASICs (Bit+fusion).
What names did you consider before this name, and why were they not chosen? We can’t remember the specific names now, but for a couple of weeks we did think about various names related to heterogeneous hardware and how software works on top of it.
What tech company names do you envy? Tesla, because Nikola Tesla is one of our favorite engineers and it’s so thoughtful to have kept that name for an amazingly engineered car. Apple and Amazon, because they're simple, and Google, because it’s such an amazing play on numbers, and geeky.
We personally don't think there is much in a name. The value that a company offers is what matters. In the end, even if it’s not a great name but if the value that a company offers is killer, people will make it a great name eventually.
It’s like people — the names are not what make them great. It’s who and what they did that makes them great.
Gong
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: Palo Alto
Number of employees: 25
CEO: Amit Bendov is the CEO and co-founder
Specializes in: Artificial intelligence-powered conversation software for sales organizations
Was Gong the original name? Bendov: No, the original name was Honeyfy. I live in a small village 30 minutes from Tel Aviv, where there is a lot of open land, cornfields, etc. When I started the company, I was walking with my wife through a field, trying to think of a name. I wanted something that would have a positive connotation. That’s when we saw a beehive dripping with honey, and the name “Honeyfy” popped into my head.
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Who named the company? Bendov.
How and why did the company take on this name? We changed the name to “Gong” because of how many B2B sales organizations use an actual Gong to celebrate closing deals (“Hit the Gong”)?
Mintent
Founded: 2013
Headquarters: Vancouver, British Columbia
CEO: Matt Dion. Dion has worked with several companies during their early stages, including Crystal Decisions/Business Objects (acquired by SAP), Apparent Networks, 90-degree software (acquired by Microsoft), Active State (acquired by Sophos) and Elastic Path Software.
Specializes in: Mintent is a content marketing automation platform used by mid-sized and large teams to plan, produce, publish and measure marketing content. The platform helps marketers more precisely align messages with customer buying cycles, manage concurrent editorial calendars and content marketing workflows to achieve higher returns on their content investment.
Was this the original company name? No, the original name was Marketing.AI
Who named the company? Re-naming the company was the result of a team effort and brainstorm session where employees along with a group of target customer experts agreed that Mintent best reflected the company's mission.
How and why did the company take on this name? Marketing.AI was too generic, and we wanted a .com url. Our target customers are primarily female, and we wanted to rebrand with a name that would be more attractive to women.
Additionally, we wanted the name to easily be turned into a verb. Mintent comes from blending the two words "marketing" and "intention." We think of Mintent as a verb meaning "to market with intent."
Content strategy is such a big part of marketing now and Mintent really helps people to build a solid content plan aligned with key messages, buyer personas and the customer buying cycle.
What names did you consider before choosing your company name, and why were they not chosen? We generated quite a long list of potential names including Content Storm, Content Mint and Mintento. In the end we opted for the shorter and more unique Mintent.
What tech companies do you admire or envy, and why? We admire companies like Square, Car2Go and HubSpot. They have all redefined markets by offering people with practical new options for solving their daily challenges.
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