"X for Y" and stereotypes

I use information theory and LZW Compression to argue that "X for Y" actually makes for an excellent elevator pitch

Back in 2012 or so, my friend Sangeet Paul Choudary became a celebrity. He started writing this blog called “platform thinking”, whose latest avatar is now on Substack, simply called “platforms”.

I remember starting to read his blog then, and started paying attention to platform businesses. This happened to be the time when platform businesses such as Uber, AirBnB and Tinder started getting established. Soon everyone wanted to start a platform business, looking at how rapidly the above named businesses had scaled.

Soon there were clones. Startups started branding themselves as “Uber for X” or “Tinder for Y”. Soon, venture capitalists started owning such nomenclature. And soon enough, such nomenclature became a meme, and non-startup people (which included me back then) started making fun of them.

This kind of nomenclature hasn’t gone away. When I talk to people about Babbage, some of them ask me to describe it in a “X for Y” format. So far, I’m yet to figure out a good answer for it. And so far I haven’t bothered thinking of a good answer for it. However, I think I need to get an answer soon.

The advantage of stereotypes

Long ago, on my (then) personal blog, I had written about “compression and stereotypes”. After waxing eloquent about LZW compression, I spoke about how stereotypes “reduce the number of bits required to place someone”, and in that sense, stereotypes are a good thing.

The whole idea of stereotyping is that we are fundamentally lazy, and want to “classify” or categorise or pigeon-hole people using the fewest number of bits necessary.

And so, we use lazy heuristics – gender, caste, race, degrees, employers, height, even names, etc. to make our assumptions of what people are going to be like. This is fundamentally lazy, but also effective – in a sense, we have evolved to stereotype people (and objects and animals) because that allows our brain to be efficient; to internalise more data by using fewer bits. And for this precise reason, to some extent, stereotyping is rational.

Stereotyping is inexact, but it provides for a good prior. Stereotypes help people “understand” other people with few bits, and thus with minimal effort. Stereotypes are a problem only when people fail to update these priors upon getting more information.

Stereotypes reduce the number of bits required to place someone or something, and are in that sense, stereotypes are a good thing.

And if this is true for people, this is true of companies as well. And this is where a “X for Y” branding helps.

Stereotyping companies

You can think of the derision for the “X for Y” kind of branding as being similar to the derision for stereotypes. Stereotyping is looked down upon, and rightly so, and this is because people fail to update their priors even after they get more information. Describing a company as “X for Y” is effectively stereotyping the company, and if stereotyping is bad, this is bad as well - so goes the conventional thinking.

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It is common to talk about “elevator pitches”, where you are supposed to talk about your company in one or two sentences. It is unlikely you’ll actually do much networking in elevators, but when you go to parties or networking events, it becomes necessary to talk about your company in a sentence or two.

If you can only use a sentence or two to describe your company, you are necessarily compressing information about your company. There is no way you can give full details on what you are doing in such a short space. The challenge is in terms of what details to keep and what to drop so that the person you are talking to has as much information of your company as possible.

“X for Y” as a great elevator pitch

If you have a very restricted word count, you will want to use words that carry as much information as possible.

In this context, think of the “X for Y” branding. In some 6 or 7 words (assuming X, being a brand name, is one word long, and Y is some 4-5 words long), you are able to convey a great deal of information, because X packs so much information in just one word.

It is inexact for sure. It reduces your company to a caricature for sure. Then again, any elevator pitch necessarily reduces your company to a caricature - the information compression required is way too much. And as Lempel, Ziv and Welch have shown us, the best way to compress information massively is by “using phrases that are already known”.

So what you are doing by using a X for Y branding is accepting that you are reducing the company to a caricature, and still trying to pack in as much information content as possible. Yes, it might sound stereotypical (ahem!). Yes, it might result in people making fun of you. But it works.

Babbage is what for what?

All this theorising, I realise, is very good, but now my problem is that I need to figure out a “X” and “Y” for Babbage Insight, if I were to describe it as a “X for Y”. Let me start by trying to crowdsource it (though, I realise, nobody ever comments on this blog - I admit I’m infrequent in my posting).

Based on what you know about Babbage, how would you best describe it as a “X for Y”? Please comment and let me know!