Jesus Christ, $50k to pick the company name?? You could launch a whole new product for that much.
Written at the height of the dot-com craziness, so the figures have probably come down to earth a little since, but still hilarious-slash-sad.
I was lead dev of the Technical Information Team System too.
(Note, as well, that one of the French words for hen is "poule," which is also an old slang term for "slut." The French just can't catch a break in the chicken business).
The French word for slut is "salope" and is also synonymous with the english word "bitch". The french word "poule" does mean hen, but is used more like the American slang word for a single woman: "chick".
If we'd had an MVP out in testing, people were loving it, and we'd been preparing to go big with a launch of some sort, sure, $50k in exploration toward securing an awesome name would have made a lot more sense. But $50k, right off the bat, felt pretty absurd at the time.
And to reiterate, this was just one symptom of a much more insidious disease: the need to consult lawyers about everything. I'm using only the mildest of hyperbole here. We did not make a single decision without a legal weigh-in. Eventually we were able to convince the CEO of our financial and strategic inability to sustain this approach. But a lot of damage had been done before we got to that point. It was a very expensive lesson.