Acquired
By Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
Every company has a story.
Learn the playbooks that built the world’s greatest companies — and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Learn the playbooks that built the world’s greatest companies — and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Latest episode
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Rolex
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! Their products are comparable to a He… -
TSMC Founder Morris Chang
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! T… -
TSMC (Remastered)
We dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Founded in 1987 by the then-56 year old Morris Chang, already a legend in the semiconduct… -
Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)
M&M’s, Snickers, Milky Way, Double Mint, Ben’s Rice, Pedigree, Whiskas, VCA, Banfield… all the brands you know, owned by the company you know nothing about: Mars, Incorporated. And Mars itself is 100% owned and deeply intertwined with… -
IKEA
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 — … -
Meta
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’… -
Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg)
Here it is: the complete video of the most unbelievable night of Acquired’s nine-year life… our sold out live show at the Chase Center in San Francisco. We joked during the months (months!) of preparation leading up to this event that it … -
The Mark Zuckerberg Interview
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 earl… -
Chase Center + Summer Update
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… -
Microsoft Volume II
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…