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.
DEBRIEF4 min · Written and voiced by AI
SeinfeldOct 19, 2026 · 3 h 50 min
SeinfeldSeinfeld, which ended three decades ago, has been watched by 72 million Americans so far THIS YEAR. Behind that incredible stat is an equally incredible business story: obsessive…
DEBRIEF5 min · Written and voiced by AI
The Home DepotSep 14, 2026 · 3 h 35 min
The Home DepotThe Home Depot's founding story is like an Avengers movie… if the Avengers got fired, went broke, and stacked empty paint cans ten feet high to look legitimate. After being…
Aug 10, 2026 · 4 h 33 min
Disney: The Renaissance and the EmpireIn 1984, the Walt Disney Company was worth more dead than alive. Disney Animation — the heart of Walt's famous flywheel — had stagnated for years, bleeding away talent while…
DEBRIEF7 min · Written and voiced by AI
The Walt Disney CompanyJun 22, 2026 · 4 h 31 min
The Walt Disney CompanyThe 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…
May 18, 2026 · 3 h 48 min
VanguardVanguard 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…
Apr 13, 2026 · 3 h 59 min
FerrariFerrari 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…
Mar 5, 2026 · 4 h 51 min
RolexRolex 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…
Mar 4, 2026 · 2 h 53 min
CostcoCostco 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…
Mar 2, 2026 · 4 h 19 min
Formula 1Formula 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…
Jan 27, 2026 · 4 h 8 min
The NFLThe 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…
Dec 15, 2025 · 2 h 38 min
10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)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…
Nov 24, 2025 · 3 h 54 min
Coca-ColaCoca-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…
Oct 27, 2025 · 3 h 18 min
Trader Joe’sTrader 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+…
Oct 6, 2025 · 3 h 56 min
Google Part III: The AI CompanyGoogle 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…
Oct 1, 2025 · 1 min
Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall (Presented by J.P. Morgan)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…
Aug 26, 2025 · 4 h 2 min
Google Part II: AlphabetIn 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…
Jul 16, 2025 · 1 h
The Jamie Dimon InterviewWe 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…
Jun 30, 2025 · 3 h 29 min
Google Part I: Origins of SearchWe 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…
DEBRIEF7 min · Written and voiced by AI
The Steve Ballmer InterviewJun 2, 2025 · 2 h 49 min
The Steve Ballmer InterviewWe 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…
Apr 28, 2025 · 4 min
Announcement: Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall!A few weeks ago, we told you that Acquired is doing something in New York City on July 15 with our good friends at J.P. Morgan Payments. Well, the big announcement is finally here…
Apr 21, 2025 · 3 h 47 min
Epic Systems (MyChart)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…
Mar 24, 2025 · 4 h 18 min
Indian Premier League CricketWhen 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…
Jan 27, 2025 · 2 h 48 min
TSMC Founder Morris ChangWe 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…
Jan 21, 2025 · 2 h 30 min
TSMC (Remastered)We dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Founded in 1987 by the then-56…
Dec 16, 2024 · 3 h 44 min
Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)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…
Nov 18, 2024 · 3 h 13 min
IKEAIKEA may be the most singular company we’ve ever studied on Acquired. They’re a globally scaled, $50B annual revenue company with no direct competitors — yet have only ~5% market…
Oct 28, 2024 · 6 h 11 min
MetaMeta is a company everyone knows (literally, everyone). But, somehow, it’s also a company that few people feel they actually understand. Their products are used by more humans than…
Sep 30, 2024 · 2 h 17 min
Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg)Here it is: the complete video of the most unbelievable night of Acquired’s nine-year life… our sold out live show at the Chase Center in San Francisco. We joked during the months…
Sep 18, 2024 · 1 h 21 min
The Mark Zuckerberg InterviewMark 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…
Aug 8, 2024 · 22 min
Chase Center + Summer UpdateSummer greetings from Acquired! Two items for this “mini-episode”: Tickets are now available for our live show at Chase Center in San Francisco, with special guests including Mark…
Jul 22, 2024 · 4 h 42 min
Microsoft Volume IIIn 1999, Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world. And in 2019, Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world, again. But… what happened in the twenty…
Jun 4, 2024 · 3 h 7 min
Starbucks (with Howard Schultz)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…
Apr 22, 2024 · 4 h 16 min
Microsoft Volume IMicrosoft. After nearly a decade of Acquired episodes, we are finally ready to tackle the most valuable company ever created. The company that put a computer on every desk and in…
Mar 18, 2024 · 3 h
Renaissance TechnologiesRenaissance Technologies is the best performing investment firm of all time. And yet no one at RenTec would consider themselves an “investor”, at least in any traditional sense of…
Feb 20, 2024 · 4 h 1 min
HermèsIn luxury, there’s Hermès… and there’s everyone else. Stewarded by one French family over six generations, Hermès sells the absolute pinnacle of the French luxury dream. Loyal…
Jan 22, 2024 · 3 h 36 min
Novo Nordisk (Ozempic)Last year Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, overtook LVMH to become Europe’s most valuable company. And the pull for Acquired to finally…
Dec 18, 2023 · 2 h 10 min
Holiday Special 2023Ben 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”…
Nov 27, 2023 · 3 h 36 min
VisaTo paraphrase Visa founder Dee Hock, how many of you know Visa? Great, all of you. Now, how many of you know how it started? Or, for that matter, who started it? Who runs and…
Oct 30, 2023 · 1 h 7 min
Charlie MungerWe 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…
Oct 16, 2023 · 1 h 23 min
NVIDIA CEO Jensen HuangWe finally sit down with the man himself: Nvidia Cofounder & CEO Jensen Huang. After three parts and seven+ hours of covering the company, we thought we knew everything but…
Sep 6, 2023 · 2 h 47 min
Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023)It’s a(nother) new era for Nvidia. We thought we’d closed the Acquired book on Nvidia back in April 2022. The story was all wrapped up: Jensen & crew had set out on an amazing…
Jul 25, 2023 · 3 h 54 min
NikeNike — 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…
Jun 27, 2023 · 3 h 15 min
Porsche (with Doug DeMuro)Nobody’s perfect — including Porsche. Despite that phrase appearing in their famous 1983 magazine advertisement, they managed to get damn-close to the perfect luxury business (even…
Jun 13, 2023 · 1 h 30 min
Uber CEO Dara KhosrowshahiUber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi dropped by the Acquired studio for an Eats delivery, so we broke out the cameras and asked him to hang out for a wide-ranging conversation. :) We talk…
May 30, 2023 · 3 h 31 min
Lockheed MartinToday 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…
May 18, 2023 · 1 h 31 min
Spotify CEO Daniel EkWe 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…
Apr 26, 2023 · 2 h 9 min
Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in GamingWe 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…
Apr 18, 2023 · 1 h 1 min
Short: The Death of SegaSega 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…
Apr 11, 2023 · 3 h 11 min
Nintendo: The Console WarsIn 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…
Apr 4, 2023 · 1 h 23 min
Hamilton Helmer & Chenyi Shi on How to Build an AWS-Like Second Business7 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…
Mar 29, 2023 · 3 h 12 min
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…
Mar 16, 2023 · 3 h 19 min
Nintendo's OriginsYou 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…
Feb 21, 2023 · 3 h 25 min
LVMHWe 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…
Jan 25, 2023 · 3 h 49 min
The NFLThe 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…
Dec 19, 2022 · 2 h 13 min
Holiday Special 2022Cozy 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…
Dec 6, 2022 · 1 h 48 min
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…
Nov 29, 2022 · 3 h 26 min
EnronThe 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…
Nov 15, 2022 · 2 h 20 min
QualcommQualcomm, or “Quality Communications” — despite being one of the largest technology companies in the world, few people know the absolutely amazing technological and business…
Oct 17, 2022 · 1 h 53 min
Benchmark Part II: The DinnerWe 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…
Oct 4, 2022 · 2 h 12 min
ACQ Sessions: Jason CalacanisWe 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…
Sep 28, 2022 · 3 h 36 min
Benchmark Part IBenchmark 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…
Sep 6, 2022 · 2 h 37 min
Amazon Web ServicesSo, 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…
Aug 30, 2022 · 1 h 23 min
Howard Marks & Andrew Marks: Something of ValueWe 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…
Aug 16, 2022 · 4 h 10 min
Amazon.comAmazon. 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…
Aug 2, 2022 · 1 h 49 min
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…
Jul 19, 2022 · 2 h 53 min
WalmartWe 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…
Jun 20, 2022 · 57 min
The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company StoriesWhen 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…
Jun 6, 2022 · 1 h 11 min
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…
May 19, 2022 · 1 h 1 min
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…
May 16, 2022 · 1 h 4 min
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…
May 12, 2022 · 1 h 20 min
Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC ContinuityWe 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…
Apr 20, 2022 · 2 h 5 min
Nvidia Part II: 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…
Apr 6, 2022 · 1 h 17 min
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…
Mar 28, 2022 · 1 h 53 min
Nvidia Part I: 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…
Mar 15, 2022 · 1 h 46 min
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…
Mar 7, 2022 · 2 h 55 min
SONYBorn 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…
Feb 22, 2022 · 56 min
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…
Feb 15, 2022 · 1 h 35 min
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…
Feb 10, 2022 · 2 h 12 min
PelotonThe 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…
Jan 23, 2022 · 2 h 31 min
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…
Dec 21, 2021 · 1 h 44 min
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…
Dec 15, 2021 · 1 h 29 min
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…
Dec 8, 2021 · 56 min
7 Powers with Hamilton HelmerYou'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…
Dec 3, 2021 · 2 h 39 min
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…
Nov 3, 2021 · 1 h 36 min
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…
Oct 18, 2021 · 2 h 15 min
Standard Oil Part IIWe 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…
Oct 5, 2021 · 1 h 17 min
Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot MoreWe 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…
Sep 22, 2021 · 2 h 7 min
Standard Oil Part IIt'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…
Sep 7, 2021 · 2 h 21 min
TSMCWe dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Founded in 1987 by the then-56…
Aug 30, 2021 · 1 h 33 min
Kevin Rose from Web 2.0 to Web3We sit down with the one and only Kevin Rose to talk about his journey from pioneering Web 2.0 with Digg to leading the charge on Web3 and NFT + DeFi investing as a partner at True…
Aug 10, 2021 · 2 h 47 min
Andreessen Horowitz Part IIAlright, backstory's out of the way, and Acquired is rolling three hours deep on the venture firm that changed the game for everyone — a16z. VC marketing? Check."Founder-friendly?"…
Jul 27, 2021 · 1 h 59 min
Andreessen Horowitz Part IWe kick off Season 9 with a classic: Part I of the a16z story. How did this brand new venture firm charge out of the gates in 2009, going from zero to disrupting the entire venture…
Jul 19, 2021 · 1 h 6 min
Special: Solana (with CEO Anatoly Yakovenko)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…
Jul 6, 2021 · 2 h 57 min
EthereumWe close out Season 8 with the most ambitious organization we've ever covered on Acquired: Ethereum, and it's celebrity wunderkind founder Vitalik Buterin. If you thought Mark…
Jun 21, 2021 · 1 h 44 min
Special: Ho Nam from Altos Ventures — A Different Approach to VCWhat 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…
Jun 7, 2021 · 2 h 50 min
Berkshire Hathaway Part IIIIt's time. We wrap our Berkshire Hathaway trilogy with Warren and Charlie entering a new era: the age of the internet. Can they and Berkshire adapt to this brave new world? We find…
May 27, 2021 · 1 h 11 min
Special: Amazon Unbound (with Brad Stone)Brad Stone joins us to discuss the making of the modern Amazon, and how it's morphed from the "flywheel company" of The Everything Store into a set of interlocking and…
May 12, 2021 · 2 h 55 min
Berkshire Hathaway Part IIIn Part II of our Berkshire Hathaway Trilogy (!), we pick up the story with Warren wandering in the woods of Omaha, searching for his life's next chapter after retiring from the…
May 5, 2021 · 1 h 13 min
Special: 2021 China Tech Trends (with Tech Buzz China)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…
Apr 21, 2021 · 3 h 4 min
Berkshire Hathaway Part IIt'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…
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