[willart4food]

It was the year 1999, remember that? I was working at a startup and we were preparing to IPO. I got a cold call from a - I kid you not - "Color Consultant"; I don't know why but I listened to her instead of hanging up, her spiel was:

"Do you know [Inser name of recent IPO]? Well they hired me and I changed the color of their corporate identity from Black on Green to Green on Black; well 4 months later they IPO's raising $250 million at a $1+ billion-dollar valuation".

WUT?

Her implication was that she was taking credit for the successful IPO.

So, there it is.

I am not saying that April's contribution was not useful, but... everything in a long process is useful, but not 1 single contribution is responsible for the entire (or majority) of success. Except for grit!

[pkaye]

This reminds me of an early job. It was my first job as a mechanical engineer. I was lucky enough to work in a R&D team on an entirely new product line. Crazy but rewarding work from months on end. Near completion, I was moved to a side team to help out with other smaller projects. At this point the marketing guy comes in to decide on the name and color of the machine. So they bring in the consultants and in the end decided to stay with the name the engineers gave it and the same color as older machines (beige and black.) And the kicker was at the launch party they forget to invite me but invited the marketing guy who spent a couple days helping out. What a punch in the guts it was.

[beachy]

I've been in more than one meeting where, after lengthy discussion about product name, the group circled again back to the original (temporary) name created by the developers.

And in that time it had somehow subtly become adopted by marketing as theirs :)

(To be fair, picking names is hard, even if you are in marketing. I'm sure there's plenty of science, but one of the best ways IMO is to just blather them all around for a while and see what feels right/sticks after a day or two).

[hnick]

Imagine if they didn't change the colours and got a $2 billion dollar valuation!

Ever since learning about opportunity cost it has infected my mind with cynicism.