Yena becomes Dffrnt.
Renaming your 7-year-old child is not something many parents go through, I’d imagine. However, this month, I did exactly that.
Ok, maybe not exactly that but renaming a company you birthed and grew from the ground-up feels, I’d imagine, somewhat similar. It also comes with many of the same challenges you might expect including regularly continuing to use the old name, before rapidly correcting yourself, in the knowledge that if you can’t get your own company name right, who will?
The journey so far
This change represented a 7-year walk to basecamp, ahead of a mountain I’d now like to start climbing. In a world where most pre-start/pre-seed companies build and test MVPs in months, I took a huge amount longer. On purpose.
Starting a company is tough enough, but doing it unintentionally while you have another business, then organically (and kind of accidentally) growing a big community of people through meetups that grow faster than you can keep up brings a lot of challenges.
One of which was understanding who I even was in this mix and what this was even meant to be. What did people want? Why? How much would they pay? All problems to overcome and discussed in these previously written thoughts.
Well, now I know.
A statement of purpose
Dffrnt’s mission has developed over time and has settled comfortably into the sizeable goal of democratising entrepreneurial opportunity and providing the highest level of support ecosystem for anyone, anywhere to access at any time.
We’re taking a stand against traditional, pre-defined routes to success. Accelerators are mostly predatory with their terms. Publicly funded programmes are, on the whole, outdated before they’re ever launched. Private coaching is a minefield of overpriced ‘cowboys’. And geography seems to be an unending factor in deciding who gets funded and by how much. Well, no more. Dffrnt is changing all of that.
What this rebrand means
The rebrand of Yena to Dffrnt is a line in the sand. A stand to re-announce ourselves to the world along with our mission and what we do as a company.
Right now Dffrnt comprises of two core products:
- Business benefits & online community, by subscription
- Consultancy services for larger firms wanting to act more like startups
In the market, this essentially positions us alongside business membership organisations — a market which I’ll be looking to attack aggressively in 2021. The FSB (Federation of Small Business) generate ~£30m per year in revenue via memberships in the UK alone but I think the market is ready for a contemporary brand, and modern service to shake up that whole experience —and without borders, on a global basis too.
The vision
Beyond what’s stated above, the latest version of the eventual vision that I have been brewing for over a year now still remains trueand this is just the first step of many to seeing that through to fruition.
I am certain that technology will play a big part in the future of Dffrnt and we help creators everywhere to start and grow businesses. For now some of that will remain under wraps but I will try to remain as transparent as possible and share with you all as we progress.
For now though, please welcome Dffrnt to the world and expect to see the name around more often!
– Ash
