Naming is a Value, Part V

Naming is a Value

Launching a project, the startupper should take care of various things: nothing should be left out of account, especially when the name of the company is being chosen.

During the first few years of my dreamings, as I was creating the product noting each idea to my sketchbook, I was calling it simply “The Platform”. Within that period, I didn’t factor out the name of the project, but I knew for sure that the name is of a great importance if you want to succeed. I had experienced fail naming previously, my former company name was hard to understand and pronounce for the customers. As years went by, and that company gained a large market share, we had an opportunity not to think about the name, but we wasted a lot of time for getting that opportunity.

The operating name “platform” was a custom one for the team even for the first several month after start. But we had already started and couldn’t stay unnamed anymore, as we needed to take part in conferences, make presentations and participate in different affairs. The time when you’ve got to make promo began. Although the platform was still at the design stage, we needed becoming recognizable for our early users. We fully realized that the name is a key moment of the startup, its phonetic image. This image is either fresh and easy to remember, or fades away. We began to look through the thousands of variants judging from two basic concepts.

#1)The Name Doesn’t Matter

The name of your project will little by little bed down within the audience, and it’ll be associated with your product only. Nobody thinks Apple is a fruit manufacture and Google is connected with mathematical investigation of high numbers. For example, our colleagues’ Airbnb name means AirBed & Breakfast, but most customers have no idea about that fact. There are lots of generic trademarks: Pampers, Xerox, Jacuzzi, etc. We ‘viber’ and ‘skype’ each other instead of calling, we ‘google it’ instead of searching on the Internet.

#2) The Name Shows the Content.

This naming concept can save a lot of time. Eg.: GetTaxi is clear to understand and the customer surely knows what the project is about. We don’t know well what Uber is, but Uber is still more recognizable, usable and popular.

Creative Experience and Brainstorm Results

When a team of young men gathers in one place for business, it can’t go without humor. Everyone proposed millions of variants but we still couldn’t agree on at least something. One of the team members suddenly blurted out a fairy-tale phrase “krax-fax-pax’, we laughed at it, but wrote it down to the variants-list.
Within some time we tried to put all our variants into different languages, as the project was international, so we had to be very careful to make-up the name that could be pleasant to hear for everyone all over the world.

The fact that a humorous ‘krax-fax-pax’ is originally a Latin saying Rex Fax Pax (“the King gives Peace”) pleasantly impressed me and, what is more, there were almost no associations and references on the Internet and media, the next step was checking domain rexfaxpax.com and the impression got yet better: it was free. But, it was a little too long and a little bit about something facsimile. I decided to shorten the name a little to make it more ‘modest’: Rexpax — King of Peace. We checked whether the domain was free and recognized it was prepared just for us.

Startups take risks: marketing is a subterfuge, startup is a developing attack, we decided to risk and chose the domain rexpax.com. It was not an ideal one, as it didn’t give any straight info about the project’s concept at all, but as a brand name, I suppose, rexpax is a do. It has some unique character. Alliteration, eurhythmy and rhyme make it simple to understand and remember for anyone in the world. Another thing is, that it reminds of the English ‘respect’. Our name brings a lot sense and it has affected our values and approaches to work and corporate culture.

We tend to make the already created World better, to make the life of people more efficient so we regard everybody as a King. This tendency reflected the philosophy of the project: as long as the name Rexpax sounds original, the idea of Peace’s King tunes inside our world, in which anyone is the King.

Rexpax Principles

Each team member as well as any potential user within the platform is a King. And we are privileged to serve them personally. We founded a kingdom inside the working process, and each team member feels like a King also.
The corporate motto of our company is ‘The King Inside Yourself” and our principle is that kings serve to kings, everyone is equal.

We want everybody to feel like a winner, realize he is being served and himself served others. We want everybody to be regarded equally and royally in Rexpax Kingdom.

Our Mission

We encourage people to make good things — share their property and use social connections for others’ sake. People become richer both in material and in spiritual sense managing their property and social capital.