Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

David Placek named CapCut, Vercel, Azure, Windsurf and 4000+ products

18 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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David Placek named Azure, CapCut, Vercel, and over 4000 other products. He pitched Azure to Microsoft as a cloud service name by suggesting a word meaning blue, evoking sky and clouds, even though the client initially hated it. The name became a $100 billion brand.

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Microsoft came to us to develop a name that started or ended with cloud, made sense to them because it was a cloud service. And our reaction was, if you do that, you're going to be in an ocean of other cloud this, cloud that, and you have an opportunity as Microsoft here to really emerge as a leader. We came up with this word, Azure, which is another word for blue. And so there was a link to clouds, blue sky, clouds, things like that. We really presented it based on its linguistic qualities. The reaction wasn't good. One of the clients said, that's just a dumb idea. And as we talked about it, they began to warm up to this. And now, of course, it's 100 billion dollar brand.