Why do the most successful, wealthiest, and smartest people in Silicon Valley and Wall Street all listen to these two people?

Let me start by asking you a question:

Suppose there is a WeChat official account that Ren Zhengfei, Jack Ma, Lei Jun, Duan Yongping, etc. all follow closely, forward it to their executives for everyone to read, and are also willing to accept in - depth interviews from the author of this account. Would you be a little curious about this account and its author?

I don't know if there is such a WeChat official account in China. But there is indeed such a podcast in the United States.

One day, Jensen Huang listened to this podcast and has been following every episode since then. He also forwarded it to NVIDIA's executive team and asked them to listen. Moreover, Jensen Huang himself appeared on this podcast and had a long chat with the host for several hours.

Not only does Jensen Huang like to listen to it. Before his passing, Charlie Munger also listened to this program. At the age of 99, he appeared on a podcast for the first time in his life to receive an exclusive interview. That was also the only time he appeared on a podcast in his centenarian life (Munger passed away three months later).

Not only do Jensen Huang in his sixties and Munger approaching a hundred years old like to listen to it, but Mark Zuckerberg in his early forties also likes it and came specifically for an exclusive interview on this podcast.

When The Wall Street Journal reported on this podcast, the title it used was: "The Smartest People in the Room Are All Listening to the Same Podcast", which means: The smartest people in the room are all listening to the same podcast.

The title of the report by Fast Company, a top - tier global business media, was: "The No.1 Tech Podcast Sensation", which means: The number - one sensational technology podcast.

The title of the report by Esquire, the most influential men's fashion magazine globally, was: "Your Boss’s Favorite Podcast", which means: Your boss's favorite podcast.

The New York Times, GQ, CSBN, etc. all spoke highly of this podcast. Some media even called it "the Rolex of podcasts".

What exactly is the background of this podcast? Why do so many big shots listen to it? What special attractions does it have?

Today, let's uncover the mystery of this amazing podcast: Acquired.

1

In 2014, at a Passover dinner held at the home of Seattle investor Greg Gottesman, 29 - year - old David Rosenthal and 25 - year - old Ben Gilbert met.

Greg is the managing director of the well - known investment firm Madrona (an early - stage investor in Amazon). David is an employee of his company, and Ben is someone he wants to recruit.

David graduated from Princeton University. He worked in venture capital for a while and then went to Stanford University to pursue an MBA. He had just graduated from Stanford and was about to return to Madrona to resume his career as a venture capitalist.

Ben graduated from The Ohio State University. He used to be a product manager at Microsoft. He was very excellent and was even featured in a cover story by The Seattle Times, which said that he represented the future of Microsoft. At that time, he wanted to transition into a venture capitalist, and Greg thought highly of him, so he specially invited him to the Passover dinner, which is usually only attended by close relatives and friends.

At the Passover dinner, Ben and David hit it off immediately. Since David was a few years older and had experience in venture capital, Ben thought that he must communicate more with this elder brother to learn the knowledge and experience in his mind.

David also thought that this young man was very capable and thoughtful. But Ben didn't seem to realize how good he was and always habitually understated his abilities. So David also liked to communicate with him.

After that dinner, Ben often invited David out for a drink and a chat. But he wasn't sure if David was willing to hang out with him every time. To have a reason to stay connected, Ben came up with an idea.

One day in 2015, Ben said to David, "How about we start a podcast together?"

It's necessary to explain here that a podcast is an audio program, similar to a personal radio, but it's listened to via the Internet (on a computer or mobile phone) instead of radio waves. Although podcasts have a relatively small audience in China, they are quite popular in the United States. Along with text and video, they have become the main ways for people to obtain information and entertainment.

Ben has always loved listening to podcasts. In 2009, when he was still in college, he had already downloaded podcast programs to his iPod. Previously, he only listened, but now he wants to create his own.

Ben came up with two ideas:

One is to study acquisitions. At that time, most reports on acquisitions in the market were used to approaching the topic from the perspective of "bad deals". For example, "Spent billions of dollars, and the valuation shrank by a certain amount in three months." Ben wanted to study successful acquisition cases and trace back to the founding of the companies to analyze the reasons behind their success.

The other is to study business insights worth tens of billions, such as Apple's launch of the iPhone and Amazon's launch of AWS. He believes that most companies rely on the "core insights" from their early days, but there aren't many super - business insights like the iPhone and AWS that emerge from the original company, which are very worthy of study.

David didn't really care whether to start a podcast or not, but he liked Ben's idea of "studying separately and then meeting regularly to exchange". After all, he also liked chatting with this young man, and the topics were helpful for work.

David said, "Let's forget about the second one. There aren't many companies that meet the criteria. We might not be able to continue after five episodes. If it's the first one, I'm willing to do it with you."

So, they decided on this and named the planned podcast "Acquired".

David Rosenthal (left) and Ben Gilbert (right)

At that time, they just wanted a reason to stay connected with their good friend and hang out together. They never imagined that this small seed would grow into such a huge tree in the future.

2

Ben and David set a principle for choosing topics for the podcast, which is determined according to three criteria:

Firstly, they can learn from the research.

That is to say, the cases they study should enable them to have a deeper understanding of the essence of business and the factors of success. It can help them better identify which companies have the potential for rapid development and can be targeted for their venture capital investments. If they start their own businesses in the future, these studies can also help them do better.

Secondly, it can help them expand their network.

During the research, they can contact the executives of the companies they are studying, as well as relevant investors and partners in the name of seeking advice. After the content is produced, it can also serve as a conversation starter, helping them communicate with the investors and entrepreneurs they admire.

Thirdly, it can expand their influence.

Let more people know about them, listen to their programs, and be influenced by their ideas.

On October 15, 2015, the first episode of Acquired was launched. The first case they studied was Disney's acquisition of Pixar Animation.

After that, Ben and David produced an episode about every half - month. They went about their own jobs during the day and conducted separate research at night. When they had done enough research, they would get together, turn on the recording device, and start chatting freely.

They didn't deliberately divide the work, but interestingly, their different characteristics emerged. David preferred to study the biographies of founders and the development histories of companies, while Ben preferred to study the company's financial statements and research reports.

When chatting together, David would passionately tell the exciting history of the company, while Ben would calmly analyze the company's business model, operating logic, and financial value. This formed a perfect complement.

Before recording the program, they didn't communicate with each other about their research progress, thinking results, or the content they wanted to discuss. This ensured that what they heard during the program was the first time for each of them, which could maximize the freshness of the conversation, stimulate curiosity, and arouse the greatest passion.

Following this pattern and rhythm, they also produced a series of programs such as "Facebook's acquisition of Instagram", "Amazon's acquisition of Twitch", "Apple's acquisition of Siri", "Google's acquisition of YouTube", etc.

They became more and more passionate. The length of the program increased from more than thirty minutes at the beginning to forty or fifty minutes, and soon exceeded an hour.

3

Unfortunately, despite their passion, the listening rate of the program was always mediocre. In the first year or two, the number of downloads basically remained at around a few hundred. It wasn't until the third year that the number of downloads per episode exceeded 1000.

If it were a business project, Acquired would have failed. Because no investor or host can accept such a slow growth rate and zero cash flow.

Fortunately, Ben and David did this out of interest and friendship. Even if they didn't record the program, they would still meet from time to time to chat for a few hours. Having a podcast just made the topics more focused, and they just turned on the recorder while chatting.

Ben and David later left Madrona and went to other companies or even other cities. However, their regular chats were still maintained, except that it changed from in - person meetings to online chats. Anyway, the podcast is just a recording, so there's no difference between in - person and online chats. No matter how busy they were at work, they still maintained the rhythm of recording one or two episodes per month.

Although the number of listeners per episode was limited, it was still growing. Ben and David thought that there might be commercial opportunities in the future, so they decided to find a sponsor. It wasn't for making money but for giving the program an endorsement. If a well - known company sponsored it, at least people would think that it was a program worthy of attention.

But it's not easy for a podcast with little traffic to find a big - company sponsor. David and Ben had to beg (they really used the word "beg") a friend who worked at the Seattle branch of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

David and Ben told their friend, "Can you help us? Just put your name as the sponsor and give us a little money, whether it's one dollar or more, it's okay."

The friend was very helpful and gave a sponsorship fee of five thousand dollars. This was the first income of the Acquired podcast. Essentially, it wasn't a commercial income but just a friendly support from a friend out of sympathy.

Despite the sponsorship from SVB, the development of Acquired was still sluggish. If it weren't for the friendship between Ben and David, the program would have been shut down long ago.

But how long can friendship sustain a program without enough positive feedback and commercial income? Maybe it can last for two or three years, but what about five or ten years? Can it still continue?

Acquired reached a critical juncture.

4

In 2018, David and Ben made a major adjustment to the program. Previously, they mainly studied "Acquisition" and "IPO". From this year on, they shifted to studying how the most successful large companies developed, such as Tesla, Tencent, Alibaba, Uber, TikTok, etc.

At the same time, the length of the program was extended from just over an hour to an hour and a half or even two hours. The episode about Netflix even lasted for three hours and was divided into three parts.

The extension of the program time also required them to spend more time on research. Previously, they spent about 8 - 10 hours per episode, but now they have to spend more than ten or even dozens of hours.

At this time, David and Ben found a pattern: the popularity of each episode was closely related to their investment. The more carefully they prepared and the more time they spent, the higher the playback volume of the episode.

So, they continued to increase their investment. The playback volume gradually exceeded 10,000, then 20,000, and finally exceeded 50,000 in 2021. By then, they had been doing it for a full six years!

After that, it exceeded 100,000 in 2022 and 200,000 in 2023... Every year, the playback volume of each episode of Acquired doubled.

By 2025, the playback volume of each episode of Acquired had exceeded one million. It became the number - one technology podcast on Apple's Podcast channel and Spotify, and was also selected by The New York Times and Apple as one of the top 100 most popular podcasts globally.

Once the influence increased, commercial sponsorships came naturally. Many companies were vying to place sponsorship advertisements. According to the rate card of Acquired in 2023 shown online, there are mainly three ways of sponsorship advertising (the prices are as of the end of 2023 and may be updated in 2025):

The first is called "Next - season sponsorship", which means sponsoring the six official episodes that Acquired will launch in the next half - year (each half - year is a "season"). The basic sponsorship fee is $500,000 per half - year. If you add brand exposure in the form of pictures, etc., it will be $750,000 per half - year.

The second is called "Interview sponsorship", which means sponsoring the interview videos of celebrities by Acquired. After Acquired became famous, many celebrities were willing to appear on their program, so they also opened a special column called "ACQ2" for celebrity interviews. The sponsorship fee for every three episodes is $225,000, and the sponsorship period is between three months and half a year.

The third is called "Sponsorship of past works". That is, inserting sponsorship content into past programs. Since the past programs of Acquired are still being downloaded and listened to, many merchants are willing to sponsor them. The fee is $40,000 per month.