What’s in a Name?

SimBco (Sim-bee-koh) represents the culmination of a slow progression of names and the evolution of a business.

After spending 4 years leading the web development projects for a local agency, Simeon Bateman (our founder) took a full time job as the Director of IT for a local Portland business in 2003. After a couple of years in that leadership role he found he missed the challenges associated with creating applications to solve small business needs. In an effort to satisfy that yearning, as well as to keep current with new development practices, he begin taking on small development projects outside of his full time job. Simeon’s personal domain has long resided at http://simb.net and in keeping with the simb theme the original business was called “Simb Development” and was hosted on the domain simbdev.com. The projects Simeon took on reminded him of how much he enjoyed writing software to help businesses solve problems with software. In an effort to help more companies, Simeon became a Certified Adobe Flex Instructor in 2006 and started teaching classes and consulting on the Adobe Flash Platform.

Soon it became obvious that his passion for helping businesses could no longer be contained to weekend and evening work. Having added training and consulting to the set of skills he’d been advancing, the “development” moniker no longer fit his business. In early 2008 Simeon filed with the state of Oregon business registry to create a new entity named “PNW Rain LLC”. Simeon grew up in the Pacific Northwest and values its climate and culture. Beyond Rain being a major feature of the weather here in Portland, Rain was also a secret acronym for his business motto “Realistic Application of Individual Needs”. Simeon felt this was the core value in what he offered his customers. In mid 2008 Simeon left his full time job to pursue building his company full time.

In 2011 SimB & Company became the official DBA and is the name that goes on our official documentation. The name comes from an idea Simeon had while watching the movie “Center Stage” with his daughter. The movie centers around a ballet company where permanent members (the principles) are joined by a cast that best fits the needs of the given production (the company). Simeon felt this analogy was a great illustration of the type of organization he wanted to build. The concept of bringing together the best team possible for each project was a perfect model. As members of the team began playing a bigger role in the projects, they would be offered a permanent position. As such, Simeon as the original Principal, began filling “the company” with valued and trusted developers and designers which were called on based on the needs of the project.

SimBco is the shortened version of “SimB & Company”. SimBco has been the name used inside the company since the beginning of the SimB & Company name. It seemed fitting to adapt our branding to utilize this shortened version of our company name.

And that, folks, is more information than you ever probably needed to know about why we call our company SimBco.