I liked Nexum.
Probably too much.
It was the name attached to an idea that had started taking shape in Verona in February 2024.
As the idea grew, so did the name: NexumCore. After enough conversations, notes and arguments with yourself, a working name begins to feel permanent.
I had three requirements. It had to mean something, look right and be protectable. Three perfectly reasonable requirements, until you try to satisfy them together.
Robert Tucker helped with the third one. We worked through names, searches and the uncomfortable distance between liking a word and being able to build a business around it. I wanted an identity that could stand on its own.
I got annoyed. More than once.
A name could sound right, carry the right associations and run into a conflict. You would find another, grow attached to it, then have another reason to start again. Being annoyed did not make a name any more available.
The chats still contain the false starts. Actilio. Veyra. More prompts, more shortlists. The AI tools helped explore the possibilities; the professional searches still had to follow.
„Kyveris ist der Name, mit dem ich weitergehen möchte.“The next day came the email: “Kyveris it is.” Seven letters. A remarkably small result for the amount of thought, searching and irritation behind it.
Steering was
the point.
The first explanation in the naming chat was associative. I asked for a short argument for Kyveris, and the AI suggested key and kinetic for “Ky”, with verity, truth and integrity, for “veris”. I asked it to develop that thought.
- KY
- Key. Kinetic.
Access, movement and the energy to make something happen. - VERIS
- Verity.
Truth, reliability and integrity in the information a system works with.
A creative reading proposed in the chat. Associations for a new name, not a dictionary translation.
Two days after choosing it, I was back in the chat, asking for a derivation that was “short and easy to remember”. That led to cybernetics and its Greek root, kybernētēs, the helmsman.
Steering through feedback felt close to the work we wanted to do: understand what is happening in production, respond to it, and learn from the result.
We made the explanation more precise as the work developed. The change from b to v gave the name some distance from the crowded “cyber” vocabulary. In the later management Q&A, we gave -is the role of an operating principle, a way to describe the logic governing a system.
What mattered was whether the name could carry the work. Real machines, real materials, decisions with consequences. An industrial system that could learn.
The Y kept
pulling me back.
Choosing the word did not finish the search. I was drawing runes, testing forms and trying to find a sign that felt right beside it.
The Y-like shape held my attention. A stem, an upward gesture, a few strokes that seemed to hold more than their geometry. I liked it graphically, and I liked what I saw in it: a connection to something higher.
In a December chat, I asked for something more Nordic and simple, a rune for “unchartered territory”. We explored a form associated with Algiz. My feedback moved from “shorter and bolder” to “too blunt”, then to a request for three more elegant variations.
I could love the shape
and still question the drawing.
That is the part a finished logo tends to hide. The versions that almost work. The proportions that bother you without immediately explaining why. The return to something simpler.
With Die Guten Agenten, we kept working on the identity through January. The Y became a sign for intelligence, connection and system logic. Something personal had found a place in the work.
Identity developed with Die Guten Agenten.
The notebook illustration above reconstructs the search; it is not an archival drawing.
Now it has
to mean something.
Looking back, I understand why I resisted letting the earlier names go. They had travelled with the idea while it was still uncertain. There is a little bit of ownership in that, and probably rather more stubbornness.
Kyveris was the name I could finally take forward. The drawing, the doubts and the conversations with Robert are part of how we got there.
Now it belongs on a production floor, attached to something useful. That is where it has to earn its meaning.