ExpenseBay is now ExpenseCloud
Posted on 03. May, 2010 by Eric in News & Updates
The service you have grown to love has a new name – ExpenseCloud. You’re probably wondering why we decided to change a name that we had for almost two years? Lets just start by saying the name change was not our idea. Back in August of 2009 we received a “friendly” letter stating we have violated an existing trademark from a company that has more money, legal help, and resources than us. If you take the last fours letters of our company name, you can figure out who we are taking about. Surprisingly, the four letters were not the trademark issue, it was only the last three letters.
So we did some recon, reading Inc. magazine’s 2006 article about Perfume Bay fighting the same issue. Once we learned the verdict of a costly David vs. Goliath legal battle, we realized it was not worth our effort to fight. We settled and agreed to change our name.
Changing a company name is never fun, but we tried to have some humor as we made the decision. We reached out to all our friends asking for their assistance in the process and boy did we get some crazy ideas. Names like GOTOMYEXPENSE (Think we would have another violation!) and ExpenseBob (Probably the next hot social game) topped the list.
These days, the name itself is only part of the equation. You need to find an available URL, twitter account, consider foreign translation and run checks the name will not land another lawsuit. I have experienced names changes first hand with the companies I had work for in the past. The change never was easy, but in the end it would always work out. The reality is once you pick the name, your work has only begun. Anywhere you have used the name, including logos, video, partnerships, etc needs to be updated. If you catch an old ExpenseBay logo out there, please be patience with us – sometimes you can’t change everything overnight!
So why ExpenseCloud? First we wanted to preserve part of the name (and brand) we created early on. It was important we keep the name Expense as part of our selection. Second, our product road map is all about using various “clouds” to access data and leverage the platforms you already use to run your business. Our solution today relies on a number of cloud offerings, including Amazon and Google. Late last year we extended part of our solution to Salesforce and in the coming months we will be a federated application on several others clouds offerings, including Intuit, Google, Intacct, and NetSuite.
Lastly, the official new company name is App7, Inc. and our first solution is ExpenseCloud. We did this to we can deliver other business applications we know the market is craving for!
Cheers,
Eric
-
ryanheneise
