Please Advise -- name preference(s)

[mark-ER]

I am mostly asking about the naming issue here. To account admins: I wanted to post it here, because non-trads have a wealth of life experience and some medical knowledge, yet are not so heavily indoctrinated into the field as to forget how the 'average joe/jane' thinks. This is the best I can do as far as market research with my very, very limited resources. This question has not been and will not be posted on any other board within SDN and I have been a member for many, many (10+ years); please give me some leeway on this.

I am seriously debating starting a new business. For now, it would be a holding company to separate my consulting earnings & expenses from my wage/employment and personal expenses, mostly for tax purposes and to clean up my accounting. Eventually (within 6-18 months), I see it developing into a concierge molecular genomics consulting -- the patient provides me with biopsy materials and I either run the samples independently or they provide me with the 'raw' data from an academic/commercial sequencing and I provide them with an interpretation/second opinion. I am fully certified to do this & I have strong contacts among the genetic counseling school here and I have my choice of top-notch CGC to work with me as subcontractors. It would be mostly for somatic testing (predominantly but not exclusively oncology), though much further down the line I may want to expand this into germline testing.

(1) Does that sound reasonable -- is LLC a good business structure for this? I can convert it or subsume it under an INC later?

(2) After a week, I am still struggling with the name for this entity. This is MOSTLY why I am here. Please vote and/or offer your sugestions. GTG part is non-negotiable, everything else I am 100% open to change. Also if it is a multi-word business name, should I capitalize first letter of each word?

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[DrESQ]

Just as a disclaimer, I'm not a med student yet -- just a lawyer who's strongly considering a career change into medicine. That said, I can maybe provide some guidance on the LLC vs Inc. issue, and give my personal opinion about your second question.

An LLC, as you may know, stands for limited liability company. It's an incredibly easy status to obtain (usually filing a piece of paper and paying a fee) and it provides some good protections for you -- mainly, LLC status puts up a "veil" of sorts that separates your personal assets from any liability that your new company may run in to. A corporation (Inc) allows you to issue stock to investors, but you'll have double taxation, be required to have shareholder meetings and record the minutes, and the paperwork and filings can be significant.

There are also a ton of tax differences between an LLC and a corporation. As such, I'd strongly recommend meeting with a lawyer in your state who can fully explain your state's process since there may be important state laws that will affect your decision on whether to create an LLC or a corporation.

For your second question, yes to capitalizing the first letter of each word. I really don't like how the hyphenated names look (I used to work in marketing...so this I'm thinking of this from a marketing standpoint). As far as the overall name goes, I voted for the first option, GTG Biomedical Consulting, because I felt it was the most broad and probably easiest for patients to understand. I don't know how many patient would think to Google or seek out "oncogenomic" in their search for interpretation/second opinion on biopsy materials.

Best of luck to you!

 

[mark-ER]

Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts. I think biomedical consulting may be too broad or too generic. Then again, I have been heavily indoctrinated and I hate imprecision this is why I asked on this more general forum rather than a subspecialty or business forum.

 

[DrESQ]

Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts. I think biomedical consulting may be too broad or too generic. Then again, I have been heavily indoctrinated and I hate imprecision this is why I asked on this more general forum rather than a subspecialty or business forum.

Totally understand that concern, and was actually going to write a bit about biomedical consulting maybe being too broad for what you're going for but I figured my original message was getting too long.

I think you'll get some additional feedback here, which will be good. If you do go with the broader, more generic "biomedical" name, you may consider using marketing materials and a tag line and even a very simple website to provide a narrower scope. I did a quick Google search of biomedical consulting and found one that specialized in fertility. The name, which included biomedical consulting, didn't give that away, but as soon as I was on the site it was clear that the focus was fertility. That could be a way for you to provide more info and narrow the scope of your consulting.

 

[mark-ER]

Another name I thought about was: GTGnomics A bit more specific, with some pizzazz to it. And I think most people would understand it had to do with genomics. I think the full name would be GTGnomics consulting LLC. Thoughts?

 

[andrek82]

Current ms4, former pharma chemist - the name need not be specific, so GTGnomics would have that genomic flavor with that bit of pizazz. One thing to be careful of with naming is alternate meanings. For example I am assuming that gtg stands for something such as your initials. In the examples in your poll that is pretty clear, but GTGnomics seems to imply a meaning for GT beyond that. One thing to look at would be your future competitors. What are their names? Fancy vs personal vs nonsensical? I don't say this to discourage GTGnomics. I actually find it pretty catchy. I would just recommend thinking about the meaning and if you think it is clear. Also, think of fun things to say like, "I'm Dr. G___, I put the G in genomics."

*if you are consulting, put consulting in the name. Some people don't and it is a bit of a mystery to me how they drum up initial business if they have no contacts.