Keel · B2B operations software · inventory & fulfillment
A B2B tool buried under a forgettable acronym found a name buyers remember
1 round
from question to new name
8
advisors, one verdict
0
of the old name left live
The challenge
The company had launched as Inventory Management Solutions — a name every buyer shortened to “IMS,” an acronym it shared with a dozen competitors, invisible in search and forgotten the moment a demo ended. The founder knew the name was costing them deals but kept circling the same fork: commit to a full rename, or just modernize the logo and tagline? And if they renamed — to what?
Putting it to the board
The founder put the board the question they answer for other founders: “Our name doesn't stick — should we rename, and to what?” The board did what Octave does on any question: the relevant advisors answered in parallel, each from their own discipline. Neumeier ran the company through the onliness test and threw out every descriptive, category-name option, pushing for a name that owned a position instead of describing a feature. Halbert pressure-tested how each candidate read aloud on a sales call, in a cold-email subject line, and across the top of a deck. Welsh flagged the risk of confusing existing customers and open deals mid-rename and how to carry them across. Rather than hand back eight opinions, the Chairman committed to one call and sequenced it: adopt “Keel,” rename the product surface first, move the marketing site and sales collateral, then cut over the domain.
The outcome
The team shipped the rename in a single working session — product UI, marketing site, and sales decks all moved to Keel, the old acronym retired, and the new domain live. The name finally does work the old one couldn't: buyers remember it after the call, and it signals what the product is for a business before anyone reads a line of copy.
“We'd been arguing about the name for a year — every deal, someone forgot what we were called. The board settled it in one round and handed us the order to roll it out without dropping a single deal in the pipeline.”
Founder, Keel