Jason Calacanis’ Post

Transcript

Going back to Zillow. And your experience there? The other thing that I think you're a master of is branding. Expedia, Zillow, Glassdoor. All of them just incredibly well done. I I'm a branding aficionado myself. I know how hard it is to name stuff. Take us through the naming of each of those companies and how you got there. I know you know this is something you're very passionate about And then you were had an interview and you talked. You said you had a whole theory about branding and the person was like, that's great. Let me go to my next question and I like literally almost threw my phone against the wall because I was like he just told you he has a theory of branding. The guys made three of the most iconic. Web properties or just properties, Companies and you literally let it go down the river and get lost forever. So let's unpack this here. Okay rich bartons. Theories on branding and creating iconic names go. OK, the title of the blog post is actually out there. It's something like, you know, syllables and high point Scrabble letters. I do it. It's out there and back when you were already blogging a lot, I tried to blog for a little while. You know? And you know how that goes for guys like me, we do a few blog posts and we forget about it and it just sits there forever on the web. So there is a there is a blog post that you guys can pull up and put in the show notes. The website is called hopperanddropper.com. That's a fly fishing term and there is a post in there. Blogging. There we go. Syllables, Scrabble, Scrabble letters and picking brand names. Here it is. Those of you on video are seeing it right now. 2009 I read this. The great financial crisis. So you're probably somewhere just absolutely licking your wounds wondering if it's the end of the world. It was. That was a big time. I was running Zillow. Yeah I was running Zillow. We we we we had to lay off 35% of the company after the you know it was a it was a natural process. The GFC happened in the real estate industry with mortgages, right. And we were by the real estate industry let's be honest right by the real estate industry and then switch over money losing pre revenue. Oh my God, that was. Look at the time, no, we were private, but it was losing money. Really rough. 150 people. I think we have to laugh about 60 people. It was it was rough. That was one of the lower points laying off people. Was that your first major layoff or have you done any Microsoft and Expedia I had you know I'd had experience with small scale ones, but nothing like this. Your leg shake. Did you puke? Did you get the sweats? I had to like I actually wrote about it. Jay Cali I I I had to journal on it to. John Paul, the awful, awful feelings I had get him out onto paper and talk to people about it because it did rile me up. I have to say, you know, I've had to do it since then. And like it or not, we do get desensitized to it. I'm very, I really, really believe you have treat people with humanity on the way in and the way out and you want to leave the door wide open because a lot of times they come back when you do. Yeah. And when we did have a lot of boomerangs, you know, that's what I call the people that. Come back. Those are those are the very best employees or the boomerangs by the way. Well and it also is indicative of great management. I I've had a number of them as well and the conversation is always very encouraging which is I've I frequently have people say you know I I really we we had our battles but I really enjoyed working with you. There was just something about the energy and the dynamic and then you know the the dynamic nature of it would love to work with you again. I think that's like people don't know how good they had it you know on both sides you have some. Employees, you don't appreciate when they're working for you. And their employees who don't appreciate you, they get some great job offer and then they just come back 18 months later, like, you know what? This is home. This is better, right? That's one of the greatest feeling. Sometimes you gotta break up before you know you're in love, right? And then that, that, that, that happens a lot. Anyway, So back to the branding. So branding, Yeah, basically I believe, first of all, fundamentally I believe making up words. If you're building a consumer brand especially OK little bit different for B to B. Some of the same principles hold though. If you're building a consumer brand, making UA new word is better than taking a pre-existing word. Okay okay Zappos is better than sneakers.com. Got it? OK. And the reason is but those of you out there are saying are saying ohh, but sneakers.com is gonna get SEO right away. Yeah, so I don't need to work very hard. And Zappos, Who the hell knows what Zappos means? I'm going to have to, like, tell people what Zappo means. OK, that's absolutely right. So making up a word is harder initially. And more expensive initially. But when you are successful making UA word, you own the word. You have defined the word. You have filled that word word with the emotions that you want to have it filled with that come from your product. And then that word if it, if you get lucky enough to get something like like Zillow you get you you you you've added to the vocabulary of humanity. Uber. Airbnb. So many great examples. Yeah. So many great examples. OK so so I. Really like the harder route, which is make up a word and then own word. Whereas if you were sneakers.com, you get really big. You know, it just there's no connectivity. Sneaker means something to people already. All right. Amazon is an interesting counterexample that existed already and had meaning. But Bezos took that word and completely redefined it. Yes, that was about to bring that up. likecom.com is another example where investors in that one, but it's a meditation app. It's an existing word. It's a four. Letter word. It's in the dictionary. It's evocative, but meditation is not necessary. Comma, it's an output of com. Uber exists as a word, you know, the top thing. But again you know and I think Airbnb, I remember talking to the founders early on they were considering just calling it air and they have this like big branding conversation with them. And I love the concept of AIR. And I I I was like, you should maybe do that. I don't know you like Airbnb or Air. I like urban be way better and because it's there, like Airbnb better. OK, yeah. I don't like it. Syllables. Let's get to syllables. Syllables. So I I like making up words. Then once I once you make you decide you're going to make up a word, here are things that I like. I like high point Scrabble letters. OK, one of those Q X ^3, right? They're high point for a reason. Why are they high point? They don't exist there. There aren't that many words with them. They're rare. Bingo. They're OK. They're so rare. Letters are memorable. Interesting rare letters jump off the page subconsciously. If you could look at a screen of text. The Z's and the Q's and the X's. You see them in the back of your the. You see them in your field of vision and you're processing them. Because they're rare. Everything else that's not rare. So I like High Point Scrabble letters. Clearly elonmuskdoes2x. com XXXXXX. I do like X. Expedia. OK, you like that? Letters. OK, second thing I learned. I made a little bit of a mistake with Expedia, XBD, XBD or syllable or syllables. Too many, Too many many Too many too too many too too many. Two Is the right #2 Is the right #2 Is the right #2 is the right number. I think Google, Yahoo, Facebook. B&B Too many, Too many. But still a good one because it's unique. Yeah, yeah, Amazon. Amazon. One too many 12K though. 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