Day 68:) Abracadabra
Reminds you of magic, doesn’t it. Jeff is not less than a spellcaster. We are not here to discuss magicians or their powers. Its related the to Bezos. His first company was not Amazon. What was it? Hint, look at the title of the write up again. Finalize an answer before we proceed, guessing has its own power.
Naming a kid isn’t easy anymore. Many people change their name as the pronunciation doesn’t go well or their friends make fun. Additionally, there is shortage of new names. Similarly, company naming isn’t easy. It needs to have some connection with consumers. It needs to build its brand.
As Brad Stone writes in his 2013 bestseller, "The Everything Store” Amazon was initially called "Cadabra, Inc." It was intended as a reference to the magic world. Yet Stone writes that Jeff’s first lawyer pointed out that, it was unclear. Moreover, people sometimes misheard as “Cadaver”. That would have been embarrassing. Being customer centric, he finalized to rename it after the world’s largest river, “Amazon”. Primarily, to suggest scale as he was building the world’s largest bookstore. Secondly, at that time there were handful of websites and were alphabetized, so he wanted a word which started with A.
During the mid-90s, when he was looking for other possibilities. He registered the domain names like Awake.com, Browse.com, Bookmall.com. These sites are still active and will directly led you to Amazon site. You can google it to verify.
To quote, Jeffrey Preston Bezos, “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”