Firetop

Sometimes I get asked why I decided to call my company Firetop Ltd; there were two factors influencing this decision. Firstly, I needed a name that was applicable to getting people to the ‘top’ of search engine results, since this was the original web marketing service provided through optimisation techniques or pay per click advertising. ‘Fire’ ‘Top’ seemed to be suitably gimmicky, memorable and short for typing. In addition I was able to register the relevant company and domain names whilst purchasing firetop.com from a ‘wizard workshop’ guy in the US. The reason a ‘wizardy’ guy owned Firetop in the first place does tie in with the second influencing factor.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was the first fighting fantasy adventure gamebook that I came across when I was nine years old. I remember picking up the tatty old book for 10p in a second hand bookshop in Hitchin called David’s Books. The idea behind Fighting Fantasy adventure gamebooks is that you ‘choose your own adventure’, reading a paragraph and then making a decision yourself as to which path you chose next; Do you ’stay and fight the dragon’ turn to 67 or ‘run away’ turn to 94. As a kid I loved the idea that I was in control of the story and went on to buy the entire series of fifty or so titles. Corny as it may sound, having a company was about ‘choosing my own adventure’ too, so ‘Firetop’, a word from the first of these books, seemed as good a choice as any.

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