In this segment from Industry Focus: Tech, analyst Dylan Lewis and Fool.com contributor Evan Niu share what SurveyMonkey (SVMK +0.00%) CEO Zander Lurie had to say about the company's name -- namely, why a monkey? Why not an octopus? A cat? -- and put the name in some context.
A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Oct. 5, 2018.
Dylan Lewis: Evan, on Twitter, I mentioned that we were going to be talking about SurveyMonkey and this new IPO, and I asked if people had any questions. As always, the internet disappointed. [laughs] We have Market Foolery host Chris Hill immediately chiming in. This is a five-parter, so get ready. "1) Why'd they pick Monkey for the company name? 2) Aren't dolphins the most intelligent animal on earth? 3) Did Survey Dolphin even make it through the first round of voting? 4) The company's HQ is in San Mateo, California. Not a question. 5) What? They don't have dolphins in the Pacific Ocean?" [laughs] So, I think Chris is having some fun here, but it does beg the question, why are they called SurveyMonkey? So, why don't we briefly touch on this? CEO Zander Lurie has mentioned this actually publicly in Quora, this great platform for asking people questions. Do you want to take this one, Evan?
Evan Niu: Lurie answered on Quora, he was talking about how, in the .com bubble, everyone had these weird internet names. I mean, these names sound normal today, because they've been around forever. Like Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, he even mentioned Amazon. They had all these different names. Again, this company is 20 years old. He says they were looking for something fresh that also described the product, an online survey tool. What is curious and uses tools? Monkeys. So, SurveyMonkey is what they came up with. I think that's kind of a silly justification or story or whatever. But it is what it is.
Lewis: You know what, Evan? I think in 20 years, a lot of people are going to be looking at companies like Shopify and Spotify, and be like, "How come every company was ending in -ify, and putting all these weird names, like Lift with a Y for Lyft?" Well, it's because domain names were bought up at that point. People had to start getting creative with how they were naming their companies because they needed domains that fit whatever they were going to name the business.
Niu: Or throw an R at the end of something. That's popular now. [laughs]
Lewis: Of course! Right! So, I think it's the same thing. It's just a bygone era in tech, if you will.
Niu: A sign of the times.
