YouSaid · the spoken record

Arielle Jackson

lines on the record: 100
first: 2022-08-18
most recent: 2022-08-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So, a good purpose. Explains the change you want to see in the world, irrespective of financial gain. So people often get hung up on like mission and vision and values and all this stuff. And like values are fine. They're like internal. I'm not going to talk about those today, but I don't care about mission and vision. I just want one thing because people can only remember one thing and it's your purpose and it's why you do what you do. And when you articulate this really well, it helps you make company decisions. It exists on a 10 year or so frame. So everything we're talking about with product positioning is pretty malleable. It exists on like an 18 month frame if you're an early stage company. So it can evolve. Whereas your purpose is pretty much going to stay the same for like 10 years. It's that North Star. And it helps align people in the company and it helps the public want you to win. So a good one. Like I worked at Google, you know, right out of grad school.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So, your purpose is why you do what you do, it makes people want to root for you, and it has a big role in aligning people to come want to work for you and to have employees all feel like they're part of something. I like to think of it as we exist too blank and like whatever that blank is is your purpose. Do you want to hear about like examples or do you want to hear about like what makes a good purpose?”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it depends on the stage of your company and how much you have already that you have to kind of like, it's hard for people to scrap what they already have. There's a lot of like sunk cost fallacy type stuff going on. If you're starting from nothing, I think you can do this in like three weeks. If you are starting the naming process itself because of trademark and domains can take a little longer. When I name companies, we usually, it usually takes about a month just for naming. But like the whole brand strategy process, you could do if you're like a really early stage company in a matter of weeks. And I think whatever time it takes you actually is going to save you so much time down the road. It's going to help you save time on company decision making. It's going to help you save time writing your website. You're literally like your web copy almost writes yourself, it writes itself if you get this all done right. So it's a small investment of time up front that actually saves you a lot of time down the road is how I would like sell it to a skeptical PM.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Descriptive to being a ball bearing company that they were able to keep it as they evolved into a car company. But if you look at like their early writing, it's so cool. Like it's so cool. Like long, long time ago, they would talk about cars are driven by humans. And our job as a car manufacturer is to protect the humans who drive the cars. Like that was like fundamental formation of the company. So they really knew why they existed. And they did stuff like in like, I think it was like the 1950s when everyone just wore lap bands in the car and they came out with the three-point safety harness. And instead of, you know, patenting it and like licensing it, they gave that away for free for everyone because that would make like all the world's cars safer. And like those kinds of company decisions, that's what made Volvo stand for safety. It's not the logo.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, their logo has to do with a very early history. I like research this because I'm a nerd out on this stuff, you know. They had some early history as a ball bearings company. And so I guess that logo had some meaning then, but it wasn't so.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's nothing about that logo that means all the things I like about Volvo, all the things that the Volvo brand has come to mean to me. Their colors are like black and white and a little blue. Like there's nothing more boring than their color palette. And so like it's not the logo and the font, the colors of Volvo that has made them mean. They literally like own the word safety in cars right now. It's other stuff. And if you looked at their style guide, I actually looked at their style guide recently and it's just like, here's our black and our white and our blue and here's our tertiary colors and here's our logo. It would not help you understand volvo as a brand.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not just logo font colors, which is really just a visual articulation that feeds into your brand. I'm a big Vovo fan. I'm on my fourth Volvo right now. So I'm like super brand loyal and I always use them as an example because if you can picture the Volvo logo in your head right now, it kind of looks like the male symbol, you know, like it's like a circle with an arrow coming off the side.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what you said is right. It's like you get those three components your purpose, your positioning, your personality. You use that as an informant to your visual design and also to your tone of voice so the way your copy sounds, the way you show up in written copy. And then ideally you have some sort of, a lot of companies have what they call like a style guide or like a brand style guide. And it really only covers logo fonts colors like don't put our logo in blue, don't tilt it on an angle. You know, here's what it looks like in white. Here's what it looks like in black. Here's the favicond. But they don't have that for like, here's who we are. Here's, you know, here are 10 lines that could be ad copy for us. Here is why we do what we do. This is the personality of our brand. Here are five attributes. You know, we are playful, but not silly. We can talk about that a little bit more. But like, I think all of that belongs in the style.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Process that's like right sized for early stage startups. And I like to start with why do you do what you do, like just having a really clear understanding of that. That's your purpose. The second part is your product positioning. So meaning How do you want people to understand your product and what role it plays in their lives? And then the last part is your personality, which is how do you show up in the world? What do you like? If your brand was a person, would I want to hang out with them? Would someone else want to hang out with them?”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so a lot of founders may think that when we say your brand, we mean your logo and your font and your colors. And that is a visual expression of your brand, but it's not actually your brand. Your brand is who people think you are. And so why is it important for people to think what you want them to think? It really comes down to like people's understanding and particularly your target audience's understanding of what your company and your product is. And I don't really think there's anything else more important than that if I was building a company. So your brand is who people think you are and developing a brand strategy is what do you want to be? What do you want people to think you are? And what are you going to do to help shape that perception? So when I work on a company, there's a lot of steps to this, but I kind of have this nice little.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big deal Sure, yeah. Everything we're talking about that you've asked me so far, I think that you're going to ask me about positioning how your marketing person and all of that is stuff we offer to first-round companies. We offer my services as part of the investment. There are times when we might get stuck and we have to bring in like an outside person to help us with something. But for the most part, it's all included. And you'd pay a lot of money. The naming for I like the best when I get stuck is called 100 Monkeys. They're awesome. A long time ago, I used to be like, oh yeah, it's about $25,000. And I recently got, couldn't take on an outsider first-round project and referred it to them. It's $47,000 for a name. So, yeah, it's gotten expensive. But if you have the means, it's nice to get some outside help.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, a really funny one is if you have like a code name for your product, or at first round, a lot of the companies we invest in, they raise their seed round with one name. They may or may not be attached to it. But then, you know, they work with me and I'm like, yeah, your name's not that good. And here's why we should probably change it. Or they say, we can't use this name. We found out we have a trademark conflict. I really believe in using a code name that's so ridiculous that you won't ever launch a product like that if you're just trying to incorporate and go really quick. So for example, a lot of people, they need their name for their corporation. And so they are filing all the steps to creating a business. And they just like pick something, but then they end up getting attached to it. And then they want to actually like launch under that name. And it's like, well, that's not so great. Like, here's why. I think you should change it. If you pick something so ridiculous that you would never launch, it's actually helpful because then you can go through a process and find it a name that will do more of your work for you and you won't be attached to something crappy”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's definitely been bad names. Like, I helped a company rebrand recently that they had a bad name. Like, it just looked dated. It didn't fit any of those. It wasn't distinctive. It wasn't timeless. It had one of those naming trends. Those are not good. Like you want to avoid those. But if you come up with something that is pretty good and you can make something beautiful out of it and it fits your company, it does some of the marketing work for you. And people like to say it. And ideally it's memorable and it has some emotion to it. Go, go for it.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you actually think about it, this happens a lot like you give someone a list of 10 names or 15 names and they're just cells in a spreadsheet these days like we're doing most of this virtually You give people name like that and it's like you have to imagine what it could be You think about Apple or Disney or Nike or Volvo or any of Lego any of these brands you know in a cell They're just okay. Like, they're, you know, you have to grow them over time. You just hear about like, I think Phil Nate with Nike when he was given that name, like as an option, he was like, it's okay. I'll sleep on it. Such a great name, you know”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. Yeah. I mean, it also takes a little of the pressure off, to be honest, you know, like everyone wants to find that perfect name.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is beyond what that actual word means. Like Disney means magic today, you know. Volvo means safety. Those names are not good. Like if I just put it in a spreadsheet or one of those lists, no one would pick it. So that's kind of what I mean, that like the name is just part of the overall marketing or the overall brand. And a bad name with a really great company with great company strategy, great marketing is going to be great over time. And a good name is just going to help you, but I don't think a bad name is going to kill a good company.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So if your company has a great name and the name is remarkable, like people will be like, oh, that's a great name. Or it just makes sense. Like in the case of Seesaw, like, that's a good name for that company. That good name is just going to help people talk about it. It's going to spread word of mouth. People are going to like to talk about the company. If you think about, there's a lot of companies with bad names that we use all the time or even quite boring names that we now love. So if you think about like Disney Walt Disney's last name, it didn't mean anything, but over time, that's such a good company and it got imbued with all this meeting and now it stands for magic and stands for so much. It was just the dude's last name, you know. So over time a word can come to mean something.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, same. The only difference is if you have a lot of equity in your company name, like Square is a good example, like Square had a lot of equity. Google is a perfect example. A lot of equity in the company name. You often don't want to name your products something really creative and different because you actually want the equity in the master brand to come through. So if you think about Square's names, I mean, they have other ones. Like when they diverge from the square brand, like cash or, you know, when they want something new or like Google, when they came out with Android and they wanted to diverge from the master brand. But think about all the products. It's like Square Register, Square Stand, Square App, you know, Google Maps. You know, they're like really boring. And it's because the equity is in the product, in the company name and the product name can actually be boring and descriptive.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Might not get it for trademark, and it's really sad when you get really attached to one and then you can't use it. So, yeah, three to five top contenders, and then you go through trademark process, domain, and kind of go from there.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the themes would be like the history of strawberry farming or like botany 101. Like we'd things things that are related. If you could do like last names of famous farmers, you know, that's the thing about like how did Tesla get their name? They probably did like last names of people related to electricity. And that's such a great name. But so like thematic brainstorm. And then that's usually a little more fruitful. And we do the same thing like free association, all that. I spend some time afterwards on Wikipedia and the internet and like actually finding words words. Also love the library. Check out books sometimes and just like read books on the topic and just write down the interesting words that come up. And anyway, so then I give them back a short list. The shortlist is around 10 to 25 concepts that are ideas that are worth looking at further. And from there narrow it down based on the criteria and the red, yellow, green, we come up with like three to five. Don't come up with one because”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your positioning statement are related to what you do, which they very well should be. That's a great way to just come up with like hundreds of words really quickly. And then the second step is a thematic brainstorm. So I pick between like seven and ten themes. You can think of them like Jeopardy themes. So it's like, I don't know, like, okay, so there was like an AI. Yeah, yeah, it was like an AI tool for strawberry picking.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So the way that I run a naming process is I like to first do positioning and then I set up an hour with the founders and me and ideally a couple other people who are interested but disinterested. So like I'll bring a writer from the first round team or the founder has a friend who's a linguist or the founder has a friend who speaks four languages. Like we like those kind of people to be in it if possible. And it's generally like five to seven people in a brainstorm. And the idea is we spend one hour. I set it up beforehand and we try to come up with like hundreds and hundreds of bad ideas and a couple decent ones that are worth exploring more. And the brainstorm is two parts. The first part is based on words in your positioning statement. So we take all the meaningful words out of your positioning statement. This is like the warm-up and we run synonyms, antonyms, free associations, other languages, whatever we can do off of those words. And so if your words”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the way I do it is I apply the criteria after we do the brainstorm, and then we do like red, yellow, green on each of those criteria just to weed out ones that are not doing well on any of this. And then you add your own criteria. So the next step's the brainstorm. I'm going to go fast through this. Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask you about the brainstorm.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's an article on the first round review called Positioning Your Startup is Vital. Here's how to nail it. And all those criteria and like how to do naming is actually in that article.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then the last one, last two are appearance. So there's some names that just like lend themselves really nicely to visual design and, you know, they have to do with like how tall the letters are and is their symmetry. And like if you give this to designers making a logo just like so awesome and cool and fun and then length. So a lot of people want, you know, they want a name like square and stripe and these one syllable names, but a two-syllable or even a three-syllable name can often be more memorable.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I always say a good name is only going to help you, but a bad name won't hurt a good company. So I don't really feel.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We went through this exercise and we were like, lettuce, it's not so easy to say and spell. So we actually didn't name the company that and went with something else. But there's a company now doing quite well.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you tell me a word like flicker, I can tell you what year it was because that was the naming trend to remove valves. So I generally stay away from naming trends because I just, I want your company name not to sound dated in 10 or 20 years. The last one is it's kind of related to what we talked about in the brief. What do you want the name to communicate, which is the name reflective of your key messaging? Or does it somehow suggest an emotion or feeling that you're trying to convey? And then sound and ease of pronunciation, like is it fun to say, is it easy to say how is it to spell? We almost named a first round company a while ago, lattice, which is now a different company that's doing quite well. But we didn't name it that because this was a company that was like.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trademark, which is kind of obvious like can you use this? Are you violating someone else's trademark? And the second step with trademark is do you need to proactively protect the name? Domain availability. So everyone gets hung up on getting a dot-com like maven.com got maven.com. It was an arduous process that Goggin wrote about on Twitter. But these days, like you don't necessarily need the dot com Square operated on Square Up for very, very long time. Lots of companies are operating on variants of a dot-com. So name availability. Distinctiveness is it memorable? Is it sound like someone else's name? That's, I think, one of the most important ones. Just is it different and distinctive? Is it timeless? So there's a lot of naming trends. Like if you tell me optimizedly, I could tell you like what year was the company.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two things. What do you want the name to communicate? So in that example of like Seesaw, we wanted it to communicate, you know, young childhood. In the example of Ero, we wanted it to communicate design, being designed forward. It can be whatever you want it to communicate. What do you want to avoid? We don't want it to sound like this competitor or we hate this word or it needs whatever you want to avoid. What are the names of competitive and related products? And then are there other considerations like I worked with a company, another first round company that was operating in China? And one of the considerations was this has to be pronounceable for a native Chinese speaker. Like that's a very valid additional consideration. And then there are seven criteria for names that always apply, in my opinion. And you could add additional ones like that Chinese speaking one would be an additional one. The seven are”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the first thing is to do your product positioning. I really believe that positioning dictates so much of your marketing and should always be the first thing you do. I had a student in my last class that I taught through Mabin. I teach a class on brand strategy. And he was, I think, second or third time founder who had never taken a class on brand strategy. He worked really hard. He was awesome. Anyway, at the end of the class, you know, kind of do this closing thing. And he goes, I'll never write a line of code without doing positioning first. And that was like music to my ears, you know, that's like, I think positioning comes first. But in any case, I do that first and we'll talk about that in a little bit. And then you write a naming brief. And it's really simple. It's like, what are you naming? Are you naming a company? Are you naming the product? Are you naming both usually if you're early stage company? You're naming both and they're going to have one name because you don't want people to have to remember.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, my personal preference is if you think about there's descriptive names, the Internet Explorer, there's suggestive names like Chrome, then there's evocative names, which I would say like Cisson Maven fit into there where they're not, they're like in-between suggestive and evocative. And then there's empty vessel names or fanciful names. There's a spectrum. And when you do your brainstorm, we can talk about like this in the process. You want to think across all of them, but you might have in your naming brief, we want a suggestive name or we want a descriptive name. You might go into it with that. And so, you know, there's times and places for all of those names across the spectrum. My personal bias is I tend to like suggested names.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it doesn't have to. And in examples like Ero and Yahoo, it doesn't. Even if you think about like Apple, it doesn't. Apple has nothing to do with Apple computers. It's a word we all know. There's a lot of words where there's no meaning behind it. If there is a meaning behind your name, your name is doing a little bit more of your marketing work for you. So if your name is Internet Explorer, I know exactly what you do. If your name is Chrome and you're a designer on the web, you kind of might be like, oh, that makes sense. That's the area around the browsing window. If your name is Firefox, I have no idea what you did. You just took two words and put them together and made something up. And now you have to spend and you have to be consistent over time and making that word mean something for people. But all three of those browsers were successful at a time. And I don't think the name had anything to do with internet explorers.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That has kind of what is almost an empty vessel name Ero is for Ero Sarinin who is a designer. He did like these really beautiful buildings, architectural buildings, and then also some tables. Like you can get a Sarinen table at design within Reach. But that name nobody knows that unless you're in the design community. And so that name is effectively an empty vessel. And they have to spend a lot and be consistent about making that mean a Wi-Fi system.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so words like that that are empty vessels, they really don't mean anything. They actually, if you think about the name Yahoo, it's actually like really silly. It's like Yahoo, I always hear it like that, you know, Google has a meaning for people in the know with the one followed by as many zeros. It's like a big number and it's a misspelling of that. So that one's a little less silly to me than Yahoo. My take on empty vessel names is they can be really memorable and they can be evocative of the motion. But you have to do a lot more marketing work over time to make it mean something. So if I say Yahoo today, like we know it's that search engine we used before we all switched to Google and we have, you know, the purple color in our head and we think about what it meant at the time that we might have used it. But it took a lot of marketing dollars and a lot of time for that word to mean that. So they're doable. I worked on a company.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it means specifically one who understands because they've done something, they've acquired the skills or knowledge over time. And I just think that's such a cool name for a platform that allows, you know, X operators or current operators to teach their skills to other people through cohort-based classes. Like you want to be a Maven, instructors are Mavens. It's short. It's easy to say when I tell you what that company does, that name makes perfect sense. So I tend to like those kinds of names myself, but I also, I don't know, I like other kinds of names for other kinds of products too. I think it really comes down to what is your product, what is your company, what is the name trying to achieve, and really getting.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, I don't know during COVID at my son's school was closed with my older son's school was closed and they all use CSA and I got to tell my son, you know, oh, that's my friend's company and we named it, you know, back in the day. And he was like, oh, that's cool. That name makes sense. That's what that's the reaction you want. It also has a little bit of emotion to it. It has some nostalgia. It's fun to say it's short, it's memorable. I think all of those things make a good name. Another company that has a good name that you and I have both worked with is Maven. So they're a first round company. Goggin has talked about this publicly. We named that company together. Maven is a Yiddish word that means one who understands.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is an awesome name, and I'll use it as an example. So Seesaw is an ed tech company. They had a really bad name before that. And we did this whole naming process and ended with that name. And why I think that's a good name is when I say it's an I say Seesaw, you don't really know what it is. But when I tell you, oh, it's this ad tech company and it's an iPad app and it helps you, you know, the work that elementary school students do go between the teacher, the parents, and the student. And you're like, oh, well, see how it makes sense for elementary school. It's something that goes back and forth. It has that sort of nostalgic feel and it makes sense that it's an ed tech company. And I personally tend to like those kinds of names that are suggestive or evocative where when I tell you what the company does, you're like, oh, that makes sense. But it's not that what the name is tells you exactly what the company does. So that's an example, I think, of a good name.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love naming. I think I've named just over 30 companies at this point. And actually, when I mention how I got into consulting when I emailed some friends and asked them if they need marketing help, I think I'm allowed to talk about this one. So one of those companies was some friends from Google, Adrian and Carl. They had left Google, gone to Facebook, and then started a company. It's now called Seesaw. It's an ed tech company. That was the first company I named Post Google Square, all of that.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did a three month project for one day a week, nine years ago. And I'm still there. I work half-time at first round. So I do everything I do for other companies, but for first round companies on first round's time. So the way it works is if you're funded by first round and as part of your onboarding, we offer a lot of value add services. And I'm one of them. And those services can be everything from we have someone who's really good at compensation and HR stuff and we have someone who will help you with pricing and I'll help you with marketing. And what that means when you're a seed stage startup is everything from naming to positioning to developing a brand identity, a website, and your initial launch and eventually hiring a marketer. So that's sort of the bread and butter. That's what I like working on anyway. So it's a good fit because we invest in a lot of seed stage companies at FirstRon. I get to help almost all of them.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was called cover. They were acquired by Twitter. It was an Android app that could get you the right apps at the right time based on where you were by changing the lock screen on your phone. And so that company and that experience of working at this tiny startup that was seven people, I really liked it. And then they got acquired by Twitter, but I just left square. So I decided not to join Twitter with the rest of the team. And instead, I just decided I was going to help a bunch of other small startups. And I emailed a few friends who, you know, from past lives who had small startups was like, hey, I'm not going to Twitter with the rest of the team. You do need marketing help. And every single person wrote back and said yes. And that's basically how I started consulting. I guess it was about eight or nine years ago. At the same time, first round had reached out and said, hey, who did you use for marketing comms for cover? And I got connected with Brett from first round. And he's like, would you help our companies?”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So after I left Square, I went to a Chinese startup that was seven people. They were funded by first round. And I helped them. With everything that a tiny startup that's trying to grow needs”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Kyle Zink had gone to Square from Google. And so after I had that experience, I think I sent them both an email just being like, this thing's fucking awesome. You know, I make jewelry. It was great. I sold, you know, I think it was like 50% more than I did last year because I accepted credit cards. And I can't remember which of them wrote back first, but they were like, come interview. And so that was basically how I ended up at Square.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. So I was working at Google before Square, and I always had this hobby of making jewelry. And I used to sell it my jewelry in a few different boutiques around San Francisco and LA. It was like a very small side hustle, but it was like my creative outlet. And I sold at craft fairs around Licanuka Christmas time. So I used to sell and just take cash. And then I got a square reader and I sold at a craft fair that year and it was awesome. Like that square reader, it helped people buy more. It helped me sort of look cool. It was just really great to accept credit cards. I'd never done it before. I used to take PayPal invoices and like be on my computer and like send someone an invoice and they'd get it. It was painful. All the reasons that people use Square, you know, I experienced it. And two people I knew from Google, Megan Quinn.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So at the time, Square was mostly used by like farmers, market vendors and event vendors. Like I made jewelry in a past life and that's how I got to Square was like being one of those vendors. The positioning was really that it was for brick and mortar businesses, particularly Quickserve Coffee. Donuts, sandwich shops, that kind of quick serve brick and mortars. And it was up against your ugly old point of sale, your cash register effectively. That was our foil. And the benefit was turn your iPad into a point of sale. And the differentiator was about one unified experience that you can do everything you can on your cache register and more and you'd be proud to have it out on your cash.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and there's been new versions of it since there's a contact list version of it. And there's one with an integrated screen that I think is Android based, which is, you know, you don't have to have an iPad, but that product's still around. Like I still pay on that original square stand all the time. I drink a lot of coffee, like those independent coffee shops around LA. So they're all still using it.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The blue bottle in Mint Plaza. I was like super pregnant, super proud. And I still get kind of excited every time I pay on one of those, which is all the time.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It seeding it so that they would all use it. We had, I think, 15 metro areas covered with like the coolest coffee shops and donut shops and everything at launch. And, you know, there was a lot of fake it till you make it. I was like negotiating a deal with Best Buy and the Apple store. I'd never done anything like that before designing packaging was really awesome. There was just so much to it, like launching a physical product. And at the time, it was at like a pretty high price point for a company that had always had like one free product and helping that company go up market. I remember I was 30 something weeks pregnant when we launched. We got all the blue bottle stores to use it and we had this launch event where Jack and our head of hardware Jesse unveiled this product.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would probably say that my favorite project, and this is because I get reminded of it like on a daily basis, was working on the square stand at Square. It was the first time I ever worked on hardware. And I joined Square was like 140 people. We had no marketing function. We had a couple marketing people. We had no product managers. And the hardware team was running the show on launching this new product that was supposed to get us upmarket into brick and mortar. Anyway, I was running like event marketing at the time and giving away a bunch of those readers that you stick into a phone for free and having a lot of like, you know, small merchants use. And I like volunteered to run the launch of this product as a product marketer for the first time. It was just so fun, like doing everything from like positioning it, figuring out how we're going to talk about this beautiful new piece of hardware that would turn your iPad into a real point of sale. We had people fly around the country and get like cool coffee shops and brick and mortar businesses seated.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So over time, a word can come to mean something. That is beyond what that actual word means. Like Disney means magic today, you know, Volvo means safety. Those names are not good. Like if I just put it in a spreadsheet or one of those lists, no one would pick it. So that's kind of what I mean, that like the name is just part of the overall marketing, the overall brand. And a bad name with a really great company with great company strategy, great marketing is going to be great over time. And a good name is just going to help you, but I don't think a bad name is going to kill a good company.”
2022-08-18 · Lenny's Podcast · The art of building legendary brands | Arielle Jackson (Google, Square, Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source