Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding)

28:26What are what's kind of like the background of these people? What are these? Where are these people? Yeah. So the fundamental quality is they're going to be curious and they're going to be hard working. This is and hopefully and this is hard to screen for, but you know, lower egos. This is unlike the advertising business which I came from. So I've six years at 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.

29:10But 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 you know, we're naming a new car here. And so I'm going to I'm going to generate 100 names and you generate 100 names and something will fall out. That just that won't those names will not there's not enough in that list to clear through our screens of legal screens or linguistic screens. And remember, we start with a creative framework and in criteria that the names need to meet. So we're looking for people who can turn out a lot of work. And when that's rejected, they just keep going.

30:01So we look for tenacious people, right? Now we have and we'll probably get to this later, 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, 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 do we find these people? More who are writers from, you know, newspaper reporters because they have to work fast.

30:50Their stories get rejected. People who might have written a novel. We have hired people from agencies over over the years. They work a little less effectively than others who have a speech writer from in I wrote speeches in Washington DC. Those people have to work hard, crank out a lot of material get rejected. Candidate says I don't like this. Start over. Those are more resilient people. That's where they come from. It's not it's not easy to find these people. It really is. I'm 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 resource and time to do this, what they should do to come up with a good name.

31:33I'm just going to let people know is they're listening because 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 length is 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. It's a three months turn and sometimes by the time they approve things and clear it's a four months process. Okay. Cool. So eight weeks, mostly if you're a big company with a lot of red tape you have to work through them longer.

32:11Okay. This point you made about three different teams with different in almost context is so interesting. So say let's use Windsor as an example, which is an amazing name, Kill In It that you guys helped come up with. So is the idea there? Okay. Here's we're naming this ID, AI ID. One of the teams has told, no, you're building a bicycle but here's all the here's all the same brief bits of bicycle and then another team's building a, I don't know, lap like I don't know something non technical essentially. Yes. Like a cup. Same more about that because that is amazing because in your finding that most of the best names come from the groups that aren't built.

32:51Let's name an amazing I, AI ID. This is a good example. So in technology, there are some things that if someone hands you a new phone and you look at it and it's tangible and it's got a shape and color things like that. Easier to name but you know the name of Windsor before it was Windsor was Codium. Right. And 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. Right. So so our rule here is if there's something that is intangible like that, we have to make it tangible.

33:33And sometimes we do that not by 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, you know, 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.

34:28And there was Windsor sitting on a list. I mean, it's 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 Windsor for us, particularly for me, you know, 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 of associations because there's wind and there's circles around that, you know, and then there's surf images around that.

35:13So one plus one equals three, right? It's interesting that when we present compounds to clients, we often get the comment, well, 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 pass that along to the team at that time, Codium. By the way, could not have been a 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 multiply effect of compounds. We showed them imagery that they could use, right?

35:58I mean, it's simple to execute on something like that. And so that's how that, that's how that came about. I'll stop there and see if you need more information or not. I mean, actually, if all this thread real quick, it's going to be kind of a tangent. You guys have been working with AI companies more and more recently, which is so interesting, is what's different about naming AI products from traditional products, not AI, I guess. First off, we are working mostly with engineers and engineers who haven't delved into the world of kind of creativity and necessarily marketing. And that's their strength.

36:39And 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 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 and the worldwide web. And that was moving pretty fast, but the internet compared to this looks like a daycare school or something like that. I mean, so so we're we're challenged by just keeping up with with developments. Right? Third thing, and this is the creative challenge here is that engineers come to us wanting more sophisticated names, right?

37:35Where they likely to end up with another codium or an anteroo or an anthropic. And we when when we saw this trend of that AI is going to take off and it was an intuitive feeling on my part, you know, I just, you know, I could have been wrong. I said, let's let's find out what's going on here. So so both not only like who's developing the products, but how do people think about AI? And we did a series of research, you know, I probably invested $20 ,000 or so. And we interviewed 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 technologies.

38:22Developers are all totally 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. Worried about it. Worried about their jobs. See the hope in it at those types of things, but haven't got the handling. 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 on to and much more natural as opposed to a codium. And they listened to us. It was simple as that. And in this case, we were right. And by the way, there's also I have to say there's some luck to this.

39:05Wind surf happened to be available. And they they sought right away, not not exactly right away, but it took about a week going back and forth to to to select it. So let me stop there and see if if that's 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 bold with stack, stacklets, wind surf with codium, basically everyone. When does it make sense to change your name? Wind surf just officially changed their entire company name to wind surf from codium. It was just a product.

39:44So let me just ask you that when does it make sense? It feels like a huge deal and a very challenging thing to do. It is challenging. And the larger you are and the more customer base you have it, it becomes 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 change your name. First one is let's focus first on startups. Startups get going early that you know they they get into Y -combinator or something like that. They're raising money and they just need a name.

40:25And 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. 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 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 and which makes that name ineffective.

41:12And the third is that a company has merged and it's time now to to create a new start and reflect to the marketplace that we're we're new now maybe bigger. We have 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. It's some some level. I'm excited to have Andrew Lueau joining us today. Andrew is CEO of one schema, one of our long time podcast sponsors, 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 Vanta and Watershed.

41:53I heard you guys launched a new data intake product that automates the hours of manual work that team 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 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 the trickiest file integrations, SFTP, S3 and even email.

42:29I 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. 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.

43:03Andrew, thank you so much for joining me. If you want to learn more, head on over to oncegeema .co. That's oncegeema .co. I want to come back to this 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, some of the people there, depending on the assignment will actually help us create names for sure.

43:44Right. 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 somewhere that no one here would know about, even if we had, if this was in Italy and there was 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.

44:34And 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 woman that runs the network for it. So it's not an insignificant facet of our business that we have to run and manage. Is there an aim you love that didn't pass the linguistic filter that ended up being like, oh, 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 on a sort of, they have a lot of interesting expressions, right?

45:26And 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. And then we find things that have sort of sexual connotations where 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 that you're like, okay, I guess we can show that one. That's true. That happens. It does. It does. You also said this really interesting thing about how every letter of the alphabet has a vibrance and an experience.

46:01Can 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 adept in it. So, you know, let's look at, I'll start with the letter V because it is so 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 born in Rome or in, you know, Sosolito, 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.

46:50It's going to have that vibrancy. So, look at Corvette. I mean, they probably didn't know about V, but it's a perfect name for a car that's fast and has a big engine that roars. Think about Viagra. 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 the time were crazy when they presented Blackberry. And we said, well, let's stop and look at some of the assets here.

47:32First off, you know, Black colors technology. Yes, not everybody knows the word berry, but we have those two Bs. 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.

47:54So, that's noisy letter X is fast and crisp as a sound. And of course, there's semantic value to all these letters. Sue X is about innovation from from aircraft to computers. And so you have to look at the semantics of it and the sound symbol of it. This is so fascinating. I could listen to this stuff all day. Just thinking about Versel with the V, the very lines with what they're trying to do, just like very strong opinionated. Yes, yes, working. And Guillermo, he feels like a V person. He is. And there's an example of a group that had a lot of confidence. Right. And what the product is is very innovative.

48:41And so we had permission there to create something new. Because Versel is a coin solution, right? But notice that we put some very simple easy to process things together. There are ver, ver, you know, in this case. So we have, you know, in Dino Veritas, right? Truth and wine, things like that. You have Verde, green. So very familiar. And then their 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 we were excited about and for them to sort of grasp. By the way, that's, that's known as processing fluency, which is when you, 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.

49:44We 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 wants to, 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 cell, perfect fluency. Okay, let's go back actually to the three steps. So we covered two. I went, it took us on a long tangent to dive into a lot of the stuff you shared with the, the second step, which you call invent. So it's essentially the three steps are, was it create? Well, which, yeah, identify and identify.

50:29And 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. We're really focused on brand names and the nomenclature that supports the name. But 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 or the CMO, why these names make a lot of sense? And to help them, we develop what we call prototypes.

51:17So we'll, we'll put the name on a baseball cap on a t -shirt. We'll put the name in the mock -up ad in the Wall Street Journal. Something's very positive. Like because of, you know, because of productoring, Gamble's new blank product, PNG shares, you know, gain 10 % this year. So that executive 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.

52:02Drills that make them not the marketing person for the day, but we're really, we're really making these customers feel that this is a new brand. And then we're asking about expectations, right? Or 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. You make such a 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.

52:42Then 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 mock -ups on 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? They want to be okay with their boss. And so they're thinking about, I don't know if my boss would like this. 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.

53:25It 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 of all, we try to separate the clients that we work with. We really want to work with clients that play to win, that want to win, that 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.

54:11And we believe in this, we can make this where they usually rally around it, right? They usually do. But if you're just taking names up to a manager and saying, what do you think? There's a different outcome, offer. 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 phone. Yeah. And just to be, you know, clarify that it's it's ideas, directions, it's not complete ready to ship names. Yeah, not ready to ship names. Yeah, it's there's a bit, this is a very inefficient process and a little chaotic.

54:58So in that list of three thousand 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 research to this. 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 or they think might surprise people? I think we've covered it.

55:31I do. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So most people is hitting this. There's a lot of founders, a lot of PMs on product teams that work out on new feature. They're about to launch a product. They got accepted into YC and they're about to like launch a product that may have, I don't know, let's say they have a couple weeks. I've got to come up with the name. What should they do? 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, our business.

56:05So I say just because most of this now because of COVID is on video, 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 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? Okay. And then I said, yeah, let's go all the way to that final thing. And what do you have to say to win? And that's where you just kept people thinking about, well, you know, what we really have here is, and we're better than this.

56:56And, and then I'll just say, okay, now what you want to take that, because this is really should be about experience and 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 a 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, blackberry. It, it, it, it, it says to the marketplace, they're not like the other guys.

57:36I 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 this practical mundane InfoSeek, right? And that's what attracts people. And so I'll do a little coaching like that. And then that, 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 create draw triangle. So you're coming up with a name, draw triangle at the top, win.

58:21Yes. At the bottom left, was it how do you win? Yeah, what, what, you, so the diamond is, you know, a diamond. Okay, I should try and triangle my mind. Okay, I got a diamond. Yeah. And so on that next angle there, on the, 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. And so, and that's, and, and often people start up, don't appreciate how much they actually do have to win because they're so busy and so stressed on what they're doing. And then what, what do they need to win?

59:00And 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, on a assignment that we've been 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, 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 and like, cool, I'm going to do this.

59:37I hope so. Say the four 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, and that 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? It's 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?

1:00:16There could be technical things. There could be a 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 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 maybe 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.

1:00:53And that usually launches a really good, a good discussion with founders internally. And so in the content, when you say have to win the 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 all companies are in that same situation. They have a bunch of stuff, but they need you know, a PNG might say, well, we need a good distributor. Okay, all right. Well, that's that put that on the list. Right. Then you might say, well, we need an witness guest to what do we have to say? We have to say the right things so that a distributor is interested in us.

1:01:31And then that then you go down sort of an avenue there. Well, what is that right? And it all it should if you work at it, it's not this is not a one hour exercise. It may be an 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 not even today. 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.

1:02:19And I'll say, well, 200 names is not enough, right? Get to 1 ,500 names and directions. Don't evaluate them. Just 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?

1:02:46There's a lot of over evaluation in our industry, right? It's, it's make sense. It's, 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, and let's, 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? 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, ah, you know, that just doesn't work for us at all.

1:03:31I'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 as different. So, 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 a list of 200 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 a descriptive name. You know, that there was something new out there in the marketplace.

1:04:20Yeah, 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 2000 or 1000 names. There's this tension between choosing something like as a person that is doing them themselves, your advice is to choose something bold, not something descriptive. You won't know 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 side of that piece and just throwing out things that feel too scary, finding a name that's actually bold as you suggest.

1:04:55First off, we, we, this pure human psychology, we really 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, 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, 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 Microsoft saying, well, Azure is different.

1:05:37There's going to be a lot of cloud stuff and there's a relevant point there as your is blue. And so there's a slight logical connection that I think gave them more permission to move forward with it frankly. But it listen, this this is not an easy task. I mean, that's that's why we're in this business and why I felt we should be specialized because if you start doing design and or advertising or, you know, other things, you can't have the intellectual engine. You can't acquire the intellectual engine that 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 that's that's my number one advice to people trying to do this on their own.

1:06:36Now, how can you get help? You can you can talk to your employees, 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 there's a fun drill that I suggest. I said, listen, go out to them and 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 of to evaluate a name. You're asking them then, what does that name do for you?

1:07:19The information you're getting is that 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. So, slight tangent, but I'm going to go to arc 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 offset 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.

1:08:06Because they were now what happened there, I mean, the technical term that we use is we've created 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. I know 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. And by the way, the opposite of that is we look for polarization.

1:08:44We look for attention in a team about arguing about these things. Because we think that polarization is a sign of strength in the word. Interesting story. The person who taught me that honestly was Andy Grove over the Pentium name. Because, and I learned a lot from him, I always say this. I just was very fortunate to work with him on Pentium and Cion and a few other things. But when we went to 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.

1:09:41So it should be pro -chip. So Andy had to be give a presentation about the strengths of this thing. And he said, he said, now let me tell you why I think this is the right name. He said, because I see the polarization here and it amongst people. There's this 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. 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.

1:10:22And that's what you want. You don't want to go out into the marketplace. This very competitive marketplace, regardless of the category, with something that doesn't have a level 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 of your team hates it, some percentage of your team loves it. That's a good sign. Yeah, it is. It is. Look for that polarization. That's what we look for. I also love this tip of asking people if our hair competitor just launched, they're called Windsurf, how your team reacts if they're just like, oh, wow, that's a great name.

1:10:56I'm interested in that product. That's 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 where you're in 415 or 615, it doesn't really matter to people. And now with AI, you know, search, SEO is going to be less important. Right. And so I just think the principle play here is you got to get the right name first.

1:11:41And 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 dot 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 the dot com, which did did make a difference 25 years ago. But it's 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, 20, 25, 30 ,000 dollars.

1:12:36And you know, we say, hey, if you can do that, have fun. I'd put the 30 ,000 dollars into marketing. Awesome. That's a reassuring. I imagine many founders just like, I'm a, there's none of them available anymore. Let me zoom out and just ask you this question as a maybe a closing thoughts to our conversation. So you were just in an elevator ride with someone and I'm sure this happens to you or just like, hey, David, I got to come over that name. What's your biggest tip for coming up with a great name? What would your answer be? I'd go back to think about, forget about the word, think about behavior and experience.

1:13:11And then the second thing from just a creative help, I'm a big believer in synchronicity. And we try to sort of force synchronicity here and I'll give you a couple examples of that. But this is this idea of connecting sort of dots, 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, I'm trying to, I'm here in Sausley, don't I guess that's why I thought about that. But and I'm trying to create a new, a new name for my company that builds sailboats. I would say, forget about sailboats. I would go and pick out some magazines about hunting or flight flight flying magazines.

1:14:00And I would just look through those, get a note pad out and and put out words that you like, things, expressions that you like. So you're, you're, and then that synchronicity, I said, I would bet you five dollars that out of those two magazines, you will get a word that you never would have thought of. But somehow it would relate to sailing. That's, that connects very much to your story of how you have these different teams and the teams that end up coming up with a winning name or the ones thinking about a very different version of that product. Yes. So interesting. Okay. David, this was everything I was hoping it'd be.

1:14:39I 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 round? 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, 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, and if you get it right, not just a good name, but the right name, the value is almost unlimited. And so give yourself some time, give yourself a budget, give yourself the right resources to do that.

1:15:23Second thing is, you know, we try to really be helpful here. And so I am always happy to talk to people about where they are in a process and if we can help or just give them a little bit of advice. And we, we schedule, you know, we call them office hours here.

1:15:45We're open to that. It's just plain 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. 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 I was written by a former Navy SEAL that, and it's not about combat, and it's just a tiny bit about being at a SEAL.

1:16:20But 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 century. And here's another person that talked about tenacity and ups and downs and stick with it. And so 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.

1:17:00But those are two books that I would say that Churchill's story is boring. That's absurd. 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, incredible. Okay, 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. Wow. You're living a life. I'm, 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 snow storm and it just felt right.

1:17:42But I think particularly the 1883 that the precursor to you. I was going to ask if you saw that because I was incredible. Yes. And then the after one, 1923, which is the post -war 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 shared it and I think it's, yeah. I love that like in the story, Montana was the easy route almost from the journey they went on. That's right.

1:18:24It's very true. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I like, you almost don't even need to watch the Yellowstone Yellowstone just starting with 1883 as door works. In fact, I recommend people, I say there's three, but if you really want the truth about the American West is 1883. Yeah. I suggested that on this podcast 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? 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.

1:18:58We're all fly fishermen. Last summer, I really, but 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, yet it's a hearty. 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. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often find yourself coming back to you, sharing with friends or family? I do. I do. And it's a little longer.

1:19:33So I wrote it. I haven't written here somewhere, but it's the quote from T .E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, Arabia here, and if I can find it, I should, should be. Yeah. I think it's a wonderful quote. So I think hopefully your viewers like this. Here's what he said. He said that 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, 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 hit me, pretty hard.

1:20:19So yeah. That is an amazing quote. It makes me think about the quote about the man in the arena. Yes. Yeah. It's the same idea. It's just a little different. And I also think Lawrence of Arabia is a fascinating person to take what he did. So inspiring in some ways. Yeah. I'm 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 ironic that the entertainment industry in general has pretty mundane names.

1:21:05So you have all these talented people. And yet when you look at the names of production studios, movie houses, you know, Comcast, things like that is just, very mundane. But here's Dreamworks. Just like Sonus. Check all the boxes. Compound, dream, you know, you expect something great from Dreamworks. 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 is incredible. I learned a ton as I imagined. I feel like a lot of people are going to have a much easier time thinking about approaching this topic.

1:21:49Well, I certainly hope so. I do. I spend very, very enjoyable, very thoughtful. And I have nothing but respect for the way you do this and the talent that you have. So very fortunate that we've come together and we live in the same place. So maybe we can get together for a cup of coffee or something. No other California for the win. Thank you so much for being here. You're very welcome. Hi, everyone. Take care. Thank you so much for listening. 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.

1:22:33You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.