The story
About a year after landing our first enterprise customers, I decided to change our name to Macro and I committed to paying $600k for the domain “macro.com,” spread over three years. It was a seller-financed deal, meaning we paid ~$200k up front and the rest monthly.
We’ve now raised over $20M to build our AI workspace (LLMs + built-in file editors for word, notes, code, diagrams, PDFs, whiteboards) but back then it was only $2M, so this was a BIG bet!!
A brand to match our ambition
Why change our name? It came down to a question: what kind of company do I want to build? Our original name felt small and niche, but my ambitions were much bigger: I wanted to rebuild the Office Suite (we now call it an “AI workspace” because office suite sounds too boomer). I’ve learned that it’s easier to work on big ideas than small ones and felt we needed a name to match.
Building big things is easier
Around the same time, it hit me—America doesn’t reward building small things. It’s easier to raise capital, recruit talent, and sell your vision when you’re solving big, important problems. I’d always wanted to build something big eventually but I didn’t realize I was allowed to just go for it out of college. I assumed I had to build up to the big thing by building incrementally bigger things to build credibility. Wrong! Just build the thing you’re most excited to build (that’s probably also what the world needs!).
Success feeds success
Two months after changing our name we raised our Seed from a16z. The best thing about that round was the credibility it gave us. That perception of success turned into tangible results: better hires, more customers, and stronger momentum. As a 24-year-old founder, I knew I needed that credibility, and a great domain like “macro.com” was a powerful way to signal it.
I credit Waseem Daher at Pilot for giving me the confidence to go big on the domain, after telling his story about Pilot dot com. I think thinking big is a cultural thing that we can either have more or less of depending on the times. Hopefully this inspires others to go big as well!
