📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：Acquired · Rolex 原内容更新时间：Wed, 04 Mar 2026 机械表走时不如石英表精准，功能上也早已过时，劳力士却在石英危机之后成为腕表生意里最强大的品牌之一。Ben Gilbert 和 David Rosenthal 从劳力士的创立讲起，追溯它如何靠精准、防水和自动上链建立产品优势，又如何在石英表横扫市场时转向机械表的工艺、品牌与稀缺性。…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：Acquired · The Home Depot 原内容更新时间：Sun, 13 Sep 2026 本期来自 Acquired，也就是商业复盘节目，由 Ben Gilbert 和 David Rosenthal…
(04:30) - The "Pacing AI" Debate (27:51) - Nico Wittenborn discusses his journey from growing up in Germany and selling refurbished iPhones to founding Adjacent, a solo-GP venture firm. He shares his…
Matt is joined by the hosts of the Acquired podcast, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, to discuss their two-part series on the history of The Walt Disney Company; what surprised them the most during…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：知名播客 Acquired Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire 原内容更新时间：2026-08-10 本期节目来自知名播客《Acquired》，主持人是Ben Gilbert和David…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：知名商业播客《Acquired》在2026年6月的一期深度节目，由主持人Ben Gilbert和David Rosenthal共同呈现。他们以研究伟大公司的故事与策略而闻名，这一期他们终于将目光投向了娱乐巨头——华特·迪士尼公司。 原内容更新时间：2026-06-23…
The Walt Disney Company is the most successful enterprise ever created for monetizing human nostalgia. Today it’s the king of global entertainment, holding the intellectual property rights to the…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：《Acquired》的 Renaissance Technologies 这是一集关于金融史上最神秘、最成功，也最难复制的公司之一：Renaissance Technologies 的深度拆解。它的旗舰基金 Medallion Fund，在三十多年里实现了费前年化约 66%、费后年化约 40%…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了： WorkOS: Boris Cherny: Claude Code & the Future of Engineering | Acquired Unplugged presented by WorkOS 本期嘉宾 Boris Cherny 是 Anthropic 的技术员工，也是 Claude Code 早期核心参与者之一。在这期节目中，他和…
本期节目我们翻译了全球顶尖商业历史播客《Acquired》第七季首集。主持人本·吉尔伯特（Ben Gilbert）与大卫·罗森塔尔（David Rosenthal）深度拆解了中国电商巨头——拼多多（Pinduoduo）的崛起史诗。…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：硅谷顶级商业史播客《Acquired》 LVMH 本期节目是一场关于 LVMH、Louis Vuitton、Dior、Gucci、Hermès、Tiffany，以及 Bernard Arnault 的超长商业史拆解。两位主持人从战后巴黎的 Dior 讲起，追溯 Louis Vuitton 从王室旅行箱到全球手袋帝国的演化，再讲到 Moët Hennessy 与…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：商业史播客《Acquired》 Vanguard: The communist capitalist who saved investors a trillion dollars (Audio) 本期节目是一场关于 Vanguard 的超长篇商业史深度拆解。Ben Gilbert 和 David Rosenthal 从 Jack Bogle 的人生讲起：他出生在…
Vanguard is the most effective vehicle ever created for participating in the fruits of American capitalism. Today it’s the single largest equity owner of the majority of corporations in the S&P 500,…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：商业播客《Acquired》Hermès (Audio)…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：知名商业分析播客《Acquired》 Ferrari: What happens when you staple a luxury brand to a sports team? (Audio) 法拉利是商业史上最矛盾的公司之一：它的年产量仅为丰田的万分之一，全世界只有不到 20 万人拥有它，但全球却有超过 10…
你可以在Bayt播客上收听任何播客的中文翻译，并查看双语字幕， 安卓 下载地址： baytfm.com iOS 下载地址： apps.apple.com 本期我们翻译了著名商业播客《Acquired》。主持人本·吉尔伯特（Ben Gilbert）和大卫·罗森塔尔（David…
Ferrari is the pinnacle of luxury scarcity — across its entire 79-year history, the company has sold just 330,000 cars at an average price today of $500,000. For context, Hermès sells that many…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：顶尖商业策略播客《Acquired》 Formula 1 (Audio) F1 不仅仅是赛车，它是一场工程界的“世界杯”，更是办公室政治的顶级秀场。本期节目我们将带你穿越 70 年，看这项运动如何从二战后英国废弃机场的“野赛”，演变成今天由美国上市公司掌控、估值超 700 亿美元的商业巨兽。你将听到伯尼·埃克莱斯顿如何通过“空手套白狼”的手段掌控 F1…
Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital successors… and demand is stronger than ever in…
Costco is not only Charlie Munger’s favorite company of all time (plus he’s on the board, natch), it’s an absolutely fascinating study in how seemingly opposite characteristics can combine to create…
安卓：https://baytfm.com iOS：https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6748532039?pt=121796720&ct=xiaoyuzhou&mt=8mt=8 📝 本期播客简介 本期节目我们翻译了著名商业史播客《Acquired》。主持人 Ben Gilbert 和 David Rosenthal…
Formula 1 is three competitions in one: a 200mph battle of the world's best race car drivers, the world cup of engineering where thousand-person teams spend hundreds of millions designing cars from…
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Ben Gilbert, co-host of the Acquired podcast, sits down with Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO of Crusoe-AI, the company building what it calls AI factories,…
📝 本期播客简介 本期节目我们翻译了著名商业史播客《Acquired》。主持人本·吉尔伯特（Ben Gilbert）与戴维·罗森塔尔（David…
By 2025, the business podcast Acquired was getting one million listeners per episode, having doubled the audience year over since Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal started it in 2015. And they’d grown…
The NFL is nearly synonymous with America today. Practically nothing is more quintessentially and universally American than tuning in every Sunday (and Monday, and Thursday… and sometimes Saturdays…
In this special encore episode from AWS re:Invent, AWS CEO Matt Garman joins Acquired podcast co-hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal for an in-depth conversation on AI, agents, and the future of…
📝 本期播客简介 本期节目，Acquired播客迎来十周年里程碑，两位主持人Ben Gilbert和David Rosenthal邀请到传奇作家Michael…
Why has Acquired — seemingly against all odds — “worked”? It's a puzzling question: episodes are four hours long, they come out infrequently, and they usually don’t have guests or video. Hardly the…
Andrew Ross Sorkin does the work of about five people. He founded and writes the DealBook newsletter for the New York Times. He hosts Squawk Box on CNBC every morning at 6am. He runs the DealBook…
Coca-Cola is… sugar water. And somehow it’s also America, Christmas, summertime, friendship and happiness. Today we tell the story of how The Coca-Cola Company amazingly transmogrified a beverage…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了知名播客《Acquired》第十二季第六集，深度探索了传奇汽车品牌保时捷的百年历史。原节目主持人 Ben Gilbert 和 David Rosenthal 邀请到汽车界的权威人士、知名 YouTuber Doug DeMuro 作为嘉宾。Doug…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了 Acquired 播客。他们探讨美国传奇连锁超市 Trader Joe's 的故事。主持人 Ben Gilbert 和 David Rosenthal 将带我们回顾这家以其独特经营模式和狂热粉丝群体而闻名的公司。从创始人 Joe Coulombe 如何将一家模仿 7-Eleven…
Trader Joe's breaks every rule of modern retail. They don't do e-commerce. They don't do delivery. No sales, coupons, or loyalty programs. They only stock 4,000 SKUs versus 50,000+ at normal…
(01:18) - Altman's Long-Term Vision (26:18) - Karim Atiyeh, co-founder and CTO of Ramp, discusses the company's innovative use of AI agents to automate financial operations, enhancing efficiency and…
Google faces the greatest innovator's dilemma in history. They invented the Transformer — the breakthrough technology powering every modern AI system from ChatGPT to Claude (and, of course, Gemini).…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了知名播客《Acquired》的深度内容，由两位资深科技投资人兼深度分析师 Ben Gilbert 和 David Rosenthal 共同主持。他们将带我们深入剖析科技巨头谷歌在人工智能领域的跌宕起伏，核心聚焦于其面临的“创新者的窘境”。节目从谷歌早期AI根基讲起，包括PageRank、Noam Shazeer的语言模型，以及Google…
It’s finally here! Today we are releasing Acquired’s first “concert film” — the full video recording of our Radio City live show from this summer with Jamie Dimon, Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times…
📝 本期播客简介 本期我们克隆了：科技商业播客的巅峰之作《Acquired》。 在本期节目中，主持人 Ben 和 David 将带我们穿越回谷歌的黄金发展时期（2004-2015），深入剖析这家公司是如何从一个单纯的搜索引擎，演变成一个拥有八款十亿级用户的庞大产品帝国。你将听到 Gmail 如何凭借革命性的技术和“无限”容量，成为对抗微软的战略武器；YouTube…
Tobi is one of the most thoughtful people in the technology industry. He's also one of the very few people who started as a programmer -- just trying to solve his own problem -- and still runs his…
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, hosts of the mega-hit podcast Acquired, join Glue Guys to share their incredible journey from side hobby to multi-million dollar business. They reveal how they've…
In its first six years from 1998 to 2004, Google built one of the greatest products of all time (and certainly the greatest business of all time) with Search. Then in its next six years from 2005 to…
Is AI just better software? Or something completely different that requires a new paradigm to understand? Today we sit down with Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, two of the best product builders in the…
Gary Cohn was National Economic Council Director in the first Trump administration, and now he’s weighing in on U.S. inflation data and the nation’s future monetary policy. If it were up to him, Cohn…
We sit down with Jamie Dimon for a live conversation at Radio City Music Hall, covering the incredible journey from his 1998 firing at Citgroup (where he was widely expected to become CEO) to…
We tell the story of the single greatest business ever created: Google search. From its origins as a Stanford research project called BackRub, Google became the front door to the internet. Today it’s…
The Savannah Bananas have created a whole new sport. It’s baseball, but it’s not. It’s fast-paced, exciting, and incredibly entertaining. For example, if you're batting, and you step out of the…
What happens when two friends decide to learn about successful acquisitions and accidentally create one of the world's most popular business podcasts? Meet Ben Gilbert, co-founder and co-host of…
We sit down with Steve Ballmer, the legendary former Microsoft CEO and owner of the LA Clippers, for an epic conversation covering his 34 years at Microsoft. Steve listened to our Microsoft episodes…
We sit down with Zach Perret, CEO of Plaid, to discuss the remarkable journey of Plaid and the broader fintech landscape over the past several years. Zach takes us blow-by-blow through journey of…
What if we told you that the most important company in US healthcare was run from a farm in rural Wisconsin? And that farm contained the world’s largest subterranean auditorium, as well as…
When you saw this episode pop up in your feed, you either jumped for joy and hit play immediately (in which case you’re not reading this), or you said “Huh. That’s a surprising episode.” Well, if…
We sit down with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott for a masterclass in the art of enterprise sales — a topic where Bill ranks as one of the all-time greats by any measure. Bill started his career as a…
In the latest episode of The Materialist , I sit down with my friend Ben Gilbert , co-host of Acquired , to talk about brands, luxury, and the meaning we assign to the things we own. Ben has spent…
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (Acquired) are hosts of the critically acclaimed podcast covering business history and strategy. Ben and David join the Armchair Expert on this special Super Bowl…
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (Acquired) are hosts of the critically acclaimed podcast covering business history and strategy. Ben and David join the Armchair Expert on this special Super Bowl…
We flew to Taiwan to interview TSMC Founder Morris Chang in a rare English interview. In fact, the last long-form video interview we could find was 17 years ago at the Computer History Museum……
M&M’s, Snickers, Milky Way, Double Mint, Ben’s Rice, Pedigree, Whiskas, VCA, Banfield… all the brands you know, owned by the company you know nothing about: Mars, Incorporated. And Mars itself is…
Adam and Adir chat to Ben Gilbert from Acquired about his incredible journey to become one of the world’s best podcasters, the rise and fall of Wisetech’s Richard White and problems at the Tech…
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, our guest is entrepreneur and investor Ben Gilbert , co-founder and co-host of the hit podcast Acquired . Ben and his colleague David Rosenthal have developed a…
Today we are replaying our classroom session with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, founders of Acquired, the podcasting sensation telling the stories and strategies of the world's great companies. In…
Starbucks. You’d be hard pressed to name any brand that’s more ubiquitous in the world today. With nearly half a billion global customer purchases per week across its stores and 3rd party retail…
Fast Company called Acquired "the #1 tech podcast sensation." I've been a huge fan of the show for years. So, I was surprised when they contacted me and wanted to switch to Transistor for podcast…
Ben has some big news. Actually, double big news! On what has become a holiday tradition here at Acquired, we cozy up to the fire to do our annual review of the show “in public”. We reflect on what…
Today's teachers are Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, founders of Acquired, the podcasting sensation telling the stories and strategies of the world's great companies. In this episode, we turn the…
Erik sits down with Ben Gilbert, co-host and co-founder of Acquired, a podcast with 300,000+ subscribers that has been ranked the #1 Technology show on Apple Podcasts. Riverside.fm is a presenting…
Sega and the Genesis was THE underdog story of the early 90’s. In a single console generation, Sega went from ~zero to 50% US market share and dethroned Nintendo’s seemingly invincible global…
In the 1980’s Nintendo was on top of the world, with the NES achieving over 90% market share of home video games globally. So how did they fall ALL the way down to ~10% in just a few short console…
Episode 440: Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) are joined by the Acquired podcast (@AcquiredFM) hosts, Ben Gilbert (@gilbert) and David Rosenthal (@djrosent) to talk about scaling to a…
7 Powers author Hamilton Helmer and his Strategy Capital colleague Chenyi Shi join us again to discuss their latest research on a topic that’s highly relevant to the recent Acquired canon: how to…
David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert — of the Acquired podcast — invited me to San Francisco for a discussion on our mutual obsession: spending every waking hour studying the history of entrepreneurship…
ACQ Sessions returns with David Senra of the Founders Podcast. David is one of our very favorite people in the world — it’s impossible to spend an hour (or 3!) with him and not come away inspired to…
This week, we're excited to release a special live episode recorded during the community event portion of the Madrona 2023 annual meeting. Managing Director Matt McIlwain talks with Madrona Alumni…
Acquired co-hosts Ben and David are BACK to discuss the state of the VC market and YC shutting down its Continuity Fund (6:20) before diving into industries that benefitted from ZIRP (26:35). They…
You may think you know the Nintendo story: a plumber named Mario, a princess named Zelda… and didn’t they buy the Seattle Mariners at some point? We thought we knew it too. And then we started…
Crypto venture investing has plummeted from all time highs, but maybe perceiving this as a "crypto" problem is the wrong way of looking at it. Through the lens of seasoned investors, Ben Gilbert and…
We tell the full history of LVMH, and how Bernard Arnault turned a $15m investment in a bankrupt French textile company into the world’s largest individual fortune. It’s a story that’s equal parts…
Cozy up to the fire and join Acquired as we do our annual strategic review of the show and our business “in public”. We recap our perspectives on Acquired’s big moments from the past year, a bit of…
Startup entrepreneur and investor Ben Gilbert, co-founder and managing director of Pioneer Square Labs and PSL Ventures, is always watching for the next big tech wave. He concedes that there have…
Ben Thompson joins Acquired to discuss the business of Stratechery itself and celebrate 10 years (!) of the internet’s best strategy analysis destination. Even beyond Stratechery’s enormous impact…
The FTX fraud has dominated headlines now for weeks, during which we’ve debated if and how Acquired could uniquely add to the conversation. Then we realized there was an angle so perfect that we had…
Qualcomm, or “Quality Communications” — despite being one of the largest technology companies in the world, few people know the absolutely amazing technological and business history behind it.…
We sit down with all five current Benchmark GPs for one of their legendary weekly dinners, during which we ask all of the unresolved burning questions from Part 1. How do THEY think about Benchmark…
Acquired's Ben Gilbert fills in for Molly Wood and joins Jason to discuss Amazon's transformation (3:57), AI edge cases (22:02), Peloton's mistakes (32:05), used car prices (59:59), and the current…
We kick off ACQ Sessions with the-behind-the-scenes story of All-in, from the world’s greatest moderator himself Jason Calacanis. ACQ Sessions is our new, occasional “MTV Unplugged” version of…
Benchmark Capital. We tell the tale of the legendary equal partnership that accomplished something no other venture firm can claim: twice it has produced the highest returning fund of its cycle, each…
What separates investments in the very best companies from the rest? In this month’s episode of Onward, CEO Ben Miller is joined by the hosts of Acquired , a podcast that looks into the stories and…
So, how DID an online book retailer end up building the infrastructure layer that powers the entire internet? (Or at least 39% of it, per latest market share data.) While many myths, legends, and…
We sit down with legendary investor Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital and his son Andrew who, while less-well-known, is also an incredibly accomplished investor in a very different arena: early-stage…
Amazon is one of the most extraordinary business stories of our time. Many people in the tech industry have a general understanding of this story, picking up bits and pieces of its lore and culture…
Amazon. No company has impacted the internet — and all of modern life — more than this one. We’ve waited seven years to do this episode, and are so, so excited to finally dive into every nook and…
Acquired's Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal join the show to discuss how they think about public market investments (1:43), VC token sales (27:25), a VC market overview (45:40), the Vision Fund's…
This episode is a first for Acquired: we’re joined by a sitting US Congressman (from Ben’s home state of Ohio!), Republican House Representative Anthony Gonzalez. Anthony serves on the House…
We kick off Season 11 with the incredible story of the retail “granddaddy of them all” Walmart, and its founder Sam Walton. Once you study Walmart, you realize just how deep its heritage runs through…
Time Stamps: (1:18) Introducing Zach Weinberg (2:44) Web2 celebrity status (7:22) Frozen tech market (10:33) Investor perspective (14:06) Current market state (25:07) Advising founders (34:24) Bill…
When Patrick O'Shaughnessy and Brent Beshore asked us to give a talk at their incredible Capital Camp conference, we knew we had to bring something special. So we spent months combing through the…
We sit down with a16z General Partner Katherine Boyle to discuss investing in “American Dynamism”, why it’s so important and why now is the right time to pursue it. Katherine has a fascinating…
We sit down with the CEO founders of two of the most capital efficient success stories of all time — Zoom and Veeva Systems — to understand how they grew to billions of dollars in revenue (and tens…
For the final act of the Arena Show, we’re joined by Brooks CEO Jim Weber to tell the amazing story of how he transformed the company from a 3rd tier, deeply cashflow negative “also-ran” into one of…
We did an Arena Show!! This evening was so big and so special, we had to split it into two episodes for the podcast feed. First up is the Idea Dinner with our best internet buddies, Packy McCormick…
By 2012, NVIDIA was on a decade-long road to nowhere. Or so most rational observers of the company thought. CEO Jensen Huang was plowing all the cash from the company’s gaming business into building…
First, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal from Acquired join Jason to talk portfolio construction (13:41), Roelof Botha succeeding Doug Leone at Sequoia (30:58), and to debate the takeaway from Fast's…
We sit down once again with one of the world’s very best strategy thinkers, 7 Powers author Hamilton Helmer — this time joined by his impressive Strategy Capital colleague Chenyi Shi — to discuss…
He wears signature leather jackets. He can bench press more than you. He makes cars that drive themselves. He’s cheated death — both corporate and personal — too many times to count, and he runs the…
We hear a lot these days about hedge funds becoming venture firms, and venture firms becoming hedge funds. But a decade before either of those approaches became mainstream, a tiny $3m fund in Boston…
Born in the unlikeliest of places — the terrible, wasteland-like aftermath of post WWII Japan — Sony rose to capture the imaginations (and wallets) of consumers and engineers around the world. The…
We sit down with two of the most talented and respected people in Hollywood — Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — to talk about the process of adapting Mike Issac’s story of Uber, “Super…
In late 2021, Ben and David were guests on Ted Seides' podcast, "Capital Allocators". The episode kicked off Ted's "Venture is Eating the Investment World" mini-series. From Ted: David Rosenthal and…
We sit down with perhaps the only person besides Marc Andreessen who’s had a major influence on each of the Web 1, 2 and 3 eras: Brave Browser CEO (and former Netscape + Mozilla Chief Architect)…
The Peloton journey has been one seriously wild ride. From can’t raise money to one of Tiger Global’s first venture investments, to pandemic darling to the stock being down 85% in 6 months... there’s…
Not only is Taylor Swift the biggest music artist of our generation by nearly every metric (it’s not even close!), with the re-recording of her original albums she’s in the process of reshaping the…
David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert are venture capitalists and hosts of the Acquired podcast. Acquired is one of my favorite shows. In it, David and Ben tell stories of great companies in technology…
Season 9 ends at the beginning — with the man who changed Hollywood forever and wrote the blueprint for A16Z’s upending of Silicon Valley a generation later, Michael Ovitz and his “Dream Factory”,…
Note: This episode was published on Dec 14, 2021, approximately a year before FTX’s subsequent meltdown. The apparent negligence, fraud and self-dealing at FTX has given us much to reflect on after…
You've heard us talk about him every episode for the past two years... but until now most of you have never actually heard us talk to him! We've remastered our first, canonical interview with…
When does a creator become a company? Who says that media companies — or venture firms — have to be organizations? How high is the ceiling on one person + the internet? Acquired has the answers and…
David and Ben from Acquired.FM join Jason to talk about their favorite podcast moments from 2021 (1:29), valuations across startups & crypto (35:50), top content recommendations (1:10:00) and so much…
Of our 65+ sources for the TSMC episode, one stood above the rest: a wonderful Knowledge Project episode with Brinton Johns and Jon Bathgate of NZS Capital laying out the state of the semiconductor…
We bring the epic saga of Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller to a close (for now) with two of history's greatest second acts: Rockefeller's pioneering of modern philanthropy (and really modern life…
We sit down with the one & only Michael Mauboussin to dive deep into his incredible body of work: untangling skill and luck, measuring moats, persistence of returns in venture capital, decision…
Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal from Acquired join to discuss David's new venture fund Kindergarten Ventures (00:56), how to structure a VC fund (12:16), Jason's super pro-rata strategy (30:17),…
We sit down with the hottest new protocol layer in crypto today: Solana, and its cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko, who is the CEO of Solana Labs. If you listened to our Ethereum episode or follow crypto…
Another day, another deal. Keeping up with the flurry of acquisitions, IPOs, SPACs and venture capital these days is no easy task. In fact, IPO dollar volume for 2021 has already reached $171…
Join Midas Lister, Initialized Capital founder and YouTube content creator Garry Tan as he talks to Ben Gilbert, creator and host of Acquired podcast and managing director of PSL Ventures, about the…
What do you get when you combine Berkshire Hathaway's approach with early-stage venture capital? Altos Ventures. We're joined by Altos's wonderful Ho Nam to discuss their highly unusual approach to…
Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal of Acquired join Jason to talk about Bitcoin's recent price action (5:55), the cognitive dissonance of liking both Bitcoin and Berkshire (14:27), Amazon's acquisition of…
We team up with two of the very best English-language analysts covering China tech today, Rui Ma and Ying Lu from the Tech Buzz China podcast, to talk about the big trends happening on the ground in…
It's time. After 150+ episodes on great companies, we tackle the granddaddy of them all — Berkshire Hathaway. One episode alone isn't nearly enough to do Warren and Poor Charlie justice, so today we…
We dive into the fast-changing world of direct-to-consumer digital health, with perhaps the best person in the world: Levels founder Josh Clemente. (Shoutout to Ben Grynol and Michael Mizrahi from…
Last Acquired left the plucky Rec Room crew in our 2018 "Part I" episode, they were a seed stage startup making a VR game that users loved but grew slowly and barely monetized. Fast forward to today,…
We dive into the history behind Meituan, the juggernaut Chinese "super-app" which dominates China's services economy, offering consumers everything from food delivery, restaurant reviews, travel…
For the entire 20th Century, you’d be hard pressed to find a better business than an American newspaper — Warren Buffett famously described them as “franchises” — and no American newspaper stood…
We cover Sequoia Capital a lot on this show. Not only across our now four(!) dedicated episodes, but across a stunning nearly 50% of recent season companies where Sequoia was a primary or only…
We had to do it. After 12 years and 3,000,000x appreciation, we kick off Season 8 with the best investment of all-time and our biggest episode ever: Bitcoin. From the first bitcoin transaction of 10k…
As regular listeners know, we typically cover some of the biggest companies who often receive the most media attention (see Airbnb and DoorDash). But today's episode is a little different. In our…
Over 13 years after its founding, one of the defining startup companies of the past decade finally makes its public debut — and boy was it a big one. But for all the hype (and all the legitimately…
Live from the scene of its blockbuster IPO, we recount the crazy, roller coaster journey of this "Palo Alto delivery company". From Sand Hill darling during their Series A and B fundraises to all but…
Acquired is live on the scene covering Salesforce's blockbuster $27.7B acquisition of Slack, with the help of the internet's #1 Slack bull (and top internet analyst in his own right), Packy McCormick…
Live from the 2020 ASCEND Space Conference, Acquired covers the full story behind the most "out there" technology story of the past few years: Virgin Galactic. How did this space tourism company grow…
Superstar past guest and Superhuman CEO Rahul Vorha joins us for a deep dive on how Superhuman applies concepts from game design to building productivity software. We're not talking points and badges…
Check out Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm FOLLOW Ben: https://twitter.com/gilbert FOLLOW David: https://twitter.com/djrosent FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
A week before the 2020 US Presidential election, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo joins us to tell the story of a company that has impacted all of our lives (political and otherwise) like none other.…
This week, a conversation with entrepreneur, podcaster and investor Ben Gilbert , who, in 2015, started two entities. The first is Pioneer Square Labs , a startup studio that builds and invests in…
My guests today are Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. Ben and David are investors but also the duo behind the Acquired podcast, which is one of my favorite podcasts that dives deep into business…
On this special episode of Acquired, we're joined by a master interviewer himself, Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like the Best. We turn the tables and cover the most fascinating story he's never…
On the eve of the 2020 NBA Finals, we dive DEEP into the history and business model of the league behind the world's 2nd largest and fastest growing major sport. How did the NBA grow from merely an…
Acquired teams up with the My First Million podcast for a “best of both worlds” crossover episode. First we go deep, “Acquired style”, on the wild story of MFM host Shaan Puri’s bought, sold, and…
Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) hosts the pod today with guests Ben Gilbert (@gilbert) and David Rosenthal (djrosent) from the Aquired podcast (@acquiredfm). In today’s episode you’ll hear: Shaan asks Ben and…
We go deep behind the "epic" story of a plucky game developer from Cary, North Carolina (by way of Potomac, Maryland) which, after bootstrapping for its first 22 years, has quietly morphed into an…
E1100 featuring Clearview AI's Hoan Ton-That: https://rb.gy/r1dofh E1101 featuring Acquired's Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal: https://rb.gy/qqoju5 E1102 featuring Zero Mass Water's Cody Friesen:…
Check out Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm FOLLOW Ben: https://twitter.com/gilbert FOLLOW David: https://twitter.com/djrosent FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis Thanks to our partners...…
We're joined by two very special guests, Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz and her cofounder, spouse and Eventbrite Chairman Kevin Hartz, to tell their story of building Eventbrite together (along with…
We kick off Season 7 with a bang: Pinduoduo, the incredible five year-old Chinese mashup of "Costco and Disneyland" (as self-described in their IPO prospectus) which recently became the fastest…
0:31 Jason intros today's news roundtable guests Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal 6:54 Clubhouse raises Series A from a16z at a $100M valuation pre-launch 11:12 How do $2M in secondary shares play into…
When you think of Intel today, you probably think of the microprocessor company. Maybe you also think about about 'Intel Inside' and their famous jingle. You might even think "big, stable, boring…
The world has changed. Acquired is changing too: we’re taking a pause from our normal episodes. The world doesn’t need stories of M&A and IPOs right now. But it does still need stories of great…
We kick off Season 6 with a long-awaited Acquired Classic: Facebook’s $22B purchase of WhatsApp in 2014, which still ranks as the largest acquisition of a private VC-backed startup in history. Yet…
“There’s no real secret to making the stuff we make. It’s not something where you have to be crazy talented. The thing is, you just spend a little bit longer on it than is reasonable. Most people…
Coming to you live from the University of Washington, Ben and David are joined by hundreds of awesome Seattle listeners (and a few non-Seattle listeners!) to cover the meteoric rise of trucking…
We take Acquired to the Old Town Road to cover the amazing story behind the biggest global sensation of 2019 — and the highest valued private startup in the world — TikTok. How did a mid-30 year old…
Ben and David cover the series of three 2004 Google acquisitions that formed the core of Google Maps as we know and love it today: Where 2 Technologies, Keyhole and ZipDash. From nearly zero adoption…
Ben and David head north of the border to Ottawa, Canada to cover perhaps one of the greatest IPO success stories of the past 5 years, Shopify. From humble beginnings as a “lifestyle business”…
For our first episode of Season 5, Acquired returns to Shenzhen to cover another Chinese technology giant, this one slightly... different from our past subjects: Huawei. From a backwater importer of…
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an... enterprise software company? We give the full Acquired treatment to newly-public Slack, one of the most extreme and successful pivots of all-time. From a log…
Zoom board member (and general partner at Emergence Capital) Santi Subotovsky joins us to tell the true underdog story behind the hottest IPO of 2019. Together we trace founder Eric Yuan’s incredible…
Acquired looks back at a monumental IPO from a *much* different era: Electronic Arts. We’re joined by EA’s founder Trip Hawkins to tell the incredible story of how he built the company that made…
What do Pinterest, Lyft, Uber and Slack have in common? Yes, they're all newly public or about to make their initial public offerings. But they also share a common characteristic on the bottom line…
In the second episode of our APLUSS(Z!) IPO saga, we dive into the history behind the planet’s largest non-social social network, Pinterest. From The Pirates of Silicon Valley to the bloggers of Salt…
Call it the playoffs. Call it the Olympics. Call it March Madness. No matter which sports analogy you borrow, it falls short of capturing what Lyft's IPO yesterday kicked off in the tech world. A…
We enter the wayback machine and revisit the subject of Acquired’s second ever episode, Facebook’s bombshell 2012 acquisition of Instagram — this time with the help of then-Facebook executive Emily…
Spotify + Gimlet/Anchor Quick Take! We continue to experiment on Acquired, this time with a quick-take on Spotify’s bombshell dual-acquisition of Anchor and Gimlet Media. While we may give these…