Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Your brand name, nothing's going to be used more often or for longer than that name. Design will change, messaging will change, products will change, but that name is there. What's a name that you came up with that you have to fight super hard for that the client just hated? When we presented Sonos, it was rejected because it's not entertainment like. We argued about that because I said, this is outside looking in, but I don't see you as an entertainment company. Humans do like to be comfortable. Part of our job here is to help people to give the confidence going bigger and being uncomfortable. There's a quote that I found of yours.

Starting point is 00:00:34 If your team is comfortable with the name, chances are you don't have the name yet. We look for polarization. We look for attention in a team arguing about these things. Polarization is a sign of strength in the word. Most clients, they come to a naming project absolutely believing with full confidence that they're going to know it when they see it. And the truth is it almost never happens. Most people as any of this are founders, a lot of PMs on product teams.

Starting point is 00:01:00 Let's say they have a couple weeks. Got to come up with a name. What should they do? Today, my guest is David Placic. David is the founder of Lexicon branding, which pioneered the field of brand naming, and invented a few names that you may have heard of, including PowerBook, Pentium, Blackberry, Swiffer, The Impossible Burger. Also, Versel and Winserp and Capcut and Azure.

Starting point is 00:01:22 In her conversation, David opens up about the, very specific process that he and his team go through to find winning names, including a simple exercise that you can do with you and your team to help you find the right name in just a few weeks. We also talk about why a great name is worth spending your time on, why you won't know a great name when you see it, and why you need to feel uncomfortable about the name first, also why big team brainstorms don't ever lead to great names, the stories behind names like Pentium and Sonos and Versel and WinServe. Also, such interesting insights about the feeling and energy of every letter the alphabet, and so much more.

Starting point is 00:01:56 This episode is designed for anyone trying to figure out a name for their product or company, and also just for anyone that's interested in hearing the stories of how some of the most iconic names came to be. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. And if you become a paid subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a bunch of amazing products, including Bolt, Linear, Superhuman, Notion, Perplexity, granola, and more. Check it out at Lenny's newsletter.com and click bundle.

Starting point is 00:02:23 With that, I bring you David Placic. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're building a SaaS app, at some point your customers will start asking for enterprise features like Samo authentication and skim provisioning. That's where WorkOS comes in, making it fast and painless to add enterprise features to your app. Their APIs are easy to understand so that you can ship quickly and get back to building other features. Today, hundreds of companies are already powered by WorkOS, including ones you probably know, like Vercell, WebFlow, and Loom. WorkOS also recently acquired Warrant, the Fine Grain Authorization Service.

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Starting point is 00:04:19 And imagine seeing a 23% lift in revenue, like Forbes did just six months after switching to Stripe for subscription management. Stripe has been leveraging AI for the last decade to make its product better at growing revenue for all businesses, from smarter checkouts to fraud prevention and beyond. Join the ranks of over half of the Fortune 100 companies that trust Stripe to drive change. Learn more at Stripe.com. thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you.

Starting point is 00:04:53 I'm excited about today and looking forward to the conversation. Me too. These are actually my favorite kinds of conversations because this topic is so outside of my wheelhouse and I know I'm just going to learn a ton. Also, this is just something that every founder and product builder has to think about at some point and they have no idea what they're doing. And then their name becomes so core to their identity. It's widely the word they say more than any other word.

Starting point is 00:05:19 word. And I feel like I've never heard advice on how to do this well. So I'm really excited for this conversation. I'm going to just dive into a question. And the question is just what's a name that you came up with and your team came up with? They have to fight super hard for that the client just hated. And you ended up winning. And now is just such an obviously awesome name that everyone loves. The story I like to tell is a story of Sonos. One, a great client team. I worked with all the founders. But at the time, they were stuck on being in a brand name that put them in the entertainment business. And so when we presented Sonos, which has many qualities to it, it was rejected because it doesn't have enough sort of emotion to it. It's not entertainment

Starting point is 00:06:13 like. And, you know, we argued about that because I said, I don't, this is outside looking in, but I don't see you as an entertainment company. You, you make speakers that allow for the flow of entertainment through these things. And Sonos is about sound, but it had a particular quality. It's, it's called a palindrome, right? So, which really means that you can flip it, and, and it means the same thing. In the case of Sonos, you could also turn it upside down, and it was essentially the same, right? And so that got them thinking about this, but they were still has, so I left that meeting. They went in Santa Barbara, and I came back and they were still struggling with it, and I went, I got on a plane, didn't even bill them for this, went back down to Santa Barbara and met with

Starting point is 00:07:05 them again and said, I really believe in this name, and I think it's the right for you. And, and At a certain point, one of the founders, you know, Bob McFarland, who's just a wonderful client, I could see him thinking, and he said, you know, we're trying to name this for ourselves. And what we really should be doing is naming it for the marketplace and the customers. And, you know, I think Sonofs now is the right name. And I felt really good about that. And he later wrote me a note about how I helped to do that. And we use it sometimes in credentials presentations because it's such a nice note.

Starting point is 00:07:44 But Sonos is something I'm so glad that I had this internal energy to, I got to go down there and make a bid for this. I don't do that often, by the way, but I felt very strongly about Sonos. I love Sonos. I love the name. I have many Sonos products. How often does this happen where the client is just, no, this is not the name. We have this bigger vision. We have a whole other idea of it, and then you convince them. Well, it happens all the time. And it's a little bit by directional, right? We, you know, there's most clients, and I can understand this, right?

Starting point is 00:08:19 They come to a naming project absolutely believing with full confidence that they're going to know it when they see it. And the truth is it almost never happens. I have now, I think this year will hit 4,000 projects that we've completed. and it's interesting, you know, we'll tell people in a very polite way, you're not going to know when you see it, but I know they don't believe me. And even when you could see them thinking that, you know what, he was right, I really have to think about this, I have to process it. And part of that, part of why clients don't like the bolder names, the more imaginative names that we present is they are looking for comfort. And that's the opposite that what you want to do. And part of our job here is to help people to give the confidence that going bolder and bigger is and being uncomfortable.

Starting point is 00:09:20 There's a, I use the expression, there is no power in comfort, not in the marketplace. Wow. There's so much here already. Okay. So this idea of you're not going to know it when you see it is something that people. people come in with thinking. Like, once I see it, it'll be obvious. Just why, why is that never, almost never the case? Is it because the name has to be something that is uncomfortable? There's a lot of psychology to this, which ironically, I never even took a psychology class in college or graduate

Starting point is 00:09:51 school. But the first element is humans do like to be comfortable. And one of the mechanisms of comfort is if something's been successful before, then I feel like I can, prove it or select it. This is why, you know, movies like Harry Potter or even novels like Jack Lundon's Call of the Wild get rejected so many times. I think Harry Potter was rejected 16 or 18 times and Jack London is a book even more than that. I mean, think about it. He's pitching a book and he say, what are you talking about here? You're saying a dog becomes a wolf. I've never heard of anything like that. So we really do have to help people think about it's not about the past. You're actually creating the future. And we really talk to people and emphasize the idea, this isn't a name

Starting point is 00:10:49 you're creating the experience for you. We're going to work together. And we really, our conversations always start with, talk to us about how you behave now and how you want to behave in the future. as opposed to tell me about your positioning, tell me about your values, tell me about your mission. That's really kind of old thinking. It's very traditional. And that did work, you know, 25 or 30 years ago. But this is a far more complex, interconnected world, a digital world now. That stuff just doesn't create, it doesn't create names like Sonos or, you know, some of our other credentials.

Starting point is 00:11:31 that we probably will talk about today. Yeah. We're going to talk about just the process you guys go through, so stay tuned for that. But before we get to that, is there's another story you can share that kind of shows this idea of being bold. I'll talk about Microsoft's Azure.

Starting point is 00:11:47 So when Microsoft came to us, they were pretty much stuck. And Marcus Roth does, and in many ways, to their credit, a lot of things don't need to be named. They don't need trademarks. They don't need brand names. They need descriptors.

Starting point is 00:12:04 And so they came to us to develop a name that started or ended with cloud. Made sense to them because it was a cloud service. And our reaction was, if you do that, you're going to be in an ocean of other cloud this, cloud, that. And you have an opportunity as Microsoft here to really emerge as a leader in this. And so, you know, there was a discussion about, okay, we'll take a look at those, but we'd like to see some cloud, some cloud names, okay, which is easy to do, by the way. And so we did that, and we, along the way, we came up with this word Azure, which is, you know, another word for blue. And so there was a link to clouds, blue sky clouds, things like that. But we really presented it based on its linguistic qualities.

Starting point is 00:13:03 It's a noisy word. That Z in there starts with an A, you know, and it ends in a nice, smooth flow. So we really strive to create names that are balanced. And in a very busy competitive world, having a strong signal, which is generated by noise, is a good thing. the reaction wasn't, wasn't good. You know, one of the clients said, that's just a dumb idea. And, you know, we, this, remarks like that at this point, after these four decades, it sort of rolls off my back, like water off a duck is what my grandmother would say.

Starting point is 00:13:46 But, but I think along the way, as we talked about it, they began to warm up to this. So now, of course, it's, I don't know, a $100 billion brand or something like that. But that's an example of, I haven't seen that before. I'm very comfortable with cloud. Cloud is what it is. That's the, you know, we're describing it. But that's a statement. And I think that, well, I don't think I know that's what I said in one of the presentations

Starting point is 00:14:17 is you don't want to make a statement here. You want to start a story, right? And Azure is going to behave differently in the marketplace. than, you know, Cloud Pro, which is, I think, one of the names that we presented to them on the other side, at their request. I'm glad they went with Azure. Let me actually ask this question. I know you're biased, but just how important is a great name? Like, if you had a better name than a product that was better than you, does that make a big difference?

Starting point is 00:14:45 Just anything you can share there to help people see this is the power of a great name. Let's look just at the reality of this. your brand name, whether it's a product name or a company name, nothing's going to be used more often or for longer than that name. Design will change, message will change, products will change, right? But that name is there. So I like to talk about this idea of cumulative advantage, right? Over time, as people buy more and more of the product, they see it more often,

Starting point is 00:15:15 that their bond between you and that brand, or them in the brand, I should say, becomes stronger and stronger. So you want that name to stick in their mind to be distinctive, because distinctiveness is what creates that cumulative advantage. The second thing is this notion of what I call asymmetric advantage. It makes perfect sense, and most clients agree with this when we, when we, when we, we say this is that even before you launch this brand, why not start with an advantage in the marketplace? And you won't get an advantage if you're descriptive. If you are cloud pro and there's

Starting point is 00:15:58 10 other cloud services, you're not going to stand out in the marketplace. You won't have the ability to create that necessarily that cumulative advantage in the marketplace. So those are my two reasons why names are, I think, you know, done right. And we do talk about our mission is not creating good names. A lot of people can do that. Our mission is to create the right name for clients. And because the right name does deliver asymmetric advantage and cumulative advantage for you. And that for us has almost unlimited value.

Starting point is 00:16:40 This is a great answer. Essentially, what you're saying is it's not going to like necessarily make or break you, but it gives you an advantage. A great name gives you an advantage, especially if you're just getting started. You need every advantage you can get. Exactly. And this is maybe a little bit off a tangent. But one of the best books on marketing I've ever read, which is not a book on marketing. It's, and you may have read it along the way in college. If you studied any Greek or, you know, classics. It's called the Meeleian Dialogues. And it's a dialogue. It's, we'll take anybody listening to this, maybe 25 minutes to read it, between the Athenians and the government of Milos. And the Athenians had decided that they needed that island. And they went and approached them a very nice way, but that we want to take over the island. Nothing will change. You'll be taxed a little bit, but we'll protect you. And the Athenians had thought every aspect about how to take that island before. So by the time they got there, they had created asymmetric advantage in terms of ships and men and all this other stuff.

Starting point is 00:17:56 It's just, by the way, in the book, there's no mention of marketing or brand strategy or any of these things. But if you read it, you begin to see that marketing really is about asymmetric advantage. And so why not start from the very beginning with an advantage? That's the value of a name. Let's dive into the actual process you guys go through. And I want to read a quote that Guillermo Rauch shared when I asked him about what it was like working with you. He's the CEO co-founder of Versal, which he has worked with. I definitely want to hear that story, by the way.

Starting point is 00:18:25 So he said before David, the ability to name something was like charisma. You either have it or you don't. It was so surreal to watch his team distill it down to a science. So let me just ask you, what does that science look like? What are the steps to coming up with an amazing name? for your product or company that you guys go through. That's very nice of Guillermo. He is a very impressive, you know,

Starting point is 00:18:49 innovator in this category, and we greatly enjoyed working with him. Well, our process is real. I'll break it down in three steps. At first, we have to identify, then we invent, and then we implement. So it's just three things. It's not rocket science,

Starting point is 00:19:05 but it does, it's a combination of creativity and discipline, right? and obviously talented people and experiencing these things. So let's just kind of go through those things. In the first section of Identify, it's really trying to find out from the client. Let's talk about behavior, right? So how are you behaving now and how do you want to behave in the future? That behavior is bidirectional. In other words, the marketplace behaves towards a Versal.

Starting point is 00:19:36 you know, that's the name we created for Guillermo. And they behave towards the marketplace. And that's an important point because everything, you know, buildings are bi-directional. Even, you know, the look at a building, you behave differently towards a temple than you or a church versus, you know, a holiday end in terms of how that architecture states. So we focus on that. Behavior is closely aligned for us with experience. how do you want this brand to the experience of this brand? Now, when we listen to those things,

Starting point is 00:20:13 we begin to think about, you know, rhythm of the name. So something like Desani has a lot of rhythm to it, right? It's kind of calming, right? And so we'll begin to extract things from that discussion on experience. We will then also, as part of this first phase, look at the competition. We call that developing a landscape.

Starting point is 00:20:37 And we're looking for what are the words, you know, what are the brand names first? And then what language are they using in this space? So because we want to be, we have to be distinctive. If a brand name isn't distinctive, you lose, right? Then you're imitating. And that's a form of suicide. I think, you know, that's a famous quote from some, I think the president of P&G, you know, 50 years ago or something like that. So that's that first phase, which allows us to create what we call a creative framework.

Starting point is 00:21:10 And we don't even use the word objectives here because that gets too logical. We actually framework for us is a metaphor for a window for us and our teams and our linguists to travel through. It's to kind of open things up so that we're not coming back with a narrow list of names. We're coming back with names that have depth and breadth and have different experiences. and personalities to them. And clients will sign off on that, and then we get going. So now we're moved to the invent stage. And in the invent stage, we do really two things.

Starting point is 00:21:47 You can look at this as two layers of our process. And I think the second layer is probably what makes us quite unique in the marketplace, and it's the result of millions of dollars of R&D on our part. So the first thing is no surprise to anyone. We work with, you know, creative individuals. And we don't use, this will be contrary, and we don't use large brainstorming sessions. I did when I first started the company. I used freelancers.

Starting point is 00:22:18 I used large brainstorming groups. And along the way, through some analysis, we really discovered that that was not really working for us, that actually the names were coming from employees and from small groups. And so we've moved our process to at least two or three small teams of two people. And each of those teams, so let's say we, you know, on significant projects, we always use three teams.

Starting point is 00:22:47 And each team gets a different briefing. One team knows everything about the project, but the other teams don't. We'll replace, if we're working for Microsoft, the second team thinks they're working for Apple. I mean, they know it's disguised. We're not keeping this from anyone. And then the third team, we take it out of computers.

Starting point is 00:23:04 And, you know, they might be naming a bicycle or a car or something like that. What we're trying to do is open up the coffers of creativity for this. And so when people are working on what they know is not the real assignment, they are now free to make all kinds of mistakes. And so most of our names have come out of the second or third team, Because there, yeah, I think the process, at some point, I will hopefully write either a good article on this or maybe even a book. But this process would work for, I think, a lot of things. I know, I know it would.

Starting point is 00:23:44 All right. Now, what's that second layer that I talked about? Well, we have made significant investments in this area of linguistics and cognitive science. And it's in two ways. building proprietary knowledge. So we know through research that we funded an extensive amount about an area in language called or linguistics called the sound symbolism. So what are the sounds of the 26 letters of the alphabet? And what do they do? How do they evoke things? Well, it turns out that each of those letters sends out a signal that that creates a certain sort of

Starting point is 00:24:28 of vibration, if you will, or experience. Now, there's been research on that over the years, but there was some gaps, and we decided to fill this. And we, you know, over the years, we've got a very good relationship with Stanford University, with their department of linguistics. You know, we've hired linguists from MIT, from Berkeley. We have a linguistic internship here. I actually just ran this number preparing for, for, for, for, you know, for, and we've got to

Starting point is 00:24:58 for this discussion. We have employed over four decades now, 253 linguists, most of them PhDs, some of them, contracts, some of them actual employees. Well, that's a lot of intellectual knowledge. So we really have what I call a linguistic engine here. And then we now have an operating network of, I just checked on this figure yesterday. We have 108 linguists in 76 countries that help us. do creative work. Others will do just the analysis of names for us. So now we have that creative framework. We have creative teams working on this. Now we're tapping into databases that have, you know, over 18,000 small word units, technically called morphemes. And so we also can tap in from a sound standpoint. You know, what are the sounds of reliability? What are the sounds of

Starting point is 00:25:56 liveliness. And so with Sonos, by the way, we wanted, you know, things that are somewhat noisy, right? And so S is a noisy letter, like a Z or even a V. And so you begin to set priorities about what letters we're going to use. And that work from that, we call it, you know, an engineering layer sort of floats up into the creative teams. And so it's a mixture of things at a certain point in time. All right, now what happens to all that? At a certain point, usually three to four weeks into this, we might have two or three thousand ideas. I say ideas because they're not all solutions. They're not all workable.

Starting point is 00:26:41 They may be just beginning ideas, concepts, and we sift through those. And now one of the major challenges that we face and certainly our clients face is the need to clear a trademark for it to be not in conflict with. a marketplace that is we're almost reaching a tipping point in terms of difficulty of clearing names here. And so we have paralegals here and we have a trademark attorney and we'll analyze those names. That gets us to a much smaller set and then we'll do our linguistic work with our linguists and we end up with a set of names to show our clients. We'll do this twice with our with most assignments. Sometimes we'll do just one time depending on timing and budget. But we really try to get two cycles here. Partly because humans love to compare, right? If you're looking for a house, you don't just

Starting point is 00:27:38 look at the first house to say, okay, let's sign us up. You look and you learn that we don't need a swimming pool, but we do need a view. It's the same with names. And so we get feedback from our clients. And sometimes that's a co-creative process where a client will come up with a or solution, and we'll then run that through our screening mechanisms for them. And that's really the process. And the final phase is implementing. Let's actually pause at that because I so much I want to talk about it with the second step, but we'll get in that step three.

Starting point is 00:28:15 There's just, this is just blowing my mind, all the things you guys do here. This is incredible. There's so many things here that are so unlike what I expected. First of all, the creative folks that are actually coming up with these names, What's kind of like the background of these people? Who are these people? Yeah. So the fundamental quality is they're going to be curious and they're going to be hard working.

Starting point is 00:28:37 This is, and hopefully, and this is hard to screen poor, but, you know, lower egos. This is unlike the advertising business, which I came from, right? So I have six years in a large agency where a creative person. or a copywriter can think about something and come in with three or four alternatives, right, in terms of a headline or body copy. And that might be refined a little bit and maybe sent back to the drawing boards altogether. But it's a relatively simple process, right? And no disrespect intended there. Here, I can't just sit down and say, okay, well, we're naming a new car here. I'm going to generate 100 names and you generate 100 names and something will fall out.

Starting point is 00:29:33 That just, that won't, those names will not, there's not enough in that list to clear through our screens of legal screens, our linguistic screens. And remember, we start with a creative framework and criteria that the names need to need. So we're looking for people who can churn out a lot of work, and when that's rejected, they just keep going. So we look for tenacious people, right? Now, we have, and we'll probably get to this labor, but we have software here that helps people generate names, not really, maybe five years down the road. It'll actually spit out solutions, but now it's helping us to generate ideas. and directions and what I you know you know sound symbolism ideas word unit prefixes

Starting point is 00:30:30 suffixes things like that so so it's relatively easy for anyone that works here to develop a list of two or three hundred names over a three or four day period where we find these people more who are writers from you know newspaper reporters because they have to work fast their stories get rejected. People who might have written a novel. We have hired people from agencies over the years. They work a little less effectively than others who have a speechwriter from I wrote speeches in Washington, D.C. Those people have to work hard, crank out a lot of material, get rejected. Candidates says, I don't like this, start over. Those are more resilient people. That's

Starting point is 00:31:20 where they come. It's not, it's not easy to find these people. It really, it really is. Let me just throw out here. I'm going to ask you, after we go through this process, what people that don't have the resources in time to do this, what they should do, to come up with a good name, I'm just going to let's be listening because I imagine many people are wondering, but let's not go there yet. Okay. How long does this process usually take? What's like the ideal length that company should expect when they want to come up with an amazing name? For us, the ideal link is pretty, it's pretty short. It's eight weeks for larger corporate projects where you have boards and a little more politicking to do and a few more presentations.

Starting point is 00:31:57 It's a three-month turn. And sometimes by the time they approve things and clear it's a four-month process. Okay, cool. So eight weeks, mostly if you're a big company with a lot of red tape, you have to work through, then longer. Okay, this point you made about three different teams with different in almost context is so interesting. So say let's use windsurf as an example, which is an amazing name, killing it that you guys help come up with. So is the idea there, okay, here's, we're naming this IDE, AI, ID. One of the teams is told, no, you're building a bicycle, but here's all the, here's all the same brief, but it's a bicycle. And then another team's bill, you're building a, I don't know, lap, like, I don't know, something non-technical,

Starting point is 00:32:42 essentially, right? Yes. Like a cup. Say more about that. that because that is amazing because and you're finding that most of the best names come from the groups that aren't you'll let's name an amazing i a i i'd this is a good example so so in technology there there are some things that that someone hands you a new phone and you look at and it's tangible and it's got a shape and color things like that easier to name but but you know the the the name of windsurf before it was windsurf was codium right and so so it's all about a type of code or a process for coding. That's intangible. And even though we do an awful lot of technology work, it is still hard for us to kind of really get a hold of what that is. So our rule here is if there's

Starting point is 00:33:30 something that is intangible like that, we have to make it tangible. And sometimes we do that, not by giving a team. And sometimes it's an individual, the assignment to create ideas for the brand itself, but to just dive into a particular context. And in this case, with Windsor, it was this, this is about sort of flow, about giving people that are coding something, much more of a flow process, a smoother process, a more dynamic process. So in that case, one team was just given the task of, we want to look at a, list of all the things that can communicate either in a real word like flow or metaphorically or in a sport about that kind of dynamics, that kind of movement. And there was windsurf

Starting point is 00:34:28 sitting on a list. I mean, sometimes this is just, it really just that simple. Of course, you have to have the right framework and you have to give the right sort of directions to someone. And wind surf for us, particularly for me, it checks all the boxes. It's a wonderful image. It's an experience, literally a physical experience. It's a compound, right? Two words put together. We know from the research we've invested in that compounds like PowerBook or Facebook are multipliers of associations because there's wind and there's circles. There's circle. around that, you know, and then there's surf images around that. So one plus one equals three, right? It's interesting that when we present compounds to clients, we often get the comment,

Starting point is 00:35:21 well, yes, it's a little bit long and it's a compound. I'd rather have a shorter single word. And then that's why we actually did research on just how effective our compounds. So we could pass that information along. We passed that along to the team at that time, Codium. By the way, could not have been a, you know, more intelligent, nicer, more respectful team that we've worked with. I'm so glad for their success. But we explained to them about the multiplier effect of compounds. We showed them imagery that they could use, right? I mean, it's simple to execute on something like that. And so that's how that came about. I'll stop there and see if you need more information or not. I mean, actually follow this thread real quick. It's going to be kind of a tangent. You guys

Starting point is 00:36:13 have been working with AI companies more and more recently, which is so interesting. What's different about naming AI products from traditional products, non-AI, I guess? First off, we are working mostly with engineers and engineers who haven't, you know, know, delved into the world of kind of creativity and necessarily marketing. And that's their strength. And what we have to do is we have to sort of balance their strength with our strength. So there's a little bit of a challenge there, but I think we deal pretty well with that. Secondly, this is the fastest moving, progressing category I have ever experienced. And I have that perspective, right? I went through the early days of the internet, right? And the World Wide Web.

Starting point is 00:37:08 And that was moving pretty fast, but the internet compared to this looks like a daycare school or something like that. I mean, so we're challenged by just keeping up with developments. Right. Third thing, and this is the creative challenge here, is that engineers come to us wanting more sophisticated names, right? Where they're likely to end up with another codium or an Anderil or an anthropic. And we, when we saw this trend of that AI is going to take off, and it was an intuitive feeling on my part. I just, you know, I could have been wrong. I said, let's, let's find out. what's going on here. So both, not only like who's developing the products, but how do people think about AI? And we did a series of research. I probably invested $20,000 or so. And we interviewed

Starting point is 00:38:09 consumers in Europe, South Korea, just picked out one country in Asia and in America, and developers in those three. And they really have different users. Developers are all totally positive. positive on it. Okay. They see the future. They see a big future. Not too concerned. Some are, but most aren't. Consumers are skeptical, uh, worried about it, worried about their jobs, see the hope in it, those types of things, but haven't got the handle it. So Codium is an example where we said, we think what you're doing needs to be much more tangible and something that people can grab onto and much more natural as opposed to. a codium. And they listen to us, but as simple as that. And in this case, we were right. And by the way,

Starting point is 00:39:02 there's also, I have to say, there's some luck to this. Winsurf happened to be available. And they sought right away, not exactly right away, but it took about a week going back and forth to select it. So let me stop there and see if that answers your question. Absolutely. And it feels like most AI companies end up having a different name for their product than their company. I've noticed this funny trend cursor was any sphere bolt with stack is stack splits, wind surf with codium, basically everyone. When does it make sense to change your name? WinServe just officially changed their entire company name to WinServe from codium. It was just a product. So let me just ask you that. When does it make sense? Feels like a huge deal and a very challenging thing to.

Starting point is 00:39:48 It is challenging. And the larger you are and the more customer base you have it, it becomes you know, a significant project. So the first thing is you have to, you have to make an argument that it's worth the change, right? That we're going to be better off by changing our name. So there's a couple situations where you want to, you want to change your name. First one is, let's focus first on startups.

Starting point is 00:40:17 Startups get going early that, you know, they get into Y Combinator or something like that. they're raising money and they just need a name. And although they know what they're doing, and that may change by 10 or 15 degrees, it's almost like we just got to have a name. And that is the absolute expression I hear from when a startup calls and says, we want to change your name. You know, we started off a year and a half ago.

Starting point is 00:40:45 We just needed a name for the documents and so we chose X, right? And it's not a very good name. So that's example number one. Number two is the company actually has, you know, pivoted, right? And so the name that they have no longer really reflects who they are or who they're becoming, which makes that name ineffective. And the third is that a company has merged, and it's time now to create a new start and reflect to the marketplace that we're.

Starting point is 00:41:22 We're new now, maybe bigger. But certainly we have more capabilities, and we want you to know about it. And because of that, we're changing our name to blank, which reflects those capabilities at some level. I'm excited to have Andrew Lueh, joining us today. Andrew is CEO of One Schema, one of our longtime podcast sponsors.

Starting point is 00:41:44 Welcome, Andrew. Thanks for having me, Lenny. Great to be here. So what is new with One Schema? I know that you work with some of my favorite companies like Ramp and Vans and Watershed. I heard you guys launched a new data intake product that automates the hours of manual work that teams spent importing and mapping and integrating CSV and Excel files. Yes, so we just launched the 2.0 of one schema file feeds. We've rebuilt it from the ground up with

Starting point is 00:42:08 AI. We saw so many customers coming to us with teams of data engineers that struggled with the manual work required to clean messy spreadsheets. File feeds 2.0 allows non-technical teams to automate the process of transforming CSV and Excel files with just a simple prompt. We support all of the trickiest file integrations, SFTP, S3, and even email. I can tell you that if my team had to build integrations like this, how nice would it be to take this off our roadmap and instead use something like one schema? Absolutely, Lenny. We've heard so many horror stories of outages from even just a single bad record,

Starting point is 00:42:42 in transactions, employee files, purchase orders, you name it. Debugging these issues is often like finding a needle in a haystack. One Schema stops any bad data from entering your system and automatically validates your files, generating error reports with the exact issues in all bad files. I know that importing incorrect data can cause all kinds of pain for your customers and quickly lose their trust. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me. If you want to learn more, head on over to one schema.com. That's one schema.c.com.

Starting point is 00:43:11 I want to come back to his linguist piece, which I know is really unique to the way you guys operate and it's so interesting. So you employed, you've said, over 250 linguists over the course of your business career. This linguist step, the way you described it is they're not coming up with names. They're more kind of like a filter for here's all the names we've come up with. Here's the ones that are good linguistically. Is that right? Or is that team also suggesting names? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:36 Some of the people there, depending on the assignment, will actually help us create names for sure. Right. And so we have linguists here, and then we have in the network we have linguists, and those linguists are contracts to us, not full-time employees. So there's a little bit of both. But the preponderance of their work in our linguistic network is to evaluate names. Not only just does it mean something negative or positive, but are there cultural implications to it, political implications, or even things that a natural disaster that would have happened, some, that, you know, no one here would know about, even if we had, if we, this was in Italy and there was a, you know, a bridge or a flood that killed a lot of people, someone that speaks Italian very well here, say at Berkeley University, but has lived here for 20 years, wouldn't know about that. And we don't, we don't want anything linguistically that would slow our clients down. And so that's why we've invested in building this network. We have a, a woman that runs the network for it. So it's not an insignificant facet of our business that we have

Starting point is 00:44:51 to run and manage. Is there a name you love that didn't pass the linguistic filter that ended up being like, oh, shit, that's a really bad name in this culture? Well, it happens frequently where we will find something that isn't really terrible, but it's worrisome to us. It's interesting, you know, cultures like Australian or in people, they have a lot of interesting expressions, right? And so we do find things that, you know, this sounds like it's a certain kind of, you know, shrimp and things like that. And we eliminate those things.

Starting point is 00:45:34 And then we find things that have sort of sexual connotations. We eliminate those. I would say it happens, you know, every third or fourth. project, we will find something that we will eliminate and never show the client. And something you love and you're like, okay, I guess we can show that one. That's true. That happens. It does.

Starting point is 00:45:54 It does. You also said this really interesting thing about how every letter of the alphabet has a vibrance and an experience. Can you give a few examples of that? I know you're not the person doing that work specifically, but just what are some letter feelings? Well, yeah, the work is from the linguist, but at this point, I'm pretty, I'm pretty, adept in it. So, you know, let's look at, I'll start with the letter V because it is so

Starting point is 00:46:23 illustrative of what this is about. V from our research that we've done is the most alive and vibrant sound in the English alphabet. And that's whether you were, you were born in Rome or in, you know, Sausalito, California. So if you know that, If you know that as you go around the world, there are going to be some exceptions to it. It's going to have that vibrancy. So look at Corvette. I mean, they probably didn't know about B, but it's a perfect name for a car that's fast and has a big engine that roars. Think about Viagra.

Starting point is 00:47:03 Same idea. And there's been surprises to us. B, the sound of the letter B is one of the most reliable sounds in the English alphabet. That was one of our rationales, by the way, for BlackBerry, right? Because that's another example of a client who thought we were, I mean, the founder actually said, I thought the people at lexicon were crazy when they presented BlackBerry. And we said, well, let's stop and look at some of the assets here. First off, you know, black colors, technology.

Starting point is 00:47:35 Yes, not everybody knows the word berry, but we have those two bees. We talked about the nature of a compound. and all of a sudden people at least lean forward to consider it as opposed to rejecting it too fast. So those are just two examples. I mentioned Z in Azure, that's a noisy letter. X is fast and crisp as a sound. And of course, there's semantic value to all these letters.

Starting point is 00:48:05 So X is about innovation from aircraft to computers. And so you have to look at the semantic. of it and the sound symbol of it. This is so fascinating. I could listen to this stuff all day. Just thinking about Versailles with the V, that very aligns with what they're trying to do, just like very strong, opinionated way of working.

Starting point is 00:48:26 And Guillermo, he feels like a V, a V person. He is. And there's an example of a group that had a lot of confidence, right? And what their product is, is very innovative. And so we had permission there to create something new because Vercel is a coin solution, right? But notice that we put some very simple, easy to process things together there or Verve, you know, in this case. So we have, you know, in Vino Veritas, right, Truth and Wine, things like that. You have Verde, green.

Starting point is 00:49:04 So very familiar. And then there's cell like accelerate something, which is really what they do. they accelerate a client's performance. So that was a relatively easy name for us to present and for the, and we were excited about it and for them to sort of grasp. By the way, that's known as processing fluency, which is when you think about how the brain processes information, We're told by a number of cognitive science that our brains are a little bit on the lazy side.

Starting point is 00:49:44 We don't like complex things. And so we really strive to make all of our solutions relatively easy for the brain to process. So it leans in towards them as opposed to, I'm too busy. I'm walking past that. And so names that are complicated are, it's a liability. And we really avoid that. But for sell, perfect fluency. Okay, let's go back actually to the three steps.

Starting point is 00:50:15 So we covered two. It took us on a long tangent to dive into a lot of the stuff you shared with the second step, which you call invent. So it's essentially the three steps are, was it create? Yeah, it's identify. Identify. And I use the word invent with intention because it's more than creative, right? And then the final thing is implement. Now, for us, we're not a design firm.

Starting point is 00:50:39 We're really focused on brand names and the nomenclature that supports the name. So for us, implement is helping the client team, if they choose, for us to help them with the presentations as it goes up the chain, right? as it to help them sort of write a longer rationale for why this these names, if they're presenting three names to the president of their company or the CMO, why these names make a lot of sense. And to help them develop what we call prototypes. So we'll put the name on a baseball cap, on a T-shirt. We'll put the name in a mock up ad in the Wall Street Journal. Something is very positive, like, because of, you know, know, because of Procter & Gamble's new blank product, P&G shares, you know,

Starting point is 00:51:33 to gain 10% this year so that executives can see that the lift that that name can have. That's our implementation phase for them. And we also do consumer research or customer research at that stage. And we do that probably about 50% of the time on our projects. Where we're going out and we're really talking to their customers, and putting the names in a series of drills, drills that make them not the marketing person for the day, but we're really making these customers feel that this is a new brand,

Starting point is 00:52:11 and then we're asking about expectations, right? We're seeing how these names fire their imagination. And that's the most important thing in research, not is the name popular? Are they comfortable with it? Does it fit to concept? If you're asking people, is this fit to concept, you are inevitably always going to get a descriptive name.

Starting point is 00:52:31 You make such a good point about how you need to arm the people working with you with ammo to win over other folks internally because the person working with you is on board. And the name is bold and not an obvious winner. I could see it being important to be like, here's what you will show them to help them see the story and the mockups and all that. Yes. And what's really important is to help their management see this in the context of the marketplace and their customers. This is a very human thing, but people want their boss to be happy, right?

Starting point is 00:53:10 They want to be okay with their boss. And so they're thinking about, I don't know if my boss would like this. You know, he's more conservative or she's more conservative. We try in a very diplomatic way to say this has nothing really in the end to do with your boss. It has to do with the marketplace. Well, that's easy for me to say because I'm not working at a PNG or an Intel, right? But we really try to give that advice for it because it is about being successful in the marketplace, right? And so we first time, we try to separate the clients that we work with.

Starting point is 00:53:48 We really want to work with clients that play to win, that want to win, not just want to not lose. in a marketplace. And so we try to encourage our direct clients to sort of lead the process to really say, hey, if a manager or a CMO or a president says, look, we're the team that's going to execute on this and we believe in this, we can make this work. They usually rally around it, right? They usually do. But if you're just taking names up to a manager and saying,

Starting point is 00:54:25 what do you think? There's a different outcome often. So we like to be in that implementation base because we have so much experience and usually credibility with people. And you said that you come up with three to four thousand names. That's the top of the funnel. Yeah. And just to be, you know, clarify that, it's ideas, directions.

Starting point is 00:54:48 It's not complete ready to ship names. Yeah, not ready to ship names. Yeah. It's like there's a bit, this is a very inefficient process and a little chaotic. So in that list of 3,000 names is probably 250 potential diamonds that have to be sort of, you know, fractured and examined. I really want to see just like a documentary of this process at some point. This is the closer we're going to get for now, but this is so interesting. I want to ask about how you would approach this if you're just a startup that doesn't have the time of resource to do this.

Starting point is 00:55:21 But before I do that, is there anything else around? the process that you guys go through with clients that you think is important to share where they think might surprise people. I think we've covered it. I do. Okay. Awesome. Okay.

Starting point is 00:55:33 So most people listening to this are, there's a lot of founders, a lot of PMs on product teams. They're working out on new feature. They're about to launch a product. They got accepted into IC and they're about to launch a product. Then they have, I don't know. Let's say they have a couple weeks. I've got to come up with a name. What should they do?

Starting point is 00:55:50 So the first thing I do is to say, okay, let's, forget about developing the name for right now. And I will have them, and I think this is a good exercise for anybody. We do it here internally when we think about our business. So I say just, because most of this now, because of COVID is on video, and I'll say, just draw a shape of a diamond on a piece of paper in front of you. And I said on the top of that diamond, put the word to win, right? You know, how do you define winning is really that? I said, now on that other next corner of the diamond, what do you have to win? Write that down. On the bottom, what do you need to win? And then on that final angle, on the left-hand side, what do you have to say to win?

Starting point is 00:56:41 Okay. Then I said, now, let's go all the way to that final thing of what do you have to say to win? and that's where you just get people thinking about, well, you know, what we really have here is, and we're better than this, and then I'll just say, okay, now what you want to take that, because this is really should be about experience and behavior. How do you want to behave in the marketplace? And how do you want the marketplace to behave towards you and what kind of experience are you creating? Because, and then they'll start, you know, talking, you know, talking a lot of, little bit. I'll say, now you just need to probe on that. You need to keep going. You need to look at metaphors because this is about experience. And I'll just give them some of our examples that we've talked about. When you know, Blackberry, it says to the marketplace, they're not like the other guys. I mean, think of something like Google versus InfoSeek, right? Google is an experience. Google says, I don't know what these guys are going to do, but it's not the

Starting point is 00:57:48 practical, mundane info seek. And that's what attracts people. And so I'll do a little coaching like that. And then that usually kind of sets them free. And they're now thinking about it, not as a word, which has maybe limited value, but as creating an experience, which has the potential for unlimited value. Okay, so let me try to reflect this back for folks. So they, so the advice is draw a triangle.

Starting point is 00:58:17 So you're coming up with a name, draw a triangle at the top win. Yes. At the bottom left, was it how do you win? Yeah, what, what you, so the diamond is, you know, a diamond, okay, two triangles. Okay, got a diamond, great. Yeah, and so on that next angle there, on the right side is what do you have to win already, right? Because they, they wouldn't be, you know, either in a Y combinator or getting some seed money if they didn't have something to win, right? And so, and often people, startups don't appreciate how much they actually do have to win because they're so busy and so stressed on what they're doing.

Starting point is 00:58:56 And then what, what do they need to win? And then finally, what do you need to say? And, and, and, and then back up to, you know, defining what is winning to us, which by the way, if we, you know, we start with that question, usually on a assignment that we've been over. awarded. And if we're in a room with five people, all five people have a different, you know, definition of what their definition of that company winning. And that's good to kind of sort that out because we can move down different avenues from a creative standpoint. Okay. Let's just make sure people have these phrases because this is awesome. And I imagine many people are going to be taking notes. I'm like, cool, I'm going to do this. I hope so say the four

Starting point is 00:59:39 points of the diamond again, just so folks can write it all down. At the top of the diamond is just the word win and underneath that is how do we define winning for us as a company, right? And that can start off being simple like, you know, we want to be the dominant player here, but you really have to work at that. What does that really mean? Right. The second on that right hand tip there of the diamond is what do we have to win? What are we doing now that makes us a winner? Then we go down to the final, the bottom of the diamond, and it's what do we need to win. There could be technical things. There, people talk about talent and resources. Often there, they'll say, you know, we need a good name. We always correct that. It's not the good name. It's the right name. And then finally is,

Starting point is 01:00:29 what do we need to say? And that's where I say, that's where you want to spend some time in really thinking about all the things you need to say, that you can say, or you even like to say, which may be right now you can't say, but you want a name that actually is going to have the flexibility as to when you can say that, it still works. And that gets them into behavior and experience. And that usually launches a really good, a good discussion with founders internally. And so in the content, when you say have to win, what you're thinking about there is what is it that you have that will help you win and then what is it you need to have in order to win? And all companies are in that same situation.

Starting point is 01:01:12 They have a bunch of stuff, but they need it. You know, a P&G might say, well, we need a, you know, a good distributor. Okay, all right. Well, that's put that on the list, right? And then you might say, well, we need an, when it gets to what do we have to say, we have to say the right things so that a distributor is interested in us. And then that, then you go down sort of an avenue there. Well, what is that, right?

Starting point is 01:01:37 And it all, it should, if you work at it, it's not, this is not a one hour exercise. It may be an, you know, exercise repeated over the next four or five days. Okay, so you have this diamond and then the idea is just sit and put names down in a Google Doc, let's say. Yeah, and then you start, but, but there is this, and maybe it's naivete, I guess that's probably the best word for this, is that, because I do hear this all the time. Hey, we, you know, we've worked at this. We got a list of 200 names and, you know, they, but they don't, we don't think there's something there. And I'll say, well, 200 names is not enough, right?

Starting point is 01:02:23 Get to 1,500 names and directions. Don't evaluate them. Just generate names and directions and ideas and then have a meeting and don't evaluate, but speculate. You know, what could we do with this name? What's the potential here? There's a lot of over-evaluation in our industry, right? It makes sense.

Starting point is 01:02:53 You know, we survive as humans because we figure out what's wrong with this picture, right? If I want to cross the street, is it safe to cross the street? What's going on? Those kinds of things. You have to counter that. You have to say, let's just suspend judgment for a while. And let's do an exercise here where we take these 10 names that we think might work. And what are we going to do with it?

Starting point is 01:03:18 Because it's how you execute, you know, going back to windsurf, if as we showed them pictures of people windsurfing and waves and things, if they said, you know, that just doesn't work for us at all. I'm very uncomfortable with it. Well, then it's not their name, right? But they leaned into it. Okay, I can see this. It's easy for us to execute as dynamic.

Starting point is 01:03:42 It's different. So that's why we build these prototypes for people. And that's what I think the best advice I can give to, whether it's a startup or someone starting a new cookie company, is it's not just a list of 200 names. It's, you know, 10 or 15 lists of 200 names. names and it's thinking about what do we have to say here, what behavior, how do we want people to feel in the marketplace about us? I imagine with Google, people felt relief that it wasn't

Starting point is 01:04:15 a descriptive name, you know, that there was something new out there in the marketplace. Yeah, InfoSeek, that's such a descriptive name now that I think about it. Yes. Okay, so one more question along these lines. So say you have a list of, let's say, 2,000 or 1,000 names. There's this tension between choosing something, like, as a point. As a point, you person that is doing them themselves, your advice is choose something bold, not something descriptive. You won't know it when you see it. Very hard to do, obviously, when you're doing it by yourself. And you just advise for not, you know, not losing sight of that piece and just throwing out things that feel too scary, finding a name that's actually bold, as you suggest. First off, we disappear

Starting point is 01:04:57 human psychology. Humans only pay attention to what is new or what is different. I should say, right? So if you're looking at shoes and they're all black, black, black, and then the next pair of shoes is red, that's the first thing you focus on. And so that usually gives people permission. You know, they'll say, okay, I get that. So look for what is really different between the names that you have on your list, but also what's different from what's out in the marketplace, right? Well, you know, then you get a client like micro, Microsoft saying, well, Azure is different. There's going to be a lot of cloud stuff.

Starting point is 01:05:39 And there's a relevant point there. Azure is blue. And so there's a slight logical connection that I think gave them more permission to move forward with it, frankly. But listen, this is not an easy task. I mean, that's why we're in this business and why I felt we should be special.

Starting point is 01:06:03 because if you start doing design or advertising or, you know, other things, you can't have the intellectual engine. You can't acquire the intellectual engine that we have. So I know it's difficult, but it can be done. And you just have to give yourself some time. But stop evaluating, suspend judgment, and speculate. That's my number one advice to it. to people trying to do this on their own. Now, how can you get help? You can talk to your employees,

Starting point is 01:06:42 but it's not so much, what do you think of this name? It's, what do you think this name could do for us? That's a much better question, right? If you go out and talk to friends who don't work for your company, there's a fun drill that I suggest. I said, listen, go out to them to say, they'll know what you're doing and say, you know what, we just have a new competitor and their name is blank. What do you think about that? What happens there is you're not asking them to give you an opinion, to evaluate a name. You're asking them then, what does that name do for you? The information you're getting is that name, they're telling you what that name does for them, how it helps them to imagine, which is a fundamental role of any name. Slight tangent, but I'm going to go to arc

Starting point is 01:07:35 kind of research. We do mostly quantitative research now, but for years we did qualitative work, and we still do. But what we found in, we were always looking for the, I'll say this way, we were always looking for this answer from consumers. If a consumer said, well, I don't really know much about that new product, but I know that they're not like the other guys. That's when we knew we had a good name. Because they were, now what happened there, I mean, the technical term that we use is we've, that name will create a predisposition to consider this product because they're not like the other guys as opposed to I already have something like that.

Starting point is 01:08:21 I don't, I'm busy. I don't need another one of those things. I need something new and different and hopefully better. That's awesome. That's a good reminder. There's a quote that I found of yours that's exactly along these lines. If your team is comfortable with the name, chances are you don't have the name yet. Yes. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:08:39 And by the way, the opposite of that is we look for polarization. We look for attention in a team about arguing about these things because we think that polarization is a sign of strength in the word. And interesting story, the person who talks about. me that, honestly, was Andy Grove over the Pentium name. Because, and I learned a lot from him, I always say this. I, you know, I just was very fortunate to work with him on Pentium and Cion and a few other things. But when we went to, you know, an executive committee to present Pentium, And by the way, internally, one of the names that makes sense here, descriptive, bunch of engineers, pro-chip. Hey, it's professional, it's premium, and it's chip, so it should be pro-chip.

Starting point is 01:09:43 Okay. So Andy had to be give a presentation about the strengths of this thing. And he said, now let me tell you why I think this is the right name. He said, because I see the polarization here in it amongst people. There's this, you know, pro chip over here. There's the Pentium thing. He said, that tells me there's energy for Pentium here. And he said, that's why I think we should go with it.

Starting point is 01:10:10 And I've never forgotten that. And so we do look for that. And when we tell that story, people say, you know, you're right. There is, I mean, we are arguing about this. And there is an intensity with the name. And that's what you want. You don't want to go out into the marketplace, this very complex. competitive marketplace, regardless of the category, with something that doesn't have a level

Starting point is 01:10:31 of boldness or intensity. That was an amazing story. Just again, so kind of a tip here is if half your team, or I don't know, some percentage your team hates it, some percentage your team loves it, that's a good sign. Yeah, it is. Look for that polarization. That's what we look for. I also love this tip of asking people if, hey, our competitor just launched, they're called

Starting point is 01:10:51 windsurf, how your team reacts, if they're just like, oh, wow, that's a great. great name. I'm interested in that product. That's what you want to look for. Yes, exactly. Yeah. How important is the dot com for the name you come up with? I imagine it's really hard to get these days. Just what do you think about domain name when you think about naming? I am so glad you asked this question because it is at this point, it doesn't really matter at all. The dot com or URL address has become an area code. And whether you're in 415 or 615, it's, it's, doesn't really matter to people. And now with AI, you know, search, you know, SEO is going to be less important, right? And so I just think the principle in play here is you got to get the

Starting point is 01:11:38 right name first. And then if you can get the dot com, sure, go ahead. But if you can't, there's ways around that. You know, you can put a prefix in front of it or a little word in front of it or after it, or you go to .aI or something like that. But the principle in play is, let's get the right name first. For those who really, and there are people who really get hung up on the dot com, and they tend to be sort of older, by the way, and have in their mind sort of the hotness of the internet and having a dot com, which did make a difference 25 years ago.

Starting point is 01:12:21 25 years now or 30, right? The good news is because they're less valuable, you can typically buy a URL if you negotiate the right way and have time for $15,000, $20, $20,000, $30,000. And, you know, we say, hey, if you can do that, have fun. I'd put the $30,000 into marketing. Awesome. That's reassuring. I imagine many founders are just like, god damn it,

Starting point is 01:12:46 there's no names available anymore. Let me zoom out and just ask you this question. as a maybe a closing thought to our conversation. Say we're just in an elevator ride with someone, and I'm sure this happens to you, or just like, hey, David, I got to come up with that name. What's your biggest tip for coming up with a great name? What would your answer be?

Starting point is 01:13:06 I'd go back to forget about the word, think about behavior and experience. And then the second thing, from just a creative help, I'm a big believer in synchronicity. And we try to sort of force synchronization. and I'll give you a couple examples of that. But there's this idea of connecting sort of dots,

Starting point is 01:13:27 you know, two unrelated ideas together. And so I'll say, look, if someone says, well, you know, we're, we make, we make sailboats. And I'm trying to, I'm here in Sausalito, I guess that's why I thought about that. But, and I am trying to create a new, a new name for my company that builds sailboats. I would say, forget about sailboats.

Starting point is 01:13:51 I would go and pick out some magazines about hunting or flight flying magazines. And I would just look through those, get a notepad out, and put out words that you like, things, expressions that you like. So you're, and then that synchronicity, I said, I would bet you $5. That out of those two magazines, you will get a word that you never would have thought of, but somehow it will relate to sailing. That connects very much to your story of how you have these different teams and the teams that end up coming up with the winning name

Starting point is 01:14:31 are the ones thinking about a very different version of that product. Yes. So interesting. Okay, David, this was everything I was hoping it would be. I feel like we're going to help so many people. Is there anything that we haven't covered or that you want to leave listeners with as a final nugget or piece of advice or story before we get to our very exciting lightning around.

Starting point is 01:14:54 I'm going to emphasize one point, I think, which is that I really would like the listeners to really begin to think about how valuable a brand name can be. That is, you're not just looking for a word. You're looking for this experience, right? And if you get it right, not just a good name, but the right name, the value is almost unlimited. right and so give yourself some time give yourself a budget uh give yourself the right resources to do that second thing is you know we try to really be helpful here and so i am always uh happy to talk to people um about where they are in a process and if we can help or just give them a little bit of

Starting point is 01:15:37 advice um and we we schedule you know we call them office hours here um we're judicious about it but We are open to that. It's just playing a long-term game. So I'd like to leave that with viewers also. We're about to book out your office hours. I love that offer. I think a lot of people are going to take advantage of that. That is super cool.

Starting point is 01:15:58 David, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? Yes, I'm ready. Here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? There's a book called Resilience, which was written by a former Navy SEAL that And it's not about combat, and it's just a tiny bit about being a seal.

Starting point is 01:16:19 But it is about overcoming things, right? And it's about tenacity. And I think, you know, everybody in the world, we all have challenges and things. And I do recommend that to people. Second book is Andrew Roberts' latest book on Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill is really one of my heroes. He was one of the most unusual, provocative statesman, politicians of the 20th. a century. And here's another person that talk about tenacity and ups and downs and stick with it.

Starting point is 01:16:50 And so I do, I do like to recommend that. Some people just kind of, you know, tip their head and said, I don't know. It seems like maybe a boring book. But those are two books that I, who would ever say that Churchill's story is boring? That's absurd. I think so. I agree. I agree. It's absurd, yes. Yeah. He's so fascinating. There's a recent documentary, I think, that, really showed me the character. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Okay.

Starting point is 01:17:18 What's a recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? For me, is the Yellowstone series. We have, we're very fortunate as family. We have some property in Montana. Oh, wow. You're living a life. Yeah, very, listen, I can't tell you how fortunate I am. And I bought this property 28 years ago, so it was a lot cheaper than in a snowstorm,

Starting point is 01:17:41 and it just felt right. But I think particularly the 1883, the precursor to yellowstone. I was going to ask if you saw that because that was incredible. Yes. And then the after one, 1923, which is the post warrant, 1883 really gives people a sense of what it took by those early Americans to build a life in a place like a beautiful place, but a hard, tough place like Montana. And it's just phenomenal. The person, you know, producing and writing those things is incredibly talented. Taylor Sheridan, I think is his name.

Starting point is 01:18:18 Yeah. I love that, like, in the story, like, Montana was the easy route almost from the journey they want on. That's right. It's very true, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Like, you almost don't even need to watch Yellowstone, Yellowstone, just starting with 1883 is

Starting point is 01:18:31 probably works. In fact, I recommend people. I say there's three, but if you really want the truth about the American West, it's 1883. Yeah. I've suggested that on this podcast. I cast a bunch actually, so I love that. That's where you went. Next question, do you have a favorite product that you have recently discovered that you really love?

Starting point is 01:18:49 Maybe one you named, maybe not? Well, I didn't name it, although it's got a very good name to it. We are a whole family. I have two daughters and my wife. We're all fly fishermen. And last summer, I really, I bought this for myself, but I gave it to my wife. But it was one of those things that was present for her, but I knew I was going to use it more. And it's a hardy.

Starting point is 01:19:11 It's an old British fly rod, but it's a beautiful rod. It's just perfect for the big rivers of Montana. So that's my favorite purchase. That's the first fly fishing rod of the podcast. Excellent choice. Next question. You have a favorite life motto that you often find yourself coming back to, sharing with friends or family?

Starting point is 01:19:30 I do. I do. And it's a little longer. So I wrote it. I have it written here somewhere. But it's the quote from T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia here, and if I can find it, I should be, yeah, I think it's a wonderful quote. So I think hopefully your viewers will like this. Here's what he said. He said,

Starting point is 01:19:53 all men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may not on their, for they may act on their dreams, with open eyes to make them possible. I just, I read that years ago, and it just, it, it, it hit me pretty hard. So, yeah. That is an amazing quote. It makes me think about the, the quote about the man in the arena.

Starting point is 01:20:25 Yes. Yeah. It's the same idea. Just a little different. Yeah. And I also think Lawrence of Arabia is a fascinating person to, what he did. So inspiring, in some ways. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:38 An amazing movie. Okay. Final question. Let me just try this. Is there a name that you didn't name that you just like, wow, that was an amazing name. I wish I hadn't come up with that name. I'll tell you, there is one name, and it's DreamWorks. I think it's a wonderful name. And it's somewhat of a somewhat ironic that the entertainment industry in general has pretty mundane names, right? So you have all these talented people. And yet when you look at, the names of production studios, movie houses, you know, comcast, you know, things like that, it's just, it's very mundane. But here's DreamWorks, just like Sonas. Check all the boxes. Compound, Dream, you know, you expect something great from Dreamworks.

Starting point is 01:21:32 They've created an experience, the experience of dreaming in a movie. I think it's a wonderful name. I wish I'd done it. That's such a cool answer. David, thank you so much for doing this. This was incredible. I learned a ton, as I imagined,

Starting point is 01:21:45 I feel like a lot of people are going to have a much easier time thinking about approaching this topic. Well, I certainly hope so. I do. It's been very, very enjoyable, very thoughtful. And I have nothing but respect for the way you do this and the talent that you have.

Starting point is 01:22:01 So very fortunate that we've come together and we live in the same place. So maybe we can get together for a couple of, a coffee or something like that. In Northern California for the win. Thank you so much for being here. You're very welcome. Bye, everyone. Take care. Thank you so much for listening.

Starting point is 01:22:21 If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenniespodcast.com. See you in the next. episode.

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding)

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