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

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/63bc0c4c4d798b53

Your brand name, nothing's gonna be used more often or for longer than that name. Design will change, message 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. If your team is comfortable with the name, chances are you don't have the name yet. We look for polarization.
We look for tension 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 gonna know it when they s.
It almost never happens. Most people listening to this are founders, a lot of PMs on product teams. Let's say they have a couple weeks. Gotta come up with a name. What should they do?
Today my guest is David Plasic. David is the founder of Lexicon Branding, which pioneer 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 Vercelle and Windsurf and Capcut and Azure.
In our 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 Vercelle and Windsurf.
Also, such interesting insights about the feeling and energy of every letter of the alphabet, and so much more, 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.
With that
I bring you, David.
Class.
This episode is brought to you by Work OS.
If you're building a SaaS app.
At some point, your customers will start asking for enterprise features, like SAML 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 Work OS.
including ones you probably know. Like Vercell,
Webflow and Loom.
WorkOS also recently acquired Warrant.
The fine grain authorization service.
Warren's product is based on a groundbreaking authorization system called Zanzibar, which was originally designed for Google to power Google Docs and YouTube.
This enables fast authorization checks at enormous scale, while maintaining a flexible model that can be adapted.
with even the most complex use cases. If you're currently looking to build role-based access control or other enterprise features like single sign-on, skim, or user management.
You should consider work OS.
It's a drop-in replacement for Auth Zero and supports up to one million monthly active users for free.
Check it out at workous dot com to learn more.
That's work os dot com.
Last year, 1.3% of the global GDP flowed through Stripe. That's over$1.4 trillion. And driving that huge number are the millions of businesses growing more rapidly with Stripe.
For industry leaders like Forbes, Atlassian, OpenAI, and Toyota, Stripe isn't just financial software. It's a powerful partner that simplifies how they move money, making it as seamless and borderless as the internet itself.
For example.
Hertz boosted its online payment authorization rates by four percent after migrating to Stripe.
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, a 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. Lear more at stripe.com.

David, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Well thank you. I I'm excited about today. Um
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 gonna learn a ton.
Also, this is just something that every founder and product buil 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 probably the word they say more than any other word.
And I feel like I've never heard uh
advice on how to do this well. So
Uh I'm really excited for this conversation. I'm gonna 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 that you had 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 the story of Sonos. Uh one a great client team. I worked with all the founders.
But
Yeah.
At the time.
They
were stuck on
being in the a a brand name that put them in the entertainment business.
And so when we presented Sonos, which has many
Uh qualities to it.
Uh um
They it was rejected because
It d it doesn't have enough sort of e emotion to it. It's not entertainment like. And
You know, we argued about that because I said I don't
Uh this is outside looking in, but I don't see you as an entertainment company. You you make s
Speaker.
Yeah.
allow for the flow of entertainment through these uh 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 all also turn it upside down and it was essentially the same, right?
And so I that got them thinking about this, but they were still has so I left that meeting. There it went in Santa Barbara.
And
I came back and they were still struggling with it and I went I got on a plane.
D didn't even bill them for this, went back down to Santa Barbara and met with them again and
said, I really believe in this name and I think it's the right for you. And at a certain point
One of the founders.
You know.
Bob McFarlane who who's

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 I you know, I think Sonovs Now is the right name and that and I feel really good about that. And
He later wrote me a note uh uh uh about
uh about how I help to do that. And we and we use it sometimes in credentials presentations because it's such a nice note. But but sonos is something I'm so I'm so glad
that I had this internal energy to I gotta go down there and make a bid for this. I don't I don't do that often, but by the way, but I felt very strongly uh 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. Uh um and and it's a little bit bi directional, right, right. We we
You know there's
Most clients.
And I can understand this, right? They they
Come to
A a naming project.
Absolutely believing.
With full confidence.
That they're gonna know it when they see it.
And the truth is
It almost never happens.
I have now uh I think this year we'll hit four thousand projects that we've completed.
And
It it's interesting.
You know, we'll tell people in a very polite way.
You're not gonna know it when you see it. But
But I know they don't believe me.
Um
And and even when I I you could see them thinking that you know what, he was right. I'm I I I I I really have to think about this. I have to process
Process it.
And
Part of that.
Part of why clients don't like
That
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 j our our job here
is to
help people to give the confidence that
Going bolder and bigger is
And and being uncomfortable.
There's uh y I I use the expression there is no power.
In comfort.
Uh not in the marketplace.
Wow, there's so much air already. Okay, so this idea of
You're not gonna know it when you see it.
Is something that
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 uh to this, which ironically, I I I never even took a psychology class in in in college or or or graduate 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 approve it.
Or select it.
Uh this is why
Um
You know.
A movie's like
uh Harry Potter or even
uh novels like Jack London's Call of the Wild.
get rejected so many times. I think Harry Potter was rejected sixteen or eighteen times and
Jack Lund is a book even more than that.
Let me think about it.
He's
He's pitching a book and he say w what are you talking about here? You're saying a dog becomes a wolf. I I've never heard of anything like that. So
So w 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
This isn't a name you're creating. That this we're creating an experience for you. We're gonna work together.
And we really our conversations always start with
Talk us about beh how you behave now and how you want to behave in the future.
Yeah.
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.

But this is a far more complex
Uh.
In interconnected world.
a digital world now that

That stuff just doesn't create
It doesn't create names like Sonos.
Or
you know, some of our other credentials that we we're probably will talk about today.
Yeah.
We're gonna 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 I'll talk about Microsoft's Azure.
Um so so when Mike Microsoft

They were pretty much stuck.
Uh and and Mark Gastroff does and w in many ways it to their credit, uh uh a lot of things don't.
need to be named they don't need trademarks they don't need brand names they need descriptors
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.
And our reaction was
If you do that.
Uh.
You're gonna be in an ocean of other cloud this, cloud that.
And you have an opportunity as Microsoft here to to really emerge as a leader in this. And so
No, there was a discussion about okay, we'll 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. Okay.
And so we did that and we
Yeah uh along the way we we uh
What we
Came up with
this word Azure, which is, you know, another word for blue and so there was a link
to clouds, sk blue sky, clouds, things like that. And but
We really
presented it based on its linguistic qualities. It's a it's a noisy word. That that Z in there starts with an A.
Yeah, you know, and it ends in a nice smooth flow.
So we we really strive to do create names that are balanced.
And
in a very busy competitive
World.
Having some
A strong signal.
Which is generated by noise.
is a good thing.
Uh the reaction wasn't
W wasn't good.
Uh uh, you know, one of the clients said, That's just a dumb idea.
And I in you know we uh this

But
But
Um
I I I think along the way.
Um
A as we talked about it.
they began to warm up to this. And now of course it's I don't know a
the hundred billion dollar brand or s or 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 that's the you know, we're describing it.
But that's a statement.
And I think that
Yeah, well, I don't think I know. That's what I said in one of the presentations is you don't want to make a statement here. You wanna
You want to start a story, right? And and Azure's gonna behave differently in the marketplace.
Then
you know, cloud pro.
w w 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 f 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? Just anything you can share there to help people see this is the power of a great name.
Let's look just at the
At the reality of this.
Y your brand name, whether it's product name or company name, nothing's gonna 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.
they that their bond between you and that brand.
uh or them in the brand, I should say.
become stronger and stronger.
So
You want that name to s to to stick in their mind to be distinctive.
Be because distinctiveness is what creates that cumulative uh advantage.
The second thing is this notion of what I call
uh asymmetric advantage.
It makes perfect sense, and most people most clients agree with this when we when 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 10 other cloces.
You're not gonna stand out in the marketplace. You won't have the ability to create that.
necessarily that cumulative advantage in the marketplace. So so those are those are my
Two
reasons why names are I think you know
The done right.
And we we do
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 for for clients. And
And because the right name does
Delivered.
Asymmetric advantage.
And cumulative advantage.
Uh for you.
And that for us
has almost unlimited value.
Uh uh this is a great answer. Essentially what you're saying is
It's not gonna 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.
the m like you need every advantage you can get.
Exactly.
And this is maybe a little bit off.
uh uh uh 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 a along the way. Um
Yeah, in in in college, if you studied any Greek or
uh uh you know classics.
is called the Melian Dialogues and it's a dialogue
It's
We'll take
Anybody listening this maybe twenty five minutes to read it.
between the Athenians and the government.
Of Melos and the Athenians.
had decided that they needed that island.
And they went and approached him very nice way
But uh that
We wanna 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 they by the time they got there.
they had created asymmetric advantage in terms of ships and men and all this other stuff.
It's just a there by 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 it's marketing really is about asymmetric advantage, and so why not start
From the very beginning.
with with an advantage.
That's the value of an name.
Let's dive into the actual process. You guys go through and I wanna read a uh
A quote that Girma Rausch
uh shared when I asked him about what it was like working with you. He's the CO and co-founder of Vercel, which he has worked with. I definitely want to hear that story, by the way. 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 he is uh a a very impressive uh uh you know innovator in the in this category, and we greatly enjoyed working with him. Well, the our process is real, I'll break it down in three steps. Um
If uh first we have to identify, then we invent and then we implement. So it's it's just three things. It's not
It's not rocket science, but it does it's a combination of
Creativity.
And
discipline, right? And obviously talented people and experience in these things.
So let's just kind of
go through those things in
in the first section of identify, it's really trying to find out from the client.
Let's talk about behavior.
Right. So how do you how are you behaving now?
And how do you want to behave in the future, right?
that behavior is bi directional. In other words
The marketplace
behaves towards a versal. That's you know, that's the name we created for it, Guillermo.
And
they behave towards the marketplace. And and and that's an important point because everything, you know, buildings are bi-directional, even, you know, the the the look at a building, you behave differently towards a temple than you or a church versus, you know, a uh holiday in, uh in terms of
how that architecture.
uh states.
So we focus on that.
Behavior is closely aligned for us with experience.
How do you want this brand?
Two.
the experience of this brand.
Yeah.
When we listen to those things
we begin to think about, you know, rhythm of the of the name.
Um
So something like Dasani has a lot of rhythm to it, right? It's kind of calming.
Right.
Uh and 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 the landscape. And we're looking for what are the words.
you know, the what are the brand names first, and then what language are they using?
In this space.
So so because we want to be
We have to be distinctive.
If a brand name isn't distinctive,
you lose, right? Then then you're imitating and that's a form of suicide. I you know, that's a famous quote from some
I think the president of P and G uh you know, fifty years ago or something like that. So
So
That's that first phase which allows us to create what we call a creative framework.
And we don't even use the word
objectives here because that gets too logical. We we actually
Framework for us is a metaphor for a window for us and our teams.
And our linguist to travel through.
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 c clients will sign off on that.
And then
We get going.
Uh this so now we're move to the invent stage.
And in the Invent stage, we do really two things. You can look at this as, you know, two lay of our process. And I I think the second layer is probably what makes us quite unique in the marketplace.
I and it it's the result of millions of dollars of
uh of of R and D on our part.
So the first thing is n no surprise to anyone we we work with
You know.
creative individuals.
And
We don't use this this will be contrary, and we don't use
large brainstorming sessions. I did when I first started the company. I used freelancers, I used brain barge 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 on significant projects, we always use three teams.
Uh and each team gets a different briefing. One team knows everything about the project.
But the other teams.
Don't
will replace if we're working for Microsoft, the second team thinks they're working for Apple.
I mean, they know it's disguise. We're not keeping this from anyone. And then the third team, we take it out of computers and you know, they might be naming it a bicycle or a car or something like that.
What we're trying to do is
uh open up the coffers of creativity uh for 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.
Yeah. Yeah, I think the process at some point.
Uh uh I will
Uh hopefully right a
uh either a a good article on this or maybe even a book. But this process would work for I think a lot of things. I I I know I I know
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.
Um
in and it's in two ways. One
Building
proprietary knowledge. So we know
through an through that we funded.
a an extensive amount about an area in l language called or linguistics called sound symbolism. So
What are the sounds?
Um
The twenty six letters of the alphabet.
And what do they do? How do they evoke things? Well it it turns out that that that
Each of those letters.
Sends out a signal.
That
That creates
a certain sort of vibration, if you will, or or experience.
Yeah.
There's been research on that over the years, but there were some gaps and we decided to
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 with
You know, we we've hired p linguists from MIT.
From Berkeley.
We have a linguistic internship here.
I actually just ran this
Number.
Uh
Preparing for for for this discussion.
We have employed
Over it.
Four decades now, two hundred and fifty three
a linguists, most of them PhDs.
Some of them contract, some of them actual employees. Well, that's a lot of intellectual knowledge. So we we really have what I call an a linguistic
engine here. And then we now have an operating network of
Um I j I just checked on this figure yesterday. Uh we have a hundred and eight linguists in seventy six.
countries.
that help us. Some of them do creative work.
Others.
Uh we'll do just the analysis of 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
No.
Over eighteen thousand small word units, technically called morphemes. And so
we also can tap in from a sound standpoint. I you know, what are what are the what are the sounds of reliability? What are the sounds of aliveness?
Um 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
like um a 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 a, you know, an engineering layer sort of floats up into the creative teams. And so it's a a mixture of things at a certain point in time.
All right, now what happens to all that?
Yet 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.
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
A need to
to clear a trademark for it to be not in conflict with
A marketplace that is
You we're almost reaching a tipping point.
in terms of difficulty of clearing names here.
Uh and so we have
uh paralegals here and we have a a trademark attorney and we'll
Analyze those names.
Uh that gets us to a small 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
w we really try to get two cycles here.
Partly because humans love to compare, right? You don't
If you're looking for a a house, you don't just
look at the first house say okay let's sign us up. You you you look
And you learn.
that we don't need a swimming pool, but we d 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 word or solution.
And we'll then run that through our our
uh screening mechanisms.
For them.
And that and that's really the process. And it that's the final phase is implementing.
Let's actually pause at that'cause I what so much I wanna talk about with the second step. And but we'll get to the step three.
Uh 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 um unlike what I expected. First of all.
the creative folks that are actually coming up with these names, what are what's kind of like the background of these people? Who are these
Where are these people?
Yeah, so so the uh the fundamental quality is
They're gonna be curious and they're gonna be hard working. Th this is and hopefully
uh and this is hard to screen for, but you know, uh uh lower egos.
Um this is
Unlike
The advertising business.
Which I came from, right? So I have six years at uh in in a a a a large agency.
Where uh
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 and maybe sent back to the drawing boards all together.
But
It it's a relatively
Yeah.
Simple process, right?
Uh a and no no disrespect uh intended there.
Here.
I can't just uh sit down and say, Okay, well we're you know, we're naming a new car here and so I'm gonna I'm gonna generate a hundred names and and you generate a hundred names and
Something will fall out.
Yeah.
That just that that won't those names will not
There's not enough in the in that list to clear
through our screens, like legal screens or linguistic screens and
Remember, we start with a creative framework and
Yeah.
Uh
a criteria that the names need need to meet.
So we're looking
For people who
Can

And when that's rejected
They just keep going. So
We look for tenacious people.
Right.
Yeah.
We have and we'll probably get to this later, but we have software here that helps people.
Uh.
Uh
generate names not really
uh maybe five years down the road
It'll actually
Spit out solutions.
But now it's helping us to generate
ideas and directions and w what I you know uh you know, sound symbolism
uh I ideas um uh word unit
uh 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? Um
More
Who are writers.
From
uh you know newspaper reporters because they have to work fast
Their stories get rejected.
People who might have written a novel.
Um
Uh w we have hired people from agencies o o over
Uh over the years.
They work a little less effectively than others who have a speech writer uh from in I I wrote speeches in Washington, DC.
uh th 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 t more resilient people.
That's where they come from.
It's not easy to find these people. It really it really isn't. Uh um let me just throw out here. I'm gonna ask you after we go through this process, what people that don't have
the resources and time to do this, what they should do to come up with a good name. I'm just gonna let people know as they're listening,'cause
'Cause 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 link the company should expect when they want to come up with an amazing name? Uh for us, the ideal link is is pretty it's pretty short. It's eight eight weeks uh for
Larger corporate
projects where you have boards and a little more
politicking to do and a little few more presentations
Um it it's a it's a three month uh turn. And sometimes by the time they approve things and and clear it, it's a it's a four month uh 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.
Um okay. This
What you mean about?
Yeah.
Three different teams with different
in almost uh s context is so interesting.
So say let's use Windsurf as an example, which is an amazing name.
Killing it.
Uh
That you guys helped come up with.
So is the idea there, okay, here's we're naming this uh IDE AI IDE.
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 build you're building a
uh I don't know, lap like I don't know. Something non technical essentially, right? Yes.
Like a cup.
Say more about that. That is amazing. Because and you're finding that most of the best names come from the groups that aren't

Let's name an amazing I AI ID.
Uh this is a good example. So so
In technology.
Um
There there are some things that
that if someone hands you a a new phone and you 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 the name of Windsurf before it was Windsurf was Codium, right? And so so it's all about
a a type of code or a process for coding.
That's
Intangible.
Yeah.
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.
And sometimes we do that.
Not by
Not by giving a team and sometimes it's an an individual.
The assignment to create
ideas for the brand itself.
But to just
dive into a particular context.
And in this case with Windsurf, it was
This this is about sort of flow about
Giving people
that are coding something.
uh 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 we're going to do.
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.
Sitting on a list.
I mean it's it 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.
Yeah.
Uh
Yeah, yeah.
Uh Windsur for us.
particularly for me, you know, it checks all the boxes.
It's a 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
uh of association because there's wind.
And there's circles around that, you know, and 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 we we often get uh the comment, Well, yeah, it's a little bit long and it's a compound. I'd I'd rather have a shorter single word. And then that that's why we actually did research on
just how effective are compounds so we we could pass that information uh along.
We pass that along to the the team at at that time Codium.
By the way.
Could not have been a
Yeah, you know, more intelligent.
Nicer.
uh more respectful team that we've we've worked with. I'm I'm so glad for for their success. But we explained to them
U about the multiplier effect uh of compounds. We showed them imagery that they could use, right? I mean, it's simple to to execute uh on something like that. And so
Th that's how that
That's how that came about. Uh I I'll stop there and and uh uh and see if
You need more information or not.

I've been working with AI companies more and more recently, which is so interesting.
Is what's what's different about naming AI products from
Traditional products. Not AI, I guess.
First off, we are working mostly with engineers. Um
And
uh engineers

you know, delved into the world of kind of creativity and and and necessarily marketing.
Uh and and that that's their strength and and what we have to do is we have to sort of
balance their strength with with our strength. So there's a little bit of a challenge there, but I I think we
We we deal with the three.
Um
Pretty well with that. Secondly, this is
The fastest moving
progressing category I have ever
Experienced.
And and I I have that perspective, right? I I I went through
the early days of of the internet, right? And and
and um the world wide web.
And
That was moving pretty fast.
But
Yeah.
The Internet compared to this looks like a
A a daycare.
school or something like that. I mean so 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
Yeah.
Engineers come to us.
wanting more sophisticated names, right? Where they w likely to end up with another codium or
an anderil or an anthropic.
And
We
W when when we saw this trend of
The AI is gonna take off.
And 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 so both not only like who's developing the products, but
How do people think about AI?
And we did a series of research. Well, we you know, I'd probably invest twenty thousand dollars or so.
And we interviewed consumers.
In Europe.
South Korea.
Just picked out one country in Asia.
And in America.
Uh
And developers in those three co and
They really have different views.
Developers 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 sceptical.
Uh
worried about it, worried about their jobs.
see the hope in it, uh 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
I they listened to us. It was simple as that. And and and in this case we were right. And by the way, there's also I have to say, there's some luck to this.
Windsurf happened to be available.
And uh they they saw it.
uh right away. Not not not exactly right away, but it took about a week going back and forth uh to
To to s to select it.
So
Let me stop there and see if
Yeah.
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 stack blitz.
Windsurfia.
Basically everyone.
When does it make sense to change your name?
Windsurf just officially changed their entire company name to Windsurf 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 do.
It is challenging and it and the larger you are and the more customer base you have, it it becomes uh y y you know, a significant uh uh project.
So the first thing is you you have to
Y you have to make an argument that
it's worth the change, right? That that we're gonna be better off by changing our name.
So there's there's a couple s situations where y you want to
You want to change your name. First one is let's let's focus first on startups.
Startups get going early. They you know, they the 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 ten or fifteen degrees.
Uh
It's almost like
We just gotta have a name.
I mean and and that is the absolute expression I hear from when it when a startup calls and says we want to change your name.
You know, we started off a a year and a half ago. We just needed the 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.
And the third
Is that a a company has merged
And
And it it's time now to
Check.
To create a new start.
uh and reflect to the marketplace that we're
We're we're new now maybe bigger.
Uh 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 at some some level.
I'm excited to have Andrew Luo joining us today. Andrew is CEO of One Schema, one of our longtime 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 Banta and Watershed.
I heard you guys launched a new data intake product that automates the hours of manual work that teams spend 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.
FileFeeds 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.
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 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 onceschema.co. That's one schema dot CO.
I wanna 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. So some of the people there on yeah, uh particular uh depending on the assignment will actually
Help us.
Create.
uh names for for sure. Right. Yeah, so we have
linguists here and then we have in the network we have
Linguists and and those linguists are
Contracts
uh to to us not full time employees.
So 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 is it 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 that
y you know, no one here would know about, even if we had
I if we this was in Italy and there was a you know a bridge or a flood that killed a lot of people.
Someone speaks Italian very well here.
say at Berkeley University, but has lived here for twenty years wouldn't know about that. And we and we we 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 woman that runs the network for so it's not an insignificant um
Uh
facet of our business that we have 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.
Yeah.
Uh
Frequently.
uh where we will find something
That that
Isn't
Really terrible.
But
It's
It's
Worrisome to us.
Um
Yeah, it's interesting.
You know, uh cultures like
Um Australian
uh or in uh people on a sort they have a lot of
Interesting expressions, right?
And so we do find things that, you know, this sounds like it's a a a certain kind of
you know, shrimp and things like that. And we eliminate those things.
And then we find things that have s sort of sexual connotations and we eliminate those.
I would say
It 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. 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
uh 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, I yeah, I I uh the the work is from the linguists, but it yeah I'm s at this point I'm I'm pretty a adept in it. So what
You know, let let's look at um
I'll start with the letter V because it it it is it is s so illustrative um of 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 and that's
Whether you were
You were born in Rome or
In you know.
Uh
Saucelito Cal California.
Um
So if you know that
If if you know that as you go around the world
Uh
there are gonna be some exceptions to it.
It's gonna have that vibrancy. So
Look at Corvette. Uh I mean they they probably didn't know about V.
but it's a perfect name for a car that's fast and has a you know big engine that roars.
Think about Viagra.
Same idea.
Um
And there's been surprises to us. Uh B
the the sound of the letter B is is one of the most reliable sounds in the English alphabet. That was one of our rationales, by the way, for Blackberry, right?
We be because tha that's another example of a client who thought we were
I mean the the founder actually said I I I thought the people at Lexicon were crazy.
When when they presented Blackberry.
And we said, Well, let's let's stop and look at some of the assets here. First off, you know, black colors technology.
Yes, not everybody knows the word berry, but we have those two B's.
We talked about the c nature of a compound.
And all of a sudden, people at least
lean forward to consider it as opposed to rejecting it too too fast.
Um
So so those are just two examples. I mentioned Z that in Azure, that's a noisy letter.
Um
Yeah.
X is
fast and crisp as a sound. Um
And of course there's semantic value to all these letters too. X
is about innovation from from aircraft to computers and so
Y you have to look at the semantics of it.
And the sound symbolope.
Have it.
This is so fascinating. I I could listen to this stuff all day. Uh just thinking about Vercel with the V.
But very aligns with what they're trying to do, just like very strong opinionated.
Yes.
Way of working.
And Guillermo, he feels like a V, a V person. He is. And there's an example of the uh a group.
That had a lot of confidence, right?
And
And I'll what their product is is very innovative. And so we had permission there to create something new because Vercelle is a coin solution, right?
But notice that we put
Some very simple, easy to process.
Things together.
There or ver, you know, in this case.
So we have, you know
in Vino Veritas, right? Truth and wine, things like that. You have
uh Verde green. Uh so 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 f name for us to
present and for the and we were excited about and for them to
Sort of um
A grasp.
Um
By the way, that's
Uh
That's known as processing fluency, which is
Um when you
When you think about how the brain
processes information.
Um
W we're told by a number of
uh cognitive science that that that our brains are a little bit on the lazy side. We we we don't like complex things.
And and so
We really strive.
To make all of our solutions relatively easy.
For so so for the brain to process so so it wants it leans in towards them as opposed to
Um
I I'm too busy. I'm I'm walking past that.
Um and so names that are complicated are
uh it's a liability and and we really uh avoid that.
But for sale.
Perfect.
uh 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 uh was it create? What which yeah, which it's identify
Identify it.
And 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 we're not a design firm. Uh we're
really focus on brand names and and and the nomenclature that supports the name.
But
So for us, implement is helping the client team.
Uh i y if they choose.
For us to help them with the presentations as it goes up.
the chain, right?
Uh as it
uh uh to help them sort of write a longer rationale for why this
These names if they are presenting three names to
the president of their company or or the CMO.
w why these names make a lot of sense.
And and to help them we develop
what we call prototypes. So
we'll 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's very positive like because of
You know, um because of Procter Gamble's new blank product, um
Yeah, P and G shares, you know, to gain ten percent this year.
So that executives can see the
the lift that that name can have.
That's our implementation uh phase.
for for them. And we also do
uh consumer research or customer research at that stage.
And we do that probably about 50% of the time on our on our projects where we're going out and we're really talking to their customers.
and and putting the names in a series of drills.
Drill 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 seeing how these names fire their imagination.
And that's the most important thing.
Yeah in research. Not
Is the name popular?
Uh it are they comfortable with it. Does it
fit to concept. If if you're asking people is this fit to concept, you are inevitably
Always gonna get a descriptive name.
You make such a good point about how you need to arm the
People working with you with
Uh ammo to win over
other folks internally because the the person working with you is on board.
Then and the name is bold and not an obvious winner.
Uh, I could see it being important to be like here's what you'll
should show them to help them see the story and the mock ups.
And all that.
Yes. And what's really
Important.
Is
Two
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 they 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, you know, 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,
Uh you know, 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, uh for because it is about
being successful in the marketplace, right?
And so
We
First off, we try to
Separate.
Okay.
Clients.
that we work with we we really wanna work with clients that play to win, that that want to win, that not
Not just wanna not lose.
uh in in in a marketplace.
So we try to encourage our
direct clients to sort of lead the process to to really say, hey, I it if a if a manager
Or a CMO or president says
Look.
We're the team that's gonna execute on this and we believe in this.
Uh
We can make this work.
They usually rally around it, right? They they they usually do.
Um, but if you're just taking names up.
to a manager.
Uh and saying what do you think?
it's there's a different outcome offered. So we like to be in that implementation phase because we have so much experience and and
And usually credibility w with with people.
And you said that you come up with three to four thousand names.
That's the topic. Yeah, and and and just to be yeah, clarify that it's
It's uh
Ideas, directions, uh
It's it's not
Completely ready to ship names. Yeah, not ready to ship names about it. Yeah. There's a bit this is a very inefficient process and a little chaotic.
Uh so in that list of three thousand names.
is probably
Two hundred and fifty
potential diamonds that have to be sort of, you know, fractured and examined.
I I really want to see just like a documentary of this process at some point. This is the closest we're gonna get for now, but this is so interesting. I wanna ask about how you would approach this if you're just a startup that doesn't have the time or resource to do 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 that you think might surprise people.
I think we've covered it. I I do awesome. Okay, so
Most people visiting this are there's a lot of founders, a lot of
PMs on product teams, they're working on new feature, they're
About to launch a product.
they got accepted into Y C and they're about to like launch a product, then they have I don't know.
Let's say they have a couple weeks.
Gotta come up with a 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.
So I say just
'Cause most of the S now because of Covid is on video.
Um
Yeah, I'll say
Just draw a 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 it. I said now on that
Other than
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?

And I said, Yeah.
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 w and we're better than this and
And I'll 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 and then they'll start
you know, talking a little bit, I s 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.
Bla and I'll I'll just give them some of our examples that we've talked about. We had b Blackberry
Yeah.
Yeah.
It it says to the marketplace.
They're not like the other guys. I'm I mean think of something like
Google.
Versus info seek.
Right.
Uh
Google is an experience. Google says, I don't know what these guys are gonna do, but it's not this practical, mundane
Info seek.
Right.
And that's what attracts people. And so
I'll do a little coaching like that. And and then I 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 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.
Yes.
At the bottom left was it How Do You Win?
Yeah, what what you so so the diamond is, you know, a diamond. Oh, diamond. Okay, I should try to triangle my mind. Okay, diamond, great. 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, right? And so and that's
And
And
Often
People
Startups don't appreciate how much they actually do have to win because they're so busy and so stressed on on what they're doing. And then
What what do they
need to win.
And then finally, what do you need to say?
Right and and and
And then back up to
You know.
defining what is winning to us.
Which by the way
Uh if we you know, we start with that question usually uh uh on a
uh assignment that we've been awarded.
And if we're in a room with five people
All five people have a different you know, uh um definition of what
their definition of that company winning.
And that's good to kinda 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. I hope so. So say the four points of the diamond again just so folks can write it all down. At the top of the diamond is uh just the word win, and underneath that is
How do we define winning?
For us as a company, right?
And and that that can can start off being simple like, you know, we want to be the dominant player here, but the you really have to work at that. What does that really mean, right?
The second
Uh on that right hand
uh 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.
um the bottom of the diamond and it's what do we need to win.
There could be technical things, there could be people talk about talent and resources.
Um
Often there they'll say w you know we need to
a good name. Uh we always correct that. It's not the good name, it's a 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 would even like to say.
Which maybe right now you can't say.
But you want a name that actually is gonna 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
Um
a a good discussion uh with founders uh in internally.
And so in the context in 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's it you need to have and and all companies are in that same situation. They they have a bunch of stuff.
But they needs me uh you know, a a P and G might say, Well, we need a you know a good distributor.
Okay. All right. Well that's
Yep.
Put that on the list. Right.
And then you might say, Well, we need an uh when it gets to what do we have to say, we have to say the right things so that a distribut
is interested in us. And then that
that then you go down sort of a an avenue there. Well what what is that, right?
in it at all. It it should if you work at it, it's not this is not a
a a one hour exercise. It 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
Sitting
put names down on in a Google Doc.
Let's say.
Yeah. And then you start but
But yeah.
Yeah.
Th there is this
Yeah in
And maybe it's naivete. I 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 we've worked at this, we got a list of uh two hundred names and
You know, they
But they don't
We we don't think there's something there. And I'll say, Well, two hundred names is not enough, right?
Yeah.
Get to
a thousand fifteen hundred 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?
Uh
The the
There's a lot of over evaluation in
uh our industry.
Right.
Um
Yeah.
It's makes sense.
You know, we survive as humans because
We figure out what's wrong with uh
this picture, right? Uh if if I wanna 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 let's just suspend judgment for a while and
And what's
Let's do an exercise here where we take these ten names that we think might work and what are we gonna do with it? Because it's
How you execute.
Um
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. I'm very uncomfortable with Well then it's not their name.
Right.
Uh uh but
They leaned into it.
Okay, I can see this. It's e you know, easy for us to execute. It's dynamic, it's 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 a uh w whether it's a startup or someone starting a new cookie company is
It's not just a list of two hundred names.
It's
uh you know, ten or fifteen lists of two hundred 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 thing. You know, that there was something new out there in the marketplace.
Yeah. InfoSeq, 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 two thousand or a thousand names.
There's this tension between
choosing something like as a 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.
Any just advice 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
We
This appear
S human psychology.
We really humans only pay attention to what is new or what is different, I should say, right? Uh uh um
So if 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 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?
Uh well you know, then you get a a client like Microsoft saying, Well, Azure is different.

Uh
There's gonna be a lot of cloud stuff and
It 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, fran frankly.
But
The
It it listen, this this is not an easy task. I mean that's that's why we're in this business and and why I felt
we should be specialized because if you start doing design and
or advertising or uh you know
uh other things.
You you can't have the
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 to people trying to do this on their own.
Now.
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.
Um there's a
uh th there's a fun drill that I suggest. I said, listen, go out to them and say
They'll know what you're doing.
say, you know what, that 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? Yeah, the information you're getting is that that name
They're telling you what that name
Does for them.
helps them to imagine, which is a fundamental role of
Of any name.
S slight tangent, but I'm gonna go to our kind of research.
Uh we do mostly qu
Quantitative research now, but
For years we did.
Uh
qualitative work. And we still do.
Uh but
What we found in
We were always looking for the I'll say it this way, we're 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.
Uh big
Because they were now what what happened there, I mean the technical term that we use is
We've create that name will create a pre
disposition to consider this product.
Because they're not like the other guys.
As opposed to
I already have something like that. I don't 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 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 we and by the way, the opposite of that is uh we look for polarization.
Uh we we we look
For tension.
in a team about arguing about these things.
Um, because we think
Yeah.
Polarization is a sign of strength in the word.
And
Interesting story. The person who taught me that
Honestly was Andy Grove.
Over
Pintium name.
Because and I learned a lot from him. I always say this. I I I you know, I I just was very fortunate um to to work with him on on Pintium and Seon and a few other things.
But when we
When it we went to
i you know, uh an executive committee to present
Pantium.
Mm.
And by the way, internally one of the names that that and makes sense here.
Descriptive
Bunch of engineers pro chip.
Hey, it's professional, it's premium, uh, and it's chip, so it should be pro chip.
But
Okay.
So
Um
Andy
had me 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 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.
And I've never forgotten that. And and so we do look for that.
Uh
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 competitive marketplace.
Regardless of the category.
With something that
doesn't have a level of boldness or intensity.
That was an amazing story.
Uh just again. So kind of a
A tip here is if half your team or I don't know, some percent of your team hates it.
Some percent energy 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 hey, our competitor just launched, they're called windsurf.
how your team reacts if they're just like, Oh wow, that's a great name. I'm I'm interested in that product. That's that's what you want to look for.
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Howard is the dot com.

the name you come up with, I imagine that'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
N at this point.
It doesn't really matter at all.
The the
The dot com or URL address has become an area code and whether you're in
four one five or six one five, it it doesn't really matter to people.
And now with AI, you know, search the you know, SEO is gonna be less important, right?
Uh and and and so
I I just think the principle in play here is you gotta get the 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 you know, you can put a a prefix in front of it or a little word in front of it or an after it, or you go to dot dot AI or something something like that. But the
The principle in play is
Let's get the right name.
Burst.
For those who really and there are people who
really get hung up on the dot com.
Uh
Yeah, and and they tend to be sort of
Older by the way.
Uh
and have in their mind sort of the hotness of the internet and having the dot com, which did did make a difference twenty five years ago. But
Twenty five years now.
Or three.
Right.
Um
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
Fifteen, twenty, twenty five, thirty thousand dollars.
And you know, we say, Hey, if you can do that.
Have fun.
I'd put the thirty thousand dollars into marketing.
Awesome. That's reassuring. I I imagine many
Founders just like God damn it, 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.
So you were just in an elevator ride with someone and I'm sure you this happens to you or just like
Hey David, I gotta come up with that name. What
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.
And then the second thing from just a a uh a creative help.
Um I'm a
Big believer in synchronicity.
Uh and we try to sort of
force synchronicity here and I'll give you a couple of examples of that.
But this 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
Um we we we make uh we make sailboats.
Yeah, and I'm uh I'm trying to
I'm here in Sauce Salito. I guess that's why I thought about that. But uh and I am trying to create a 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.
Uh.
Or
Flight flight flying magazines.
And I would just
look through those, get a notepad 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 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 will relate
J.
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 are 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. I feel like we're gonna 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
Gets our very exciting
Lightning round.
I I I'm gonna emphasize one point, I think, which is
That
Uh I I I really would like the
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.
Right. And so give yourself some time.
Give yourself a budget.
Uh give yourself the right resources to do that.
Se second thing is, you know, we try to really be helpful here.
And so I am always
Uh
happy to talk to people.
um uh uh about where they are in a process and if we can help or just give them a little bit of advice. Um
And we we schedule
you know, we call them office hours here. Um we're
judicious about it, but we we are open to that. Um it's just playing a long term game. So I I'd like to leave that with the viewers also.
We're about to book out your office hours. I love that offer. I think a lot of people are gonna 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 uh was written by a a a former Navy SEAL that
Um
And it's not about combat, and it's uh it it's just a tiny bit about being a seal.
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 and I do recommend that.
um to people.
Second book is uh Andrew Roberts' latest book on Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill is really one of my heroes.
He was one of the most unusual provocative statesmen, uh politicians of the twentieth century.
And here's another person that talked about tenacity and ups and downs and stick with it. And so I I do I do like to recommend that uh some people just kind of
You know
Tipped their head and said, Uh I don't know. It's it it seems like
Maybe a boring book, but but those are two books that I Who would ever say that Churchill's story is boring?
That's absurd.
Yeah.
I think so. I I agree. I agree. It's absurd. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He's so fascinating. Uh there's a recent documentary, I think, that uh really showed me the character. Yeah.
Yeah.
Incredible. Okay. What's a recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?
for me I is the the Yellowstone series. Um
We we have we're very fortunate as a family. We have some
property in Montana. You're living the life.
I'm I'm yeah, very very listen, very I can't.
tell you how fortunate I am. And and uh and I bought this property.
uh tw twenty eight years ago, so it was a lot cheaper than in a snowstorm and it just felt right.
But
Uh, I think particularly the eighteen eighty three that the the precursor to I was gonna ask if you saw that'cause that was incredible.
Yes. And then the after one, nineteen twenty three, which is the post one.
eighteen eighty three really gives people a sense of
What it took.
By those early Americans.
to to to build a life in a place like a beautiful place, but a hard
tough place like Montana. So it and it's just it's just
But phenomenal.
Um the the person uh you know
producing and writing those things is incredibly talented.
Taylor Sheridan, I think is his name. Yeah.
I love that like in the story it like Montana was the easy route almost from the the journey they went on. That's right. It's very true, yeah.
Oh man. Yeah. I like you almost don't even need to watch Yellowstone, Yellowstone just starting with eighteen eighty three is
Yeah works. I in fact I recommend people I say there's three, but if you really want
the the the truth about the American West is it's eighteen eighty three. Yeah. I've uh suggested that on the 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, uh, although it's got a very good name uh to it. Uh we are a whole family. Uh I have two daughters uh and and my wife. Uh we're all fly fishermen and uh
Uh last summer um
I really but I I bought this for myself, but I gave it to my wife. But but it was one of those things as a present for her, but I knew I was gonna use it more. And it's a and it's a hardy, it's an old British.
Fly rod, but it's a
beautiful rod. It's just perfect for the big rivers of of Montana. So that's my 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, sharing with friends or family?
I do, I do. And I I it it's it's a little longer. So so I wrote it I I have it written here somewhere, but it's um it it's the the quote from um
T E Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia uh Arabia here, in if I can
Find it.
Yeah.
Uh I I think it's a wonderful quote. So I think hopefully your viewers will like this.
Here's what he said, he said uh 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 for for they may act.
on their dreams with open eyes.
To make them possible.
I I just I read that years ago and it just it it
Uh.
It hit me, huh?
Pretty hard.
So
Yeah.
That is an amazing quote. It makes me think about the the quote about the the man in the arena.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's the same it's the same idea. It's just a little different.
Yeah. And I also think Lawrence of Arabia is a fascinating per person, uh to to to ex what he what he did. So
inspiring in some ways.
Yeah. Amazing movie.
Okay, final question.
Uh, let me just try this. Is there a name that you didn't name?
that you're just like, wow, that was an amazing name. I wish I had come up with that name.
I I'll tell you there is one name. Um
And it's dream works.
Um
I think it's a wonderful name and it it 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 the names of production studies, movie houses
Um
You know, Comcast.
Uh you know, th think things like that. It's just it's it very mundane, but here's DreamWorks.
Just like Sonas.
Check all the boxes.
Compound.
Dream I you know, you 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 was incredible. I learned a ton, as I imagined. I feel like
A lot of people are gonna have a much easier time thinking about approaching this.
Topic. Well, I certainly hope so. I do. It's been very, very enjoyable. Uh uh very thoughtful. Um, and uh I have nothing but uh respect for the way you you do this uh and the talent that you have. So
Uh
Very fortunate. Um
Uh to that we've
Come together and we we live in the same place. So so maybe we can get together for a cup of coffee or something. Northern California for the win. Uh
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.
You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast.com.
See you in the next episode.