Essay · 12 min read

Should You Name a Business After Yourself?

Steve Harvey · Fabrik Brands Free Beginner

Where the HBR piece frames the trade-off, this essay digs into the specific ways a personal name helps early and holds you back later. It is direct about the scaling wall (everyone expects to deal with you personally) and the hiring and delegation friction that follows, which is the part founders underrate at the naming stage.

  • A personal name builds fast trust for solo and service work, where the founder is the product.
  • It gets awkward once you hire, because clients still expect to work with the name on the door.
  • A name unhooked from the founder is easier to scale, hand off, and eventually sell.
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The question it answers

  1. Is it a bad idea to name my startup after myself or use my own name?

Read with it

  1. This is the cleanest, research-backed answer to the exact question, and it refuses to give you a blanket yes or no. Yohn walks... Harvard Business Review Article · 6 min read Should You Name Your Company After Yourself? Denise Lee Yohn
  2. A short, honest conversation between two founders who lived this choice, with Jodie Cook admitting she named her agency after... The Futur Podcast · 19 min listen Should You Name Your Business After Yourself? w/ Jodie Cook (Ep 423) Chris Do
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