In the fourth post of this series, I recall 20 years ago when we decided on a name for our startup, and the issues it then caused for the next decade…
Before the idea, there was context, an unforgettable comedic event before we talked to people we trusted about our idea.
Now, a few weeks on in mid 1999, we were actually thinking seriously about forming a business, raising funds and building a prototype.
We jumped on the ASIC website to buy ‘aussiehome.com Pty Ltd’ business name (having landed on ‘aussiehome.com’ as the best website domain a few days earlier).
We gave ourselves 50% ownership each, and with the company now formally established, we could set up a bank account to hold our initial seed capital. We valued the business at $1M (nice round number) post money, and would look to sell 20% to investors for $200K if we could.
Before that, we needed a business plan, and a rinky dink prototype of the site.
I remember being up in Exmouth during that mid year winter school holidays. I was still teaching, and had somehow agreed to go on a Year 9 camp. In order to get emails, I had to climb onto the tin roof of where we were staying to get reception, so I could contact co-founder Nick.
Weirdly, 20 years on, I’ve just been back to Exmouth again for the first time since 1999. Memories of that time flood back. Exmouth had just had a cyclone back then, and I remember farmers asking us if we’d seen any sheep out in the bay or on the islands. Apparently 50,000 had be swept out to sea during the storm.
Everything was moving fast. Within a few weeks we had bashed out a very ugly html prototype, and had the first draft of our business plan. We went back to our MBA professor, and he seemed interested in investing. He gave us a few names to follow up on, and we would go and show our demo and idea to several high net worth people around town.
One meeting would become three more as we asked for more introductions.
Looking back, I’m sure we made sensible decisions during this time, but there was certainly some gaps in our knowledge. We failed to set up a shareholder’s agreement between us (mistake), as we rather naively presumed all would be well. Or perhaps did not give it a thought? Later, when things got tough, we had no clear exit for either of us. We were locked in.
The name ‘aussiehome.com’ would continue to cause confusion with ‘Aussie Home Loans’ (or ‘Aussie’ or ‘Aussiehomes’) for years and years. Even nine years after the sale of the business, friends of mine still get the name wrong.
It’s aussiehome.com, not aussiehomes.com, I still say. So many people said they could not find our site, because of the confusion over our domain name.
We did not realise the high profile name of the ‘Aussie’ brand would create issues for us. Oddly, we never heard from Aussie Home Loans. They would never complain about our brand name being so close to theirs. We even approached them in the early days to see if they’d like to partner, and they ignored us.
And so we marched on. I thought the name was distinctive, clear and cool. Very Aussie.
A year on, there was even an ASX-listed Perth company called ‘Aussie’. They did a quick IPO (or back door listing? I can’t recall) but did not last long. We remember having a few chats with them, but it went nowhere, and they got bought out by Aussie Homes anyway.
Years later, I was speaking at an event, and even had a clear type written intro the MC would read out to introduce me.
“Ladies and gentleman”, said the announcer, “Please welcome Charlie Cunningham, from Aussie Home Loans.”
Agh well. Twas my cross to bear.
~~
These days, I speak about naming and trademarks every now and again – here’s my slide deck on the very subject.
Photo by Matthew T Rader from Pexels
