As strange as it seems, my entire life, I wanted to make a word up. I wanted to create a word or phrase that everyone used and I could feel proud that it was my brainchild. So, I decided to make this app my opportunity to do so.

I wanted to tap the market and make my brand become the true moniker of the concept itself – like Google or Uber. No one wants to be Bing or Lyft. Well, financially, yes, but bear with me.

No one says “Go Bing that.” or “I’m going to Yahoo Search it.” If they do, I don’t know those people, and frankly, I feel like they may be a little off mentally…although, I guess I am too, so I guess that could be a good thing??

When we need a ride, we say Uber, even if we are opening the Lyft app. I wanted to not only create some new and catchy word, but I wanted to be first to the market to grab that extra level of branding.

I toyed around for a while with a bunch of ideas, but everything kept leading me back to raising your hand.

Remembering back to when I was a kid, if you needed some help, you put your hand in the air.

Or if the coach was asking who wanted to do another set of stairs, you put that hand wayyyy up (well, I was the only one excited for stairs, so you could see where this is a terrible example since it really just annoyed my teammates).

If a teacher offered extra credit and you were terrible with History so you needed it, you threw that hand up faster than you threw your notebook out after your final exam.

Now, how could I create a word using that concept? Since no words were obvious, I thought of the act itself. To raise one’s hand, you simply put your hand up. If I need a service done, I would put my hand up and someone would have theirs up to help.

Between people looking for on-demand services and service professionals looking to fill open appointment times, I envisioned an entire city of people raising their hands. Tons of hands up.

A few terrible internal suggestions later, I had it:

Hands. Up. City…huc. Oh huc, that was it!

I had an idea. I had the perfect partner. I had the name. I was ready to run. Let’s do this huc’ing thing!