The Exchanges

Q 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?

A Well, I, yeah, I, I, the, the work is from the linguist, but at this point I'm, I'm pretty adept in it. So what, you know, let, let's look at, um, I'll start with the letter V because it, it is, it is 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, Sausalito, California. Um, so if you know that, if, if you know that as you go around the world, uh, there are going to be some exceptions to it. It's going to 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 that's another example of a client who thought we were I mean, the, the founder actually said, I, I thought the people at Lexicon were crazy 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 …

AI assessment note: “V from our research that we've done is the most alive and vibrant sound”

Q Here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

A There's a book called Resilience, which was written by a former Navy SEAL that, um, And it's not about combat, and 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. Uh, he was one of the most unusual, provocative statesmen, uh, 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, I do, I do like to recommend that some people just kind of, you know, tip their head and said, ah, I don't know. It's, it, it seems like maybe a boring book, but, but those are two books that

AI assessment note: “There's a book called Resilience... Second book is, uh, Andrew Roberts' latest book”

Q their product than their company. I've noticed this funny trend. Cursor was AnySphere, Bolt was StackBlitz, Windsurf, Codium, 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.

A It is challenging. And it, and the, The larger you are and the more customer base you have it, it becomes, uh, you know, a significant, uh, uh, project. So the first thing is you, you have to, you have to make an argument that it's worth the change, right? That, that we're going to be better off by changing our name. So there's, there's a couple situations where you want to, you want to change your name. First one is let's, let's focus first on startups. Startups get going early that, you know, they, they get into Y Combinator or something like that. They're raising money and they just need a name. And although they know what they're doing, and that may change by 10 or 15 degrees, uh, it's almost like we just got to have a name. I mean, and, and that is the absolute expression I hear from when, when a startup calls and says, we want to change your name. You know, we started off a year and a half ago. We just needed a name for the documents, and so we chose X, right? And it's not a very good name. So that's, that's example number one. Number two is the company actually has, you know, pivoted, right? And so the name that they have no longer really reflects who they are or who they're becoming and which makes that name ineffective. And the third is that a company has merged and, and it's time now to To, to create a new start and reflect to the marketplace that we're, we're, we're …

AI assessment note: “there's a couple situations where you want to, you want to change your name.”

Q Okay. Most people listening to this are, 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 like 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?

A 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, because most of this now, because of COVID is on video, um, I'll say, just draw a shape of a diamond on a piece of paper in front of you. And I said on the top of that diamond, put the word win, right? You know, how do you define winning is really 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?

AI assessment note: “the first thing I do is to say... draw a shape of a diamond”

Q There's so much here 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?

A There's a lot of psychology to this, which ironically, I, I never even took a psychology class in, in college 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, movies 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 16 or 18 times, and Jack London's book, even more than that. I mean, think about it. He's, he's pitching a book and he say, 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 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 the experience for you. We're going to work together. And we really, our conversations always start with, talk to us about how you behave now and how you want to behave in the future. As opposed to, tell me about your positioning. Tell me about your values. Tell me about your mission. That's really kind of old thinking. It's very traditional. And that did work, you know, 25 or 30 years ago. But this is a far more complex, uh, in…

AI assessment note: “the first element is Humans do like to be comfortable”

Q 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.

A That's very nice of Guillermo. He is, uh, a very impressive, uh, uh, you know, innovator in the, in this category, and we greatly enjoyed working with him. Well, our process is real. I break it down in three steps. Um, uh, at first we have to identify, then we invent, and then we implement. So 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 Vercel. You know, that's the name we created for 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 look at a building, you behave differently towards a temple than you, or a church versus, you know, a, a holiday inn, uh, in terms of how that architecture States. So we focus on that. Behavior is closely aligned for us with experience. How do you want this brand to, the experience of this brand? Now, when we listen to those things, we begin to…

AI assessment note: “I break it down in three steps. Um, uh, at first we have to identify, then we invent”