At A Hundred Monkeys we make every word count. From naming to brand messaging, our expertise is distillation.
We believe human attention is a resource worth earning and respecting. We use language to draw people in.
We are a Berkeley, California-based naming and writing studio. Since 1990, we’ve kept busy working with passionate people who can embrace creativity without being assholes. So far, so good.
MIRO is an excuse to think of your workday as a collaborative canvas. Derived from Joan Miró, the Spanish painter and sculptor who painted bright, bold murals of surreal amoebic forms. His vibrant, energetic work was a perfect metaphor for bringing ideas to life. Miro can also be considered as an empty vessel name with a connection to the Spanish word for “look” or “watch.”
When we began the project, Miro (then RealTimeBoard) had offices in San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Perm. We were lucky to be able to meet with the majority of the team in San Francisco to demo the product and work through our intake process. The team wanted a short, unmistakable name that spoke to creativity and visual collaboration.
Names were screened in the US and EU.
Not a project priority but the team was able to acquire miro.com
After legal review, we met with the leadership team in San Francisco and worked through the final contender names one by one. It rarely happens this way but we actually made a decision as a group, in the room.
Imbue is an AI systems company creating practical AI agents capable of complex reasoning. They believe that AI has the potential to make life better for people, offering the time and space to live happier lives.
When we first met with the team they were still operating under their original name: Generally Intelligent. While we appreciated the humor of the pun on “artificial general intelligence,” most people thought the name was a lot to process and maybe a little too frivolous. We were able to work directly with the founders, including the passionate and thoughtful CEO. We progressed through several rounds of naming, refining our directions, style, and tone along the way.
Imbue received a B in the preliminary U.S. screening and passed all deeper legal diligence.
The team had funds allocated for a domain name purchase and were thrilled to be able to acquire imbue.com.
Imbue received uniform praise from the project participants in our third round of naming. The name felt magical, distinctive, lively, warm, and artistic. They all appreciated that the name could indicate “imbuing computers with intelligence and human values.” After a long search it was nice to find a name that felt right for their purpose and their personalities.
Definite Articles is a performance apparel brand that is entirely biodegradable. The fashion industry wastes 2.4 billion pounds of textiles annually. Biodegradable apparel is an important step in closing the loop.
Definite Articles is a term borrowed from grammar. In English, it’s the word the. But in the context of clothing and fashion, the term takes on new meaning. Calling clothing articles makes them feel valuable and considered. Definite Articles feel durable and confident. This acts as a fitting counterbalance to the idea of biodegradable clothing—as if to say “This clothing is built to last.” That is, of course, until you’re done with them and pop them in the compost.
Definite Articles received an A grade in preliminary trademark screening and didn’t run into any issues during the registration process. This is thanks in no small part to it being a longer, two word name. In a world where everyone wants something short, longer names definitely stand out.
The team at DA registered definitearticles.com. Again, having a longer name was very helpful here.
Definite Articles was the fourth name presented in the first round. We do a lot of groundwork before presenting names to ensure that our early options can be winners.
Groundcover is any plant that grows over an area of ground and provides protection of the topsoil from erosion and drought. The Tel Aviv-based team loved the name as an easy metaphor for their DevOps monitoring platform that installs in a flash, stamps out issues, and recedes to the background when things are running smoothly.
Our team worked directly with the co-founders so we got up to speed quickly and decisions were made swiftly. Once they landed on Groundcover the team built a lovely, playful brand identity, and have found success at every turn.
This was a standard software search in the US and Israel.
URL wasn’t as much of a concern and they’ve managed to acquire the .com.
After one round of names the team liked nearly half of what we shared, mulled the names over for a short while, then emailed us with the good news: they’re were going with Groundcover.
Who do we work with?
We aren’t going to regale you with an exhaustive list of everyone we’ve had a meeting with since 1990. We’ll keep it short. What matters most to us is doing interesting work with good people.
This is a group of companies big and small where there’s mutual respect and a solid track record of collaboration.
- Alphabet
- Designer Fund
- Eero
- Manual
- Moniker
- Mozilla
- Mucho
- NEA
- OpenAI
- Samsung
- Slanted Door Group
- UCSF
- Verily
- Waymo