There’s an interesting lesson to be learned by entrepreneurs and company owners from the current trials and tribulations of John McAfee, creator of the well-known antivirus software that bears his name. I say current because John McAfee has had a fairly eventful time since he sold his company to Intel in 2010 (including run-ins with the police in Belize, being deported from Guatemala, and a failed attempt to win the 2016 presidential nomination for the Libertarian Party).
Anyway, what concerns us here is a Bloomberg story that McAfee is involved in a legal battle with Intel to try and regain the right to use his name in new business ventures. According to McAfee’s filing, Intel told him that any attempt to use his name would infringe on the trademarks that the chip giant acquired when it bought the McAfee company.
John McAfee is involved in a number of businesses, including digital gaming company MGT Capital Investments Inc where he is chairman and chief executive. According to the Bloomberg report, the plan is to rename the company as John McAfee Global Technologies Inc. However, that could run foul of the terms of the 2010 agreement with Intel.
The process is complicated further by the fact that Intel is trying to sell the McAfee unit. At the same time, you might think Intel’s decision to rename the McAfee business as Intel Security should make the process easier for John McAfee to start using his name again. However, I suppose it all depends (and I’m speculating here) on what the prospective buyers of the Intel Security business would like to do with the McAfee name and trademarks and the value they attach to them.
Which must be weird, when you think about it, to have people owning your name and making decisions that you are not party to but which dictate whether you can use your name in business for yourself or not.
The lesson here is to avoid the temptation to name a company after yourself. While it’s all well and good if you end up running said company forever or handing it over to your children, it’s not such a great idea if you want to sell up at some point and move onto something else. If the company’s success and brand are associated with your name then if you sell it off, you’ll be selling your name with it.
And that means you’ll be selling the ‘success’ attached to your name as well. Which is the very thing that would be of most value if you were planning to try to set up another business afterwards.
What we can learn from John McAfee’s example is that while it’s perfectly natural to want to name the company after yourself, it can lead to some pretty unnatural situations further down the line. Perhaps the best approach to take with businesses, unless you’re Donald Trump, is “not in my name”.
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