We shape our tools

I was speaking recently at a gathering of Social Entrepreneurs – most of them early in their startup journey. In their changemaker programme, I’ve been asked to run a Visual Storytelling workshop. To date, I have (a little accidentally) founded/co-founded and run three companies (sold two), a social enterprise and a cooperative. Let’s just say I’m a curious experimenter.

“How do you find a good name for your start-up?” someone asked.

“Hold it lightly – don’t overthink it. In the beginning you don’t even know what it is. As it starts to take shape it will start telling you what it wants to be called”, I said, almost sounding like I knew what I was talking about.

And it reminded me of this saying, sometimes attributed to Marshall McLuhan.