Own one word if you want people to remember your company
Longtime Silicon Valley marketer Shernaz Daver tests every startup with a one-word association.
TechCrunch · The marketing guru who helped turn Khosla Ventures into an AI powerhouse is moving on | TechCrunchShernaz Daver, the first chief marketing officer of Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley firm that funds young startups, helped make that firm one of the first names founders mention in artificial intelligence. Her tool was not a slogan or a campaign. It was a test she calls the equals exercise.
Get a whiteboard and draw a large equal sign. Then check whether you have one clear association in the mind of a stranger. Daver puts it this way: “If I say ‘search,’ you say ‘Google.’ If I say ‘shopping,’ you say ‘Amazon.’ If I say ‘toothpaste,’ you probably say ‘Crest’ or ‘Colgate.’” Then she asks the team: “What is the thing that when I say it, you automatically think of your company’s name?”
The answer has to be one word or one short phrase, and it has to be specific enough to own. Daver believes the exercise has worked for two startups backed by Khosla Ventures. She counts Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup working on fusion energy, as having claimed nuclear fusion, and she counts Replit, a tool for writing software, as having claimed vibe coding, or describing what you want in plain words and letting AI write the code.
Then repeat that word until you are sick of it, and keep going. Daver warns founders, “You’re on mile 23, the rest of the world is on mile five.” Founders move so fast, she says, that they underestimate how long everyone else needs to catch up, so they switch messages while the public is still hearing the first one for the first time.
Start by running the test on a handful of people outside the company. Say your word and see what they say back. If they do not say your name, in Daver’s view, you do not own it yet.
Questions people ask
How do I pick the right word to own?
Pick something customers already care about and can picture, not an internal value like quality or innovation. As general advice, try out a few candidates with outsiders and keep the one they remember without prompting.
What if a bigger company already owns my word?
Then you need a smaller or newer word you can plausibly claim first. Daver points to Commonwealth Fusion Systems focusing on nuclear fusion rather than energy in general, and Replit focusing on vibe coding rather than coding in general, as examples of narrower claims.
How long does it take for the association to stick?
In Daver's experience at Khosla Ventures, it took two and a half years of persistent effort for the firm to be widely remembered as an early investor in breakthrough startups, and she called that fast. Expect to use the same word consistently for a long time before judging it.