Deep dive · Global & US
Acquired
with Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal
Multi-hour company histories, researched to a depth no other podcast attempts — how great businesses were actually built, and what the people involved were thinking at the time.
Why an angel should listen
Acquired does one thing: it takes a single company and tells its entire story, from founding to the present day, with the strategy and the numbers intact. Episodes routinely run past three hours and the research behind each one is measured in hundreds of hours. It should not work as a format and it has become one of the most listened-to technology shows anywhere.
For an angel the value is pattern recognition of a kind that no amount of pitch-deck reading provides. You hear how a company looked in year two, what its investors were worried about, which decisions turned out to matter and which felt enormous at the time and did not. That is the same judgement you are trying to exercise when a founder describes a company that does not exist yet.
The luxury and consumer episodes are worth particular attention for investors who work mostly in software, because they demonstrate how differently value accrues in businesses with brand, scarcity or distribution as the moat. It is a useful corrective to a mental model built entirely on recurring revenue.
Watch one
Start with this episode
Rolex (Audio)
A company owned outright by a charitable foundation, selling mechanical watches at scale in a world of digital ones — an unusually clear study in how brand and scarcity create durable pricing power.
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Where to begin
Start with these
- Pick a company you already think you understand. The gap between what you knew and what the episode covers is the point.
- The luxury-goods episodes if you invest mostly in software — they rewire how you think about pricing power.
- Any episode about a company that nearly failed. The near-death sections are where the investor lessons are.
Listening orders