Acquired – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

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Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Technology

Business

Frequency: 1 episode/18d. Total Eps: 216

Every company has a story. Learn the playbooks that built the world’s greatest companies — and how you can apply them.

Site

RSS

Spotify

Apple

Recent rankings

Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.

Apple Podcasts

🇨🇦 Canada - technology
19/08/2026
#1
🇨🇦 Canada - General
19/08/2026
#94
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
19/08/2026
#2
🇩🇪 Germany - technology
19/08/2026
#10
🇺🇸 USA - technology
19/08/2026
#3
🇫🇷 France - technology
19/08/2026
#4
🇨🇦 Canada - technology
18/08/2026
#1
🇨🇦 Canada - General
18/08/2026
#80
🇬🇧 Great Britain - technology
18/08/2026
#1
🇩🇪 Germany - technology
18/08/2026
#10

Spotify

🇨🇦 Canada - top-podcasts
20/08/2026
#175
↘
🇨🇦 Canada - trending
20/08/2026
#61
↗
🇩🇪 Germany - technology
20/08/2026
#15
↘
🇬🇧 Great Britain - trending
20/08/2026
#186
↗

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Links found in episode descriptions and other podcasts that share them.

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http://vanta.com/acquired
400 shares
https://www.acquired.fm/email
219 shares
http://acquired.fm/slack
213 shares

https://www.youtube.com/c/AcquiredFM
10 shares
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKN-abRJMEw&amp
6 shares
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFzWAEPDGiY34bGpwM_DWmA
5 shares

RSS feed quality and score

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RSS feed quality

Good

Score global : 79%

Publication history

Monthly episode publishing history over the past years.

Year

Latest published episodes

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Chase Center + Summer Update

Season 14

Thursday, August 8, 2024 • Duration 21:53

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 (!). The show is Tuesday, September 10th, with doors opening at 5 PM for an hour of mingling with other listeners before the show starts at 6 PM. Huge thank you to the J.P. Morgan Payments team for being our incredible partner in making this happen. Tickets are almost gone so make sure you grab one ASAP — you don’t want to miss this night! https://acquired.fm/sf
We also figured this is a good excuse to update you all on the state of Acquired — after an incredible first half of the year (including WSJ’s profile of the show) we are taking the rest of the summer off to recharge, parent our young children, and prepare for the big night in September. We hope you’re having a great summer, and we’ll see you live in the fall!

Carve Outs:

More Acquired:

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

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Microsoft Volume II

Season 14 · Episode 6

Monday, July 22, 2024 • Duration 04:50:00

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.

In this episode we explore and analyze the browser wars and the DOJ case, Windows XP through 8, Surface, Xbox, search, Yahoo!, Bing, the iPhone, Nokia, mobile, social, Facebook… and oh yeah, a little thing called Azure and the enterprise — which ended up becoming so big that no failures mattered. Tune in for Microsoft, Volume II.

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

Links:

Carve Outs:

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang

Season 13

Monday, October 16, 2023 • Duration 01:31:46

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. A couple teasers: we learned that the company’s initial motivation to enter the datacenter business came from perhaps not where you’d think, and the roots of Nvidia’s platform strategy stretch back beyond CUDA all the way to the origin of the company.

We also got a peek into Jensen’s mindset and calculus behind “betting the company” multiple times, and his surprising feelings about whether he’d go on the founder journey again if he could rewind time. We can’t think of any better way to tie a bow on our Nvidia series (for now). Tune in!

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

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Merch Store!

Season 6 · Episode 1

Wednesday, January 29, 2020 • Duration 01:52:54

We kick off Season 6 with a long-awaited Acquired Classic: Facebook’s $22B purchase of WhatsApp in 2014, which still ranks as the largest acquisition of a private VC-backed startup in history. Yet despite that enormous pricetag and all its associated fanfare, as we sit here 5+ years later WhatsApp actually generates LESS revenue than the meager ~$20m it was bringing in at the time of acquisition. Was this this worst acquisition of all-time, or a brilliant strategic chess move by Mark Zuckerberg & co? Tune in as we render Acquired’s judgement!

Note: Unfortunately David’s audio quality in this episode was impacted by a technical glitch which we didn’t discover until after recording. Our editors worked super hard to fix in post-production, but it’s still not totally perfect. We hope you’ll give it a listen regardless, and we’re working on getting a transcript made ASAP, which we’ll post to the website when it’s ready. Thanks for bearing with us,

-Ben & David

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

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Subscribe to ACQ2
Merch Store!

The Lean Startup and the Long-Term Stock Exchange (with Eric Ries)

Season 5 · Episode 10

Monday, December 30, 2019 • Duration 01:25:59

Season 5, Episode 10: The Lean Startup and the Long-Term Stock Exchange (with Eric Ries)

Acquired closes out Season 5 and 2019 with a radical look into both the past and future decades of startup company building, investing and - yes, exiting - in conversation with legendary Lean Startup author Eric Ries. Nine years on from pioneering the now-canonical concepts of product-market fit, minimum viable products, and pivots during the aftermath of the financial crisis, Eric’s new venture at the Long-Term Stock Exchange represents an equally ambitious attempt to rewrite the orthodoxy of how companies and their investors manage liquidity, governance and alignment around longterm value creation. Like Lean Startup a decade before it, can LTSE help address some of the endemic problems in this generation’s startup ecosystem — excessive capital raising, stay-private-longer, dual-class founder hegemony, extreme illiquidity and quarterly earnings myopia? Tune in to find out!

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
Join the Slack
Subscribe to ACQ2
Merch Store!

Convoy (with CEO Dan Lewis)

Season 5 · Episode 9

Thursday, December 19, 2019 • Duration 01:41:36

Coming to you live from the University of Washington, Ben and David are joined by hundreds of awesome Seattle listeners (and a few non-Seattle listeners!) to cover the meteoric rise of trucking industry disruptor and hometown hero Convoy. How did Dan and Convoy go from nervously conducting market research at truck stops on I-5 to one of the largest logistics companies and fastest-growing startups in the world in just four short years, raising over $650m (not a typo) along the way? Tune in to find out!

Special thank you to the Paul Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington and to Pioneer Square Labs for generously sponsoring the show venue.

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

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Merch Store!

Carveouts:

Mystery: https://mystery.sh

TikTok

Season 5 · Episode 8

Monday, December 9, 2019 • Duration 01:42:55

We take Acquired to the Old Town Road to cover the amazing story behind the biggest global sensation of 2019 — and the highest valued private startup in the world — TikTok. How did a mid-30 year old UX architect at enterprise software giant SAP wind up creating Gen Z’s favorite social app that’s now rivaling Instagram in global MAU? Why is a 2017 merger of two Chinese companies being branded a US national security threat and retroactively placed under review by CFIUS? And perhaps most importantly, why is TikTok such an important product & technology innovation that all of us should be learning from? Tune in for all the answers!

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
Join the Slack
Subscribe to ACQ2
Merch Store!

Carve Outs:

Ben: Track 34 on Ghosts IV by Nine Inch Nails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF_ceFugJjQ
David: Nintendo Switch Lite https://www.nintendo.com/switch/lite/ and Knives Out

Disney, Plus

Season 5 · Episode 7

Monday, November 25, 2019 • Duration 02:18:49

The Flywheel is strong with this one. We dive deep into the origins of one of the boldest business strategy decisions of our time: Disney CEO Bob Iger’s attempt to buck the Innovator’s Dilemma - and forego billions of dollars in cashflow from Netflix and pay TV providers - in order to establish a direct distribution relationship with its customers for the first time in the company’s history. Is this the force awakening within the house that Walt built, or a phantom menace that will drag Disney to the dark side of unprofitability? Tune in to find out!

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
Join the Slack
Subscribe to ACQ2
Merch Store!

Links:

The WeWork “Acquisition” (with Dan Primack)

Season 5 · Episode 6

Friday, October 25, 2019 • Duration 01:40:39

It’s an IPO, it’s a bailout, it’s an... acquisition? We’re joined by the one and only Dan Primack from Axios to recount the epic saga of the We Company in all its tragic glory. How did this business somehow go from chopping up commercial real estate to elevating global consciousness to rewarding its ousted CEO with a $1.7B “platinum parachute”, all while the company can’t afford severance for thousands of soon-to-be laid-off employees? Where did it all go wrong? And most importantly, who gets the Gulfstream G650??

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
Join the Slack
Subscribe to ACQ2
Merch Store!

Acquired – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Acquired – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other99+

Amazon99+

Youtube99+

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other99+

Amazon99+

Youtube99+

Apple Podcasts

Spotify