What’s in a Name?: Code2 Becomes Peaka
As a startup founder, your business becomes part of who you are. Leading a small team, serving a few customers, and spending your time putting out fires, you come to feel that your destiny is intertwined with your startup’s destiny. Your office is your second home. Your logo symbolizes what you stand for in this life, and you take it personally when someone questions the name you chose for your startup. They are all part of your identity, and you never think about changing anything about them until one day, it dawns on you that you should.
That’s what I went through at Code2 in the last few months, and I made the decision that the time was right for a rebranding. Here’s the full story:
Growing pains: One hypothesis at a time
Setting out on this journey with Code2 more than two years ago, we had one goal: Solving the developer shortage problem. The demand for software had never been higher, but there were not enough developers to serve the demand. The only way out of this conundrum was to leverage the low-code/no-code technology to empower people to build their own apps. This way, we would be able to help people from non-technical backgrounds implement their business ideas without having to rely on technical founders.
At the time, the lack of coding skills seemed to be the only barrier separating non-technical founders from business success. Removing that barrier was our primary goal. But we later discovered that finding a replacement for coding was only a partial solution to the problem of software democratization.
‘Thank you, Code2, but our princess is in another castle!’
Many of our users started building apps as side projects and lacked the motivation to see their projects to completion. But those with a business vision created impressive apps when they put their minds to it. Their real challenge proved to be in powering their apps with real-time data.
A typical Code2 user had a bunch of SaaS tools she wanted to pull data from. She needed to bring together her data in order to build dashboards, form customer profiles, or generate reports for investors. Without unifying her data first, her app was little more than a cute, highly-customized digital ornament.
Here, we come to the thorny question of data integration. Data integration is treated as a non-problem in tech circles. People consider it “solved.” But most of the existing solutions are only applicable to the enterprise use case due to the cost and skills required. Startups and SMBs still lack an affordable option to unify their data. That’s why the majority of support requests we received at Code2 were about integrating the data from different sources in real-time. Our most successful customers turned out to be people who got over that hump.
Seeing how most users were struggling to consolidate their data, we decided to prioritize the data integration issue in the second half of 2022. We had just realized that our data muscle was exceptionally powerful and that we could use it to satisfy the data integration needs of startups and SMBs. Starting with data would ensure that our users would be able to create apps that worked like they were supposed to.
In our quest to solve the app development problem, we were successful in empowering people to create apps without coding. However, we had also upgraded the problem from one of coding to data integration. Now we needed to capitalize on our data integration capabilities for a self-serve solution so that users would not have to rely on developers to bring their data together.
A new name for a new era
Despite the change in what we prioritized, we weren’t pivoting per se. Our product was the same, but we were repositioning our platform to address a pressing need. We still envisioned a future where users would self-serve and compose apps from a set of ready-made building blocks. Our new focus on data integration complemented that vision really well.
Code2 was the name we picked at a time when we regarded the lack of coding knowledge as the biggest challenge in front of software development. There had to be a way other than coding; hence the name, Code2. However, we’ve come to feel that Code2 was restrictive in the sense that it limited our scope to just creating apps, which many other platforms claim to do. It falls short of capturing our vision of fully-democratized software development with its well-integrated components of UI, data, and logic, which goes far beyond coding.
Our platform ushers in a new era for our current and future users. We want it to become the do-it-all tool that startups and SMBs can use to bring together their data and build internal tools and web apps with. We believe it is fitting that we change our name at this moment as we reimagine ourselves as much more than a no-code platform.
‘Nomen est omen’
That’s what the Romans used to say. “The name is a sign, an omen, of your destiny.” Ancient people believed that a name shaped a person’s character and life. That still holds true for startups centuries later. How you name your company becomes a major part of how people see your product.
Finding a name for your startup is hard. Doing this in 2023 is even harder. Think of a cool name, and you can bet somebody took it long before you even came up with your business idea. The number of suitable candidates can be fairly small, and there are many boxes for a name to tick: First, it should be easy to spell and pronounce. Then, it should be something your team and existing customer base can embrace. Finally, it should embody and convey the core values your business is built on.
In our search for a name, we wanted to find a word that could express the dynamism and ingenuity we take pride in at the office. It would have to evoke an upward trajectory toward a better future. One of the names on our short list that everyone on the team seemed to like was Peaka. Then I decided to run a focus group of one — with my nine-year-old daughter. When she picked Peaka from a list of available names, it sealed the deal for me.
The Code2 name has served us well. It put us on the map, beautifully summed up what our team wanted to achieve, and helped us build a vibrant community. Now we are ready to move on to greener pastures.
Farewell Code2. Hello Peaka. I hope you will become a household name.
