We frequently get asked how we came up with the name of our company – Venebio. Here’s the story.

Not surprisingly, when you present a question to a group of scientists, you can expect them to look at it from every possible angle to find the definitive answer. For a company specializing in life sciences research, you might expect the naming of our company to be no different.

And in the case of Venebio, you would be right.

Those with some understanding of etymology might assume that we thoughtfully derived Venebio from, venire, the Latin word for “to come,” and bios, the Greek word for “life” – thus, “come to life (sciences).”

However, the road to the name Venebio was not as intentional as it may appear.

For those who’ve ever started a business, you know that naming the company is just one of many tasks that need to be completed to get your operations off the ground. For several months in 2008, we kicked around and brainstormed name ideas – none of which seemed to resonate with our team.

A close business advisor and friend, Michael Grisham, however, felt differently. Turns out, he pointed out quite sternly, that what was most important for our fledgling business was not deciding with scientific precision what our new name would be, but rather identifying our first customers. The pursuit of a perfect company name was starting to negatively affect our startup.

Soon we landed on a name – Invenio, meaning “to invent or discover” in Latin. We checked the internet widely to determine whether Invenio was already in use by another life sciences company, and it was not – or so we thought.

After excitedly sharing our new company name with our advisor, he immediately informed us that the name was in fact taken. Time was of the essence and securing business, he said, was the priority. We should take no more than 24 hours to decide upon our name. He further suggested that we download a random word generator to come up with our company name. So, over the following night, our colleague, Dr. Todd Webb, came up with a list of the 10 best options. On that list was Venebio, our unanimous first choice. Depending on how you look at it, it either took nearly six months or one night to name our company!

Only after the fact could we appreciate the unintentional Latin and Greek connotations of our newly minted company. Suffice it to say, when you need a systematic review of buprenorphine compared to methadone to treat pregnant women with opioid use disorder or assistance with an FDA application for Breakthrough Therapy Designation of a new compound, give us a call. However, if you need help with a new company name, it may behoove you not to ask a bunch of scientists.