David Placek
Transcript
David Placek[00:00:00)]Your brand name, nothing's going to be used more often or for longer than that name. Design will change, messaging will change, products will change,
but that name is there. Lenny Rachitsky[00:00:09)]What's a name that you came up with that you had to fight super hard for, that the client just hated?
David Placek[00:00:14)]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. Lenny Rachitsky[00:00:32)]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."
David Placek[00:00:37)]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 going to know it when they see it,
and the truth is it almost never happens. Lenny Rachitsky[00:00:57)]Most people listening to this are founders, a lot of PMs on product teams. Let's say they have a couple of weeks, got to come up with a name. What should they do? (00:01:05): Today, my guest is David Placek. David is the founder of Lexicon Branding, which pioneered the field of brand naming, and invented a few names that you may have heard of including Powerbook, Pentium, Blackberry, Swiffer, the Impossible Burger. Also, Vercel, Windsurf, 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 Vercel, and Windsurf. Also,
such interesting insights about the feeling and energy of every letter of the alphabet and so much more.[00:01:56)]This episode is designed for anyone trying to figure out a name for their product or company, and also just for anyone that's interested in hearing the stories of how some of the most iconic names came to be. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. And if you become a paid subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a bunch of amazing products including Bolt, Linear, Superhuman, Notion, Perplexity, Granola and more. Check it out at lennysnewsletter.com and click bundle. With that,
I bring you David Placek.[00:02:27)]This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're building a SaaS app, at some point, your customers will start asking for enterprise features like 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 WorkOS, including ones you probably know like Vercel, Webflow, and Loom. WorkOS also recently acquired Warrant, the fine-grain authorization service. Warrant'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 to 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 WorkOS. It's a drop-in replacement for Auth0 and supports up to 1
million monthly active users for free. Check it out at workos.com to learn more. That's workos.com.[00:03:45)]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 4% 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 at growing revenue for all businesses, from smarter checkouts to fraud prevention and beyond. Join the ranks of over half of the Fortune 100
companies that trust Stripe to drive change. Learn more at stripe.com.[00:04:48)]David, thank you so much for being here,
Thank you. I'm excited about today and looking forward to the conversation. Lenny Rachitsky[00:04:58)]Me, too. These are actually my favorite kinds of conversations because this topic is so outside of my wheelhouse, and I know I'm just going to learn a ton. Also, this is just something that every founder and product builder has to think about at some point, and they have no idea what they're doing. And then, their name becomes so core to their identity. It's hardly the word they say more than any other word. And I feel like I've never heard advice on how to do this well. So,
I'm really excited for this conversation.[00:05:25)]I'm going to just dive into a question. And the question is just what's a name that you came up with, and your team came up with, that you had to fight super hard for that the client just hated, and you ended up winning. And now,
it's just such an obviously awesome name that everyone loves. David Placek[00:05:40)]The story I like to tell is a story of Sonos. One, a great client team. I worked with all the founders. But at the time, they were stuck on being in a brand name that put them in the entertainment business. And so when we presented Sonos, which has many qualities to it, it was rejected because it doesn't have enough emotion to it. It's not entertainment-like. And we argued about that because I said, "This is outside looking in, but I don't see you as an entertainment company. You make speakers that allow for the flow of entertainment through these things. And Sonos is about sound." But it had a particular quality. It's called a palindrome, which really means that you can flip it and it means the same thing. In the case of Sonos,
you could also turn it upside down and it was essentially the same.[00:06:47)]And so that got them thinking about this, but they were still has... So I left that meeting in Santa Barbara, and I came back and they were still struggling with it. And I got on a plane, 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, Bob MacFarlane, who's just a wonderful client. I could see him thinking, and he said, "You know? We're trying to name this for ourselves, and what we really should be doing is naming it for the marketplace and the customers. And I think Sonos now is the right name. And I felt really good about that." He later wrote me a note about how I help to do that,
and we use it sometimes in credentials presentations because it's such a nice note.[00:07:45)]But Sonos is something I'm so glad that I had this internal energy to, "I got to go down there and make a bid for this." I don't do that often, by the way,
but I felt very strongly about Sonos. Lenny Rachitsky[00:07:58)]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. David Placek[00:08:07)]Well, it happens all of the time. And it's a little bit bidirectional, right? Most clients, and I can understand this, they come to a naming project absolutely believing, with full confidence, that they're going to know it when they see it. And the truth is, it almost never happens. I think this year we'll hit 4,000
projects that we've completed.[00:08:37)]And it's interesting, we'll tell people in a very polite way, "You're not going to know when you see it." But I know they don't believe me. And even when... You could see them thinking that, "You know what? He was right. I really have to think about this. I have to process it." And part of that, part of why clients don't like the bolder names, the more imaginative names that we present is they are looking for comfort. And that's the opposite that what you want to do. And part of our job here is to help people to give the confidence that going bolder, and bigger, and being uncomfortable. I use the expression, "There is no power in comfort, not in the marketplace."
Lenny Rachitsky[00:09:27)]Wow. There's so much here already. So this idea of you're not going to 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 is that almost never the case? Is it because the name has to be something that is uncomfortable?
David Placek[00:09:43)]There's a lot of psychology to this, which ironically, I never even took a psychology class in college 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. This is why movies like Harry Potter or even novels like Jack London's Call of the Wild get rejected so many times. I think Harry Potter was rejected 16 or 18 times, and Jack London's book even more than that. I mean, think about it. He's pitching a book and they say, "What are you talking about here? You're saying a dog becomes a wolf? I've never heard of anything like that." So, we really do have to help people think about, "It's not about the past. You're actually creating the future." And we really talk to people and emphasize the idea, "This isn't a name you're creating. We're creating an experience for you. We're going to work together." (00:10:54): And our conversations always start with, "Talk to us about how you behave now and how you want to behave in the future," as opposed to, "Tell me about your positioning, tell me about your values, tell me about your mission." That's really kind of old thinking. It's very traditional, and that did work 25 or 30 years ago. But this is a far more complex, interconnected world,
a digital world now that stuff just doesn't create... It doesn't create names like Sonos or some of our other credentials that we probably will talk about today. Lenny Rachitsky[00:11:34)]Yeah, we're going to talk about just the process you guys go through, so stay tuned for that. But before we get to that, is there's another story you can share that shows this idea of being bold?
David Placek[00:11:44)]I'll talk about Microsoft's Azure. So when Microsoft came to us, they were pretty much stuck. And Microsoft does... And in many ways, to their credit, a lot of things don't need to be named. They don't need trademarks. They don't need brand names. They need descriptors. And so they came to us to develop a name that started or ended with cloud. Made sense to them because it was a cloud service. And our reaction was, "If you do that, you're going to be in an ocean of other cloud this, cloud that. And you have an opportunity as Microsoft here to really emerge as a leader in this." And so, there was a discussion about, "Okay, we'll take a look at those, but we'd like to see some cloud names." Which is easy to do,
Classic. David Placek[00:12:42)]So, we did that. And along the way, we came up with this word azure, which is another word for blue. And so there was a link to clouds, blue sky clouds, things like that, but we really presented it based on its linguistic qualities. It's a noisy word, that Z in there. It starts with an A, and it ends in a nice smooth flow. So, we really strive to do create names that are balanced. And in a very busy competitive world, having a strong signal,
which is generated by noise is a good thing.[00:13:27)]The reaction wasn't good. One of the clients said, "That's just a dumb idea." Remarks like that. At this point, after these four decades, it just rolls off my back like water off a duck is what my grandmother would say. But I think along the way, as we talked about it, they began to warm up to this. And now of course it's, I don't know, a $100 billion brand or something like that. But that's an example of, "I haven't seen that before. I'm very comfortable with cloud. Cloud is what it is. We're describing it." But that's a statement. And I think that... Well, I don't think I know that's what I said in one of the presentations is, "You don't want to make a statement here. You want to start a story." And Azure is going to behave differently in the marketplace than Cloud Pro,
which is I think one of the names that we presented to them on the other site at their request. Lenny Rachitsky[00:14:34)]I'm glad they went with Azure. Let me actually ask this question. I know you're biased, but just how important is a great name? 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. David Placek[00:14:49)]Let's look just at the reality of this. Your brand name, whether it's a product name or a company name, nothing's going to be used more often or for longer than that name. Design will change, messaging will change, products will change, but that name is there. So, I like to talk about this idea of cumulative advantage. Over time, as people buy more and more of the product, they see it more often, that their bond between you and that brand, or them and the brand I should say, becomes stronger and stronger. So you want that name to stick in their mind to be distinctive,
because distinctiveness is what creates that cumulative advantage.[00:15:35)]The second thing is this notion of what I call asymmetric advantage. It makes perfect sense, and most clients agree with this 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 cloud services,
you're not going to stand out in the marketplace. You won't have the ability to create necessarily that cumulative advantage in the marketplace.[00:16:09)]So, those are my two reasons why names are, I think, done right. And we do talk about our mission is not creating good names. A lot of people can do that. Our mission is to create the right name for clients, because the right name does deliver asymmetric advantage and cumulative advantage for you. And that, for us,
has almost unlimited value. Lenny Rachitsky[00:16:41)]This is a great answer. Essentially what you're saying is it's not going to necessarily make or break you, but it gives you an advantage. A great name gives you an advantage,
especially if you're just getting started. You need every advantage you can get. David Placek[00:16:54)]Exactly. And this is maybe a little bit off a tangent, but one of the best books on marketing I've ever read, which is not a book on marketing, and you may have read it along the way in college if you studied any Greek or classics. It's called the Melian Dialogues. And it's a dialogue... It'll take anybody listening to this maybe 25 minutes to read it. Between the Athenians and the government of Melos, the Athenians had decided that they needed that island. And they went and approached them very nice way, that, "We want to take over the island. Nothing will change. You'll be taxed a little bit, but we'll protect you." And the Athenians had thought every aspect about how to take that island before. So by the time they got there, they had created asymmetric advantage in terms of ships, and men,
and all of this other stuff.[00:17:57)]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 a symmetric advantage. And so, why not start from the very beginning with an advantage?
That's the value of a name. Lenny Rachitsky[00:18:12)]Let's dive into the actual process you guys go through, and I want to read a quote that Guillermo Rauch shared when I asked him about what it was like working with you. He's the CEO and co-founder of Vercel, which you guys 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." (00:18:35): 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?
David Placek[00:18:42)]That's very nice of Guillermo. He is a very impressive innovator in this category and we greatly enjoyed working with him. Well, our process is real. I break it down in three steps. First, we have to identify, then we invent, and then we implement. It's just three things. It's not rocket science, but it's a combination of creativity and discipline. And obviously, talented people and experience in these things. So, let's just go through those things. In the first section of identify, it's really trying to find out from the client, let's talk about behavior. So, how are you behaving now and how do you want to behave in the future? That behavior is bidirectional. In other words, the marketplace behaves towards a Vercel, that's the name we created for Guillermo. And they behave towards the marketplace. And that's an important point because everything... Buildings are bidirectional. Look at a building, you behave differently towards a temple than you or a church versus a Holiday Inn in terms of how that architecture states. So, we focus on that. Behavior is closely aligned for us with experience. How do you want the experience of this brand? (00:20:11): Now, when we listen to those things, we begin to think about rhythm of the name. So something like Dasani has a lot of rhythm to it, right? It's kind of calming. And so, we'll begin to extract things from that discussion on experience. We will then, also, as part of this first phase, look at the competition. We call that developing a landscape. And we're looking for what are the words... What are the brand names, first, and then what language are they using in this space? Because we have to be distinctive. If a brand name isn't distinctive, you lose. Then, you're imitating. And that's a form of suicide. That's a famous quote from some... I think the president of P&G 50 years ago or something like that. 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.[00:21:16)]Actually, framework for us is a metaphor for a window for us, and our teams, and our linguists to travel through. To open things up so that we're not coming back with a narrow list of names. We're coming back with names that have depth, and breadth, and have different experiences and personalities to them. And clients will sign off on that. And then, we get going. So now,
we're moved to the invent stage.[00:21:44)]And in the invent stage, we do really two things. You can look at this as two layers of our process. I think the second layer is probably what makes us quite unique in the marketplace. It's the result of millions of dollars of R&D on our part. So the first thing is, no surprise to anyone, we work with creative individuals. And we don't use... This will be contrary. We don't use large brainstorming sections. I did. When I first started the company, I used freelancers, I used large brainstorming groups. And along the way through some analysis, we really discovered that that was not really working for us. That actually, the names were coming from employees and from small groups. And so we've moved our process to, at least,
two or three small teams of two people.[00:22:41)]And each of those teams... So let's say on significant projects, we always use three teams. And each team gets a different briefing. One team knows everything about the project but the other teams don't. If we're working for Microsoft, the second team thinks they're working for Apple. I mean, they know it's disguised. We're not keeping this from anyone. And then the third team, we take it out of computers, and they might be naming a bicycle or a car or something like that. What we're trying to do is open up the coffers of creativity for this. And so when people are working on what they know is not the real assignment, they are now free to make all kinds of mistakes. And so,
Wow. David Placek[00:23:29)]Yeah. I think the process, at some point, I will hopefully write either a good article on this or maybe even a book. But this process would work for, I think, a lot of things. I know it would. All right now, what's that second layer that I talked about? Well, we have made significant investments in this area of linguistics and cognitive science, and it's in two ways. One, building proprietary knowledge. So we know through research that we funded, an extensive amount about an area in language called or linguistics called the sound symbolism. So, what are the sounds of the 26 letters of the alphabet and what do they do? How do they evoke things? Well, it turns out that each of those letters sends out a signal that creates a certain sort of vibration, if you will,
or experience.[00:24:31)]Now, there's been research on that over the years but there were some gaps, and we decided to fill this. And over the years, we've had a very good relationship with Stanford University, with their Department of Linguistics. We've hired linguists from MIT, from Berkeley. We have a linguistic internship here. I actually just ran this number, preparing for this discussion. We have employed, over four decades now, 253 linguists. Most of them PhDs, some of them contracts, some of them actual employees. That's a lot of intellectual knowledge. So we really have, what I call, a linguistic engine here. And then we now have an operating network of... I just checked on this figure yesterday. We have 108 linguists in 76 countries that help us. Some of them do creative work, others will do just the analysis of names for us. So now, we have that creative framework,
we have creative teams working on this.[00:25:39)]Now, we're tapping into databases that have over 18,000 small word units, technically called morphemes. So, we also can tap in from a sound standpoint. What are the sounds of reliability? What are the sounds of aliveness? And so with Sonos, by the way, we wanted things that are somewhat noisy. And so S is a noisy letter, like a Z or even a V. And so, you begin to set priorities about what letters we're going to use. And that work from that, we call it an engineering layer floats up into the creative teams. And so,
it's a mixture of things at a certain point in time.[00:26:27)]All right. Now, what happens to all that? At a certain point, usually 3 to 4 weeks into this, we might have 2 or 3,000 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 the need to clear a trademark for it to be not in conflict with a marketplace that is... We're almost reaching a tipping point in terms of difficulty of clearing names here. And so we have paralegals here, and we have a trademark attorney, and we'll analyze those names. That gets us to a much smaller set. And then, we'll do our linguistic work with our linguists,
and we end up with a set of names to show our clients.[00:27:22)]We'll do this twice with most assignments. Sometimes, we'll do just one time depending on timing and budget. But we really try to get two cycles here, partly because humans love to compare. If you're looking for a house, you don't just look at the first house and say, "Okay, let's sign us up." You look and you learn that we don't need a swimming pool, but we do need a view. It's the same with names. And so, we get feedback from our clients. And sometimes,
that's a co-creative process where a client will come up with a word or a solution and we'll then run that through our screening mechanisms for them. And that's really the process. The final phase is implementing. Lenny Rachitsky[00:28:08)]Let's actually pause at that because I would, so much, I want to talk about with the second step, but we'll get to the step three. They're just blowing my mind,
all the things you guys do here. This is incredible. There's so many things here that are so unlike what I expected.[00:28:23)]First of all, the creative folks that are actually coming up with these names, what's the background of these people? Who are these people?
David Placek[00:28:31)]So, the fundamental quality is they're going to be curious and they're going to be hardworking. This is... And hopefully... And this is hard to screen for, but 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 3 or 4 alternatives in terms of a headline or body copy. And that might be refined a little bit and maybe sent back to the drawing boards altogether,
but it's a relatively simple process. And no disrespect intended there.[00:29:19)]Here, I can't just sit down and say, "Okay, we're naming a new car here. And so, I'm going to generate 100 names and you generate 100 names, and something will fall out." Those names will not... There's not enough in that list to clear through our screens. Of legal screens, our linguistic screens. And remember, we start with a creative framework and a criteria that the names need to meet. So, we're looking for people who can churn out a lot of work. And when that's rejected, they just keep going. So, we look for tenacious people. 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... Sound symbolism, ideas, word unit, prefixes, suffixes, things like that. So, it's relatively easy for anyone that works here to develop a list of 2 or 300 names over a 3 or 4-
day period.[00:30:41)]Where do we find these people? More who are writers from newspaper reporters because they have to work fast. Their stories get rejected. People who might have written a novel. We have hired people from agencies over the years. They work a little less effectively than others who have a speechwriter from... I wrote speeches in Washington. 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 easy to find these people. It really isn't. Lenny Rachitsky[00:31:25)]Let me just throw out here. I'm going to ask you after we go through this process, what people that don't have the resources and time to do this,
Sure. Lenny Rachitsky[00:31:36)]... I imagine many people are wondering,
Okay. Lenny Rachitsky[00:31:39)]How long does this process usually take? What's the ideal length the company should expect when they want to come up with an amazing name?
David Placek[00:31:44)]For us, the ideal link 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-month churn. And sometimes by the time they approve things and clear,
it's a four-months process. Lenny Rachitsky[00:32:05)]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.[00:32:11)]Okay, this point you made about three different teams with different almost context is so interesting. So say, let's use Windsurf as an example, which is an amazing name, killing it, that you guys helped come up with. So is the idea there, okay, here's we're naming this AI IDE. One of the team has told, "No, you're building a bicycle. Here's all the same brief, but it's a bicycle. And then another team, you're building a..." I don't know, lap. I don't know, something non-technical essentially, right?
Yes. Lenny Rachitsky[00:32:43)]Like,
a cup. Say more about that because 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 AI IDE. David Placek[00:32:54)]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 the name of Windsurf, before it was Windsurf, was Codium. 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 really get ahold of what that is. 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 giving a team, sometimes it's an individual, the assignment to create ideas for the brand itself,
but to just dive into a particular context.[00:33:49)]And in this case with Windsurf, this is about flow about giving people that are coding something much more of a flow process, a smoother process, a more dynamic process. So in that case, One team was just given the task of we want to look at a list of all the things that can communicate either in a real word like flow or metaphorically or in a sport about that kind of dynamics. That kind of movement. And there was Windsurf sitting on a list. I mean, sometimes, this is really just that simple. Of course, you have to have the right framework and you have to give the right directions to someone. And Windsurf, for us and particularly for me, it checks all the boxes. It's a wonderful image, it's an experience. Literally, a physical experience. It's a compound, right? Two words put together. We know from the research we've invested in that compounds like Powerbook or Facebook are multipliers of associations because there's wind and there's circles around that, and then there's surf images around that. So 1 + 1 = 3, right? (00:35:16): 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 passed 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 multiplier effect of compounds. We showed them imagery that they could use. I mean, it's simple to execute on something like that. And so,
that's how that came about. I'll stop there and see if you need more information or not. Lenny Rachitsky[00:36:11)]Let me actually follow this through 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. What's different about naming AI products from traditional products, not AI, I guess?
David Placek[00:36:25)]First off, we are working mostly with engineers, and engineers who haven't delved into the world of creativity and necessarily marketing. And that's their strength. And what we have to do is we have to balance their strength with our strength. So there's a little bit of a challenge there, but I think we deal pretty well with that. Secondly, this is the fastest moving progressing category I have ever experienced. And I have that perspective, right? I went through the early days of the internet and the World Wide Web, and that was moving pretty fast. But the internet compared to this looks like a daycare school or something like that. We're challenged by just keeping up with developments. Third thing, and this is the creative challenge here,
is that engineers come to us wanting more sophisticated names where they are likely to end up with another Codium or an Anduril or an Anthropic.[00:37:42)]And when we saw this trend of that AI is going to take off, and it was an intuitive feeling on my part. I could have been wrong. I said, "Let's find out what's going on here." So both, not only who's developing the products, but how do people think about AI? And we did a series of research. I probably invested $20,000 or so. And we interviewed 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 views. Developers are all totally positive on it. 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, those types of things,
but haven't got the handle on it.[00:38:41)]So Codium is an example where we said, "We think what you're doing needs to be much more tangible, and something that people can grab onto, and much more natural as opposed to a Codium." And they listened to us. Very simple as that. And in this case, we were right. And by the way also, I have to say, there's some luck to this. Windsurf happened to be available and they sought right away, not exactly right away but it took about a week going back and forth to select it. So,
let me stop there and see if that answers your question. Lenny Rachitsky[00:39:23)]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 is StackBlitz, Windsurf is Codium. Basically,
everyone.[00:39:37)]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?
It feels like a huge deal and a very challenging thing to do. David Placek[00:39:48)]It is challenging. And the larger you are and the more customer base you have, it becomes a significant project. So the first thing is you have to make an argument that it's worth the change. 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, they get into Y Combinator or something like that, they're raising money. And they just need a name. And although they know what they're doing, and that may change by 10 or 15 degrees, it's almost like, "We just got to have a name." And that is the absolute expression I hear from when a startup calls and says, "We want to change your name. We started off a year and a half ago. We just needed a name for the documents, and so we chose X." And it's not a very good name. So,
that's example number one.[00:40:53)]Number two is the company actually has pivoted. 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 company has merged and it is time now to create a new start and reflect to the marketplace that we're... We're new now, maybe bigger, but certainly we have more capabilities and we want you to know about it. And because of that, we're changing our to blank,
which reflects those capabilities at some level. Lenny Rachitsky[00:41:38)]I'm excited to have Andrew Luo joining us today. Andrew is CEO of OneSchema, one of our longtime podcast sponsors. Welcome,
Andrew. Andrew Luo[00:41:45)]Thanks for having me,
Lenny. Great to be here. Lenny Rachitsky[00:41:47)]So, what is new with OneSchema? I know that you work with some of my favorite companies like Ramp and Vanta and Watershed. I heard you guys launched a new data intake product that automates the hours of manual work that teams spent importing, and mapping,
and integrating CSV in Excel files. Andrew Luo[00:42:03)]Yes. So, we just launched the 2.0 of OneSchema FileFeeds. 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 in Excel files with just a simple prompt. We support all of the trickiest file integrations, SFTP, S3,
and even email. Lenny Rachitsky[00:42:29)]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 OneSchema. Andrew Luo[00:42:37)]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. OneSchema stops any bad data from entering your system and automatically validates your files,
generating error reports with the exact issues in all bad files. Lenny Rachitsky[00:42:58)]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 oneschema.co,
That's oneschema.co.[00:43:12)]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?
David Placek[00:43:35)]Yeah. Some of the people there, depending on the assignment, will actually help us create names, for sure. And so, we have linguists here. And 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've happened somewhere that no one here would know about. Even if we had,
if.[00:44:21)]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. And 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. Lenny Rachitsky[00:44:52)]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"?
David Placek[00:45:00)]It happens frequently where we will find something that isn't really terrible but it's worrisome to us. It's interesting cultures like Australian or people in Australia, they have a lot of interesting expressions. And so, we do find things that this sounds like it's a certain kind of shrimp and things like that, and we eliminate those things. And then we find things that have sort of sexual connotations,
I would say it happens every third or fourth project we'll find something that we will eliminate and never show the client. Lenny Rachitsky[00:45:49)]And something you love and you're like, "Okay, I guess we can show that one"?
That's true. That happens. It does. Lenny Rachitsky[00:45:55)]You also said this really interesting thing about how every letter of the alphabet has a vibrance in 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?
David Placek[00:46:11)]The work is from the linguist, but at this point, I'm pretty adept in it. So, 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 Sausalito, California. So if you know that, if you know that as you go around the world, there are going to be some exceptions to it. It's going to have that vibrancy. Look at Corvette. 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. Because that's another example of a client who thought we were... I mean, the founder actually said, "I thought the people at Lexicon were crazy,"
when they presented Blackberry.[00:47:29)]And we said, "Well, let's stop and look at some of the assets here. First off, black color's 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. So, those are just two examples. I mentioned Z in Azure, that's noisy letter. X is fast and crisp as a sound. And of course, there's semantic value to all of these letters, too. X is about innovation from aircraft to computers. And so,
you have to look at the semantics of it and the sound symbol of it. Lenny Rachitsky[00:48:15)]This is so fascinating. I could listen to this stuff all day. Just thinking about Vercel with the V, that very aligns with what they're trying to do. Just very strong, opinionated way of working. And Guillermo,
he feels like a V person. David Placek[00:48:29)]He is. And there's an example of a group that had a lot of confidence, and what their product is is very innovative. And so, we had permission there to create something new because Vercel is a coin solution., right? But notice that we put some very simple, easy to process things together there. Or ver, in this case. So we have in vino veritas, truth in wine, things like that. You have verde, green. So, very familiar. And then their cel, 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 we were excited about for them to grasp.[00:49:26)]By the way, that's known as processing fluency, which is when you think about how the brain processes information. We're told by a number of cognitive science that our brains are a little bit on the lazy side. We don't like complex things. And so, we really strive to make all of our solutions relatively easy for the brain to process. So it wants, it leans in towards them as opposed to, "I'm too busy. I'm walking past that." Names that are complicated, it's a liability. And we really avoid that. But Vercel,
perfect fluency. Lenny Rachitsky[00:50:13)]Okay, let's go back, actually, to the three steps. So we covered two, and it took us on a long tangent to dive into a lot of the stuff you shared with the second step, which you call invent. So, it's essentially the three steps are... Was it create? What would you call it? The step?
David Placek[00:50:26)]Yeah,
Identify. David Placek[00:50:29)]And I use the word invent with intention because it's more than creative. 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 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. To help them write a longer rationale for why these names, if they're presenting three names to the president of their company or the CMO, why these names make a lot of sense, and to help them develop what we call prototypes. So we'll put the name on a baseball cap, on a T-shirt. We'll put the name in a mock-up ad in the Wall Street Journal. Something's very positive. Because of Procter & Gamble's new blank product. P&G shares, they gain 10%
this year. So that executives can see that the lift that that name can have. That's our implementation phase for them.[00:51:44)]And we also do consumer research or customer research at that stage, and we do that probably about 50% of the time on our projects where we're going out and we're really talking to their customers, and putting the names in a series of drills. Drills that make them not the marketing person for the day, but we're really making these customers feel that this is a new brand. And then, we're asking about expectations. 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. Lenny Rachitsky[00:52:31)]You make such a good point about how you need to arm the people working with you with ammo to win over other folks internally. Because if the person working with you is on board and the name is bold and not an obvious winner, I could see it being important to be like, "Here's what you should all show them to help them see the story, and the mock-ups, and all of that."
David Placek[00:52:53)]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. 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. It has to do with the marketplace." (00:53:27): Well, that's easy for me to say because I'm not working at a P&G or an Intel, but we really try to give that advice for it because it is about being successful in the marketplace. And so 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, not just want to not lose in a marketplace. And so, we try to encourage our direct clients to lead the process to really say, if a manager or a CMO or a president says, "Look, we're the team that's going to execute on this and we believe in this. We can make this work," they usually rally around it. 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 offered.[00:54:28)]So, we like to be in that implementation phase because we have so much experience. And usually,
credibility with people. Lenny Rachitsky[00:54:37)]And you said that you come up with 3 to 4,000 names. That's the top of the funnel?
David Placek[00:54:41)]Yeah. And just to clarify that, it's ideas,
Complete ready-to-ship names. David Placek[00:54:51)]Yeah,
Got it. David Placek[00:54:54)]This is a very inefficient process and a little chaotic. So in that list of 3,000 names is probably 250
potential diamonds that have to be fractured and examined. Lenny Rachitsky[00:55:10)]I really want to see just a documentary of this process at some point. This is the closer we're going to get for now,
but this is so interesting.[00:55:17)]I want to 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 they think might surprise people?
I think we've covered it. I do. Lenny Rachitsky[00:55:31)]Okay, great. Awesome. Okay, so most people listening to this, there's a lot of founders, a lot of PMs on product teams. They're working on a new feature, they're about to launch a product, they got accepted into YC and they're about to launch a product. Then they have, I don't know, let's say they have a couple of weeks. We've got to come up with a name. What should they do?
David Placek[00:55:50)]So the first thing I do is to say, okay, let's forget about developing the name for right now. And I will have them, and I think this is a good exercise for anybody. We do it here internally when we think about our business. So I say, just... Because most of this now, because of COVID, is on video. And I will 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. How do you define winning is really it?" 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?" Then I said, "Now, let's go all the way to that final thing of what do you have to say to win." (00:56:49): And that's where you just get people thinking about, "Well, what we really have here is... And we're better than this." And then I'll just say, "Okay. Now, what you want to take that this really should be about experience and behavior. How do you want to behave in the marketplace? How do you want the marketplace to behave towards you? And what kind of experience are you creating?" And then they'll start 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 says to the marketplace, they're not like the other guys." 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."
And that's what attracts people.[00:57:54)]And so I'll do a little coaching like that, and then that usually kind of sets them free. And they're now thinking about it not as a word, which has maybe limited value,
but as creating an experience which has the potential for unlimited value. Lenny Rachitsky[00:58:12)]Okay. So, let me try to reflect this back for folks. So the advice is draw triangle. So, you're coming up with a name. Draw triangle. At the top, win. At the bottom-left, was it how do you win?
David Placek[00:58:25)]Yeah. So,
the diamond is two triangles. Lenny Rachitsky[00:58:27)]Oh, diamond. Okay,
I got you. Lenny Rachitsky[00:58:30)]Okay,
got it. Diamond. Great. David Placek[00:58:31)]And so on that next angle there on the right side is, what do you have to win already? Right? Because they wouldn't be either in a Y Combinator or getting some seed money if they didn't have something to win. And often, people, startups don't appreciate how much they actually do have to win because they're so busy and so stressed on what they're doing. And then, what do they need to win? And then finally, what do you need to say? And then back up to defining what is winning to us? Which, by the way, we start with that question usually on an assignment that we've been awarded. And if we're in a room with five people,
all five people have a different definition of what... Their definition of that company winning. And that's good to sort that out because we can move down different avenues from a creative standpoint. Lenny Rachitsky[00:59:31)]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 say the four points of the diamond again just so folks can write it all down. David Placek[00:59:42)]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. And that can start off being simple, like we want to be the dominant player here. But you really have to work at that. What does that really mean, right? The second on that right-hand tip there of the diamond is what do we have to win? What are we doing now that makes us a winner? Then we go down to the bottom of the diamond, and it's what do we need to win? There could be technical things there. People talk about talent and resources. Often there, they'll say, "We need a good name." We always correct that. It's not the good name,
it's the right name.[01:00:28)]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 to a name that actually is going to have the flexibility as to when you can say that,
it still works. And that gets them into behavior and experience. And that usually launches a really a good discussion with founders internally. Lenny Rachitsky[01:01:03)]When you say you have to win though, 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 this win?
David Placek[01:01:10)]Yes, that's right. And all companies are in that same situation. They have a bunch of stuff, but they need... A P&G might say, "We need a good distributor." (01:01:19): "Okay. All right, we'll put that on the list." (01:01:24): And then you might say, "Well, we need in..." When it gets to what do we have to say, we have to say the right things so that a distributor is interested in us. And then you go down an avenue there. Well, what is that? And if you work at it, this is not a one-hour exercise, it may be an exercise repeated over the next 4 or 5
days. Lenny Rachitsky[01:01:49)]Okay. So, you have this diamond. And then the idea is just sit and put names down in a Google Doc,
let's say. David Placek[01:01:55)]Yeah. And then you start. But there is this... And maybe, it's naivete. I guess, that's probably the best word for this is that, because I do hear this all of the time. "Hey, we've worked at this, we got a list of 200 names, but we don't think there's something there." (01:02:19): And I'll say, "Well, 200 names is not enough. Get to 1,000, 1,500 names and directions. Don't evaluate them. Just generate names, and directions, and ideas, and then have a meeting. And don't evaluate but speculate." What could we do with this name? What's the potential here? There's a lot of overevaluation in our industry. It makes sense. We survive as humans because we figure out what's wrong with this picture. If I want to cross the street, is it safe to cross the street? What's going on? Those kinds of things. You have to counter that. You have to say, "Let's just suspend judgment for a while. And let's do an exercise here where we take these 10 names that we think might work and what are we going to do with it."
Because it's how you execute.[01:03:21)]Going back to windsurf, as we showed them pictures of people windsurfing and waves and things, if they said, "Ah, that just doesn't work for us at all. I'm very uncomfortable with." Well, then it's not their name. But they leaned into it, "Okay, I can see this. It's easy for us to execute. It's dynamic, it's different." So, that's why we build these prototypes for people. And that's what... I think the best advice I can give to whether it's a startup or someone starting a new cookie company, is it's not just a list of 200 names. It's 10 or 15 lists 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. That there was something new out there in the marketplace. Lenny Rachitsky[01:04:20)]Yeah. Infoseek,
Yes. Lenny Rachitsky[01:04:24)]Okay, so one more question along these lines. So say, you have a list of let's say 2,000 or 1,000 names. There's this tension between choosing something... Like, as a person that is doing them themselves. Your advice is choose something bold, not something descriptive. You won't know it when you see it. Very hard to do, obviously, when you're doing it by yourself. And you just advise for not losing sight of that piece. Just throwing out things that feel too scary,
finding a name that's actually bold as you suggest. David Placek[01:04:55)]First off, we disappear... Human psychology, humans only pay attention to what is new or what is different, I should say. 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. They'll say, "Okay, I get that." So, look for what is really different between the names that you have on your list, but also what's different from what's out in the marketplace. Then you get a client like Microsoft saying, "Azure is different. There's going to be a lot of cloud stuff and..." There's a relevant point there, Azure is blue. And so, there's a slight logical connection that I think gave them more permission to move forward with it, frankly. But listen, this is not an easy task. I mean, that's why we're in this business, and why I felt we should be specialized because if you start doing design and/or advertising or other things,
you can't have the intellectual engine.[01:06:16)]You can't acquire the intellectual engine that we have. So I know it's difficult, but it can be done, and you just have to give yourself some time. But stop evaluating. Suspend judgment and speculate. That's my number one advice to people trying to do this on their own. Now, how can you get help? 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. If you go out and talk to friends who don't work for your company, there's a fun drill that I suggest. I said, "Listen, go out to them 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?" (01:07:10): What happens there is you're not asking them to give you an opinion to evaluate a name. You're asking them then what does that name do for you? The information you're getting is that name, they're telling you what that name does for them, how it helps them to imagine, which is a fundamental role of any name. Slight tangent, but I'm going to go to our 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...[01:07:49)]I'll set it this way. We were always looking for this answer from consumers. If a consumer said, "I don't really know much about that new product, but I know that they're not like the other guys." That's when we knew we had a good name because they were... Now what happened there? I mean, the technical term that we use is 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'm busy. I don't need another one of those things. I need something new and different, and hopefully better."
Lenny Rachitsky[01:08:30)]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."
David Placek[01:08:38)]Yes. And by the way, the opposite of that is we look for polarization. We look for tension in a team about arguing about these things, because we think that polarization is a sign of strength in the word. And interesting story, the person who 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 Xeon, 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... And makes sense here, descriptive, bunch of engineers, ProChip. "Hey, it's professional, it's premium, and it's chipped. So, it should be Prochip." So Andy had me give a presentation about the strengths of this thing, and he said, "Now, let me tell you why I think this is the right name." (01:09:56): He said, "Because I see the polarization here in it amongst people. There's this ProChip 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'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 in the marketplace, into this very competitive marketplace, regardless of the category,
with something that doesn't have a level of boldness or intensity. Lenny Rachitsky[01:10:33)]That was an amazing story. Just again, so kind of a tip here is if half of your team or, I don't know, some percent of your team hates it, some percent of your team loves it,
that's a good sign. David Placek[01:10:43)]Yeah,
it is. It is. Look for that polarization. That's what we look for. Lenny Rachitsky[01:10:47)]I also love this tip of asking people if, "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 interested in that product." That's what you want to look for?
David Placek[01:10:59)]Yes,
exactly. Lenny Rachitsky[01:11:02)]How important is the .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?
David Placek[01:11:10)]I am so glad you asked this question because at this point, it doesn't really matter at all. The .com or URL address has become an area code. And whether you're in 415 or 615, it doesn't really matter to people. And now with AI, SEO is going to be less important. And so, I just think the principle in play here is you got to get the right name first. And then if you can get the .com, sure, go ahead. But if you can't, there's ways around that. You can put a prefix in front of it or a little word in front of it or after it,
or you go to .ai or something like that. But the principle in play is let's get the right name first.[01:12:02)]For those who really... And there are people who really get hung up on the .com, they tend to older by, the way. And have, in their mind, sort of the hotness of the internet and having a .com, which 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. And we say, "Hey, if you can do that, have fun. I'd put the $30,000 into market."
Lenny Rachitsky[01:12:42)]Awesome. That's reassuring. I imagine many founders are just like, "God dammit, 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.[01:12:56)]Say you were just in an elevator ride with someone, and I'm sure this happens to you of just like, "Hey, David, I got to come up with that name. What's your biggest tip for coming up with a great name?" What would your answer be?
David Placek[01:13:06)]I'd go back to forget about the word, think about behavior and experience. And then the second thing from just a creative help, I'm a big believer in synchronicity. And we try to force synchronicity here, and I'll give you a couple examples of that. But this idea of connecting dots, two unrelated ideas together. And so I'll say, "Look, if someone says we make sailboats and I'm trying to..." I'm here in Sausalito. I guess,
that's why I thought about that. And I am trying to create a new name for my company that builds sailboats.[01:13:49)]I would say forget about sailboats. I would go and pick out some magazines about hunting or flying magazines. And I would just look through those, get a notepad out, and put out words that you like. Things, expressions that you like. And then that synchronicity, I said, "I would bet you $5 that out of those two magazines, you will get a word that you never would've thought of, but somehow it would relate to sailing."
Lenny Rachitsky[01:14:25)]That connects very much to your story of how you have these different teams,
Yes. Lenny Rachitsky[01:14:36)]So interesting. Okay. David, this was everything I was hoping it'd be. I feel like we're going to help so many people. Is there anything that we haven't covered or that you want to leave listeners with as a final nugget or piece of advice or story before we get to our very exciting lightning round?
David Placek[01:14:55)]I'm going to emphasize one point, I think, which is that I really would like the listeners to really begin to think about how valuable a brand name can be. That you're not just looking for a word, you're looking for this experience. 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. Second thing is 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 schedule, we call them office hours here. We're judicious about it, but we are open to that. It's just playing a long-term game,
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.[01:15:58)]David, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?
David Placek[01:16:03)]Yes,
I'm ready. Lenny Rachitsky[01:16:05)]There we go. What are 2 or 3 books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
David Placek[01:16:09)]There's a book called Resilience, which was written by a former Navy SEAL that... And it's not about combat, it's just a tiny bit about being a SEAL. But it is about overcoming things and it's about tenacity. And I think everybody in the world,
we all have challenges and things. And I do recommend that to people.[01:16:31)]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 statesmen/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 tipped their head and said, "Ah, I don't know." It seems like maybe a boring book, but those are two books that I [inaudible 01:17:02].
Lenny Rachitsky[01:17:02)]Who would ever say that Churchill's story is boring?
That's absurd. David Placek[01:17:07)]I think so. I agree. I agree It's absurd,
yes. Lenny Rachitsky[01:17:11)]He's so fascinating. There's a recent documentary, I think,
that really showed me the character. Incredible.[01:17:18)]Okay. What's a recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?
David Placek[01:17:20)]For me, it's the Yellowstone series. We're very fortunate as a family,
we have some property in Montana. And- Lenny Rachitsky[01:17:29)]Oh,
wow. You're living the life. David Placek[01:17:31)]Yeah, very... Listen, I can't tell you how fortunate I am. And I bought this property 28 years ago,
Wow. David Placek[01:17:40)]In a snowstorm, and it just felt right. But I think particularly the 1883,
I was going to ask if you saw that because that was incredible. David Placek[01:17:50)]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 producing and writing those things is incredibly talented. Taylor Sheridan, I think,
is his name. Lenny Rachitsky[01:18:19)]I love that in the story,
Montana was the easy route almost from the journey they want on. David Placek[01:18:24)]That's right. It's very, very true,
yeah. Lenny Rachitsky[01:18:26)]Oh, man. Yeah, you almost don't even need to watch Yellowstone. Just starting with 1883
totally works. David Placek[01:18:32)]Yeah. In fact, I recommend people. I say there's three. But if you really want the truth about the American West, it's 1883.
Lenny Rachitsky[01:18:40)]Yeah. I suggested that on this podcast a bunch, actually. So,
I love that. That's where you went.[01:18:45)]Next question, do you have a favorite product that you have recently discovered that you really love? Maybe one you named,
maybe not. David Placek[01:18:51)]I didn't name it, although it's got a very good name to it. Our whole family, I have two daughters and my wife, we're all fly fishermen, and last summer I really... I bought this for myself, but I gave it to my wife. It was one of those things that was present for her, but I knew I was going to use it more. And it's a Hardy. 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 the first fly-fishing rod of the podcast. Excellent choice.[01:19:24)]Next question, do you have a favorite life motto that you often find yourself coming back to, sharing with friends or family?
David Placek[01:19:31)]I do. And it's a little longer, so I wrote it. I have it written here somewhere, but it's the quote from T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, here. And if I can find it, I should be. I think it's a wonderful quote, so I think hopefully your viewers will 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 act on their dreams with open eyes to make them possible." (01:20:14): I read that years ago and it just hit me pretty hard,
That is an amazing quote. It makes me think about the quote about the man in the arena. David Placek[01:20:25)]Yes. Yeah, it's same idea. It's just a little different. And I also think Lawrence of Arabia is a fascinating person, what he did. So,
An amazing movie.[01:20:40)]Okay, final question. 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"?
David Placek[01:20:49)]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. You have all of these talented people. And yet when you look at the names of production studios, movie houses, Comcast, things like that, it's very mundane. But here's DreamWorks, just like Sonos, check all the boxes. Compound dream. 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. Lenny Rachitsky[01:21:39)]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 going to have a much easier time thinking about approaching this topic. David Placek[01:21:50)]Well, I certainly hope so. I do. It's been very, very enjoyable, very thoughtful, and I have nothing but or 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,
Take care. Lenny Rachitsky[01:22:19)]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 lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.