In 1997, when I was 24, I started a web development company. A year later, my partner and I decided to rename it Furnace Labs.
At the time, traditional advertising agencies were rebranding themselves as "Interactive Agencies," selling broad, flashy, but technically shallow services. We didn't want to do that. We didn't offer design or creative services. We just built the complex internet software that actually made things work in the background.
I vividly remember sitting around a table back then, earnestly coming up with the name. We likened our collective intellect to the raw material, and the software to the heat. We talked about our passion for coding as "the fire within." We tacked "Labs" onto the end because we wanted to sound like an R&D facility, not just a production shop. We were young, and we meant every word of it.
But the core of the metaphor was simple: a furnace sits hidden in the basement. It isn't pretty. It doesn't get noticed or praised by the people walking through the house. But it provides the heat that makes the entire building livable.
Looking back almost thirty years later, the metaphor still holds up. I’ve always preferred being the furnace.
Even now, I have no interest in being the flashy front-end. I don't want to be the face of the campaign or the guy taking the credit on stage. I just want to sit quietly in the background and help keep the house warm.