Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Every company has a story. Learn the playbooks that built the world’s greatest companies — and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.

#3 in the Top 100 investing All time chart

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Top 10 Acquired Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Acquired episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Acquired for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Acquired episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Starbucks (with Howard Schultz)

Acquired

06/04/24 • 195 min

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 channels, a significant portion of the human population gets their daily fix in the green and white paper cup. (Including our own Ben Gilbert who famously enjoys his daily spinach feta wrap. :)

But it wasn’t always this way. Long before the frappuccinos and the PSLs and the cake pops, Starbucks was just a small-time Seattle roaster that only sold beans — and was started not by Howard Schultz but rather the guys who later ran Peet’s (!). Starting from six tiny stores when Howard took over in 1987, this quirky coffee company named after a character from Moby Dick has scaled to nearly 40,000 locations worldwide.

Today, in a first for Acquired, the protagonist himself joins us as a third cohost to tell the whole story of Starbucks. And Howard is in the perfect moment to do this — after three separate stints as CEO he’s now retired, off the board of directors, and in his own words “not coming back.” So place a mobile order (or not! as you’ll hear Howard speak about), sit back with your own favorite Starbucks items, and enjoy.

Sponsors:

Many thanks to our fantastic Season 14 partners:

The Biggest Thing We’ve Ever Done:

San Francisco. September 10, 2024. Mark your calendars.

Links:

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** Future capabilities of biometric payments are under development; features and timelines are subject to change at the bank’s sole discretion.*

‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

9 Listeners

Costco

Acquired

08/21/23 • 178 min

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 incredible company value. For instance: Costco has the cheapest prices of any major retailer in America — and also the wealthiest customer base. They pay their hourly workers 30% above the industry norm (and give them excellent healthcare + 401k benefits) — and are almost 3x more profitable on labor than Walmart. Speaking of Walmart, Costco stocks 40x fewer SKUs than their Bentonville-based rivals — yet sells an average of 15x more volume of each. And oh yeah, practically all of Costco’s C-Suite started their careers as baggers and checkout clerks! Tune in for a mind-bending exploration of one of the world’s most iconic — and iconically unique — companies.

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Sponsors:

ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acqsnaiagents
Huntress: https://bit.ly/acqhuntress
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta

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7 Listeners

The Mark Zuckerberg Interview

Acquired

09/18/24 • 87 min

Mark is the iconic founder CEO of our time. At Chase Center on September 10, 2024, he did an unprecedented thing: a live conversation in front of 6,000 people on Meta’s company strategy, sharing stories from early Facebook history, and his thoughts on the future of AI, VR, and AR. Mark was remarkably candid in our discussion, and gave us a window into his real and intense daily demeanor leading Meta. (And his other life endeavors!)

We can't wait to release the complete video of the whole night, including our surprise conversations with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, and cameo appearances from Jensen Huang and Mike Taylor (the incredible singer of “Who Got the Truth?”). That’s coming in a couple weeks, but for now: enjoy this conversation with Mark Zuckerberg.

Sponsors:

Many thanks to our fantastic Fall ‘24 Season partners:

Links:

Mike Amiri (who designed Mark’s shirt!)

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Photo Credit: Mark Zuckerberg by Jeff Sainlar / Meta

3 Listeners

Charlie Munger

Acquired

10/30/23 • 66 min

We sit down with the legendary Charlie Munger in the only dedicated longform podcast interview that he has done in his 99 years on Earth. We’ve gotten to have some special conversations on Acquired over the years, but this one truly takes the cake. Over dinner at his Los Angeles home, Charlie reflected with us on his own career and his nearly 50-year partnership at Berkshire Hathaway with Warren Buffett. He offered lessons and advice for investors today, and of course he shared his speech on the virtues of Costco once again (among other favorite investments). We’re so glad that we got the opportunity to record and share this with you all — break out your notebooks, tune in, and enjoy the singular wit and wisdom of Charlie Munger.

A transcript is available here.

Sponsor:

Special thanks to Tiny for being the exclusive sponsor of this episode. You can get in touch with them here (just tell them Ben & David sent you), and order your very own bronze Charlie bust here.

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3 Listeners

1 Comment

Amazon.com

Acquired

08/16/22 • 263 min

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 cranny of this legendary company. And of course because we’re Acquired and this is Amazon, we couldn’t contain it all to just one episode... even a 4+ hour one! So today we focus on Amazon.com the retail business, and we’ll have another full episode on AWS coming soon. And because all great series are trilogies, to fully understand Amazon we highly recommend starting first with our previous episode on Walmart, which truly is the giant’s shoulder that Jeff Bezos stood upon. Let’s go!!

**Big News** We've got merch! Check it out at https://www.acquired.fm/store !

If you want more Acquired, you can follow our newly public LP Show feed here in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).

Sponsors:

Thank you to our presenting sponsor for all of Season 11, Fundrise! If you’re considering raising a growth round of capital in the next year, you should definitely explore raising some of it with the Fundrise Innovation Fund. Just email [email protected], and tell them Ben & David sent you. And if you’re an individual looking for exposure to private growth-stage technology companies, you can invest in the Innovation Fund here.
Thank you as well to Pilot and NZS Capital! You can register for the NZS Talkback here.

Links:

Carve Outs:

2 Listeners

Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More

Acquired

10/05/21 • 82 min

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 making and — particularly timely — expectations investing and how to think about valuations in the current 2021 market environment. (!!) Michael's work is maybe our most frequent carve out on Acquired, so we're pumped to finally have a chance to interview the man himself. Big thank you to Patrick O'Shaughnessy and Brent Beshore for introducing us all at Capital Camp this year!

Sponsors:

ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acqsnaiagents
Huntress: https://bit.ly/acqhuntress
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta

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Links:

Michael's wonderful talk at Google: https://youtu.be/1JLfqBsX5Lc
The new revised edition of Expectations Investing: https://www.amazon.com/Expectations-Investing-Reading-Returns-Heilbrunn/dp/0231203047/
The Success Equation: https://www.amazon.com/The-Success-Equation-Untangling-Investing/dp/1422184234/
Measuring the Moat: https://research-doc.credit-suisse.com/docView?language=ENG&format=PDF&sourceid=csplusresearchcp&document_id=1066439791&serialid=4uA2wHojCvFKzqWfwIyDvkSN1pkXRpb43LvyclLcJsk%3D&cspId=null
Public to Private Equity: https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/articles/articles_publictoprivateequityintheusalongtermlook_us.pdf

2 Listeners

The NFL

Acquired

01/25/23 • 227 min

The NFL — it’s almost synonymous with America today. And its history is a fascinating lens to explore the nation’s development over the last 100 years, from WWII to TV and suburbs to the Internet and social media. What began as a quasi-illicit league in small midwestern towns is now the single largest media property in the world today by revenue. And whether you watch football or not, this is one incredible business story. Acquired is ready for some football — let’s kick this Season off right!

Sponsors:

Thanks to our fantastic partners, any member of the Acquired community can now get:

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2 Listeners

LVMH

Acquired

02/21/23 • 212 min

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 Berkshire Hathaway, Steve Jobs and Barbarians at the Gate... and wholly under-appreciated for the genius business model innovations that enabled it. Whatever industry you operate or invest in, there’s so much to be learned from Bernard and LVMH’s complete reshaping of the luxury sector over the past three and a half decades. And oh yeah, it also involves Nazi spies, Italian family murders, Rupert Murdoch, Rihanna becoming a billionaire, Jay-Z’s champagne feuds and Beyoncé wearing a 128 carat diamond. Tune in. :)

Sponsors:

Thanks to our fantastic partners, any member of the Acquired community can now get:

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2 Listeners

SONY

Acquired

03/07/22 • 178 min

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 company produced hit after hit after hit: portable transistor radios, CDs, the Walkman, the PlayStation, DVDs, life insurance(!!)... and yet ultimately fell behind its greatest American admirer, Steve Jobs and Apple. This is the incredible story of Sony’s human and technological optimism in the face of overwhelming odds — a story that, given recent world events, remains as relevant today as ever.

Sponsor: https://acquired.fm/zoominfo

This episode has video! You can watch it on YouTube.

PSA: if you want more Acquired, you can follow our newly public LP Show feed here in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).

Links:

Steve Jobs’ Tribute to Akio Morita: https://youtu.be/Drwkvf76Cls
Planet Money on Sony and Spider-Man: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076531156/the-spider-man-problem
Episode sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LpnPSju5xSPcuaRVd1TYXnL1oGBr4Qs5bRS7owbxoEc/edit?usp=sharing

Carve Outs:

How This All Happened by Morgan Housel: https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/how-this-all-happened/
The Model 3 is AWESOME: https://www.tesla.com/model3

2 Listeners

Nike

Acquired

07/25/23 • 239 min

Nike — it’s perhaps the most iconic and most prolific brand of the modern era. On any given day, swooshes adorn the feet of more people on earth than any other footwear company — by a long shot.

If you read Shoe Dog or watched Air, you may think you know its history. But Shoe Dog ends in 1980, and Air... well let’s just say it’s an enjoyable piece of fiction. And it turns out (as always) that the real story is filled with far more drama, twists and business lessons than either of those works.

We’ve been wanting to cover Nike for a long time, and thanks to our LPs who voted to choose this episode it’s finally here. So lace up your Vaporflys, Air Maxes, Dunks or Jordans (or your Monarchs, hey we don’t judge), head out for a long run or walk and enjoy!

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