Holiday Special 2023
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I am loving that you also busted out the holiday sweater feels very .

appropriate. I purchased this holiday sweater at the seattle nordstrom for our twenty nineteen live show at the university, washington.

like two months before the pandemic. Cat is right.

And I think I were at last year too.

I feel like I did. Yeah, we were right behind me. I wish do you get again this year but seems prudent and to, uh, not have a father of a toddle hop on airplane and then sit in a confined space with me for five .

a lot of germs in my life right now.

Thank you for .

your precautions. Easy, you wait, you wait, you who got? I see me down.

Welcome two, season thirteen, episode five, family and holiday special of acquired the pocket about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm and gilbert.

I'm David s.

and we are your hosts.

So I did their David. I did. I did. No technology.

no technology. yes. I motion to you know the whole board of directors here that we drop technology from our intro since I crouched the numbers and four of the fourteen episodes we did this year where technology companies well.

it's a good thing that there are no other board members required besides you and me because I am in full agreement unit. Us and othe wise we went have had a deadlight vote there when the one that's two.

And I don't think our charter really actually ever accounts ford what to do in that circumstance to. And so yes, listeners, if you can't lucky, Martin, it's five, if you can't VISA at six. But the minority of the episodes that we did in twenty twenty three were tech companies, which is a very fascinating evolution to me based on where acquired started analyzing technology acquisitions that actually went well.

But of course, we will keep doing deep episodes on tech companies since we are nerds, and that's where we have spent in our whole career so far. So if you liked the programming assembly language on air from a video or a assembly language studio code or our cocom epo de, where we tried to describe how the CDMA protocol works, were still here for you. We're just going to do a lot of LV h nfl.

Ki, you make. So what do we do doing here today? Well, David and I are going to bring you good tidings, good cheer, hopefully, and keep you .

company as happy holidays. Cheers, cheers. I've got my a cinema, a infused hot chocolate here. It's delicious.

You're feeling very festive. Yes, we are here to keep you company on your long drives or flights or workouts or house cleaning or whatever over the holidays. On our agenda today is a recap of acquire this year, both the state of the franchise from the board of directors themselves.

We will also be giving you some new tidbits on our favorite episodes behind each one of them, why we picked them, how they came to be, what listeners helped us select that sort of thing. We're going to talk about, how we see acquired fitting into the broader media landscape. How are views about the show and the stuff that we cover have changed over time. What's in store for required in twenty four new car fouts and answering listener questions from the slack. And then at the end of the episode, we're going to share a little bit about David in my investing lives and how those will be changing in twenty twenty four as uh David and I are gonna to do much more of our investing together.

I know it's gonna come a full circle. We started but that major investing together and well, to step to talk about this later .

in the but first listeners I mentioned in one quick line on the chilly interview and have not said anything on any social media or anything like that sense but I am a parent and joining David on the parenting journey with a proximately a one month old here at .

the gilbert household and Jenny are so so so happy for you guys parenting um as you know, now is the most joyce difficult, wonderful, biggest thing you will ever do in your life and there is no way to understand and describe IT until you become one so welcome to the club.

Thank you. I think that's right. I think any words that I would say about what it's been like so far are words that other people tried to use to describe IT to me, and I found them largely meaningless.

I think I could say the same thing that everyone also always says. And there have been some amazing things written. I think I read the program article on kids. I read the fourth trimester way.

But why peace i've read you read the microloan is book, right? The Michael Lewis is book. Yeah, that was good. But like, I don't know, the words kind bounce off you.

You're like, why would that be fun? Why would that be rewarding? Why would waking up at three A M to change your diet and to the, you know, scream like why is that? But it's actually more in household.

Put IT to me in a really lovely way where he just said, what greater gift could you have then helping another human, another member in your family who's new to the world, and their most intense time of need? And you know, that intense time of need comes down or two thousand times a day, but a privilege of being able to suit someone when they are experiencing that sort of intense emotion. You know, they may not be fully formed, but babies are people too.

So, absolutely. yeah. Well, so great. That is big, big change number one. Since we last reconvened here. Big change number two is keep quiet. Reported about this already, but you are joining me full time next year, all required. I'm so so excited .

is about freaking time how David.

I wasn't GTA say that but yeah, I can't wait.

You are so just fired up to double down on acquired and IT feels very fun to be going all in on IT together. And on the one hand, that feels like could spend a long time coming. On the other hand, acquired has been such a slow burn over the last eight plus years that there was not like an obvious moment to do IT.

So was one of these moments where you sort of look back in your life, wow, how am I not spending all of my waking time and energy on this when you IT is something that is just, you know, with our life's work. As our friend Patrick ony likes to say about the types of entrepreneurs is looking for a like, this is definitively our life's work. And IT wasn't when we started. And somewhere along the way.

gradually IT just became that, yeah, totally.

And the way it's going to work, I am transitioning to a venture partner at p. sl. At piner square labs here and seattle.

So still get to keep my board seats, which I think keeps me sharp for the show and stay a friend of the family there. So um excited to sort of changed my role at psl. But of course, all of my real time and energy going forward is required.

So happy not only for as a you know fifty percent shareholder and acquired, but even more so like you're my best friend. This means we're going to spend even more time to and just outside of the show, outside of anything that that means for us, our business to the episodes, all of which you're gonna get so much Better get that brings me joy. I'm so happy.

Thanks, man. So we should say before we get too far in, this is not a investment advice. This whole show, David, I may have investments in the companies we discuss in the show is for information and entertainment purposes only.

Somebody here has to follow the rules and keep us. I've got a nice scripts that well built out in front of me. I also must apologize to listeners.

I am coming in hot from podcasting purity leave here and I think I say is completely incoherent. I am on pretty minimal sleep. So thank you for bearing with me.

All the parents out there will understand and appreciate you being here as you. Yeah well, let's start the twenty twenty three acquired year and review recap. IT, dude, this has been frequent wild.

I mean, you were talking about leg acquired has been a slow burn. You know, we have doubled every year. We've always been this example of exponential growth that like IT starts small. And the first year we doubled from two to four listeners know like, but IT wasn't exactly that.

No, I worked at backwards one time. I think IT was like five hundred to a thousand or something actually actually cranch that number. But there is a number you can figure out in your once since you know what our current numbers are, you but small base IT was like small base, kind of small base, still small base. You know.

there were many years where nobody would have imagining that this would be either of our full time gigs. And I actually, when I looked IT up last year on our holiday special, I was both pretty excited and proud to announce and also terrified that we had hit a quarter million listeners to the pod, felt like, holy crap, that's a big number. This is like real what we do. And I was terrified because it's like we talk all the time bentos all the time about how we double every year, like how on earth that we're going do that, right?

You were like, you should stop saying that because it's eventually gonna be true.

Yeah, because it's about the end.

which is eventually because.

I mean, literally we started expanding the actual or something going like that.

yeah. And the question is, how big is the adjustable market for people who want to, in an audio only medium, consume, you know, for our essentially books, conversational audio books about business histories, often in kind of an esoteric way. And granted, you and I have gotten much Better at becoming storytellers over time, but each one of those sort of concentric circles, niches, IT down. And I think you and I just thought that that addressing market was, you know, a one hundred thousand people or something at first.

But now we know it's at least half a million. yes. So the big news, we hit half a million listeners this year, which is pretty well. Hopefully we can put up the chart, the ben gilbert acquired chart, that you make obsessively every month, showing our episode growth every time.

which at some point I do want to stop making because I said last year on the show, like holiday special. I don't think growth is inherently virtuous for us for the goals of our business here. And yet, I am the person whose sort of obsessively trying to compile the numbers and figure out is IT going na double again organically since we advertise or anything.

And so do I want to be known for the ben gilbert chart? I really think so, because it's actually anathema to how I think about what we do. But I do make the chart.

I do put a lot of thought into IT and what episodes will do what and trying to predict the numbers. I think a lot of people describe IT as virtual st. Oh, I don't pay attention to the analytics.

I think to each zone, I pay a lot of attention to the analytics. I think that helps you become Better at making a product that people like. I don't understand why you wouldn't immerse yourself in every single number you possibly could all the time.

That may lead you to a different outcome. But that outcome, as long as you're measuring correctly, seems to be make something that people want more. So yes, I obsessively look at the numbers. I look at the completion rates that I think that's .

super important. Well and related that thank you to all of you. Yes, half a million of you now for are spending all this time with us this year.

There's a lot to discuss. So you know for me, i've kind of gone back and forth, you started saying, I think about two years ago, growth is not a goal. I don't know, the growth is good for required.

And I started not in my head, but I wasn't totally sure this year, I think, is really helped Crystalized my thoughts on this. As we've grown so much, I do completely agree with you. Growth in and of itself should not be a priority and in fact, can be very detrimental to what I think we both want to do here.

If we optimized just for growth, what I think we've done this year goes back to the very start of this episode. And you changing the intro, we went from page cast about great technology companies and the stories in playbooks behind them to packets about great companies and the stories in playbooks behind them. Yes, we have continued to grow in the tech world and sort of our ordinary and I think that audience and audience potential is way bigger than we ever realized.

But we've also added everybody else in the world now who is interested in business and runs a brand, thinks about brand management or runs a retailer or runs a large hardware business like home, deeper or something like that, you know. And also all around the world, too. I mean, some of our biggest episodes this year were, a not american companies.

B, even if they wear american companies, they were truly global brands and global companies. A lot of what we do, if we just want to optimize for girths, we would do differently. We would not make for our episodes, we would release more frequently. A is .

interesting. Growing from a podcast about great technology companies to a podcast about great companies is certainly a growth strategy or a by product of doing that is growth because the addressing market is larger. But I think IT would fail if that wasn't just you and I following what our natural interests were.

People ask us all the time, how do you pick episodes? And the answer is, you know, and I talk for hours a day. We wander around our house and our igher hood, putting on airports and calling each other and talking about, you know, what's currently in our email and box, researching what we need to do to ship an episode prep for guests, that sort of thing.

And one of the conversations that always is happening is what are you interested in right now? Well, however, your views shifted over period of time. What is fascinating to you now? And I think the growth is sort of a by product of our obsessions shifting and becoming these durable businesses and trying to understand what makes a company worthy of being a century long company. Regardless of where I came from or how was funded or what technologies were used in creating.

I think that's been what's so cool for me and my big lessons and take away from everything we've done this year, is that those stories and studying the elva matters. The cost goes the nikes of the world. If anything, that's like even more important than studying the great technology companies for building a great technology company. Yes, we found this, this incredible response, especially to the L V M episode of like, wow. Here, these lessons that are not well talked about in known in our world.

right? IT is kind of strange. Becoming cannon, I D never thought acquired, would get to the point where, when we do IT episode on something that has the possibility to become an undertone of themes that people are discussing, and certainly years one through six or seven, that was never the case.

But with L V M H, with costa may be with porsha, certainly with nike, I think there was an element of, we released the episode, and suddenly we noticed the discussion, especially amongst tex fear about that topic massively picked up where people would go on C, N, B, C, and make a point that we made. And i'd got you even get a guy. I wonder how that comparison got made. This is great.

Maybe they didn't even listen to the ethics, but what was cause that enough? People now have been consuming this and talking about IT and getting value out of IT. IT gets in the water.

He gets in the water. yeah. Well, my favorite was a friend of mine who's A V, C. At lights feed texted me about two weeks after the cost go at the show, came out and said, dude, I have gotten three pitches this week from startups where at some point in the deck they talk about how their business model is similar to.

yes, I don't want to, over two daron horn on this. But that has been a huge change this year that we have never seen in previous years, is once we do an episode.

IT gets in the water. yes. So let's talk about the episodes. So we started the year actually with the nfl, which I think a lot about that episode still to this day. And we do the VISA episode that we finish the year with. It's like the nfl code part two.

Then we did L V M H, which I feel like we have even more to talk about, intendo, lackey, portia, nike, costco in video, part three and then VISA, and then our interviews this year. And we should talk about our kind of change in strategy from what used to be special last year to acquired interviews this year, Daniel ek, dark sta chai for mubarak's sen from NVIDIA, and then charity. But let's stick with the season. First of that, what was your favorite that we did this year like ben gilbert s personal favorite episode?

I think the most interesting businesses or at businesses that sort of ticket me, are costco and VISA because there is a purity to them. Costco is the purity of the way that the puzzle pieces fit together in a way that is just artful. It's almost like a discovery of laws of physics, the way that saw Price and jim anaa and the rest of the crew of sort of built that business over, over the years.

It's just beautiful. It's like watching a ballet. I think that we like to to that the episode VISA, on the other hand, is like the best Operating leverage business. I mean, they have over fifty percent net income margins. They seem like they're locked in forever, you know for Better for worse as we describe on the episode.

But if you I would ask someone like what is the best at scale business model? It's probably VISA to do this sort of a least work for the most free cash flow. You look at costco, not that much free cash flow. Crap ton of work is almost like the complete opposite .

over in VISA and total.

But you ask me what my favorite episode was. And my favorite episode was elva ih, because I was so not on my radar at all and not something that I valued at all. And I scorned luxury before doing the research, and I didn't understand any of the history. And now I feel like a whole new world has been open to me of understanding brand and value.

And now you have a whole closet in your house filled with li bags.

I do not. I do not. I only owned one thing from one luxury brand in all my possessions. And actually, that item is not made by LV image.

Did you just still leave at that? Well.

I I want to reveal IT on a twenty twenty four episode. We are planning.

Okay, alright, you heard to hear first, there will be at least one luxury episode in twenty twenty four that what you telling me?

Yes, absolutely. And I should say I would probably a lot of things that are L, V image, but none that I would consider luxury. I don't mean like a loud on suitcase. I mean like I have some wooden fill whisky in the closet that l the image somehow over the last few years came down, wouldn't fill whisky. I think there's a lot of those sorts of things that or I ve bought a lot of things at duty free shoppers or yes.

you're talking about an item that is truly a luxury item, which is on a whole different blue brick. IT has a sense of place. IT has a sense of place.

IT is not a premium item. You could look at IT through a certain lands and say, this is uterine ridiculous. Kan like, how on earth is this, you know, piece of raw material worth that?

right? I only own one of those things.

yes. Okay.

of course, would you describe anything that you own that way, other than things that are obviously that way, other than some like love on you case that you have? Or I don't know what you, but you've got some more? Xx.

yeah, I have some water is, but on esty, those are mostly from my dad. My dad is really into waters, and a few of those sort of have trickled to me over the years I was thinking about in preparing for this. I do not. And maybe part of that is having a two year old. Which is not good for the health of the objects in your home but um I was thinking about that I was like, you know I I would like to change that and have something that is meaningful on a different level beyond just what IT physically is.

Yeah, I guess any jewellery would count as that oh yeah. And these things may not be branded the way that we're talking about lingery branding. But like a diamond erring is inherently not premium but luxury.

yes. And I certainly I count my wedding ring amongst that.

or a real world N F T. For the crypto folks out there.

Let's give a movie which.

by the way, I think is actually the best way to think about diamonds. I spent some time recently looking into lab grown verses, mind diamonds. And there's ve been interesting.

I know a diatribe here, but you ask me about my episode and the image come up, and here we are. So there is a fixed supply of diamonds in the world, and there is a rate at which humans can mind them. So regardless of the intrinsic qualities of diamonds, IT is a thing that can only come out at a certain volume.

And largely they go through the gia to be identified with a serial number. And actually it's laser etched microscopically onto the diamond. So these things are like verified that they came out of the ground and you know, the year they were mind, and know where they were mind and all that.

So that would be a fun episode to do some day, totally.

And the lab room diamonds are chemically identical and is a huge accomplishment of humankind that we figured out how to do this. And on the one hand, they're identical. You look at them, you write, click you down, load the JPEG, and like these things are identical. But on the other hand, we are only going to get Better, more law style at creating lab grown diamonds. And so they will ayont ticals approach zero, maybe not zero, but some number every year, presumably they should get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.

Whereas for something where there is a known finite supply of them, like gia certified number edged diamonds, there is a strong argument for that to hold its value to the except that you care about her and gave me in holing its value, but that will hold its value much longer or uh, much more durably. And truly the best way to articulate is, well, if you believe that this jay peg has value, but that other JPEG doesn't have value and that other JPEG is the exact same bit map, is this one like why do you believe that? Oh, I see it's got an on chain location able. It's literally the exact same thing with diamonds.

We're going to have to do that to be A Y because this more is a full acquired deep dive.

I think. Yeah, agree, David. Isn't that what was your favorite episode this year?

I was thinking about this to not be the lead. My favorite episode was nike. But I don't think IT was our best episode. I think our best episodes this year were L V M H, costco and VISA.

And i've come to think that there's a sweet spot for you and me in terms of preparation and our sort of emotional states preparing foreign leading up to an episode that leads to IT being good. And I don't think nicky was bad. I think IT was perfectly acceptable. But my level of work preparation and emotional concern and stress heading into niki was the peak that IT has ever been of that an acquired episode?

Yeah, you are a rec. I mean, how many books did you read over ted?

And part of that was IT was the first episode, the season. Part of that was I went to stanford business school, which is the night management center, and this filled night, and I never met filled night, but I felt an extra death of gratitude to him and obligation to do IT right? And then part of the two was our friend David likee, at fast company was trAiling us, following along with us, says we were making IT, which was super cool. The article, that hero was a wonderful and very complimentary.

Yeah, he's a town that writer.

but all of that do you know? I felt like, okay, I really GTA bring IT on this one. I was interesting that I was my favorite and proud of all the work that I am we did for IT. But I think I finally went too far. If you look at that episode, I was trying too hard.

which may not come out in the final edit. I gotto be honest. If you go back and look listeners, you may not hear IT.

I could hear IT in the first edit. And certainly, what we're recording here alive, I mean, the number of things that we end up cutting is massive. But David, I completely agree with you until this year. I don't think I would have agreed with the statement that the quality of our episodes is governed just as much by our headspace. The day of recording as IT is by the quality of the research that we did. And now I believe that that is immensely the case, that the flow of the episode, the excitement about the topic, the clarity of the points that we're trying to make, it's about treating IT like sunday, if you're an nfl player, and having a game day routine in the way that teaches you how to perform your highest.

This is going to be incredibly self agane zing here. But this is how to come to think about IT like, and I fell sunday when we go out ah go back here and I fell episode at the beginning of the year IT takes me right back to playing football in high school. The games that I prepared the hardest for felt like I really put the effort in were not the ones where I played the best, the ones where I played the best. Or when you play loose, you know, you go out there and you have thought, and you enjoy yourself and you let IT flow. And like, this is the exact same with acquired episodes.

I wasn't going to share this, but now that we're on the topic, so at the top of my show notes document for every episode, there's two things written. One is what should the listener take away from this? And I have some bullet points of make sure you nail these points and are clear about these things.

And the other one is a one liner that I have written that says, have fun, laugh. You're good at this. Monitors are powerful.

and those things are so important. I think you know, just again, for books who you are listening, who are or have been athletes, I suspect this will resonate. That's the past part of my life that that resonates with.

All of those are important. Have fun. You going to play your best when you have been fun.

You know, laugh related to that. But also, we can do to me, makes me think about your team. Your team made to you and I were a team.

And then the last piece maybe is the most important. You're good at this. The sports psychology element, the self confidence and element is huge. Yeah, I mean, who are we to think that we can go make these ridiculous episodes?

Well, that's exactly the headspace that I get into that causes episodes to be bad when we restart an episode less as we rearrest. This episode got fifteen minutes and we were like and I feels forced and we restarted IT. I can guarantee that the quality this episode Better, but yet that's the sort of negative self talk that I started getting into.

Who are you? What are your credentials? What qualifications are you? Sure you look under every rac. Those are the things that start ripping me apart. If I start thinking the moments before recording.

So that's why nike is my favorite episode, because I feel like this way of thinking about what we do finally clicked for me. It's like you got to, like, take yourself past the breaking point before you realize I might need to think about this differently.

IT is funny how doing the episodes and studying these people, these businesses teaches us things that we internalize in our own business. I would not have been able to describe acquired as a luxury brand or a luxury product prior to L, V. Image and luxuries.

Probably still not right. It's probably enough. It's ultra mia or if it's just like a prestige brand.

I want to talk about this later in the episode, but my quick take is we are not a luxury products, but we share a lot of traits.

Yeah, scarcity is kind of the biggest one. And that's a thing where I was unable to understand what to do with our scarcity before studying L V M H. But in afterwards I sort of came to the realization of, oh, we should embrace the fact that we only have the output to be able to do one episode month.

And rather than trying to figure out how a scale that there is a very fair path to owning IT and staying a beautiful little shop, that you and I and Stephen are wonderful editor who worked with us on a contract basis. And this is the team. This is what we do, and we can only make so much.

And if we make more, the quality drops or we have to scale in some way, that feels unnatural to us. And that's okay rather than every other person. The pocket ecosystem that we had spoken with up until that point was, well, you have to figure out how do you layer that second show or how do you indo small hose or how do you get research assistance so you don't have to do that.

And the this is one of our greatest strength, and that was something I think I was trying to run away from for a while. And now people ask, what's going to be different for required when you go full time, we doing way more episodes? No, absolutely not. We're to make the same number or fewer of even Better episodes.

where to be carefully were onna turn in the 点 carin here and episode year history。

A.

I know. So the luxury strategy, which was part of our preparation for L V image, was reading this incredible book. The lexical strategy, which contains the twenty four anti laws of marketing, and I just want to call out anti law of marketing number I .

just have on your desk.

I put IT on my desk head of recording this. A I actually my desk for large portions. This anti love marketing number eighteen, do not relocate your factories. This is our version of that. We're never gona relocate our factories.

and we happen to be in a particular business that scales extremely elegant with a word of mouth go to market and a product that is infinitely replicable and a revenue stream that scales nearly in lockstep with the size of the distribution. And I say nearly is important, we should talk about nearly later, but we do have a business model that lets you grow the business indefinitely. Without compromising at all. And like if you are an LV mage, you do have to go build another factory in order to go serve more customers. There is not sort of that infinite scaling that can happen by the virtue of the internet and media on the internet up.

So to put about on the very easy question of what was your favorite episode.

yeah, so far you spend a lot of time not answering me.

Um no, I did. IT was nike. Nike is my favorite. But I think the other part of the coin question of what was our best eissa, I think via was our best episode.

nice.

There were others that are more impacted. I think L V H. That episode alone, and I think completely changed.

acquired as did costco.

as did costco. But VISA, I think, was the perfect blend of like an nfl sunday gone extremely rate. We prepared the right amount and we played at least we had fun.

We laughed. We were remembred that we were good at this. I think you can see IT in the finish product.

Yeah, it's the ones where we didn't put too much pressure on ourselves that I think came out the best.

Yep, which for me, where L V, image, costco and VISA. Yeah okay.

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Yeah, so learn how you can put A I agents to work for your people by clicking the link in the shower notes or going to service. Now doc m slash A I dash agents. So in january, David, I looked at each other and we said we should stop doing specials.

Specials is what we called the non season episodes that we did on the feed until this year. And they were almost all interviews in practice, but anything that wasn't a canonical season episode.

yep. And the reasons that we decided we wanted to discontinue them were, as David he said, there almost always an interview and what is an interview? An interview is uh, episode where you have a person who is not a part of your enterprise, something you control, come on the show and say something that they very likely are going to say somewhere else to. So by their very inherent value of IT, IT is not an end of one product, whether when we make a cosa episode, that's an end of one product. And so no matter how could you do the interview, you are starting on your back foot in terms of, can you create this diamond, this unique thing in the world, the way that we can on a season episode?

And also there are other people and pod casters out there who are world class interviewers, and they are incredible masters of their craft. And we were kind of looking at what we were doing and be like, why are we doing this to?

Yeah and you can see at the numbers every time we would do on even with the biggest names, you know, these people were you like, I imagine that really moved the needle for you. No, I didn't. Every single time we did a special IT had less downloads than the most recent season episode we did, which is crazy. Never once was a special, our biggest episode .

ever to your point about the analytics that was telling us something and that was screaming at us in the face for years.

which is when you make a unique product, that is the thing that people are here for. You have a format and a product that people want to make that don't go do something that want to click over in the commodity spectrum. And we tried all sorts of things.

We tried to do the S Q sessions where we really like, you know, try to make you feel more casual. And we'd por wine. And I think all the different specials we did and sessions we did collapse. We did there is something to be learned from to bring in to mainstream acquired and what .

interviews now are. yes.

So here's where the lesson we learned around. Don't clutter your paroles too tightly. We swarm off. We said, you know what we're done.

We had made the decision that there was never going to be another interview and acquired.

This is gonna a great year going forward where once a month, we have this very pure thing that we do that's release A L V H style episode. And then we have the opportunity to fly to stockroom and interview Danielle ec about spotify, and then we get the opportunity to interview the CEO of the then eighty billion dollar market cap, uber. And we would call each other and say, we said we were going to do this.

So what do we decided? We have q 2 and we started calling that the acquired .

interview show yeah briefly for like two .

weeks legitimately。 This is where the hit the road. We were going to put Daniel and dara on A C Q two.

And that was the decision. And we are ready to do IT that we just kind like to each other. We were like.

what are we doing here, right? We are getting far too precious. And I think our preciousness has made acquired what IT is, I believe that, but you can get too precious. Easy to do is awesome. But IT has one tenth the distribution of acquired.

And that's great because IT lets us play around with stuff and IT lets us do follow ups to episodes where we don't feel like every single person that listen to this big episode want to listen to the follow up and we get to talk about up incoming companies. It's a lower stakes thing for us to do an A C Q two episode, which is great to have as a part of our ecosystem. But IT was really dumb, and i'm really glad that we didn't go through with IT to put the ceos a spotify and uber there.

And so the year went on. We had the opportunity to that interview, jenson, as he's becoming the most highlighted o of one of the top five most important companies in the entire world. And then of course, we get to spend time with chilly monaker. Gosh, a month and a half before you passed away, which is.

I feel so unbelievable. lucky. yeah. Well.

but IT turns out with interviews, the answer is we still don't do interviews. We don't do specials acquired as what IT is, except for, you know, charlie and janson.

Well, I think there's a couple teams here too. IT all kind of stumbled into real time with Daniel and dara. Those interviews actually happened on the calendar pretty close to one another.

And then I think we kind of Crystalize this by the time jenson and charly happened, we still can do something unique and special. And in most cases, I don't want to say this. I'll be every case going forward.

But if you look at those four interviews that we did this year, they were all the ceos sort of protection nous in charlies case of companies that we had covered extensively on acquired. And I think that to me is at least one example there, maybe more of how we can do something unique and special. And that's not to take away from all the other many masters of the craft out there like patcha see, and many others that are world class interviews, of which I don't think we are in a vacuum. But in cases where we've done one hundred dollars of work are, in the video's case, in burch's case, many hundreds of hours of work on these companies, I think we then can do something special with the protectors that other people can't do.

right? This is something that my dad was always say to me when I was Younger. He, like, I legitimately don't think i'm the smartest person, but I do think i'm the hardest working.

And whether I was in school or whether in his career, the answer was ground for more hours and become the most knowledgeable to make the most informed decisions. And I kind of feel that way as an interviewer. I'm not Andrew ross arcon, you know, plain vanilla, walking into a pretty new subject. He's gonna be just a lights out interviewer, but the place where I can be one of the best in the world, as if I have done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of research on the topic. We can start with jenson on the rival one twenty eight, and that's not how other interviews are onna start, right?

And that was just obvious to us. I think that was your idea to do IT. You're just like, of course, we have to start with the repo and eight.

right? You can know a story as well as protect us, know the story, but try to get as close as you can.

Sometimes I think we save ourselves from ourselves here, but i'm glad that we didn't cut these. And I think I can end up well. We get to the stats in the second, but clearly, they have ended up being something special.

But the cool thing about the core thing that we do our season episodes is like that is the natural by by product. It's not like we need to go car without time to do one hundred dollars of work to go interview jenson or charlie. It's like, no, what we've already just done that is the core thing that we do. So to throw out the opportunity to continue doing there would have been really silly.

yep. So you like you wondering, Charles mark was by far epo de ever. Johnson was bigger than any previous season episode. Dara and Daniel were right around the ballpark of what our season episode doing at that point in time.

When we had interviewed them, we sort of figured out there is a style and a type of person where the episodes behave as an of one episodes. The sort of decay's look similarly over time of people seeking them out in an ever Green way. You know, we have seen just as many people ninety two days later, which is what today is.

Referencing the jenson interview that we would see, referencing the nike episode ninety two days later, these things, if we do them right, stay just as ever Green. And so, you know, we want to stay as precious as possible about them. And so what does that mean?

Like how can we change acquired business to make IT so that the answer is we don't do interviews on the the main show and less. Of course, it's an interview that we need to do on the main show. And after some early conversations we've had with some of the sponsors for next year, we just sell them differently.

I think that was a key insight for us. We used to do in a season six main episodes and six specials, and we would sell them and both and say, here's we will get in this period of time and that's still how we sell the sponsorships for the season. You know that is going to happen over six months.

You know it's gonna about once a month will give you a heads up as soon as we know with the topic that we're going to be covering. And we would try to do the same thing with specials. And that drives us to create special, which is entirely the wrong thing to do.

that was broken. IT was slut filling. You know, get not to take away from our guess. We had incredible guess, but the conversations themselves were slave fill. We had slaughter we needed to fill that works for us with the season episode des, because we're going to make an episode once a month that in our control. But with interviews, you can't slot fill if you want them to be special if you're sitting .

around waiting certain deviously for a charly longer Jackson interview to happen, which is basically what we just hide. The strategy is for guess.

you can't have pressured a commitment to your partners that you're gonna. Do you know six of those every six months?

exactly. So stay tuned for how this will work in practice. But the way we're think about IT for next year and similarly conversations seems like this is going to work as you get the next three interviews. We promise you they are going to be world class and we have no idea when they will come out, and they're probably going to come out next year, but we can't tell you much p on that.

And I think that to the extent that we find and continue to find great partners who want to work with us as sponsors in that way, that works really well to make sure that the content bar is where IT needs to be, the audience is happy and that we can Frankly blow IT out the water the way that we do on the season episodes for our sponsors. So what does that mean for A C Q two? I should say A C Q two next year is gna be so much Better because there's all of this inbound that we get for required that we've decided doesn't make sense on acquired.

And what that means is we are getting crazy good guest for A C Q two. So I would feel silly not to point people toward that when I know what's coming next year. So yeah.

i'm excited about that too. So I completely obviously agree with you know on the implications for the business model and not slot filling. And you can predict when certain deviously, you're going to a chance to interview gencer in our interview charly.

But this is our opportunity. What interviews do we want in a perfect world to do in the next to set of time here for required? Well, David.

I think that's the right question. And I think the answer is sort of obvious. You have to look at a episode list.

I mean, who are the people that we feel like we studied the way that we studied jenson, but we have another conversation with yet. I mean, it's but I or no, it's worse chain. It's still nice. It's bob iger. I think there are people whose stories we know, but we don't know, and those would make for special interviews.

Then I can give you a hall pass on this one because you are literally one month departing. And lord knows I have empathy and sympathy for you, but you missed the obvious one that I was teaching you up for there, which we're going to make our appeal. We're going to suit our seat right here. Taylor, or if you are listening.

if you can make an intro.

or travis, if you can make an intro, well, maybe have you on for .

a little segment of IT. We'll go to long pon studios.

We can meet, you know, anywhere at a posh restaurant around south.

The absolutely.

Um right, let's talk about early.

Let's talk about early first.

we just have to you know we set the episode but again, say a huge thank you to anger Marks who's become such a good friend of the show.

I feel like Andrew sends us more research material than like Andrew is like a source for every episode. We're not just going to write his name and the sources, but like ten sources from every episode are things that Andrew, texas, like. Have you found this?

If found that if you found that the minute that we solidify what the next episode is gonna, we texted Andrew and say you, what do you got and he's always got something .

not to mention he's got like a twenty company long request less with a reason for why each of those company ies should be acquired episode of making the the appeal. And so that here is a celebrate to when we pick one off of his list.

So big, big. Thank you to endure. He is literally the acquired M.

V. P of twenty twenty three. It's not you. It's not mean it's and you and also our other friend who who know who he is, thank you to them for making that happen.

Think there was just IT was a life experience. I don't know what else to say. I can't believe we got to do IT.

There is a strangest that comes. And if anybody who is listening to this is like a long form journalist, like A A new yorker writer, something like that, or has written a book on a company, or maybe even like A P H. D. Research association, you should have know this feeling where even though something happened in real life, you've done enough research about IT, where IT feels like a story to you. And yes, at some point you meet the protagonist and you're like, oh, right, you're like a person in addition to being the main character of a story that I know very well, and that in burch's case, there is a cold following of millions and millions of people who all know the story, who can all cite passages from, you know, the scripture.

IT is is like a religion.

Charlie is a person, a wonderful person, in addition to being this character.

and I think a figure. yes.

yeah. The surreality of the moment, I think, hit me the most. When there was a question, we asked charly and he responded, i'm not interested in being any more of a gou that I already. Mt, even though IT works so well for him to get so much of his wisdom to the masses, and he has, he and warned both of in these incredible teachers there, all the fifty plus years, in addition to their main job of being great investors, capital, alligators, Operators, there are sort of these educators on the side. But that education and universe that we've created has blown up to the point where I think IT waves a little bit heavy, at least on charlie. Yeah, it's almost like the burden he Carries to get his wisdom out is that he has to sort of be treated as a gu or a character in a story rather than just a person.

And I guess I have no idea charlie would say to that, obviously, but I think for people who find themselves in those positions, you know, Steve jobs was that for sure? Obviously wearing in earlier that jenson.

maybe on his way of becoming that all, has become that tailor swift.

Is that one hundred percent?

It's almost like the batman thing. What's the line from batman begins really talking about this sort of frailty ness of being a person. And then when he becomes batman, he says, as a symbol, I can be incrusted. I can be ever lasting something elemental. Is that sort of idea?

Totally, all these people are both people and symbols. And i'm just imagining, once you become a symbol, you kind of have two options. You could the month, or you could embrace IT and I think charlie would say, look, it's gonna on you no matter what, no matter which one you choose, there's no going back. It's going away on you and so you might as well embrace IT yeah one .

other behind the scenes point to make, which I think listeners might find interesting on this for Daniel, dara, jensen and charley, they all were these massive lead time interviews. They don't just get coordinated a couple weeks before. And the story behind each of them was charlie was a maybe six months thing.

IT was once we started dig in the costco, Andrew suggested, hey, what if you interview charity for a follow up, jenson, I think we originally reached out to NVIDIA before we started our and video part one research almost two years ago and said, hey, with jenson, this was a very different time for required. We thought the dreams to interview jenson, not the dream, is to go learn as much as we about and video and tell the story ourselves. And we reach out and say, queen of v.

Johnson. And even though we had a good friend of the show who is able to innocence us to someone on the executive team, we ve got to know, can responsive, very busy, this sort of thing. And IT wasn't until, like, we did the work and we made part one, part two, where then economy, video, attention and the folks they were, we should do something together.

And IT still took another year to figure out exactly what the thing was to do together and when. And same thing with dara uber. We met uh actually friend of the show brad carson, or had his investor day for altimeter and H I met dara there and I think IT took party nine months after that to figure out a good time, you know, on the earnings calendar, on the P, R calendar.

When IT could actually make sense to the interview. The way happy with Daniel was we said, Daniel, the crickets. What did we say like a next time or in stocks home, we'd love to do IT. And he was like, go.

yeah, next time you here, let's do IT. Well, IT turns out of all those four cast characters, only one has a professional podcast studio in his office that would be the one who runs a pag sting company.

So we happened to find ourselves in starcom, which that actually was a highlight for me this year. I know, was only three days, David, but that crazy. And we have three beautiful days in may in stockham.

What a gorgeous, gorgeous city.

The run we had a couple runs around the city while we are there.

and just make sure to anna take IT all in and the people spotify were so nice hosting us to roll out the red carpet up.

By the way, I just want to say I know a lot of people at lam basting spotify podcasting strategy. I think people are entirely missing the forest through the trees on calling that a failure, a blue group. I think spotify in their music business has gotten to scale and has no potential to create a high Operating leverage business.

There are always going to be giving the same percentage of the profits to the record labels who have an unbelievable amount of bargaining power over them. So the question is, what do you do next? Audio books is a good bed pod castings, a good bt, something where you can eventually gain Operating leverage.

And the fact that they did the huge rogan deal, they bought the ringer, they bought gift. Well, if you look at the dollars and sense today, you're like, g is the'd spent a lot of money, but they haven't generated a lot of profit from podcasting yet. They totally bootstrapped their way to become the scale player in podcasting. So to the extent that there is a big pile of money waiting to be the scale player in podcasting, their well position to make IT, given the half billion dollars for three course of a billion dollars that they spent on content, they now have booths strapped to scale.

Yeah, that was the Price of entry. And like we see IT in our analytics, spotify is the majority of consumption of acquired out there. No.

IT is by the largest single player, but I don't think it's over fifty percent yet. But one that that's interesting is from spotify rapped for pod casters, they make a wrapped to give to you in addition to the ones to distribute to your audience. Is that seventy six percent of the people who listened to spotify, acquired on spotify found us this year that is crazy on platform growth.

And I think the corresponding status, we grew something like one hundred and seventy six percent on spotify or something like that often already decently sized bed.

yeah. So I mean, in many ways, i'm pretty disposed to think podcasting is more interesting and important in the world than IT is. But if you sort of write off the idea that spotify will ever make decent margins in music, they needed to make another bet. This feels like a pretty good bet.

This an audio box P. I don't think the other side that we see if that is IT does lead into some of our discussion of acquired the french ze and tony. Tony, for broadcasting is a great business. I do not doubt that IT is a very valuable, very large market for them to be. And yeah.

if you can figure out how to make being the scale player translate ted into lots of profits, which no one has done yet well.

no one has done yet. And the previous scale player, almost like I did not start you like didn't even run the race.

Apple, yeah. Which, as we talked about before, we are immensely grateful for because IT enabled this open, free podcasting medium that we have today, which is to our vantage.

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yeah. Well, to kick things off on that front, I feel like you had a little more to say on that. Our discussion earlier about his growth. good. I ve been certainly this .

is relevant yeah so my thinking on this has gotten simpler er, which is basically I am extremely open to fully saturating the niche of smart people who care about what makes businesses work and great technology. E E is successful in durable in the world. And I think last year again, I was being too precious about like I don't think it's good for our lives if we become too famous.

I mean, a by product of podcasting is you're not on video that often. So you actually do get out to stay less famous than youtube. Ers are less visually recognizable, which is good.

I just kind of generally believe recognizably is fun until go to a certain level and that is bad. And then you can put the genuine back in the bottle and you're less horrible. And I would like to not become that.

But if we can keep doubling and doubling double IT, turns out the set of people who like studying business history and being thoughtful about IT and can write us with little, little bit saying, oh, I happen to think about IT this other way and have thoughtful responses and want to be a part of the acquired community. If that turns out to be five million people or ten million people, great. That's only goodness. But I think my view on growth is we have a natural governor to our growth, which is the universe of that set of people is a fixed number, and i'm just not interested in discovering a second market outside of that. So to the extent that we can stay true to making the stuff that we love to make and serving that group of people, awesome and I just don't ever want to like you could say lower the bar or create some different product or whatever, but to appeal to a different mash audience, that part is not really interesting to me.

Yeah this has become more evident to me too in um some of our episodes this year like particularly the porch episode that we did with due to miro have blown up on youtube. Youtube completely put a quiet aside for a second. My feelings about youtube like IT is an amazing platform.

IT is an incredible gift to the world that youtube exists. And one of my car bouts later in the episode is gonna the Q B school youtube, which is a former nfl courter bac, who makes amazing detailed breakdowns of what is actually going on every week and you're like favorite teams. Oh, that's all. It's incredible. Like the fact that that is available and accessible for free.

I'm a subsidy to that right now.

Oh, it's amazing. G, T, L, an, we will talk more Better later. Go subscribe if you care at all about football, even if you don't. That said, for our episodes that they ve gotten big on youtube, if you go look at the comments, awful IT is a hundred percent, not even the same universe of experience that the quiet lack community is.

And like this kind of Crystalized for me, what you're talking about of like anybody who is the type of person who really cares about knowledge, understanding these great businesses, these stories we tell them, learning from them, come on IT. Like we want as many people of those in the world. The youtube comment world out there is not what we want, right?

And i'm not trying to be pretentious. I'm not saying like you must have thought about IT as much as I have in order to be a part of that. No, I feel like this has been an eight year journey for us and for me up twenty year journey of learning about what makes these technologies and these businesses become powerful forces in our world.

Anyone who is anywhere on that journey, including far past you and I, David, on that journey, I would love to have a relationship with either two way through this lack, or even if it's just one way through people listening to acquired so i'm not saying like I just want to appeal to the people who are like, oh, here's a gotcha. There actually is an eth power. It's not that it's the curious, thoughtful people who are not in the youtube comments of the porsha episode.

This has never happened to any of our episodes before. Until this year, we were not exposed to this part of the internet.

Nothing had like algorithm ally blown up, yes, and reached a lot of people quickly. The only way anybody had really heard of acquired until this year was their friend told them, and that is always gonna be a really high quality way to grow your audience. But if an audience grows quickly, it's like the masses just enter and you get who shows up.

Yep, I think for both of us, this really kind of clarified what we really want and meant by this. I were little worry about growth like it's not the way worry about growth. It's that we want to keep this no place. That's about .

knowledge. yeah. Well, and last year, I think we were talking about we were getting a little bit a shaky about the impact on our business from growing the show because getting larger wasn't according to growing the size of our revenue.

And that also was creating problems for the classic sort of start up in growth stage companies that had been our long time sponsors, where we were going to them and saying, okay, the audience is four times bigger than when we worked with you two years ago. Let's have a conversation about what IT should cost response to the show. IT was just like an immovable object meeting an unsuitable force if there just wasn't anything to be done. And so we've had to get creative and figuring out what do we do to continue to grow the business. Well, IT doesn't have to be commensurate with the audience, but the audience growing should make acquired a more viable platform for larger sponsors, deeper partnerships, ways that we can sort of increase both the size of our business, but also like the durability and importance in the world of our business.

So as we've started experiencing some of the girls that we talked about, we realized that, that we d kind of hit a scale now where acquired is a viable platform and partner to new sponsors that we can work with. And just talk about what those are for a season fourteen. Starting in january, two of our three sponsors are going to be J P.

Morgan, specifically J P. Morgan payments division and service now both of which are incredible companies. We are super excited to work with them. But in both of those cases, we knew those companies and knew those people there for several years now.

right? We should say the teams that have decided to partner with us for each of those companies have been long time acquired fans. And we've gotten know over the course of years and years and years.

And the answer has sort of always been, hey, we should do something together. And then like we talk about IT for a while and then the answers is always kind of okay. You're sort of this like little niche.

Maybe there's some a dube and now the conversation is very much like, oh, wow, you show up in the world in a big way with an important set of people and you're now in this category that we can totally work with you as a durable partner that we want to like build this deeper relationship with. Especially now that we're in our eighth year, it's a very different thing to be partners with acquired than IT was when we were in our third year or it's not like a scrappy startups. It's the trusted entity in the world.

Yep, IT would have been odd for four and five hundreds to a work with us before recently and now starting to work with their teams how A J. P. Morgan thinks about their brand and they're positioning and they're kind of whole set of marketing activities is a completely different animal than how startups and you know earlier stage tech companies do.

Yeah and it's an intensely coordinated effort with a calendar that is already full by the time you're finishing twenty, twenty three, twenty, twenty four is largely known. There is a whole set of events, there is a set of campaigns that are going to happen at different times, and these things are adaptable. But my gosh, the level of four and planning that we've gotten to work with from those teams has just been like a whole different animal than what we're used to.

And we love the nimble ness of small companies, and that enables us to do special things together and sort of our fun task for next year, which i'm excited to unveil, some of the stuff doing will be to bring that custom thing that were able to do with these small companies and create native content for the medium and do other collaborations with them as a company, for example, all the way that we invest in our sponsors or the way that we speak at their conferences and things like that, to bring that to, like, large fortune hundred enterprises, and that such an amazing dance, like the way that these marketing organizations are able to figure out, okay, can we talk about this partner of hours? And what way can we talk about IT and how much ley can we give them? And David to native, fully work and acquired theme from six episodes ago and trust them that in this episode it's gonna come across right on air.

IT takes a very special marketing department to be able to behave the way that the vantage and the modern treasuries and the vouchers of the world do while stewarding a twenty thirty hundred year brand and a few other things. We've got up her sleep. I think the goal is to be able to continue to work with these sort of recent product market fit you serious bish companies that we've always worked with.

So between the back catalogue, between interviews, we will figure out ways that we can still work with those companies because, Frankly, those are the types of companies is that David and I love using for required. I mean, were customers of vouch and we use modern y we like playing with IT. We like following the founders on their journey.

We like having the founders on A Q two so we can kind of learn about how their building their companies. We also like getting the exposure to be able to invest. So it's also to be able to build these really tight relationships with those companies, especially when they're founded.

Like I just keep going back to the metre as cofounder ers coming up to us at our very first live show after they had come out of yc and telling us about this tiny little model trognon at the time. And you just look at the the hema, the amount of money that they move. Now there are dozens of companies in the acquired ecosystem that we have relationships with that we want to be able to continue to be a partner to and just figure out the right way to structure that.

Yeah and just as importantly, dozens, if not more than dozens that are gonna be coming up over the next thirty years.

Yeah, David, what you're getting to here is now that we're both full time on acquired, we finally have the opportunity to do our investing together and and do IT in a way that's uniquely acquired and that is sort of native to acquired. And so there is no big announcement or anything, but that's the thing to share with the acquired community is i've been writing these little Angel checks into probably ten ish of our sponsors at this point. And q 2 gas companies， we've gotten to know, and we're finally going to be able to to do that at scale and do IT together in a way that we're not spending a lot of our time hearing early stage pitches or anything like that. But for companies that we already know well, David air are gonna join our investing forces and invest morning in those growth stage market leading .

to companies. Yep, and is an early example of this, are gray friends over advantage their C. E.

O. Cristina have been a very, very kind giving pigs for us. So vana has been a long time partner. The show we've helped to grow their business.

And last year, kindergarten and ventures, the early stage Angeles fund that I run with my friend nap, we did a ten million dollar S P V in vana series b. And that is a great test of can we invest in a market leading company and put meaningful k capital to work. So that's a playbook that we're not going to be able .

to run more often, more and together and specifically as a part of required. I just have this funny thing that happened so much of the last two, three years, which is uh company is raising great up round from, you know one of the best few investors in the world and technology companies and says, would you like an allocation? I can give you one or two or ten million in this big growth round. And I know write some little Angel check and like, that's been great, but it's time to do more with that opportunity. Yes.

this is all part of you coming full time. And it's time it's time for rail this to happen.

Yes, it's time. So that sort of the state of what we're thinking about for investing, which will put into action early next year and sort of the direction that our sponsorships have been going to, and we should say we're excited to welcome back for next season. In the third slight friends of the show, pilot and fanta are splitting slot number three. So first three episodes going to be fanta, second three are going to be a pilot. And I think we fired out a nice baLance to be able to work with fortune five hundred ds as sort of a scale platform and also to business, both investing and on a sponsorship basis for their go to market with great stage companies.

all of which we are super excited about. But you and I are super clear with each other, and we want to be super clear listeners with all of you, too. The show is the most important thing acquired is the show.

That is what you and I love doing. That is why you and I are full time podcasts ers now. And all of our effort is gonna go into the show.

right? It's what we're most excited about. But it's also, if you just think about the monger ism, you you show me the behavior and all incentives. It's literally the thing that makes IT all work.

If you look at the acquired fly wheel, IT is produce unbelievably high quality deep dives on these companies and try to create some of the deepest business content in the world in a very, very approach, able, fun, conversational way and share the learning journey that we're on with everyone. And like you said, minute to go. We're really clear with each other.

Like I feel like that montrer comes up on our phone call once a week or something. H it's like the quality of the episodes is all that matters. And you know we just spent ten minutes talking about how we're involving the franchise and working with fortune five hundred ds and you know how we're going to be doing more investing together or list stuff. The only thing that matters that drives .

all of IT is quality of episodes. yes. So on that front, we've got some fun stuff planned for next year, episode one. We are already deep in research for or not going to give you away what IT is, but IT is a new category for acquired, which is I don't .

think we ve ever touched IT in all two hundred and eighty episodes or whatever, and it's one of the largest category of spend for most countries GDP in the world.

Yeah I think got to be probably every countries GDP in the world .

depending on their level of .

this function. Yeah, yeah. good. Anyway, we're already deep in the research.

The story itself, like industry aside, financials aside, you know, market capite. This is a century long incredible story IT. I really.

really pumped IT. Turns out there's a lot of them out there. We often get the question, are you afraid you're gna run out of episodes to do? no. Everywhere we look, there's like some new fascinating multi generation business that you'd never expect could have thrived through all these times that they have and have five unique, amazing vin ets to tell through their whole history today. Like as long as we want to keep doing this, there will be fuel to keep doing that this year.

IT was brands and luxury and retailers. It'll be been of this other thing hopefully next year. But they we look around the corner and there's a home new category of companies to cover up. So we're pumped for that. Then you have to spell the beans that another luxury brand is in .

the ork absolutely solution.

What else we get cooking .

will hit some big tech. We have to IT feels like A A obligatory nod will hit something in the sort of entertainment, gaming, streaming world and we could keep naming categories. But one listener question that we got that I think is worth chatting about here is how do we handle current events? Because there are lots of episodes that would be very appealing to do.

For example, the dozens of request we got two weeks ago, three weeks ago for open eye after the board room drama, we very much have moved away from current events. And I think that is in part because of what we talked about earlier that we want to create and have one content. And the way to create the most possible commodity content is to try to cover the current new cycle that literally everyone else is covering concurrently.

I think that's a way to get completely drowned out in the noise, create something that's not special and create something that, even if you blow IT out of the water, has a shelf life in this world of about eight hours. And so we have decided to move as far away from that as possible. And the other reason, I think, is a little bit our disposition where, David, when you are looking at something brand knew that unfolding in real time, I think we've really started trusting our gut that there's probably more here than there seems to appear on the surface.

And years ago, I don't think we felt that. I think we thought uber going public cover uber even three years ago, airbnb is going on public cover airbnb. And you know, there was an acquired way to do IT, where most of the episode could actually focus on the last ten years, and only a little bit at the end was focused on the last few months.

But the more current and event is, the less ever Green value that you will have, and the more likely IT is that you could really blow IT. Like, I feel super self conscious that we interviewed some bank man fried. And like, you know, we're not investigative journalists.

We weren't going to spend the time to like try to unfold and dig up hay. Is this all legit? It's like a sqa had just invested a huge man of money like everyone and all of the possible signals had validated this person in this company. IT was seemingly enormously free, casual, positive.

And yet, yet we regret doing IT.

We totally regret doing that.

And we're going to try our best not to set ourselves up to do something like that again in the future.

So the question becomes, what should you do and what we are structurally well set up to do is these huge retrospective tips where the story is written and the story is known.

And it's about really synthesizing yet and applying IT to today's world, where there is just no way that we are ever going to do the sort of a investigative journalism and Frankly, like investment diligence, often with private information that you need to do to get a real time story right. IT is structurally impossible for us. So swear IT off. I think that's the answer.

I won't even go so far as to say, you know, something that i've taken from especially the last couple years of required is the story is always deeper than you think. And so let's even say we were set up to do investigative journalism and deep diligence that we would then share with the public on the company in real time. In real time.

I still think it's impossible to get IT right. I the best PC out there they are, at least on the diligence and investing side of the equation, making these calls in real time. And the very best of them only get IT right.

What twenty percent of the time at most, you know, thirty percent of the time, I don't think IT is possible to do. I mean, fraud is different. Yes, i'm not talking about frog. I am just talking about getting the story right, like the story of uber that we did on, you know I P O day back when we did that. I would like that was not the full story of uber.

Yeah to revisit the S B, F interview in particular. I haven't listen to in a long time. I do think we've generally had our witz about us enough to always sort of be question asks in terms of like, hey, this seems really crazy.

How did that happen? And you and I have sort of never been the types to be like everyone should be extremely excited about this, and we urge you to go get involved with this. Now I always sort of chuckle when we say the not investment advice, but that's more my demeanor.

I truly mean IT was like, hey, i've done a certain of work on this. I'm going to tell you what I learned. And also, I am not recommending you act on this in any way.

I and I think that fortunately, our disposition, especially among some of the cyp to in web 3 media， was a little bit more of that. But we've learned lessons from that. And those lessons are you get to choose the games you play, and we don't need to play the current media's game totally.

And as much as I wanted take as a kind personal compliment, all the things you are saying to apply a to myself, but I really got to give credit to you, I think this is a big part of the dinner that you bring in your personality to the show like you are a optimist as we ve both are and we've talked about a lot on the show.

But skeptic.

well, in the big picture, you're an optimist yeah. And I think this is one of the things that makes us a really good team, like in terms of the actual goal and what we're trying to do here and acquired and what IT is in what we wanted to be. We are a hundred percent line, and you do a really good job keeping us and check on this front.

Thank you. And if we didn't have you, then we would just tell stories of old retailers and old oil companies that you know Carry no no risk associated with them.

And maybe we should do that because those are our biggest deficits.

Yeah, thank you. I'll take the complaint. And you do need both. You need someone who's staying a tune to like, maybe this is this new thing everyone is talking about, is a breakthrough, interesting thing. And you also so need the, hey, let's pay attention in history.

And I think someone asked a question, this lack, do you consider yourselves journalists? And I, if anything, because we've got in the question, are you analysts? Are you journalists? Are you IT? We're certainly not reporters. But I think on that spectrum, we've shifted much more toward historians, then journalist. I don't ever expect that we are going to get a story right about something in flight. But hopefully, given you a couple months to prepare, we can get the story right about some thing that happened over a long period of time with a lot of perspectives where people are willing to share everything they sort of know since the hatches are buried. And like, does anyone have the story right on what happened in the open a eye board room right now?

I don't think so. I don't think so if reflecting on this too, I think ironically, moving to this role as hour, and we don't mind over the past couple years, official, you know, job function and identity of being historian versus venture capitalist investor has made me a much Better investor.

Yeah, ain't the truth.

And for me specifically, when I was only in investor, investor was the primary thing. Everything we were just talking about were both strength and weaknesses. For me, I would fall in love with companies deeply in love with company is and obviously for people who listen to us, I still do this with acquired episode.

The companies recover. And that was a great strength too, like you can really help companies and founders can really feel like you are on their team and a line and pulling with them. And also just purely in terms of making the right investments, having a bit more arms, like the objectivity and perspective helps shifting my focus to the show certainly has made me a Better investor.

Like I just look at like the investments that I ve done. I've been more active in the past few years than I wasn't. I was A B, C. And you know you and I are going to be even more active together going forward. I never would have ve expected this.

but IT has really helped me. Turns out knowing history is very helpful. And analyzing the present, yes.

and just having this other thing be my obsession has allowed me to have a little more arms length.

It's also very nice because what he does is IT puts most things in your too hard pile, like the fact that your main job isn't to go picker early stage companies like when the whole world is your too hard pile because you need to research and acquire only the no brainers end up actually grabs your time meers yes, the no brainers that don't take up weeks and a weeks of your time to decide if you should do IT or not are the ones that end up actually becoming the investments that you do and especially when you can sort of take something you've learned from history and apply IT to the present.

I think that's the David isn't all sweet pot. Yes, it's funny. Marketing in particular. I think um doing acquired has made me such a more savi marketer.

Perhaps the most useful that I am in ballgames now is being like a reality check on are you actually reaching people a, in a medium that's gonna convert to what you want them to do, and b, with a messaging that people will care about. Because most of the time, most people are creating lots and lots of copy and work product that nobody cares about at all. And that goes for podcast and that goes for startups. And I think breaking through and creating something where people no, oh, I should pay attention to this. That's still so rare.

We are having this discussion. You may zoom a couple of with a world class investor and the sort of frame that we put on IT was taste.

oh no, this conversation.

yeah, you can't really teach you. You certainly can develop IT. But this is a version of that.

yeah. Okay, what's next on the darker .

well keeping on this topic of audience QAQ? A couple of weeks ago, we got this kind email from listener Martin from scotland in IT. He had a list of questions for us and said, if you have time to answer a few though, I would really appreciate IT.

And we looked at IT and we said, gosh, these are awesome questions. Should this be the entire episode should be our holiday special. So thank you, Martin. We are gna dive into a unto them here, and they are just fantastic. So number one, what is the book or books you've given most as a gift? And why or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life.

then you want to go first? Yeah, I am not actually a huge book gifted. I love the practice.

I just never remember red to do IT because it's great that when people are able to do that, I think a huge one for me, a psychology of money. There's a recency bias on IT, who we mentioned more in housel. The top of the show, good front of the show, great, great human.

I mean, truly, I massively changed the way that I personally invest me too face on that book in the way that I just think about spending my time and family and the or throughout the day. Another one is this book and I haven't written by twelve, fourteen years. It's called .

the artist way by Julia .

Cameron ah I D A part of college class, cool class at all, creativity and innovation. And one of the mechanics in the book is called morning papers. And the rule is you must write three pages, stream of consciousness before getting out of bed in the morning.

And IT is so cool because IT flushes out all the crap from your head so that you can go and have a clean slate to start the day. And you're not wasting your time processing. You're not like wasting C.

P. U. I goes in your brain processing something in ruminating on something that you really just need to get out, get on the page, and then you could focus on other things, or perhaps focus on that thing.

But at least now you have a little bit of clarity on IT because you've I should do IT more often, but I think it's an amazing practice. And kind of like A, I hate the phrase but life hack that I remember feeling like IT really worked for me while I was doing IT. David, will you give your answer? I'm going to turn on to look at my bookshelf to find a third one.

I have a bunch more books to talk about later in the episode, but the one that i've gifted the most is about called transition by William bridges, which was first given to me by benami friend mark in seattle. Then have I given you this book?

I don't think so.

You've mentioned IT, okay. We need to rectify this right away. What your amazon deliveries i'm an incentive to .

sounds like anything's probably showing up to my house three times a day for amaze.

You'll find IT again and like six months or so when you're cleaning out your basement, this book is a super cool concept. There was written, I think, in one nine hundred and eighty. And the idea is about major transitions in your life could be a good transition, like having a baby.

Welcoming a new family member could be a bad transition, like a death in the family or career related IT was losing a job, something like that. But the this is of the book is that when this happens in your life, and IT will many times can sound a little grim, but you need to sort of kill your old self and be reborn as your new self. That sounds super wow.

But if you actually think about IT, IT makes sense. Your identity, who you thought you were before, a major transition. IT has to change. There is no way around IT. And you'll go through the five stages, you know, denial, anger with ba ba blaw, all the stuff.

This book is a great sort of with a streamline, the process, but you have to accept that that you, that you were before he is no longer. And then you can create the new year. And I found that incredibly helpful, both for big chAllenges in my life and for great positive stuff, like having a baby.

Hm, hi, that's awesome. I will watch my front doorstep. My third one is a classic thinking, fast and slow by conomo university. It's just everything you think you know about, the way your brain perceives the world and how you make decisions is wrong. And reading IT doesn't make you get any Better, but at least makes you aware of how wrong your decision making is unless you pay unbelievably close attention and write down exactly why the decision is being made and look at all the data, even then you'll like IT wrong.

Then there is a very fun easter egg e that is gonna buried later in this episode for you to find related to this. But recommendation who sweet? So ben and listeners can go on a little treasure hunt.

great.

right. Next question, what purchase of two hundred dollars or less has most positively impacted your life in recent memory? This is a super easy one for me.

Uh, no brainer. My oji rushy hot water heater for people who don't know about these. And I think this is probably most of the world outside of japan.

This is a device that sits on your kitchen counter and keeps several gallons of water at a set temperature constantly. I am a huge tea drinker. I use this thing four or five times a day and have for the past decade plus IT is amazing.

I said, at one hundred and ninety five degrees, I drink Green tea every day. I releve my tea pot constantly throughout the day. And like, IT is unquestionably made my life Better and probably will extend my lifetime by, like several years from drinking tons of Green and tea every day.

Wow, that's awesome. Zg rushy is the brand willing to IT in .

the show notes? Zg rushy is the brand is a japanese company. Everybody in japan has one of these things.

awesome. Mine might be a pair of nike shoes. So living in seattle rains all winter, or at least it's wet all winter. And there's a particular pair.

I'm gonna look up what IT actually is so that if you want to buy IT, you can cause the nike men's peg is for gore tex. And the gore tex is so good, IT makes winter running possible. And they even have a few of the color ways that are not like totally insein, so that you can kind of wear them as everyday sneakers. But I basically wear them all day, every day in the winter. And IT makes me far less afraid to go out in the world because I don't like having your feet amaze.

okay. Next one is the tim fares question. I don't think anybody he's ever asked us that before.

If you had a gigg antic billboard anywhere with anything on IT, metaphorically speaking, what would you say and why maybe the most random fact about me I was a french literature major in college, particularly um seventy and nineteen century a french literature expert hardly in expert but that's what I major in in college and um as something that is stuck with me from then and the older I get in the world we live in becoming more the world that is has stuck with me more and more is the last line of voltage indeed you will cult v noto juda we must cultivate our own garden. Especially today like this is so much in the world that you don't have any control lover. The only thing you have control lover is your garden and cultivating your own garden.

And for us, that acquired and for me, that acquired in my family and you know, maybe some other things over time, but just focus on what is in your control and be great at that, and be good at that. Be great and be good at those things. And that is what you can do. At least those are the words that I have come to look by.

I love that I actually don't have my own answer to this question. There is someone else that I know that has unanswered to this question that I quite like, so i'm just going to working out their story, but I should go find some words to live by a good friend of mine, his dad had a saying when he was growing up that a, he would always remind his kids, just be kind, hey, whatever the thing is, just be kind.

You know, someone might be being a jerk to you and you know, they deserve some kind of repercussion, but you should just be kind. And certainly the world will figure out a way to deal with this person's s action at some point. And I think my friend did is at some point, as his dad was getting older, he asked him to um write down the model on a piece of paper and sign IT and he wouldn't got a tattoo on his back, just be kind signed by his dad's name.

I know know who you're talking about that amazing.

Yeah, I just think that's the cool list. I often remind myself of that of there is almost nothing to be gained by me exceeding anything but kindness in this moment. IT doesn't mean let someone roll all over you, but that does mean just always realize that, you know, it's kind of the Michelle l obama thing of when they go low, we go high, you going high is never onna heart. You, in the long run.

there is never any reason not to be kind right. I love that. That's so good. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you have ever made? IT could be an investment of any type.

Cultivating the relationship with my wife hands down one percent. And the second best is cultivating the relationship with you, which has made to so many things that have made my relationship with my wife and building a family possible. And there is no difference or buts about that, that how I am standing in is thanks to acquire the lifestyle, enjoy one hundred percent acquired.

The fact that I wander around all day listening to audio books. The thing that is done in my demining, in my personality, truly, the life that myself and my family enjoy, is because of what you and I have built. And thank .

you all. I have the same answer. I actually didn't write down Jenny, but I should thank you for reminding me. Yes, genie, I love you. Yeah, did know nothing more dead .

and probably therapy. That's probably the second agree.

I started doing weekly therapy. I done IT often on before, but I started doing IT weekly, committing to that this year. And it's just mentally help.

yep. And if you feel like it's not helpful, just which thyra s will eventually find someone .

who's helpful for you. yeah. alright. What is an unusual habit or absurd thing that you love?

I eat a starbucks, spinach, feta and cage free eggs ite by rap every single day. And I have four years and years and years. And I actually go to starbucks and buy them still in the package called by, like ten at a time. And then I just make him every morning at home.

We were in the airport flying back from L. A. We are at L.

X. After intervening charly monkers. And you got one of these at the starbucks at L. X. And I have known this about you for years, and I just kind of liked to you.

And I was like, then I think you have eaten more spinach fitter apps than any other human being in the world. And you thought about that. You were like, yeah, I think that's right.

Because I think i've consumed probably close to three thousand of them.

This is a way this is the very best and gilbert via that exists. When did you .

start a i'm going to guess around ten years ago. I mean, I get really ramped like seven years ago, so maybe two thousand twenty five hundred, but well, yeah pretty much every day breakfast for a lunch.

Speaking of special unique interviews that only we could do. I don't even need to finish that sentence ah we're just .

going to leave one .

day yeah okay. I do not even going to answer that because I can't stop .

that in the last five years. What new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life?

Yes, I ve adding weekly therapy this year. And related to that is listening to my instincts, in particular my physical reactions, to things like, I feel like, you know, IT takes a while to train your instinct. So like, I don't know if I just listen to my instincts and followed my instincts when I was twenty five, that the would have been the right thing, but pretty dial at this point, unlike what's right for me. And I find that I have physical reactions in my body to things and like listening and tuning into that usually is the right way to go.

Yeah, I like that.

And just being more aware of IT.

I think you have a good sense of that too. If somebody is one percent holster, I noticed you get like physically uncomfortable and try to create distance between you and them. Yes.

and that's just me. I don't know if everybody has that.

I think mine is I think that i'm still working on, but the amount that I have done IT has dramatically improved my life. Be more present, be a Better listener. The answers almost always tune more to the person that you're talking to and really understand them.

And I think listen harder is usually the way to Better understand what someone else around you wants. And it's often not what they're saying, it's what they're feeling. My therapy regularly uses the phrase it's about the feelings, not the content. And if you can figure out how to be present, listen Better and meet someone else at their feelings level and figure out how do I you don't even have to make their feelings feel Better because they might feel fine, but how do I tune into you emotionally and not try to just have a conversation about the content you're saying you're much more likely to both have a positive outcome and have a Better rest of your day.

You're gonna crush parenting.

Well, use your down. Yeah right.

Easier said than done when you know you're an hour like three of intense feelings, shall we say? What advice would you give a smart, driven college student about to enter the, quote, real world? And what advice should they ignore?

Oh, man, let's see. Some advice I gave like three years ago that I really deeply believe in is harvest, when everyone else is harvesting and build skills when there is no harvest, teaming to be done. And in particular, this person had the opportunity to go work at, I think, is a big consulting thing and make good money first year.

And they were thinking about doing that or working for non profit as their first job because their part was in the right place like they just want to to do good for the world work. And I was like, we're in a weird time where I don't know when it's going to end, but everyone's making stupid money right now just like, well, there's harvest in to be done. Go participate in that and you should build the best foundation you can. But I promise you there will be a time where this job opportunity is not available to you and you will look back at a few years of making a small salary in your first few years at a school and kind of wish that you could build a little bit more of a foundation because I just think this time is the end. And like a sort of flies in the face of be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful yeah .

this is kind of be greedy when others are greedy and you know build when others are fearful.

I'd be mindful that you're in this temporary moment. But like when there is opportunity to harvest .

harvest yeah reflecting on the twenty, twenty to twenty twenty two time for him, that is a huge takeaway for me. go. Garry has for years said this, you've got to play the .

game on the field. Well, yeah, benchMarks. Very good at that.

Yes, yes, yes. They are my answer. I would just repeat what I said on the art of investing podcast that we went on a few months ago, which those guys have just built such a great show. I mean, they're teachers and they've been teachers for years .

yeah rick polar investors in capital gators and you know great partners to the people that they work with. But like even their demining in one conversation is that of learning a teacher yeah.

So once I said there literally called students both the following your own path has never been more rewarding in this world that we live in and never been harder, like they're so much pressure out there. Social media, everything else about the world we live in, there's so much pressure to conform. And that makes standing out and following your own path that much more valuable. So harder .

and valuable? Yeah, people are undated. Like in my harvesting comment, IT was interesting that what I did was to described to job opportunities. I think there's another way to make decisions, which is surround yourself with, if you're an ambitious person with the most intelligent people you possibly can, who are the closest to grounds ero for your industry be where the interesting thing is with the people who are the best added.

This is the market entry. And I totally go to.

yes, always go to Dennis.

Always go to Dennis.

And they can't just be smart. They have to be like unbelievably trustworthy people worthy of your time and partnership. And that's the harder thing, I think, to us out over time. That hard advice to give a college student yeah.

I don't think those two things are at odds.

I know there are are add either, but your circle of opportunity gets smaller when you require more constraints, when you require both of them.

In the last five years, what have you become Better at saying no to distractions, invitations? Is that what new realizations and or approaches helped any other tips?

H, man, David, there's a thing that you do that I am so much worse at, which is you never feel compelled to respond. You never feel like somebody else can .

give you a task to do. It's not my most flatter equality.

but it's the thing that allows you to give energy to the people in your life that matter the most to you. That's the thing that I ve long but jealous service like I very OK with. Somebody emailed me a form email that i've never heard of them or their name.

It's like very easy to archive that. It's harder when it's like somebody that I met three years ago that I really enjoyed getting coffee with and now I have eight of those in my inbox and I just I want to at least say I don't have the band with for this right now. But like you do those eight times and suddenly two hours i've gone by, it's actually taken away some of your your energy in your life force, exact.

And you do IT to me sometimes. So like I sort of know, I feel like to be in the receiving element. But like you, you have a remarkable tendency to truly wake up every morning and say what actually is important and needs to get done and you don't do the other stuff and it's kind of OK if that has a little bit of collateral damage. Yeah.

I was going to say the same thing and you said IT for me, like I said, this is not my most flattering natural tendency. But as i've thought about this over the years, what i've come back to is I reach out to lots of people. How do I feel if I don't get a response to all those? I feel fine.

And you know, I assume that folks that I reach out to have something going on their specially hame more. There's nobody more important to me than my daughter. Nobody my wife you know like, and you you know like, okay, outside that circle, like you are my most important people.

And there's only so many hours in the day. It's like a version of you've got to put the year mask on before helping others. It's like I got to put those relationships on before others.

Yep, and everything's a trade off like an a fact him. Sure you should give your time in your life forest, everyone, but you have a fine item out, and so it's a priority thing.

okay. Last one, when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? What questions do you ask yourself? This is so easy. This is the perfect one to end on. We can make a great quiet episode.

And this has been such a gift to me in my life, because up until we started doing acquired, and up until acquired became my full time job three years ago, I didn't have anything that I could control like that. I don't know what I would have answered to that question, like so much of everything was out of my control. When you're adventure investor, you don't control anything.

Oh my god, yeah, yeah. What do you mean? Just go to a good deal. And that way in ten years.

you'll if I was good or not, right? exactly. We're so lucky now that we have this thing that we do that we can do and we're good at. We know how to do where no matter how bad things get or you no matter what's going on, we can just go on a lab and like we know we can make a great episode and we also know it's the best thing we can do. No matter how good or bad things are going, it's always the best thing we can do.

It's an interesting derivation that I wanted take this down. I've had this life advice that i've been thinking about to give to my son when he's old enough to understand life advice, which is not right now.

Oh.

you can have to wait a while. You would scream in my face and which is interesting that he can listen to all of this. I don't think he ever will but it's crazy that there's like hundreds of hours of his dad talking like you ever think about that our kids will get to watch a sort of grow up. I guess there's not video until year five or so, but still like listen to us sort of form who we became a summing that we do this for decades and decades to come. But one of the pieces of life advice, and David, I was testing you about this on our walk N, L, A up running.

Kenyon, we were down their interview, charley, was that when you're a Young person, you should try to become singularly productive, and I mean, productive in the economic sense that you are able to, soup to nuts within your control, make something of economic value and put IT in the world in a way that you own the design, engineering, creation, marketing, distribution, monetization. And like everybody shouldn't do that, like the corporation is a great structure that enables people to work together in a creative way to produce an output. But your life is way Better if you have the capability to singularly produce something on your own, and then it's always your choice of how much stuff outside your control you want to let in.

You might be a singular productive individual who then goes on to be crack. Federico, I and you know, run all of apple software, but then it's your choice. You're not reliant on a bureaucratic structure for you to thrive in politics.

Inside of this is another one of those paradoxes, I think, in that the way the world works today, this is on the surface, can never been harder. Organizations are bigger, things are more complex, things are more independent. The idea that you could, as a person, that especially Young person, be able to do that is hard to fat them. And yet it's also never been more true than ever. All you need is an internet connection, and you can find and learn some version of this.

Yes, it's pretty wild. We want to think our long time friend of the show, vantine, the leading trust management platform. Venta, of course, automates your security reviews and compliance efforts. So frameworks like soc two, I saw twenty seven o one gdpr and hypo complaints and modeling ing then to takes care of these otherwise incredibly time and resort training efforts for your organization and makes them fast and simple.

Yeah, fanta is the perfect example of the quote that we talk about all the time here and acquired. Jeff bases his idea that the company should only focus on what actually makes your beer taste Better. I E spend your time and resources only on what's actually going to move the needle for your product and your customers and outsource everything else that doesn't.

Every company needs compliance and trust with their vendors and customers. IT plays a major role enabling revenue because customers and partners demand IT. But yet IT add zero flavor to your actual product.

Then IT takes here of all of IT for you. No where spread sheet, no fragment to tools, no media reviews to cobble together your security and compliance requirements. IT is one single software pain of glass that connects to all of your services v and eliminate countless hours of work. For your organization, there are now A I capabilities to make this even more powerful, and they even integrate with over three hundred external tools, plus they let customers build private integrations with their internal systems.

And perhaps most importantly, your security reviews are now real time instead of static, so you can monitor and share with your customers and partners to give them added confidence.

So whether you are started up or a large enterprise and your company is ready to automate complaints and streamline security, like vantage seven thousand customers around the globe and go back to making your beer tase Better head on over to vantage cosh required, and just tell them that ban and David sent you and thanks to friend of the show, Christina anta CEO, all acquired listeners get a thousand dollars of free credit vent outcome slash .

acquired well, for then you and my traditional extended car outs to end the holiday special. I have a special family, one that I want to start with, if that's okay. So my brother in law, dave, jennie sisters husband dave is the most beloved number of our entire family, including my daughter, who no doubt about IT, loves him away more than mom, dad.

He is the best. He, until this year, was an early employee at a petrobank start up S. O.

He changed jobs and he joined the company called mill. This year, I will tell me about the company I was ously to start. Mill was founded by matt Rogers, who matt was tony fadel cofounder nest back in the day. And mill is the nest thermostat version of a compost bin. He was an internet connected compost bin.

Oh, I have heard of this. yes.

And, uh, I persea OK tive, i'm glad you're passionate about this. Can imagine how many people out there really need an internet connected compost bin. Then he joined the company.

And you say this really great. So py, coca, i'll support the family will gap one. This thing is freaking awesome.

I was totally wrong of an obviously, this is to I just sort of I be luxury good. I mean, not a luxury good. It's compose in but like, it's a premium good.

I did not realize how much I needed this thing for. Basically my entire adult life, I have had free flies in my kitchen on enough in the como spin. And if I didn't have free fly, you know, it's couple spin.

I know company in your kitchen this thing, roast your compost overnight and is internet connected. IT runs over now. You put all the fit scraps in there.

IT rose and turns up IT turns IT into chicken feed. And every morning IT gets fully roster, which means no smell, no mess. And IT absorbs.

This thing is like a black hole of composed. It's a big band. We will go weeks as a family. I've just putting everything in there, no empty, no go into the garbage, no smell, no nothing. And then when he gets full, your APP tells you, you put IT in a box.

They send you a bunch of boxes, like get a bag in a box, they send IT off to them and they sell at a chicken feet. This is like the most brilliant thing ever. I was so skeptical, and I one hundred percent conference, build that com. I'm not to say that because this is my brother in law. Actually, this is the best thing i've bought this year.

Did you or did you not get yours for free?

No, I paid for. I didn't get any discount.

This is not anyway enforcement .

and there is no paid. The only connection I have to the company is that my brother in law joined them, and I thought I was a really bad idea.

Alright, I am trying decided like your problems or real problems at this point or a year, like you've gotten so comfortable in life, are like solving these. Like really, I recognize .

that I just recommended an internet connected compass in, but IT really is awesome.

but it's a great one. I mean, yes, I recognize the value of good gadgets. I've been using a june evin for the last six months. Also life changing.

You might be like, why do you need a small love instead of your big of? And why does that need to be on the counter? And spinach federation s oh, every morning spends feeder rabs in the june.

perfect. Okay, I have a little tme of carvels. I'll save my baby related ones for later.

My TV show, my wife and I just benched. Watch is like, holy crap. good.

So the best T, V i've watched in a long time, very different genre than succession. But like succession level quality is called silo on apple TV. IT is excEllent.

It's based on a book, maybe book series. And the four T, V, adaptation is just very a dialogue. The photography go, the sets really impressive.

The premise is just beautiful, so simple. And the premise is, this is going to be spoiled free. There is a civilization of humans that exist in a silo like a big silo. And I want to say the exact number of people, because some might consider that uh spoiler but like, you know, a civilization in a ilo o .

and on earth or to space.

presumably on earth is the premise. And IT is all about people trying to figure out what's going on because IT opens with this idea that at some point that will be safe to leave the silos. We don't know when that day will be, but we know that day is not today. And it's a whole civilization of people live in in asia.

O this sounds like a great promise.

That's the setting and i'm giving no plood details about like what then transpires. But it's awesome and it's great.

H, as you know, i'm not A T V person, but that is up my ally.

The female lead is the woman from the most recent, the last two mission impossible, who's a really good actress and who else is in IT. The woman from the office, bertie Jones, is also in IT good show, highly recommended.

She's quinzy Jones.

his daughter. So, right, I think that's right. yeah. So that is awesome for less good T, V, but still very entertaining.

A part of our material leave, material leave has been watching alias. Neither of us watched IT back in two thousand two. And it's like A J, J rooms early. J, J, ms. Jennifer, gardeners.

the lead. You've already done this as a car about but I like, yeah, recover vow.

It's fine. It's great. I mean, IT gets worse as distance go on, but seasons one, two and three are great, very worth watching.

A product that i've been loving. I just got some new warby Parker glasses. I believe they're made out of vinal, but the frame is called a murray A M A R I.

They are much later than any other glasses frames that i've ever gotten. And it's like totally game changing to feel like there are sort of just floating on your face all day. Some might view them is not a stylish as some of the most styles options, but there might at home glasses for sure.

Yep, one of your car votes I picked up recently, hook slides actually didn't get the slides. I got the or the recovery .

shoes hook a slides.

So good. Yeah, I got the same technology in the kind of more shoe, more enclosed for factor, I think also called the ora O R. A so great, best house shoes i've ever had, per your recommendation.

Now happy to recommend. Another one is a feature of a product that I found a couple days ago that is figure insane. So i've had this thing where, as iphone cameras have gotten Better and Better, the computational photography, like what apple does to photos, makes them look a certain way. And i've sort of gotten used to that way, that potos look.

And now that i'm using the big camera again, because we have a baby, i've gone back to am using the Alice seventies and like this kind of like very flexible lens that can either be a wide or A A zoom lands that we're going to use actually for some of coming interviews next year to get a title shot on the subject. I've been using that and i've been feeling like, god, these images are so grainy, like basically anything that I shoot. Indoor feels like IT has this really terrible Green.

And you look, and of course, like the super high ISO. But the iphone is so much smoothing that i've like forgotten that film. Green is a thing.

And so light room shipped this unbelievable M L powered d noise feature. I found out a bit because new life patel was just on the talk show of john gruber. And he is right, say, IT totally pegs your GPU while you're using IT.

But IT is pure magic. You open up light room, you select the photos, you can even select like ones that don't seem no easy to and you come back and it's like unless you cracked the setting way up, they look totally realistic. IT doesn't look overly aide, but your photos just all get like magically way Better.

So huge custos to the adobe team. I've been so impressed with everything that they're cracking out on the AI side. Like I think there are the enterprise company that is probably the best, uh, rapidly commercializing these generate A I advancements. This one is immediately useful for me, for everything that I shoot, not with my iphone.

Yeah, this is a, we did that A C Q two episode with the crest from runway like this sector application of A I in imagine video. We're only discrete ing the surface. The surface is already unbelievable and like I just can't wait for what's in yep.

totally agree. I think I made may have made this a carve out at some point, but I want to be highlight IT because it's been at least twelve months because I remember reading IT over Christmas last year. It's an article by Derek Thompson called the erec theory of everything is wrong. Yes.

this is awesome.

It's so good. I just read IT. It's just such a pleasant reminder that it's not about the idea, it's about the implementation and it's often about the unsexy distribution work.

The article highlights a number of different instances where we know the famous inventor, but we don't know about the heroic effort made by governments around the world to actually rule things out like vaccines and things that know a huge part of the public good. I highly recommended reading IT. If you're in for sort of a perspective changing, read on what is important to advances society forward.

Love IT. I'll jump in with a couple before we get back to you first, a book that I included to earlier in the episode the luxury strategy by john oil career and vince in best yen. This book was a core part for both you and me in L V, M, H.

prep. And it's so good, it's so counterintuitive, tive and worth reading for anybody who has a brand, any company that has brand, which is everybody, even you don't like enterprise software, fast company, you have a brand. You should read this book.

I am just onna read. You have treated this and I think maybe even on air said, but to see them again, this book contains the twenty four entire laws of marketing. One, forget about positioning. Luxury is not comparative. Two, does your product have enough flaws?

Three, do not pander to your customers wishes, keep non enthusiasts out, do not respond to rising demand, dominate the client, make IT difficult for clients to buy, protect clients from non clients, the role of advertising is not to sell, communicate to those you are not targeting, the presumed Price should always seem higher than the actual Price, luxury sets the Price, Price does not set luxury, raise your Prices as time goes on in order to increase demand. Think about that one, keep raising the average Price of your product range. Do not sell.

Keep stars out of your advertising. Cultivate closest to the arts for initiates. That was seventeen.

There was eighteen to twenty four. I just like, this is acquired right here. IT snacks me in the face. Eighteen, do not relocate your factories. We talked about that earlier. And then he continues, do not hire consults, do not test, do not look for consensus, do not look after group synergies, do not look for cost production, just sell marginally on the internet.

T it's so good. It's good to get the reminders to yep.

that's one. The next one I want to imagine. I also talked about earlier in the episode the Q B school on youtube. So J T, O, Sullivan, who was like a ten year long journey man backup counter back in the nfl, he briefly started for the forty nine years, I think, in like the late two thousands after he finished playing, went and got A P H D in leadership studies, and then started this youtube channel where he breaks down quarterbacks performances every week and does behind the scenes of like basically just lets you ride along with how a quarterback and an N F L offence from, like the office of coordinator down to the courter backs coach down to the players like what is actually happening?

There is a quote that I think we cut from our nfl episode, but that kind of summed up whats going on here from one of the books that we read is said that baseball fans love baseball because they think they understand the game. Football fans love football because they know they don't understand the game. I played football for ten years, and this is the first time I am like getting a glimpse of understanding the game is so this guy is awesome.

I can't wait. That's totally been a thing that we've done this fall. As you know, we are getting ready for the birth of our son. And then as we've been on the couch, lot is like, watch an insane amount, college football, nfl games. Yeah, i'm all over this youtube channel.

You just watch these games in the drama so compelling. But what's going on is at such another level.

yes, the production of football and the story lining around the teams and the players, it's the great at scale story telling of our time. And to your point, there's a whole another thing going on underneath at all. It's unna. The carvey. I was gonna next before you judge in with a couple.

Is football been so good this year? I actually didn't get IT until I didn't fell until this season because I grew up around the fan and said, well, yeah but d i've watch a lot of and fell this year and I and funy, who does not know about the anding cast, when you're watching mother night football, you can choose either to watch the Normal announcers or there's a completely second production using the same cameras. Plus a couple of cameras in paint manning and mannings homes where there basically just like watching the game on zoo e together, it's hold over from the pandemic and they have guests on like they had will fare on.

But I think it's actually Better without guests like even when it's just E I. And paint analyzing the game. It's similar to what you're talking about, David, a little bit of helping you understand what's going on behind the scenes. But of course, by two brothers that are very fun to be around and they are often act like they're still eight, ten years old.

I would say. Like if you think about um the nfl broadcast, that's one level. Then there is like manning cast that's like several clicks deeper in getting a window into what's going on.

And then Q B school is like as far to the other side of the spectrum as you could go. Well, still being really fun. Like j is a great host, but like technical .

okay, we are entering the baby product section of recommendations.

Is that okay with you? I've got one other first that I want to throw out late on me, which is going to be a recommendation that nobody because you ve already seen IT the eras tour, I haven't watched you.

Oh.

you what little? Yeah, it's available at home now.

IT also. Did we call that or did we call that? It's been two years since .

did the way amazon, like we said, open invitation tailor you know we will fly to wherever .

you are is true.

Do you got to watch IT like when the baby sleeping maybe over the course of two apps because um it's a long will be but she's just done another level from anybody I mean time person of the year this year and that is one of the best movies period that i've ever seen. Notice like concert film.

awesome. Can't wait. Are baby recommendations go for IT?

I feel like I finally .

have strawberry died. Now, granted, I only have a one month d so like the needs massively change over time, but I ever I was trying to figure out for non parents out there figuring out the right car seat stroller combos for all the different needs, like at home travel, when they're different ages, you have different needs right now. We have a lean set up like there's a way to be dialed and you're set up by just having four strawyers. But i'm pretty pumped where we landed with two.

I am super pumped for your recommendations because I really trust you on this. Like then you are such a optimized like when he comes to this stuff, this is your real house. So I I can't wait. All right.

So here's the current set up. And this is after buying a few other strollers and returning them because there were things I didn't like about them organically. So the upper baby vista is the homes stroller.

That's the one that's like big. You don't want to be the business of like folding that and taking IT. And that has the newborn bed in IT.

This is like the heavy suburban strollers.

Yes, oh yes. You do not ever want to pick the thing up, but it's got great shocks. We take IT on a trail near house and the the arbery dm, seattle and the fact that has a huge basin out on IT, a lot of his naps happen there.

So I can go on walks while the baby is napping, even as a newborn, which for a lot of strollers, new burns can't nap if their sort of like upright newburn can even sit, you know, in an orb looking store. So you need a bus and that drawer. So that's the home situation, the travel situation. And we have like flinty worry yet, but we will in a month or so. Is the jewels J O O L Z L plus A E R .

plus OK? Not one of ice?

I had neither, but we went in order from, and we are tested. All the strollers.

amazing.

and the one that we had ordered. I really hated the way that the handlebars SAT and made my risk feel. So I we got this, the jewels air plus instead.

And IT has adapters for the car sey that we bought the click lake, oh yeah. And I just snaps right in. So this jewels air plus of supervise eleven pounds IT fits in the overhead of a airplane.

So when we traveled, starting in a month, we'll be able to do that when we're home. I always sits in the back of the car and so like whenever we take the baby at out, we leave the baby in the car seat and we just snap the car sey. Which by the way, is like the safest. You know, the click link is like the safe cari. Yeah.

you do not want to be transferring baby out of car seat when baby is to sleep, ever?

no. So the car seat just snaps right in. And so for like doctors visits and stuff, we just take the travel stroller with the car seat snapped in.

No, an eruption to sleep IT took a lot of fagging, but this is where we've arrived for now. The optimization are some people recommend the truly running stroller. In addition to this will have to see if that's a category we dept.

Into and other people are swearing by this. In fact, listen to the show, alex, I think text me. He takes me a lot about this stroller. And I I think he's right there. Number one fan, there's a car seat that converts .

to a stroller. The a, the A I was literally waiting with bated breath. Four year opinion .

on the tune that may enter the rotation. I haven't .

tried IT a very delete um also expecting number two this year. congratulations.

I was wondering you going to talk about IT.

I know, but I I appreciate the fan surprised there and we are considering this is among the consideration set and whether we will change our strategy. And also okay, laid on me.

So the da is sort of like a different philosophy of what if your car seat could become a stroller? And so that way when you're going on vacation, you you should not bring a travel stroller. You just keep the baby in the car seat all the way until you get to gate check.

Then you check the tuna. Or if you're so bold as to get a seat for your newborn e, then I think they can stay in. I am not exactly sure how that works.

And then when you get there, so the trade off then is like is the tuna actually a good enough stroller for like five five walks? And that I don't know when we go on vacation, we just try to do like tons and tons of walking. And so that's the thing that i'm playing with, with is the tuna and to the rotation or do we rely on the air?

Okay, i'm waiting with beta breath fur your verdict on that.

Yeah, stay tuned. At the risk of acquire getting a lot more boring, I think we have to keep discussion of baby .

products to a minimum. Well, this is nitto quired here. Like, what are the right kitt? This is reverting content.

Yep, either spend off show or were you have to keep these like all creative, like a bonus section at the end of the episode or something? Yeah, yeah.

I was think about, I got what my kid know. My daughter is too. Now she's like, you know, share, certainly not an adult, but like, you know, smooth, fast. Like she's, yes, SHE basically an adult at this point.

You send me that picture of her in the costco hot dog.

Oh yeah, totally. Well, let's be clear. The bun I ate, the hot dog. SHE hate the bun, which was her choice. My kid related.

Carver, I was having trouble coming up with any them in this season, even that kid related, but is her favorite movie, which everybody should watch. I can't believe I hadn't seen IT till now. Is coco the pixar movie go up good about the ideal is martos.

It's so good. I've now seen IT like ten times. I will probably see IT about five hundred more times in my life and um disney plus despite all the turmoil and I go all that to hell a drug to hell of a drug for a parent hey that's .

also where you can find great shoes such as elius.

yeah. All right. Well, that if for extended carve out slash holiday present suggestions this year from acquired, we have one more section to close out the year.

And that is thank you. First, we are just the biggest thank you in the world to our wonderful editor, Stephen. Stephen, you are and everybody listening, i'm sure, will agree. The single best podcast editor in the business is unbelievable. Hands down.

It's not even close. And for people who are curious about how this works, Stephen does a first pass after we send him eight, nine hours of raw audio in turning IT into sort of a candidate episode. And that's getting rid of likes and ums and all that.

But it's retakes, it's reduce, it's David. And I think, uh, I feel like I didn't come across right. I didn't make the points sink and off one, and I try to make IT more.

And he sends us back this released candidate, which we then also take apart and has, you know, a hundred more edits of. Like, this fact is wrong. This little part of the sentence is extreme. Delete this number.

Hey, can we move this section to this part? And then does a complete second pass after a week's worth of work to deal with us on a complete second copy at IT? So thank you so much. Even you're the best. And IT comes out just sounding a maculate mache seven.

You are the man. Thank you for making the show. What IT is a second thank you for this year is once again M V P of acquired Andrew Marks not only for charity but really for being our thought partner behind like every episode and relationships that we've built. Um you know now having into next year in investing, helping us think through that.

oh, what we're thinking, thought partners, we should think. Friend of the showers k bridge, who is a good friend of mine, appear cy at all. A good friend of David as well.

gave me transitions .

runs of very cool, founder of a very coal company called at present, which is a marketplace for very unique and a cool jewelry pieces for women. David, I actually both small investors in the company and customers and customers. That's right.

Probably the most expensive thing I ever bought. I bought through at present. But mark has been a thought partner on tons and tons of episodes, especially sure he actually ally suggested L V M H good thought partner on. So mark, thank you for everything you've done and helping .

require to yes. Speaking of valve image, adam preiser helped us a time on L. V. H.

Adam of, of course, was one of the founders of general assembly and now has a semple brands. And k, which they just sold them was a fantastic outcome for everybody there. Adam really gave us a window into actually building and running one of these companies.

Yep, the whole team at NVIDIA, initially, the people that we're willing to speak with us about the episodes we are doing just to help with the research for the episodes and make sure we got IT right.

But then subsequently, their entire communications team for hosting us and putting up with all of our requests and being willing to build the insane three screens set up and filled with three cameras and do everything we wanted to, the production standards we wanted and way more via H. Q. So thanks to the awesome team there. Thank you to doug demo for consulting to join the crazy acquired episode process for porch.

I don't think doug do what he was getting into when he agree to this.

No, but he did all the research to you know, for someone who has two businesses that he's trying to, you know, run at the same time. You know, he started with a head start on the history of portion, but he really did a tone of work to prepare for that and had all of his facts and figures ready at hand.

Let us send to his garages for the whole day 呀。

dog rocks. Also, i'm thinking about buying my next car. And like i've been watching so many dog videos to prepare.

he also totally set the bar for if and when we ever have another voice on a season episode. That is how we're going to do IT like an .

expert guest host, and we love that format. We'd like you're a feedback on the two, but we thought that was the perfect amount of guest to research and what they brought to the table and how we looked them in with the episode and interacting with vid. And I I we were just like, this is canada ten?

ten? ada? ten. Just such a high quality guy on every dimension. yep. And then on the research to mention you, thank you to um I dozens dozens of people who helped us with research for episodes this year. Too many to name here and many of you don't want to be named but the people who have way Better things to do with their time then jack with me and bent about a pocket episode. We're working on the co and cfs of public company, a immensely grateful all.

And for most of these folks, they do IT because they listen. And so they sort of know the product that's gonna come out the other side. Thank you also for a listening because I think that sort of the superpower of acquired is the fact that now there are people who listen, who can really help us make sure that we get episodes right.

So we love getting these notes to me. We can't respond to him all, but people who join this lack or email us acquired F M A, gmail, 点 com and say， hi. Here's a thing that I know a lot about in my industry experience. If you ever do IT feel free to reach out. We totally do when we do those episodes.

So thank you. Thank you. It's speaking of the last most important. Thank you, all of you. This whole thing would not happen without you listening. You all are just an amazing community, and we really appreciate you have a wonderful, wonderful holiday season and all the best for a happy, successful, wonderful new year ahead.

And with that, if you want to know every time and ephod drops, you can sign up for email updates at acquire data A M slash email. We added two new things recently. Emails include little hints at what the next episode will be, and there also where we're putting followup and corrections to previous episodes.

So thanks to the two listener's who recently wrote in correcting me on VISA that IT was not north dakota but south dakota that first changed their user laws to support credit cards, which is why all of your credit cards or so many of them are failed from there today. So we'll be including probably we ve got three or four more VISA to bits that will talk in the email for that. Come talk about this episode with us after listening at acquired data.

M slash slack, check out A C Q two. We just did this. awesome. These are follow up with our good buddy, gora ahuja, from thrive capital.

He's been in the payments industry for over a decade, founding companies, investing in companies and help put a finer point on a lot of the things we were describing in the current ecosystem today. If you want some merch, you've got a sweet merch store acquired that F, M, slash store. And without listeners.

we'll see you next year. We will see you next year. Easy you, easy you, easy you who got true?