What’s In a Name?

So what was it—really—that got Virgo Capital its name?

“You want the cool answer?” says Virgo co-founder and managing director Hemanth Parasuram. “Other than the fact that the URL was available?”

The cool answer happens to be that Parasuram’s wife’s astrological sign Virgo. His co-founder, Guhan Swaminathan, isn’t married, so “there was only one lucky lady in the family,” says Parasuram. He adds that neither he nor his partner believe in astrology, though his wife might.

But when it came to the name of the company, the firm’s strategy really came down to the URL, which is www.virgocapital.com. “Names these days have been harder to come by,” says Parasuram. “It’s nice to not have some wacky URL.” The firm outsourced the design of its nifty logo to a firm called NextPoint and liked it so much they trademarked it.

Parasuram adds that the name for the firm signifies the “virgin territory” that Virgo Capital goes for in its deals. The 2005-founded firm seeks financial services companies in the southern regions of the U.S. Parasuram and Swaminathan cut their teeth at Goldman Sachs and later developed their strategy of targeting companies that provide services to larger institutions such as debt collection. These companies are often in low cost geographies and easily accessed from Virgo Capital’s Oklahoma City, Okla. and Austin, Texas offices. A second part of the firm’s strategy is its refusal to take any fees from portfolio companies, which its believes are detrimental to the companies’ balance sheets.

The firm closed a $50 million fund this summer which mostly came from high net worth individuals and it is still on the prowl for its first deal.