Every once in a while someone asks me why we have such a dorky looking frog as our mascot. Obviously, his species is known for hopping around and we have the word ‘hop’ in our name, but is that really all there is to it? The answer is yes, and no. More yes, than no… OK, the answer is ‘Maybe.’

More…You see, it all started a long time ago in a land far, far away… Well, not that far away, but it was several years ago. I guess that isn’t that long ago, either… Any ways, moving on… Zak and I were discussing a new business idea we had, the idea that would eventually evolve into SingleHop. We wanted to be playful, to be friendly and be fun… and more importantly, to be known in the industry as the company to go to if you needed a solid managed dedicated server. We wanted to be known for our innovation, for our technical prowess, for our skills, so to speak. Yet, we didn’t want to be a corporate black hole. We wanted our future clients and customers to feel comfortable with us, after all, we’re all frogs… I mean, people.

But, alas, we didn’t even have a name, much less an identity.

Now, anyone who has ever started a business in the past decade will know the first thing you do when you have a potential name is to check if the .com domain is available. This is a quick way to see if anyone else is using the name, and even if the name is not in use, a nice way to avoid a fight later by simply choosing something that isn’t taken at all now and avoiding domains that other people own. There are other ways, but we like to play nice.

You can imagine how surprised we were when we saw SingleHop.com wasn’t taken. It was not our first choice, but it wasn’t our last, either… We liked it especially because it has a networking connotation to it (a hop on a trace-route, for example) and it sounded good. We registered the domain and all related domains and incorporated the new company as SingleHop, Inc.

The next step was to have a website built. But why have a standard abstract logo? Most modern logos are abstract. A swoosh here, a dot there, a line here. Add a stylized font and bam, you have a modern logo. Thinking about it, it’s kind of sad what qualifies as an business identity now-a-days. We wanted more, and eventually we decided to be clever (or try to be) and play off the word ‘hop.’ Well, frogs hop, and our designer was able to render, from scratch, a very cool looking toad+person creature.

But just a frog wasn’t enough — we needed a frog that represented SingleHop as a business, a frog that had ‘elite skills’ and could compile a Linux kernel while configuring a Windows SQL cluster. Where to find a name that would represent such a frog? Well, someone said Poindexter and we all cheered… We have a name that sounded intelligent and clever, and a frog that matched. Fast forward a few weeks of rendering, add a pocket protector and some glasses, and our mascot was born.

And that, my friends, is the story behind our mascot, Poindexter, the nerdy Frog from Chicago.

Best wishes,

Dan Ushman
Co-Founder, SingleHop, Inc.