Wownce

This is part two of our Q&A email with Mister Daniel Burka himself. He’s quite the spiffy guy too!

You can read part one here

Enjoy.. But not too much.. because that’s never fun, is it?

Wownce: Where do you see the internet in two years?

Daniel Burka: This is a tough one. I really hope that in the next two years we’ve solved some of the problems that continue to plague the web. Having a single profile and login, which OpenID has some potential to do, would be a massive improvement. Developing a method to have a single set of contacts who you can share across social networks in a nuanced way is also a tough nut to crack that many people are working on from many different angles. Overarching, I finally am feeling more confident about the mobile web – people have been anticipating the mobile web for a decade in North America and it’s only now becoming believable.

W: Where do you see Pownce in two years?

D.B: This is an even tougher one. In some ways I don’t want to think too far out with Pownce – I’d like to make sure we adjust the site organically as we see what people are doing with it. At the same time, we’re going to continue to develop new features as we come up with them. In two years, I think Pownce will most likely become more of a messaging platform and perhaps the website will have lessened importance as people interact with the site using apps, mobile devices, etc.

W: Where did the name “Pownce” come from?

D.B: You wouldn’t believe how difficult it can be to name a company! We had a few criteria for the name:

1) Bar test: can you say it in a crowded bar and have someone understand?
2) Verb test: can you use the name as a verb as well as a noun?
3) Dot come test: we really wanted the .com domain

So, getting to Pownce took us months. Our working name for the site was “Sencha”, a type of tea, but that was always temporary since we couldn’t get the domain. We came up with tons of names, but these ones were all shortlisted

> QPine - Like a porcupine… Leah loved this.
> Poki.to - My favorite for a while, but Kevin thought it sounded like a Taco Bell sandwich.
> Rawr - The domain was way too expensive… Leah did like making a lion roar noise though.
> Ziing - The forerunner for a while, but it was very expensive and lame in retrospect.

In the end Kevin finally came up with Pownce only about a week before our initial launch. It was available, so we grabbed the domain on GoDaddy and I whipped together a wordmark.

D.B: Cheers! Daniel

W: Thanks again Daniel!

And thank you for reading!

Green is the new gold,
Joshua Duffy