It’s pretty interesting to learn about how a company got its name, and every company has a story. We learned about Square’s today, and it was almost called “Squirrel”, according to founder Jack Dorsey and Square’s Creative Director, Robert Anderson:
What could have been: when Square was originally called Squirrel, the reader was an acorn. Squirrel payments, anywhere. http://t.co/AKCaE1dw
—Jack Dorsey (@jack) September 11, 2012
Now that @jack is in nostalgic mode on Twitter, here's his SMS to me on naming the company Square (away from Squirrel). http://t.co/dGMeJbuu
—Robert S Andersen (@rsa) September 11, 2012
@thatdrew You should add the original brand to your post! http://t.co/VCuYm0Zf
—Robert S Andersen (@rsa) September 11, 2012
The original Squirrel interface. We redesigned this 4 times to get Square 1.0. This stuff looks so rough now. http://t.co/qKzm0XAs
—Robert S Andersen (@rsa) September 11, 2012
And, finally, the inspiration for the Square logo came out of the most unusual 3D sketches. See the top? http://t.co/NvPNYOxo
—Robert S Andersen (@rsa) September 11, 2012
@thatdrew You should add the original brand to your post! http://t.co/VCuYm0Zf
—Robert S Andersen (@rsa) September 11, 2012
Here’s Square on a really old iPod:
We tried. http://t.co/VqSuycpi
—Jack Dorsey (@jack) September 11, 2012
And the team whiteboarding it up:
Early Square whiteboards. In my apartment. http://t.co/lZXjiahn
—Jack Dorsey (@jack) September 11, 2012
Can you imagine if the company had stuck with the whole Squirrel theme? “Hey dude, do you have an “Acorn” reader?” Yeah, Square was the right move, and Acorn as the reader name would have been a bit tragic.
We’re told that “Squirrel” was just the early name that Dorsey was contemplating, so maybe it wasn’t such a close call. Regardless…whew.
Here’s Dorsey discussing the whole Squirrel name thing:
Dorsey has a thing with company names, as Twitter might have/almost was named after a Bubble Tea shop called Quickly.
