#AskGaryVee Episode 30: How to Pick a Name for Your Business

- [Voiceover] Maurizio asks, "Hi Gary, "what's your opinion on listicle sites? " - If you haven't noticed, back in San Francisco for episode 30, excited about that. Listicles. You know, it's interesting. I have a very different view on this than because a lot of my friends and contemporaries are journalists or have loved growing up reading the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or the Post, or these kind of things. I think there's way too much romance in journalism, and here's what I mean by that. I'm a huge fan of it because BuzzFeed and UpWorthy and companies of that nature, and let's not forget the USA Today really started infographics and listicles in its modern sense, though listicles have been around for 100 plus years. The people that are exploiting listicles and our worlds are being overrun by 12 things a cat did while it ate food, everybody who's complained about that needs to understand, this is the same debate we had about reality TV, the same thing we had about the people that didn't like game shows during the daytime, the same thing we are about everything, meaning there's a huge misunderstanding of how these things work. Here's my example, what do I think about listicles? As a business? 24 months ago, phenomenal. You were going up in trend. Right now, super strong. 24 months from now, solid. 48 months from now, hmm. 72 months from now, concerned. See what happens is we get these trends, they matter, people enjoy them, and then marketers ruin it. We love listicles 24 months ago as a big base, then you had the cynics and the haters that started a little bit earlier, and now what you're seeing is, you're starting to have a conversation of like, is it too much? Are we clicking as many? And the reaction of the market is always what dictates. I love the customer. I don't love anything else. So as long as the customer is enjoying it and they're clicking it, everyone says the Kardashians are crap, but million of people watch it. These things are subjective. Listicles are subjective. My POV on it, my subjectiveness on it is if people enjoy them, then that's what it's going to be. And so for now and the next 36 months, I'm bullish on it as a business. As far as a consumer, I don't consume anything, so it doesn't matter.

- [Voiceover] Gabriel ponders, "Gary, in the age "of social media, tweet, vine, Instagram length limited, "how does, should this affect a startup "in choosing a name? " - Gabriel, this is a great question. I understand what you're saying, right, Twitter, tweet, you know, kind of the short form, you know I actually think it's an interesting question. The reason I decided to choose it is, a name is made. Meaning, when everybody's sitting around, I have friends who sit around and think about picking the name of the startup for 900 years. And I tell them, what did Google mean to anybody? What did Facebook mean to anybody outside of people that were in the Harvard community that knew what the facebook was? None of these words mean anything until there's something, right? People email me like, uh I don't like my last name, like you're emailing Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, Vaynerchuk sucks. Let's call it what it is, right? And so now a bunch of you are gonna leave in the comments. No no, it's kind of unique, it's good. I get it. But it's only good because I made something out of it. And so, what does it mean? It means nothing to me. If you went with a long-winded startup, you could get abbreviations. I actually think that's a new trend. Somebody's gonna come out with a company called like Copperhound Thompson, but everybody's gonna call it CHT, right? And so like in a world where we're short-forming everything, people call me V-chuk because they don't want to say Vaynerchuk and that became my slang last name to my friends in high school and so we will evolve our name into our convenience if it brings value. So stop worrying about the name, and start worrying about the product. - [Voiceover] Noble Rot Society. (background murmuring) (laughter) - Right? - [Voiceover] I haven't written any blog posts. - I highly recommend it if your name's available or if you own your dot com, to just do it under that. - [Voiceover] I do too. - Cool.

- [Voiceover] Noble Rot Society asks, "Gary, when you left Wine Library "to start VaynerMedia, was it a conscious decision "not to have someone take over Wine Library TV? " - This is a great question. People have asked me this question a lot, and I wanna interject some depth, like last couple questions, last couple episodes with some of this kind of fun stuff. And insight that I've never talked about. You know, I don't know if it was a conscious decision. Nobody really raised their hand, nobody wanted that spot. It's kind of like my speaking career right now, knock on wood I'm doing so well, the bad part is I always have to speak last because nobody wants to go next. I don't think it was the right or obvious choice internally at Wine Library to jump on it, Ian, Brandon, you know all these great people internally just didn't' wanna have the kind of, you know, not responsibility, look it takes a certain personality to put yourself out there. We've talked about the past, my blog post about this the other day did really well. You can link that, Stunwin. So it wasn't a conscious choice, it was the right choice. If that person existed in the building, maybe it would have continued in that manner, but I think one thing that I'm really focused on, why I took this question to interweave it to everybody else while answering it is I think you have to assess. Like you always have to assess. And I think way too many people come in with what they want it to be, the notion of, somebody will take over this show, and then you're forcing someone to sit in the hotseat, and then you really lose the lustre of it. Not to mention, I may want to jump back in that seat one day. (bell dings) Question of the day. Where do I want to, San Francisco, I'm in San Francisco, I should ask a San Francisco, what is your favorite thing about San Francisco? And remember, you guys are letting me down on this 'cause you're so focused on answering questions. I want critiques. Now that you've had two of them, give me the overall feel of these five-minute episodes. You keep asking questions! Oh! This is my opportunity to make my Jets-Broncos prediction, since my Chargers-Jets wasn't so good. Let's go 41 to 13, 13 Broncos. You keep asking questions, I'll keep answering them. Subscribe! I need subscriptions because I can't push this many right hook in social, so subscribe!