We often get the question, “What does the CB in CB Insights stand for?” when talking to customers, partners, friends, etc.
The back story is mildly embarrassing (or amusing) but here goes.
When we started the company, we called ourselves ChubbyBrain. We were always focused on private company data but we were trying to be hip and startup’y (or that is what we’d like to believe)
Then one day, an investment bank we’d spent a lot of time wooing came back to us and said:
We love the product and the data and what you guys are doing. But we can’t buy a product called ChubbyBrain.
And in an instant, we realized we had to grow it up and became CB Insights. We kept the CB as an homage to our younger, dumber days.