Where It All Began
In the picture: The original home of ATTX. I built the wall, door, and desk from scratch, then built countless projects right there in the attic.
Our Story
One of the questions I get asked most often is, “Why the name ATTX?” And I get it, because it is a strange name to those who are unfamiliar with our story. For those who don’t know, our name isn’t pronounced like A-T-T-X, it’s pronounced like “attics.” And the story of why goes all the way back to our company’s true founding, long before I graduated high school.
When I was a kid, I loved working on projects. Whether it was a model rocket, my own airplane, an RC car, or a crossbow literally made of some hangars and my underwear, I was always working on something. Eventually, my parents got tired of me littering our house with the remains of whatever the latest objective was, and decided I should have a workshop of my own. So at 12 years old we pushed aside all of our boxes in the attic, and I built a desk (pictured) on which to do all of my engineering projects. Thus, ATTX was born.
I was always entrepreneurial, and to my 12 year old self attics was the logical thing to call a made up business in an attic. Then, of course, I had to replace the “cs” with an “x” to make the name cooler. What I didn’t expect was that I would eventually name a real company ATTX.
When I left my job, there was a period of time where I brainstormed what the name of my new company should be. The final list of ideas was 5 names long, and didn’t include ATTX. When I told my mom of the potential names, she insisted that it should be ATTX. Then she insisted again. And again. And every time we talked for a couple weeks. Finally, I agreed to include it on the list of possibilities, thinking it would go nowhere. But something strange happened — when I sent the list of possible names out to my trusted friends and family, everyone insisted that ATTX was the best choice, even those who didn’t know the history. To be fair, that may be a testament to how bad the other ideas were, but I decided to roll with it, and it stuck.
At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the name. I didn’t really look forward to the task of explaining it over and over again to people. The first couple times folks asked me what the acronym “ATTX” stood for and I couldn’t tell them, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. But as time has gone on, I’ve fallen back in love with the name. It keeps our company connected to why we’re doing this in the first place, and helps to remind us where we want to go. When I first came up with ATTX at 12, I wasn’t thinking of money, titles, or prestige — I just wanted to build awesome stuff. That goal is still at the center of ATTX today. A lot of companies make money, but few ever change an industry. We want to be the few. Our name reminds us of that every day.
- Alex
