Six companies Heirloom renamed—and the stories behind their new names
A company name can do a lot of heavy lifting. It can signal what a business does, express what it stands for, help it stand apart from competitors, and give it room to grow.
But companies evolve. Products expand, audiences change, businesses merge, and strategies shift. Sometimes, the name that worked at the beginning no longer fits.
That’s where renaming comes in.
At Heirloom, we’ve helped companies across technology, financial services, cybersecurity, professional services, and other industries navigate the challenge of choosing a new name. Here are six examples—and a look at the thinking behind each transformation.
1. UFS is now Navanta
The company: UFS was founded in 1991, when three Wisconsin community banks came together to give community financial institutions access to technology comparable to that of larger banks. Over the years, the organization expanded its capabilities and, ultimately, merged with BankOnIT, Safe Systems, and Quest Analytics.
Why Heirloom renamed it: What had become a much broader organization needed a brand capable of representing more than one legacy company. In 2026, the businesses came together under a unified identity serving community banks and credit unions with technology, core banking, security, compliance, advisory, and CRM solutions.
The new name: Navanta.
“Navanta” gives the combined organization a shared identity while supporting a broader vision for its future. The name evokes ideas of navigation and forward movement—fitting for a company focused on helping community financial institutions navigate an increasingly complex technology landscape.
The result is more than a new name—it’s a brand designed to unite multiple organizations around one purpose, while carrying decades of experience forward.
2. Qimple was renamed Alongside
The company: Founded in 2014, Qimple was a Canadian HR technology startup focused on connecting employers with job seekers. The business was gaining momentum—including participation in 500 Startups—but its name was becoming an obstacle.
Why Heirloom renamed it: “Qimple,” originally inspired by “quick” and “simple,” was frequently mispronounced and misspelled. More importantly, the name didn’t fully capture what the company wanted to stand for.
The new name: Alongside.
Heirloom’s naming exploration centered on the brand idea of togetherness—bringing the right people together so they could do their best work.
That led to “Alongside”—a familiar word used in an unexpected way as a company name. Rather than describing HR software literally, it expresses the relationship the company wanted to build with employers and job seekers: working alongside them.
In 2021, after an acquisition, Alongside became CareerBeacon, a household name in the Canadian recruitment landscape with over 25 years of market equity.
3. Broala is now Corelight
The company: Broala was a cybersecurity company built around Bro, the open-source network analysis framework now known as Zeek. The company had significant credibility among technical audiences but was preparing to scale and reach a broader enterprise market.
Why Heirloom renamed it: As Broala (Bro + koala) evolved from its open-source roots toward a product-focused cybersecurity company, it needed a name capable of supporting its ambitions while preserving the meaning behind what made its technology valuable.
Working as part of a broader brand team, Heirloom developed names around a central strategic idea: Illuminate your network.
The new name: Corelight.
The name brings two ideas together. “Core” points to the heart of a customer’s network, while “light” conveys visibility, clarity, and insight. The full name tells a compact story about the value the company provides: bringing light to what’s happening deep inside a network.
Since rebranding, Corelight has established itself as a market leader in Network Detection and Response (NDR), driven by massive enterprise adoption and a $150 million Series E round that brought the company’s total valuation to approximately $900 million.
4. InCloudCounsel is now Ontra
The company: Founded in 2014, InCloudCounsel developed technology and services designed to help companies manage routine legal documents and processes more efficiently. As the business expanded, its original name became increasingly limiting.
Why Heirloom renamed it: Both “cloud” and “counsel” were creating perceptions that no longer reflected the company’s expanding technology, expertise, or future direction. Heirloom, working in partnership with HUb Strategy & Communication, explored nearly 1,000 potential names.
The new name: Ontra.
“Ontra” is derived from the middle of the word “contract.” It creates a subtle connection to the company’s area of expertise without becoming overly descriptive or restrictive. The “on” beginning also carries a subtle technology association.
The company relaunched as Ontra in 2021 along with a $200 million Series B funding announcement. Today, the company has over 1,000 customers and continues to build AI-powered technology for legal workflows.
The new name gave the business something its previous identity couldn’t: a shorter, more distinctive identity with room to evolve as the technology does.
5. Thumbtack Technology is now Lineate
The company: Thumbtack Technology was a custom software development company that had been operating for more than a decade when it encountered an unusual naming problem: another, much larger consumer company was using the Thumbtack name.
While the two companies weren’t direct competitors, sharing a name created confusion and made differentiation—not to mention SEO—increasingly difficult.
Why Heirloom renamed it: By this point, the company had evolved, too. What began as a small consulting company had grown into a technology partner helping organizations develop applications, work with data, and solve complex technology challenges.
The new name: Lineate.
Heirloom explored over 1,000 potential names around ideas including extracting answers, connecting dots, and simplifying complexity.
“Lineate” ultimately rose to the top. Related to “delineate,” the name suggests outlining, defining, and bringing clarity to something complex. It also happens to be a real word meaning “marked with lines.”
Unlike the previous name, “Lineate” gave the company an identity it could truly own—and one broad enough to support where the business was headed next.
6. GoAnimate is now Vyond
The company: Founded in 2007, GoAnimate built a platform that made it easier for people without traditional animation experience to create their own videos. Over time, the platform increasingly served businesses using video for training, marketing, communication, and other professional applications.
Why Heirloom renamed it: The problem was right there in the old name. “GoAnimate” described what the product originally allowed users to do, but it also tied the brand closely to animation. As the platform and its ambitions expanded, that description became restrictive.
The company also heard from customers that “GoAnimate” didn’t reflect the seriousness of the platform as a business communication tool.
The new name: Vyond.
Introduced in 2018, along with additional brand work by Liquid Agency, “Vyond” gave the brand a more distinctive identity while suggesting the idea of going beyond—beyond traditional animation, beyond static content, and eventually beyond video, as the company continued to evolve.
That flexibility has proven especially relevant as Vyond has expanded beyond its animation roots into a broader AI-powered video creation platform.
What these renames have in common
Navanta, Alongside, Corelight, Ontra, Lineate, and Vyond are very different names for very different businesses. But the challenges behind them share a common thread.
A company rename is rarely about simply finding something that “sounds better.” Often, the existing name has become too narrow, confusing, difficult to own, or disconnected from the company’s strategy.
The strongest new names solve those problems while creating something more valuable: a distinctive asset the company can build a strong brand around.
“Alongside” expresses togetherness. “Corelight” speaks directly to network visibility. “Ontra” is short, simple, and connects subtly to contracts. “Lineate” is ownable and suggests connecting the dots. “Navanta” signals navigation and forward movement. “Vyond” opens the door to what comes next.
That’s ultimately what a successful rename should do. It shouldn’t just reflect where a company has been—it should give the brand room to grow.
Thinking about renaming your company? Heirloom helps organizations develop distinctive, memorable, strategically grounded names built for the next stage of their growth.