HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is your business a company or a product?

7 points by typicalrunt ↗ HN
When I read the stories on HN of people promoting their new product, I see many people starting businesses whose names are the same as the product they're selling. This is different than some traditional notions of companies where their name is different from their product, and they have diversified into one or more product categories.

My feeling is that if the company's name is different than the product that they're selling, the company can create any number of potential products without having to reincorporate or shut down operations (under the previous business name).

There no 'one right way' of doing it, but is there an advantage (revenue, tax, buy out, etc) between having a company whose name is the same as their product (e.g. MobileWorks), or one whose name is different from their product (e.g.: 37Signals)? If there's no advantage, why do people name their company after their product?

2 comments

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dmk23
By definition a "product" is not a "business". A business is a company that has products that bring in revenue.

Businesses that scale tend to have multiple products, so tying product name to company name could restrict your positioning going forward.

relaunched
When you are early, you should only have one product and your name should be synonymous with it, unless you want to spend every encounter explaining the distinction. That doesn't include the numerous people (press, investors, potential hires, potential customers / biz partners) that will have your business card and not associate your company name with the product they used.

From my experience, startups can work on one thing at a time (and that's hard enough). The more difficult you make it for someone to associate your company with your product, the worse off you will be. You can always change your company name later.