One of the first questions we get asked is "why did you name your company Bixby Boons?"

The short answer is that we could have named it after ourselves, a lake, a mountain or a city and called it a day. That certainly would have been the easiest way to go, but if we'd gone that route, we wouldn't have gotten to answer the second question we get asked, which is "What do you do?" This way we get to talk to people, and we enjoy talking to people.

 

The long answer is a little bit different... It goes back to an old philosophical question about the duality of man. This idea, that inside each of us exists an element that is rational, logical and follows reason; and also a competing element that is chaotic, emotional and often times unpredictable. In Plato's Republic, these elements are identified as parts of the divided human soul, logos and eros, or logic and desire. René Descartes explained a similar theory of the duality of man by separating the physical and mental components of humanity into the more modern mind-body dualism problem. Later, Sigmund Freud described the properties of the duality of man through the idea of the id and the ego. Most recently, extensive study has been undertaken on the neurological work done in the brain by the amygdala and prefrontal cortex.

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To us, Bixby represents the logical, reasoned, and rational portion of ourselves that we want to access when making investment decisions. Boons represents the biased, emotional and chaotic side we seek to acknowledge, but exclude from our investment process. If this sounds like we overthought it, that is ok, we probably did. However, if we would have just named our group after ourselves, we never would have gotten to talk to so many people about our company, what we do everyday, and what makes us different.