Growing Venture Solutions needs a new name

February 14 of 2006 was my last day as an employee of a US cable telecommunications firm. I immediately set about creating a new company as a vehicle for my work as a Drupal consultant and I knew from the start I wanted it to be a multi-person firm. Of course the first step is a name - I wanted something that expressed some of the values I had for the firm.

Each word, in priority order:

Solutions

So often I find people encounter problems and say to their boss or client "We have a problem because x, y and z." I am occasionally guilty of that and especially in my first job was guilty of it. Luckily I had a great boss who told me I should never come to him with just a problem but always with a set of possible solutions with pros and cons for each and a recommended solution. This rule, whether applied to a boss-employee relationship or the consultant-client relationship is a powerful one. Very few people like interrupting their work to solve someone else's problems. If you present them with solutions it makes their life easier: they weigh the pros and cons you laid out, maybe brainstorm a little to try to help think of alternative solutions, and then select one and move on. This policy also is useful for building trust and training employees for more complex job responsibilities. The more that the boss can see and approve of her employee's decisions the more easily she can promote that person.

Venture

I liked this more generic word for "business" or "organizations" since it evokes the word Adventure. I hoped that some of the projects would be adventurous for our clients, marking pivotal moments for their organizations leading to great growth. As a relatively young entrepreneur striking out with no customers it was definitely an adventurous time. Fortunately I had a stably employed and supportive spouse, a booming niche field, and a bit of Luck.

Growing

Of course my vision was that through website consulting I would be helping my clients to grow. This fits the classical business perspective of "you're either growing or you're dying" even if that false dichotomy is finally dying itself thanks to great works like Small Giants. However, with a very loose definition of "grow" I felt we could still include meaningful work like "shrinking a business to focus on the most important elements" but that is still growth if it means you are able to stay in business rather than simply exit.

So, the name was born on February 22 2006 with a filing at the Colorado Secretary of State: Growing Venture Solutions. Unfortunately it's a little long. Over the years we as a company have debated alternate names. Lots of great ones came up, but none of them really stuck. So we stayed with a non-ideal name that had some recognition rather than move to something we didn't all love. In the meantime, people were mis-pronouncing or mis-stating our name.

Things people called us instead of our real name:

Here are direct quotes from our clients, partners and a landlord.

• GVS (this was actually ok, but it's not ideal, we ultimately embraced it rather than letting them shorten it in one of the completely wrong ways below)
• growing ventures
• growing adventures
• growing ventures solution
• global ventures
• growing
• ventures solutions
• GVC
• Growing Web Venture CMS
• Growing Vendor Solutions
• Growing Vent
• GVS Solutions
• These guys are Durpal executives (from a landlord, who pronounced it a bit more like dirtball)
• growingventurersolutions.com

Oh well. Time to get a new name, right?