Acquired

In 1984, the Walt Disney Company was on the brink of being broken up, its animation division stagnating and corporate raiders circling. Michael Eisner and Frank Wells orchestrated a historic turnaround, revitalizing the flywheel with hits like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, extending into home video, Broadway, and the acquisition of ESPN. After internal strife and the Euro Disney fiasco, a new leadership era under Bob Iger rebuilt the company through the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, creating a dominant 21st-century media empire.

The Walt Disney Company is the most successful enterprise ever created for monetizing human nostalgia. In this episode, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal explore Walt's era, tracing how a moonshot factory that repeatedly bet everything on crazy projects—from the first feature-length animated film to a theme park—accidentally invented the modern flywheel business model. The result was a marriage of art, commerce, and engineering that produced Snow White, Fantasia, and Disney Imagineering, and established the foundation for the global entertainment giant we know today.

Vanguard is the most effective vehicle ever created for participating in American capitalism. The episode tells the story of Jack Bogle, who after being fired by his partners launched a client-owned mutual company that returned excess profits to investors through lower fees. This structure transferred roughly $500 billion from Wall Street managers to retail investors since 1975. Bogle popularized the index fund, a concept he first explored in his senior thesis, proving that low-cost market tracking outperforms active management.

Ferrari is the pinnacle of luxury scarcity — across its entire 79-year history, the company has sold just 330,000 cars at an average price today of $500,000. For context, Hermès sells that many Birkins and Kellys roughly every 2 years, and Rolex moves that many watches every 3 months.

Formula 1 is three competitions in one: a 200mph battle of the world's best race car drivers, the world cup of engineering where thousand-person teams spend hundreds of millions designing cars from scratch, and — as one of our listeners perfectly put it — the “Real Housewives of the Garage”, a soap

The NFL is nearly synonymous with America today. Practically nothing is more quintessentially and universally American than tuning in every Sunday (and Monday, and Thursday… and sometimes Saturdays and holidays too) to watch the world’s most beautiful ballet of violence.

Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital successors… and demand is stronger than ever in history!

Costco is not only Charlie Munger’s favorite company of all time (plus he’s on the board, natch), it’s an absolutely fascinating study in how seemingly opposite characteristics can combine to create incredible company value.

Why has Acquired — seemingly against all odds — “worked”? It's a puzzling question: episodes are four hours long, they come out infrequently, and they usually don’t have guests or video. Hardly the standard-issue playbook for podcasting success!

Coca-Cola is… sugar water. And somehow it’s also America, Christmas, summertime, friendship and happiness.

Trader Joe's breaks every rule of modern retail. They don't do e-commerce. They don't do delivery. No sales, coupons, or loyalty programs. They only stock 4,000 SKUs versus 50,000+ at normal supermarkets. Their parking lots are famously terrible and they're constantly out of your favorite items.

Google faces the greatest innovator's dilemma in history. They invented the Transformer — the breakthrough technology powering every modern AI system from ChatGPT to Claude (and, of course, Gemini).

It’s finally here!

In its first six years from 1998 to 2004, Google built one of the greatest products of all time (and certainly the greatest business of all time) with Search.

We sit down with Jamie Dimon for a live conversation at Radio City Music Hall, covering the incredible journey from his 1998 firing at Citgroup (where he was widely expected to become CEO) to building the most powerful bank in the world.

We tell the story of the single greatest business ever created: Google search. From its origins as a Stanford research project called BackRub, Google became the front door to the internet.

We sit down with Steve Ballmer, the legendary former Microsoft CEO and owner of the LA Clippers, for an epic conversation covering his 34 years at Microsoft. Steve listened to our Microsoft episodes and had some thoughts to share — and boy, did he deliver.

What if we told you that the most important company in US healthcare was run from a farm in rural Wisconsin? And that farm contained the world’s largest subterranean auditorium, as well as Disneyland—style replicas of Hogwarts and the Emerald City?

When you saw this episode pop up in your feed, you either jumped for joy and hit play immediately (in which case you’re not reading this), or you said “Huh. That’s a surprising episode.” Well, if you’re in group two, boy do we have a treat for you!

The definitive Acquired episode on Amazon: Jeff Bezos from D.E. Shaw quant to building the everything store. The Prime flywheel, AWS as an accidental trillion-dollar business, the Day 1 philosophy, and how Bezos created the most customer-obsessed company in history.

We flew to Taiwan to interview TSMC Founder Morris Chang in a rare English interview. In fact, the last long-form video interview we could find was 17 years ago at the Computer History Museum… conducted by the one-and-only Jensen Huang!

We dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

M&M’s, Snickers, Milky Way, Double Mint, Ben’s Rice, Pedigree, Whiskas, VCA, Banfield… all the brands you know, owned by the company you know nothing about: Mars, Incorporated.

Patrick and John Collison built Stripe from 7 lines of code into a $65B payments infrastructure company. How two Irish brothers dropped out of MIT and Harvard to make internet payments work for developers, becoming the plumbing of the internet economy.

IKEA may be the most singular company we’ve ever studied on Acquired. They’re a globally scaled, $50B annual revenue company with no direct competitors — yet have only ~5% market share. They’re one of the largest retailers in the world — yet sell only their own products.

Meta is a company everyone knows (literally, everyone). But, somehow, it’s also a company that few people feel they actually understand. Their products are used by more humans than any other’s in history — almost half of the entire world’s population daily. But… what is Meta?

Daniel Ek built Spotify by solving the music industry's unsolvable problem: making piracy unnecessary. How a Swedish teenager who grew up coding convinced every major record label to license their catalogs to a free streaming service, then grew it to 600M+ users.

Here it is: the complete video of the most unbelievable night of Acquired’s nine-year life… our sold out live show at the Chase Center in San Francisco.

Mark is the iconic founder CEO of our time. At Chase Center on September 10, 2024, he did an unprecedented thing: a live conversation in front of 6,000 people on Meta’s company strategy, sharing stories from early Facebook history, and his thoughts on the future of AI, VR, and AR.

Summer greetings from Acquired! Two items for this “mini-episode”: Tickets are now available for our live show at Chase Center in San Francisco, with special guests including Mark Zuckerberg (!).

In 1999, Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world. And in 2019, Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world, again. But… what happened in the twenty years in between? The answer, as we discovered in our research, is probably not what you think.

Mark Zuckerberg's journey from The Facebook to Meta: the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, the pivot to mobile, the metaverse bet, and the dramatic AI comeback of 2023-2024. How a single founder maintained control through 20 years of reinvention.

How a 100-year-old Danish insulin company accidentally discovered the most important weight loss drug in history. The GLP-1 journey from diabetic side effect to Ozempic and Wegovy, making Novo Nordisk the most valuable company in Europe.

Starbucks. You’d be hard pressed to name any brand that’s more ubiquitous in the world today.

Enzo Ferrari built the most iconic luxury brand in the world — not because he wanted to sell cars, but because he wanted to race them. How a company that sells fewer than 14,000 cars per year became worth more than Ford and GM combined.

The complete Berkshire Hathaway story: how Warren Buffett turned a failing textile mill into the most successful conglomerate in history. From the partnership years to See's Candies to the Geico insight to the current $900B+ empire. The evolution of Buffett's investing philosophy from cigar butts to quality.

Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nate Blecharczyk built Airbnb from air mattresses on a living room floor to an $80B+ travel platform. The complete story of surviving Obama O's, Y Combinator, the pandemic collapse, and the design-driven reinvention.

The Satya Nadella era: how Microsoft went from a stagnating Windows company to a $3T AI and cloud leader. The cultural transformation from 'know-it-all' to 'learn-it-all,' the Azure bet, the GitHub/LinkedIn/Activision acquisitions, and the OpenAI partnership.

Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies: how a Cold War codebreaker built the most successful investment fund in history. The Medallion Fund has returned 66% annually before fees for over 30 years — a track record no one else has approached.

The 187-year history of Hermes: from making horse harnesses in 1837 Paris to becoming the most exclusive luxury brand on earth. How six generations of family control produced a company that deliberately limits growth.

Bernard Arnault assembled LVMH through decades of acquisitions — Louis Vuitton, Dior, Tiffany, Sephora, Hennessy — into a $400B luxury empire. How a real estate developer from northern France became the architect of modern luxury conglomerate strategy.

Last year Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, overtook LVMH to become Europe’s most valuable company. And the pull for Acquired to finally tackle healthcare (18% of US GDP!) became too strong for us to resist.

Ben has some big news. Actually, double big news! On what has become a holiday tradition here at Acquired, we cozy up to the fire to do our annual review of the show “in public”. We reflect on what can only be described as an absolutely mind-blowing 2023 (LVMH! Jensen! Costco! Charlie!

To paraphrase Visa founder Dee Hock, how many of you know Visa? Great, all of you. Now, how many of you know how it started? Or, for that matter, who started it? Who runs and governs it? Where is it headquartered? What’s its business model?

The improbable story of how Visa became the most profitable company in the world per employee. A cooperative of competing banks that built a payment network processing $14 trillion annually with only 30,000 employees.

We sit down with the legendary Charlie Munger in the only dedicated longform podcast interview that he has done in his 99 years on Earth. We’ve gotten to have some special conversations on Acquired over the years, but this one truly takes the cake.

Morris Chang invented the pure-play foundry model: a company that manufactures chips designed by others. This single innovation enabled Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, and the entire fabless semiconductor revolution. Now 90% of advanced chips are made by one company in Taiwan.

We finally sit down with the man himself: Nvidia Cofounder & CEO Jensen Huang. After three parts and seven+ hours of covering the company, we thought we knew everything but — unsurprisingly — Jensen knows more.

The full story of NVIDIA from Jensen Huang founding it in 1993 at a Denny's to becoming the most important company in the AI revolution. How a gaming GPU company bet everything on CUDA and parallel computing, creating the platform that AI was eventually built on.

The final installment of the NVIDIA trilogy covers 2022-2023: how Jensen Huang's decades-long bet on GPU computing finally paid off when ChatGPT created overnight demand for every GPU NVIDIA could produce.

How Costco built a $240B empire on the radical idea of charging customers for the privilege of shopping there. The membership model, the $1.50 hot dog, and why Costco might be the most admired company in retail.

The 60-year story of Nike: from Phil Knight selling shoes out of his car trunk to a $170B global empire. How a handshake deal with a Japanese shoe company, Bill Bowerman's waffle iron, and Michael Jordan created the most powerful brand in sports.

The full Apple story: from the garage to $3T. How Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the most valuable company in history through an obsessive focus on product quality, vertical integration, and the intersection of technology and liberal arts.

The story of Porsche: from Ferdinand Porsche designing the Volkswagen Beetle for Hitler to the company's dramatic 2022 IPO at a $75B valuation. How one family's obsession with engineering produced the most profitable car company per unit.

The Toyota Production System: how a small Japanese loom maker became the world's most efficient automobile manufacturer. Kaizen, just-in-time, and the management philosophy that influenced every manufacturing company on earth.

Reed Hastings built Netflix by making three impossible pivots: DVD by mail to streaming, licensed content to original programming, and domestic to global. Each transition required abandoning a working business model for an uncertain future.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin built Google from a Stanford research project into the world's most important information company. PageRank, AdWords, Android, YouTube, and how 'organizing the world's information' became a $2T company.

Sam Walton built Walmart from a single five-and-dime store in Arkansas to the largest company in the world by revenue ($600B+). The story of how ruthless cost discipline, small-town strategy, and logistics innovation defeated every competitor.

John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil: the first great American monopoly. From a Cleveland bookkeeper to controlling 90% of US oil refining. The story that defined antitrust law, corporate ruthlessness, and modern philanthropy.

The Disney empire from Walt's first animation studio to the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Fox. How Bob Iger transformed Disney from a fading animation studio into the most powerful content company in the world.

The rise and fall of Intel: from inventing the microprocessor to losing the mobile revolution. How Andy Grove's 'Only the Paranoid Survive' philosophy built a monopoly — and how Intel's successors abandoned it.

John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil: how one man built the most dominant monopoly in American history. From Cleveland oil refinery to controlling 90% of American oil refining through a combination of efficiency, ruthlessness, and strategic brilliance.