When discussing my new venture with friends and colleagues, this in one of the first questions I get — which is perfectly valid, given that it’s not an obvious choice. Essentially, in choosing AardvarkA as my company name, I was driven by two things:

1) I really didn’t want to be ‘Jackson Research’ or ‘PJ Consulting’ — partly because those names/domains were already taken (darn you, common surname!), but mainly because I’ve bumped into too many analysts who have set up their own, eponymous firms and with one exception — she’ll know who she is — they have all been unbearable.

2) I have had a long-term obsession with Cerebus the Aardvark by Dave Sims and Gerhard.

Largely coincidentally, it’s also a great YPO (Yellow Pages optimization) name — you’ll almost certainly be at the top of any alphabetical list. That’s why there are so many ‘Aardvark Plumbers’!