Before Roompact evolved into the comprehensive residential education software you know today, it began its life focusing solely on digital roommate agreements. Matt, our CEO and founder, recalls the story of how Roompact got its name…

The idea for creating online roommate agreement software came to me in June of 2013, but the company needed a name. I spent hours and hours one night thinking it over. I pored through the dictionary to find words related to roommates. I read material from the industry to get my creative juices flowing. I used online company name generators. For each name I considered, I’d check the domain name, Google the word, and investigate it. I repeated this process over and over. After hours of research, I made a short list and pondered the handful of names I’d narrowed it down to.

Finally — there it was.

I had an epiphany and picked out THE name. The name to end all names. It made sense. It was short. It was memorable… It was perfect! I registered the domain name, received the confirmation email at 2:42am, and went to bed.

I woke up and had a morning meeting with an intern who was shadowing me for the summer. I was excited to tell him about the name I came up with. We went in the room, he took a seat, and I scribbled the name across the whiteboard:

“SORTADA!”

I excitedly blurted out. “There it is! What do you think?”

The intern paused, and after a moment he stuttered out, “Um…I don’t…I don’t think…it’s great.”

(That was shy-intern-speak for, “It’s awful.”)

He was right. Sortada was scrapped. I swore to never spend so much time trying to figure out a name again and moved on. The untitled “roommate agreement idea” would have to do for a bit longer.

About a week later, I still hadn’t thought of name. I threw together a short list of more practical names and emailed a few people to see what they thought would be best:

• Roomant
• Roomape
• Runrom
• RoomCow
• RoomRep
• Roomule
• Roompact
• Roomra
• Roomsa
• Roomind
• Roombat
• Roomyo
• Roomita
• Roomano
• Roomise
• Roogic
• Roomir

The email responses I got back weren’t helpful. They were all over the map. In the end, I just picked Roompact. I liked it. It was as simple as that. A very anti-climactic end to a process that took almost a month. Having a great company name is important, but sometimes the simplest answer is right before your eyes. I trusted my gut, went with it, and there was no looking back.

That’s how Roompact got its name.