Why the name "Capacities"

Members of our community have recently asked us about the origin of the name “Capacities” for our note-taking app.

From the beginning, we wanted to build something that empowers users – a tool that makes people more productive. At the same time, we wanted our app to be something that is not a quick “hack” or a tactical “trick” to be more productive, but to enable users more profoundly and fundamentally.

For us, “Capacities” was a very good fit for what we wanted the product to be. By putting it in the plural, we wanted it to express the versatility of the product. There’s not just one way to use it or one single use case but instead a whole toolkit for knowledge work.

While we are happy with the name, it is also true that it is a bit too long with 4 syllables. It also tends to take too long to convey the name with the correct spelling when introducing it to people. Another signal seems to be the lack of stickiness and recognizability: In some user messages, people accidentally call it “Capabilities” instead of “Capacities”, and it happened more than once.

Among our users and in our community, a shorter name has emerged: people simply call it “Cap”.

The name has served us well so far, but we are also thinking about making it something shorter and catchier. It is not our highest priority at the moment, but something we are talking about once in a while.