I was talking today with one of my advisors, let's call him Charles, who was giving me advice on how to structure the latest revision of the good old business plan. He mentioned that he's renaming his company. I can't give you the name of the company but it doesn't matter because they have no web presence right now and it's going to change anyway. Also I can't tell you what they do exactly, partly because I think they're still in a sort of "stealth" mode and I don't want to risk upsetting Charles because he gives me really good advice.

So anyway, I'm not a professional marketer (although I am an award winning marketer ! :-) but I'm really interested in naming. For example, take semacode, it's a really good name, in my opinion, and it wasn't like I just tossed it off one day. A good name takes work and it's important to the company in all kinds of intangible ways.

Take one of the greatest names in corporations today. Apple. They make computers, and the name doesn't have anything in it like "sys"/"soft"/"gen"/whatever. There's probably some story about why Steve Jobs -- the ultimate marketer -- chose that particular name but for sure looking at the logo, it's obvious. It's the apple of knowledge, from the Christian biblical Adam and Eve story. Adam took a bite of the apple, and they got knowledge. Of course he was also cast out of paradise but hey, nothing's perfect.

There's several general categories of names. First, there's the named after the founder(s) name. Like HP, Dell, and thinking of Waterloo specifically, how about MKS. A lot of these are acronymized either immediately or later. These names are usually pretty bland. They don't really contribute or take away anything from the company. I suspect they come either from ego or from not wanting to work hard on a name.

Next there's names that are sort of techno-sounding, but don't really mean anything. Prominent examples include Microsoft, Sybase. And related to them are names that are totally made up to just be unique, and totally meaningless in any language, like Kodak.

There's a few basic rules that all company names have to conform to. They have to be distinct enough to be found in google. They can't be rude in foreign languages. They can't be silly or make people laugh at you. If you meet those basic rules (like all of the above) then you've got something "that will do" as they say. But you'll never be Apple.

To get a good name you have to start thinking about words and the meaning that people attach to them. Thing semantics and semiotics. Think about the way words sound like other words, in good or bad ways. Think about the psychology of words. And the emotions of them.

If you want to come up with a good name, start writing down words that you associate with your idea, technology, business model, company. Also, write down words that you literally like. I really like the word "semantic" and wanted to use it in my name. "Code" was natural from barcode. Also, think about what you want people to think or feel in association with your company. Do they want to feel comfortable? Challenged? Hip? Smarter? Better able to cope? Better able to communicate?

Research in Motion (RIM) is the name of the company that makes the Blackberry. Now, RIM is a name that came from someone who wanted you to think of them as, well, researchers. Intelligent, investigative, always innovating. "In Motion" has a double-entendre which is REALLY good, because it both indicates that they deal with wireless, but also they they are always moving forward technologically. The killer drawback is that five syllables is just too long for a company name.

You can tell that "blackberry" was made by a marketer because on the face, it's meaningless. Lots of good names are (like Apple and Google). It has nothing to do with the product. But "blackberry" is a cool, tasty fruit, so that's a positive connotation to something that's cool and easy to use. Also, "black" is kind of a cool word, black is a hip colour. And "blackberry" reminds me of "blackbird", the stealth fighter jet. You can bet that they had that connection on their white board. The idea is a technology that will give you a high-tech edge on your competitors.

(Incidentally Apple is also a double-entendre, because it's also a tasty, friendly fruit. Everyone loves apples. And their computers are friendly and easy to use.)

You too would like to have these kinds of positive connections, but you need to figure out precise what the connections are. In my case, I wanted a friendly name. What do you want? If you're making a data mining tool, friendly is right out. I worked for a data mining company that renamed themselves "RightPoint" while I was there. I don't know if marketers where involved, but it's not an impressive name. Sure, it makes you think you're going to "point" to the "right" thing, but it doesn't convey a feeling, except a sort of sharp pointy feeling. On the other hand, they were bought out by e.piphany. Definitely a weird name, but think about it. You're staring at all this data, you're looking for some meaning. You use a data mining tool and it finds some kind of hidden connection you were missing. What's that like, like an epiphany. Sure, it's bad in other ways (weird punctuation, the horrible "e-something" hype wave, etc) but "epiphany" conveys the right sort of investigate, startling/learning feeling that data mining customers are looking for.

Anyway, yet another long post, but a good name can help your company. And it can help you and your customers and your team have an "instant understanding" about what the company is about.

I was just listening the other day to the Monty Python song "There's nothing quite as wonderful as money (etc)" (actually it's called the Money Song). Of course it's amusing but in my personal experience there's lots of things more wonderful than money. And so, some people think it's odd that I'm in this for the big score. The real reason is that I want to have a nice bit of scratch in the bank when Semacode works out so that I can go and do it again.

To any kind of prospective investor in the company (or into any "early-stage" company for that matter) that's going to be music to the ears. Let's be realistic about how you can make boatloads of money. In keeping with the novel "The first $20 million is the hardest" I'll define "boatloads of cash" as $10 million (seriously ...). The only realistically legal way to go from normal to $10M is to start a company, period. You'll never get there no matter how successful a lawyer / doctor / whatever you are. And then, the $10M point is where you can basically stop worrying about money for the rest of your life, unless you have a very strong need to buy yachts, private airplanes, or islands.

The point isn't that you're going to spend it. The point is that if you have $10M it will keep itself going and the interest you can earn on it (let's say conservatively 8%) is enough to keep you going at whatever you want to do, family included. Even if you accidentally throw half of it away, which wouldn't surprise anyone (ask Steve Wozniak).

And that might include for example, working on some other technology that's not paying a cent for a few years like I did before semacode started to pay. As I said, the next idea. I have a few by the way.

Investors, whether Angel, VC, or whatever, like to hear that because they're very focused on the so-called "exit event". This is something that seems to be very poorly understood by the common folk, e.g., my friends and family. The "exit point" is the point at which people who own shares get to turn them into something a little more liquid, that might be cash (preferably) or shares in some larger company. The EXIT is the ultimate goal of all entrepreneurs and investors in new companies. Why? Simple. They are entrepreneurs - they don't want to do that same thing forever. They like starting companies, so once the company is well and truly started, they don't want to hang around. They'd rather go and start another one.

The EXIT provides an opportunity to turn all their hard work on the company into cold hard cash, preferably $10M or more, and then it's time for the next thing.

I think a lot of people don't realize that that's how it works. That's the ultimate financial goal of a startup company. But I emphasize that it's not the whole goal, or even the most important goal, for me, and for many other founders. It can be hard to believe this, but starting a company isn't all that painful. Oh, I know, you constantly hear about how hard it is to start a company, how you have to work 16 hour days and blah blah blah. And also people who get rich, I think a lot of people think that getting rich is why they're in it. Personally, my attitude is that if you can get rich without being ruined by it, then that's pretty impressive. Success can be very hard on your personality.

And by the way, I'm not predicting that I'm about to get rich...

So anyway, the psychology of a lot of investors in startup companies, whether they're angel investors or VCs or whatever. Or, people who are experienced business people considering getting back into a startup company. I guess I have two thoughts. One is that I think they're looking for a sort of vicarious startup experience. When you're the founder, there's a lot of stress, yes, even though it might be good stress, you do occasionally have to push hard. As an old hand diving in again fully (that is, founding a new company yourself) has some drawbacks: it's got personal drawbacks, maybe you've got a family, and also it might not satisfy a desire to give back to the community. By investing your money, you can help out a new generation of upstart founders, get invovled in the action without being tied to the horse, and so on. There are people who actually do the serial entrepreneur thing, many because their previous companies didn't do quite well enough to hit the $10M barrier, and others (really) because they want the full monty again.

Anyway, a long post, but I want to say just one more thing. When you are meeting these people, always always always find out what their previous experience is in starting up companies. Anyone who has successfully started a company, made it to $10M or whatever, and is interesting in getting involved with you, is an A+. Someone who has founded before, and was moderately successful, but didn't make it to the magic $ figure, is an A. And someone who founded a company but fizzled and never did it again, you shouldn't be getting business advice from them.

So I finally put up some Semapedia tags, and of course they noticed right away! Because I tagged them properly in Flickr. That way they show up at the bottom of the semapedia page, and in the semapedia stream on flickr. Yes, all kind of tasty web 2.0 goodness in there.

Now semapedia has a method for adding geotags to your photos so that they can place it on their World Semapedia Map which uses Google Earth API. Also, you can use the brand-spanking new Flickr Maps thing in the flickr organizer. But that uses Yahoo Maps, and Yahoo Maps kind of suck unless you are in North America. Most semapedia users are not in North America. And if you're not in North America, Yahoo basically doesn't show any roads and the satellite imagery sucks rocks.

So now Guido Sohne the amazing programmer from Ghana (it rhymes if you have the right accent...) (or maybe the hacker from accra?) has put together "semaflickr" ... you can't tell from the name, but it's a web app that works almost 100% identically to the flickr maps, uses the flickr API, but Google Maps for the maps and satellite photos. So, you can use it to precisely geotag semapedia tags in Europe or other places.

The new app is open source and very easy to use. It integrates with your flickr account, and then it just gives you your photo stream at the top, and a map at the bottom. You drag your photo onto the map location where you took it. You can move the little marker around to make it more precise. And it automatically geocodes your photos.

Then, semapedia's server automatically picks it up and adds it to their map.

Guido provides complete source, it's all written in Ruby (wow) and Rails (sounds good) and javascript (ok) and ... well, it's Web 2.0 to the max. The amount of actual source code is minimal. And he's done something clever so that it hardly hits the web at all, even asynchronously. So, I hope that the semapedia folks upgrade their "publish your tags" system to Guido's software, or else point people to his server, or whatever. It's really good.

I just finally dug myself out from under the snowdrift of email that accumulated while I was on vacation. It's like an emotional weight off the shoulders.

While I was away I did actually do a bit of work (2 days really) because of some important conference calls that came up. But mostly I actually took a break. It's hard to take a break when you're starting a company. Every of time there is something that you could be doing. But still, I was starting to feel a bit frazzled around the edges, and I hadn't been on vacation for a year, so I decided to take two full weeks off. I think I feel better now.

The business seems to be doing well. This week I'll be doing more network, network, network. It's actually quite a simple thing to do, mechanically speaking -- business people seem to expect that I'll be quite blunt about looking for money, employees, partners, etc. I actually get into more of a hassle from not being forward enough and walking away from a conversation without knowing what I wanted to know - because I didn't ask.

For the business, we've done some really good sales process development over the last few months, and are building I think some strong relationships with interesting people in interesting companies. It's interesting how every prospective client, there's the company with corporate needs, and then there's the individuals inside it with their own needs. They don't always agree on how to meet the company's needs. Sales -- an important part of it -- seems to be about discerning or untangling those connections. Ultimately your goal is to help the company solve its problems, but at the same time you have to help the individuals solve their problems too, like if they think they know the right way to solve it, but often they aren't the final decision maker or have to find a way to demonstrate to others that it's a good idea or going to work.

This has nothing to do with semacode, but on my vacation I wrote a two-level tag browser for my personal weblog. I don't think anyone's ever done that before. I like it, it makes the content a lot more accessible. That was my sort of vacation hobby project. XSLT.

In a few weeks in Waterloo is Entrepreneur Week . If you're in the area, you must go to some of the events. Apparently I will personally be speaking at UW Expo ("Why I Started my Company in Waterloo") so skip that of course. But these ones should be good: Failure breeds success (should be fun if they're really honest); Chapter 4 (don't ask about the name) everyone who matters will be there; and if Guy Kawasaki shows up, check out his talk on Friday.

Oh yeah, and a bonus: a nifty google maps tool to geolocate your semapedia tags .