Acquired

By Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Technology Business Investing

What's Acquired about?

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.

4.9

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Lockheed Martin

05.30.2023

Today we bring you two absolutely incredible stories. The first is Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works division — the elite team of aviation geniuses who produced some of the greatest airplanes in history: the U-2, the Stealth Fighter, and the incomparable ...

Acquired episodes:

05.30.2023 Lockheed Martin Today we bring you two absolutely incredible stories. The first is Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works division — the elite team of aviation geniuses who produced some of the greatest airplanes in history: the U-2, the Stealth Fighter, and the incomparable ...
05.18.2023 Spotify CEO Daniel Ek We sit down with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek live in Stockholm at Spotify’s amazing HQ studio (check out the video version of this episode — which plays natively on Spotify!). This was an incredibly special and timely conversation: for those ...
04.26.2023 Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming We sit down Benchmark’s legendary gaming investors Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins (now also of the excellent Gamecraft podcast fame) to discuss the history and future of gaming business models. This episode is the perfect bookend to our Nintendo/Sega gaming ...
04.18.2023 Short: The Death of Sega 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 monopoly. But — somehow — it all then ...
04.11.2023 Nintendo: The Console Wars 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 ...
04.04.2023 Interview: Hamilton Helmer & Chenyi Shi on How to Build an AWS-Like Second Business 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 build a second business line. This incredibly ...
03.29.2023 Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) 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 go take ...
03.16.2023 Nintendo's Origins 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 researching and were blown ...
02.21.2023 LVMH 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 ...
01.25.2023 The NFL 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 ...
12.19.2022 Holiday Special 2022 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 commentary on ...
12.06.2022 Stratechery (with Ben Thompson) 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 itself on business and tech over the years, Ben’s work inspired a ...
11.29.2022 Enron 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 to drop everything and enter ...
11.15.2022 Qualcomm 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. Seriously, this story is on par with Nvidia, TSMC and all the ...
10.17.2022 Benchmark Part II: The Dinner 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 v3? What are their day-to-day ...
10.04.2022 ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis 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 Acquired: a great IRL guest, a bottle (or two) of wine, and ...
09.28.2022 Benchmark Part I 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 time with a 100% different GP lineup. If ...
09.28.2022 Benchmark Capital 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 time with a 100% different GP lineup. If ...
09.12.2022 Replay: Sequoia Capital Welcome to a new experiment here at Acquired: Replays! We realized many of you have joined us recently and haven’t heard older episodes — so we’re re-releasing some of our “greatest hits”. Today we’re starting with one of our very ...
09.06.2022 Amazon Web Services 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 some downright falsehoods exist, the real ...
08.30.2022 Howard Marks & Andrew Marks: Something of Value 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 VC. The purpose of the conversation was to discuss their ...
08.16.2022 Amazon.com 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 ...
08.02.2022 From NFL to Startup COO to Congressman Regulating Crypto (with Rep. Anthony Gonzalez) 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 Financial Services Committee and is deeply involved in crypto and ...
07.19.2022 Walmart 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 Amazon and so many iconic ...
06.20.2022 The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories 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 Acquired back catalog and cataloged our 12 ...
06.06.2022 American Dynamism (with Katherine Boyle) 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 background, beginning her career as a reporter ...
05.19.2022 Capital-Efficient Growth (with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan & Veeva CEO Peter Gassner) 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 of billions ...
05.16.2022 Arena Show Part II: Brooks Running (with CEO Jim Weber) 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 the world’s premiere ...
05.12.2022 Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity 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 and Mario ...
05.09.2022 Packy + Mario @ Acquired Arena Show! For our next Arena Show guest announcement... we have not one, but TWO heavyweights of internet business culture. That's right, live and for one night only, the supergroup of liquid super teams is getting back together. Packy McCormick, Mario Gabriele, ...
05.09.2022 Arena Show Announcement (!!) Seattle, May 4th 2022 Yes, you heard that right — we are doing a live show, IN AN ARENA!! Thanks to our friends at PitchBook Data, we have Seattle's brand new Climate Pledge Arena the evening of May 4th, 2022. We are so, so ...
04.20.2022 Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022) 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 a highly speculative platform with few ...
04.06.2022 Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi) 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 platform businesses, and how the Power ...
03.28.2022 Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006) 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 8th most valuable company ...
03.15.2022 Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner) 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 named Altimeter Capital set out simply ...
03.07.2022 SONY 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 ...
02.28.2022 Aid for Ukraine (with Anatoly from Solana and Sergey from Everstake) Like so many, we’ve been both heartbroken and inspired by what’s happening Ukraine. Our friends at Solana and FTX are announcing today that they’ve helped Everstake — a Ukrainian company and the largest Solana validator in the world — set ...
02.22.2022 Super Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) 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 Pumped”, into their new Showtime series. ...
02.15.2022 The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) 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) Brendan Eich. In true ...
02.10.2022 Peloton 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 never a dull moment in this ...
01.23.2022 Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version) 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 entire music industry in a way ...
12.21.2021 CAA (with Michael Ovitz) 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”, Creative Artists Agency. From Jurassic Park to ...
12.15.2021 FTX (with Sam Bankman-Fried & Mario Gabriele) 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 we — and many others — gave Sam ...
12.08.2021 7 Powers with Hamilton Helmer 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! To celebrate the LP Show going public, we've remastered our first, canonical interview ...
12.03.2021 Not Boring (with Packy McCormick) 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 they are... Not ...
11.03.2021 Complexity Investing & Semiconductors (with NZS Capital) 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 market. When coincidentally we met Brinton ...
10.18.2021 Standard Oil Part II 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 itself), and perhaps the single greatest shareholder ...
10.05.2021 Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More 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 ...
09.22.2021 Standard Oil Part I It's time. We dive into the original American capitalist mega winner, Standard Oil, and its legendary founder John D. Rockefeller. This company and man almost defy characterization -- Elon, Bezos, Gates, Buffett... they've got nothing on old John D. Not ...
09.07.2021 TSMC It's time. We dive into the unbelievable history behind the quietest technology giant of them all — and as of recording the world's 9th (!) most valuable company — the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. This story checks every box in ...

Older episodes

Acquired

What's Acquired about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Acquired episodes:

Lockheed Martin

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek

Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming

Short: The Death of Sega

Nintendo: The Console Wars

Interview: Hamilton Helmer & Chenyi Shi on How to Build an AWS-Like Second Business

Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast)

Nintendo's Origins

LVMH

The NFL

Holiday Special 2022

Stratechery (with Ben Thompson)

Enron

Qualcomm

Benchmark Part II: The Dinner

ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis

Benchmark Part I

Benchmark Capital

Replay: Sequoia Capital

Amazon Web Services

Howard Marks & Andrew Marks: Something of Value

Amazon.com

From NFL to Startup COO to Congressman Regulating Crypto (with Rep. Anthony Gonzalez)

Walmart

The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories

American Dynamism (with Katherine Boyle)

Capital-Efficient Growth (with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan & Veeva CEO Peter Gassner)

Arena Show Part II: Brooks Running (with CEO Jim Weber)

Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity

Packy + Mario @ Acquired Arena Show!

Arena Show Announcement (!!) Seattle, May 4th 2022

Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022)

Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi)

Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006)

Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner)

SONY

Aid for Ukraine (with Anatoly from Solana and Sergey from Everstake)

Super Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave)

Peloton

Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version)

CAA (with Michael Ovitz)

FTX (with Sam Bankman-Fried & Mario Gabriele)

7 Powers with Hamilton Helmer

Not Boring (with Packy McCormick)

Complexity Investing & Semiconductors (with NZS Capital)

Standard Oil Part II

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

Standard Oil Part I

TSMC

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