Is This the Best Strategy for Naming Your Business in 2024?

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this new series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

CapForge Founder and Owner Matt Remuzzi reacts to business advice on how you should name your business for maximum success. 

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video:

Name your company a Latin name. I want you to find out what SIC codes banks like, what SCI codes banks don’t like, so you don’t start out with the wrong name. Now, since we know they speak Latin, now we wanna go in, and let’s say you wanna be big. You have to put in your company what you want it to be. One of my companies is Robots, Robots Inc. I went into Google and I said, I wanna be big. I went in, I said, what’s big and Latin? And it said, big, robust, robustus. And they cannot and will not teach you this because this is economic masonry. People didn’t even know that exist.

Matt’s Review:

You wouldn’t know it exists cause it’s not a real thing. You just made it up! Economic masonry. Okay, naming your business something in Latin is the weirdest, most random advice that I’ve heard in a long time. And I have no idea where this guy got the idea from, but I guarantee you Bill Gates and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, none of those guys were thinking, “Man, if I wanna have a big company I better name my business something in Latin. Biggest Maximus Inc. so that way I can be sure of having a billion-dollar company. And if I name it something like tiniest, I’m never gonna be a big company.” This is the craziest advice I’ve ever heard. Name your company something that makes sense for what you’re doing, or name it something that doesn’t mean anything like Google or Xerox or Cap Forge, that way you can do anything or pivot as you need to, and you don’t have to keep changing the name, right? If you name your company Great Haircuts for Dogs and now you wanna do cat grooming and llama grooming, well, now your name doesn’t make much sense. So then you back it up to Great Grooming for Pets, but then what if you know something else comes along and you decide you really wanna do graphic design? Oh, now you have to change the name again cause it no longer makes sense. But if you just named your company something like Amazing Company Group Inc then you really could do anything or you name it. Something like Googly Gook and then you can do anything too. Okay maybe that one’s a little extreme on the silly side, but you get the idea.

I would not worry about Latin. And I guarantee you the bank is not looking at the name of your company to decide how to lend you money. They’re looking at your balance sheet, they’re looking at how much cash you have, they’re looking at your profitability if that looks good. Your business could be named About to Fail.com but they’d still be willing to give you a loan because, in fact, you’re cash flow positive and doing great. On the other hand, if your bank or your business is named Robust but you’re losing money, no bank is gonna lend to you. Doesn’t matter what your name is. So this is just ridiculous advice and I wouldn’t spend any more time thinking about it.