Episodes

  • Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)
    Dec 16 2024

    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 the Mars family, who are currently the second wealthiest (and perhaps first most secretive!) family in the United States. Tune in for one of the 20th century’s most incredible entrepreneurial stories across candy and pet care, and one that’s all the more incredible because it’s so little-known!

    Sponsors:

    Many thanks to our fantastic Fall ‘24 Season partners:

    • J.P. Morgan Payments
    • Crusoe
    • Statsig

    Links:

    • Hershey’s M&M response: Hershey-ets
    • Our past episodes on Berkshire Hathaway, LVMH, and Novo Nordisk
    • Worldly Partners Multi-Decade Mars Study
    • Episode sources

    Carve Outs:

    • Dandelion Chocolate and the Dandelion Advent Calendar
    • Tesla Model Y + repair service
    • Silo
    • Home Alone


    More Acquired:

    • Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
    • Join the Slack
    • Subscribe to ACQ2
    • Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!

    ‍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.

    Show More Show Less
    3 hrs and 53 mins
  • IKEA
    Nov 18 2024

    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. They generate a few billion in free cash flow every year — yet have no shareholders. And oh yeah, they also sell hot dogs cheaper than Costco! (Sort of.)

    Tune in for an episode flat-packed with counterintuitive lessons about how this folksy mail order business from the Swedish countryside came into your living rooms (and bedrooms and dining rooms and kitchens and bathrooms and patios and garages and backyards) all over the globe!

    Sponsors:

    Many thanks to our fantastic Fall ‘24 Season partners:

    • J.P. Morgan Payments
    • Statsig
    • Crusoe

    Links:

    • Please take our 2024 Acquired Survey if you have a minute. It'd mean the world to us!
    • The Testament of a Furniture Dealer
    • Our past episodes on Costco, Walmart, Amazon, LVMH and Hermès
    • Worldly Partners Multi-Decade IKEA Study
    • Episode sources

    Carve Outs:

    • Detroiters
    • The 11-inch iPad Pro
    • The QB School
    • Ice Cube at the World Series

    More Acquired:

    • Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
    • Join the Slack
    • Subscribe to ACQ2
    • Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!

    © Copyright 2024 ACQ, LLC

    ‍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.

    Show More Show Less
    3 hrs and 22 mins
  • Meta
    Oct 28 2024

    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? Why do they do what they do? How do they do what they do? Ask ten people and you’ll likely get ten very different sets of answers.

    Today, we dive deeper than we’ve ever gone trying to find Acquired’s answers to those questions. And after months of research and 6+ hours of incredible stories about how they (and really “they” being Mark himself) bet it all and win time and time again in the face of overwhelming odds, we arrive at our answers. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, AI, Oculus, Orion, it’s all here. Tune in for one of the greatest corporate stories of all time: Meta, a Mark Zuckerberg Production.

    Sponsors:

    Many thanks to our fantastic Fall ‘24 Season partners:

    • J.P. Morgan Payments
    • Statsig
    • Crusoe
    • Huntress

    Links:

    • Please take our 2024 Acquired Survey if you have a minute. It'd mean the world to us! https://acquired.fm/survey
    • Our past episodes on Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Snapchat, the Snap IPO, TikTok, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and the Mark Zuckerberg Interview
    • Worldly Partners: Meta multi-decade study
    • Episode sources

    Carve Outs:

    • Ben Cohen’s piece on NotebookLM
    • Mr. McMahon
    • The Dwarkesh Podcast

    More Acquired:

    • Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
    • Join the Slack
    • Subscribe to ACQ2
    • Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!

    © Copyright 2024 ACQ, LLC

    ‍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.

    Show More Show Less
    6 hrs and 23 mins
  • Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg)
    Sep 30 2024

    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 was like planning a wedding for 6,000 Acquired fans, and the guest list included Jamie Dimon, Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg… no pressure! But thanks to our amazing partnership with J.P. Morgan Payments, together we were able to make something incredible. Tune in and enjoy the celebration!

    Sponsors:

    Many thanks to our fantastic Fall ‘24 Season partners:

    • J.P. Morgan Payments
    • Statsig
    • Crusoe

    Links:

    • Mike Taylor, the truly incomparable performer of Who Got the Truth?
    • Mike Amiri (who designed Mark’s shirt)

    More Acquired:

    • Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
    • Join the Slack
    • Subscribe to ACQ2
    • Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!

    Photo Credit: Mark Zuckerberg by Jeff Sainlar / Meta

    © Copyright 2024 ACQ, LLC

    ‍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.

    Show More Show Less
    2 hrs and 26 mins
  • The Mark Zuckerberg Interview
    Sep 18 2024

    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. Mark was remarkably candid in our discussion, and gave us a window into his real and intense daily demeanor leading Meta. (And his other life endeavors!)

    We can't wait to release the complete video of the whole night, including our surprise conversations with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, and cameo appearances from Jensen Huang and Mike Taylor (the incredible singer of “Who Got the Truth?”). That’s coming in a couple weeks, but for now: enjoy this conversation with Mark Zuckerberg.

    Sponsors:

    Many thanks to our fantastic Fall ‘24 Season partners:

    • J.P. Morgan Payments
    • Statsig
    • Crusoe

    Links:

    • Mike Amiri (who designed Mark’s shirt!)

    More Acquired:

    • Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
    • Join the Slack
    • Subscribe to ACQ2
    • Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!

    Photo Credit: Mark Zuckerberg by Jeff Sainlar / Meta

    © Copyright 2024 ACQ, LLC

    ‍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.

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 27 mins
  • Chase Center + Summer Update
    Aug 8 2024

    Summer greetings from Acquired! Two items for this “mini-episode”:

    1. 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

    2. 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:

    • Thule Urban Glide 3
    • Disney’s Aulani Resort
    • Meller sunglasses
    • Quarterback and Receiver on Netflix

    More Acquired:

    • Subscribe to ACQ2
    • Join the Slack: https://acquired.fm/slack

    © Copyright 2024 ACQ, LLC

    ‍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.

    Show More Show Less
    22 mins
  • Microsoft Volume II
    Jul 22 2024

    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.

    Chase Center Live Show in SF:

    • Sign up here to for the pre-sale list before tickets are available to the public. See you there!!

    Sponsors:

    Many thanks to our fantastic Season 14 partners:

    • J.P. Morgan Payments
    • ServiceNow
    • Pilot

    Links:

    • Bill Gurley on Android’s “Less Than Free” business model
    • All episode sources

    Carve Outs:

    • Meta Ray-Bans
    • Ozlo Sleepbuds
    • M3 Macbook Air
    • Model Y

    More Acquired:

    • Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
    • Join the Slack
    • Subscribe to ACQ2
    • Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!

    Note: references to Fortune in ServiceNow sponsor sections are from Fortune ©2023. Used under license.

    © Copyright 2024 ACQ, LLC

    ‍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.

    Show More Show Less
    4 hrs and 52 mins
  • Starbucks (with Howard Schultz)
    Jun 4 2024

    Starbucks. You’d be hard pressed to name any brand that’s more ubiquitous in the world today. With nearly half a billion global customer purchases per week across its stores and 3rd party retail channels, a significant portion of the human population gets their daily fix in the green and white paper cup. (Including our own Ben Gilbert who famously enjoys his daily spinach feta wrap. :)

    But it wasn’t always this way. Long before the frappuccinos and the PSLs and the cake pops, Starbucks was just a small-time Seattle roaster that only sold beans — and was started not by Howard Schultz but rather the guys who later ran Peet’s (!). Starting from six tiny stores when Howard took over in 1987, this quirky coffee company named after a character from Moby Dick has scaled to nearly 40,000 locations worldwide.

    Today, in a first for Acquired, the protagonist himself joins us as a third cohost to tell the whole story of Starbucks. And Howard is in the perfect moment to do this — after three separate stints as CEO he’s now retired, off the board of directors, and in his own words “not coming back.” So place a mobile order (or not! as you’ll hear Howard speak about), sit back with your own favorite Starbucks items, and enjoy.

    Sponsors:

    ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acqsnaiagents
    Huntress: https://bit.ly/acqhuntress
    Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta

    The Biggest Thing We’ve Ever Done:

    • San Francisco. September 10, 2024. Mark your calendars.

    Links:

    • Howard’s letter “The Soul of a Brand”
    • Worldly Partners’ multi-decade Starbucks analysis
    • Starbucks S-1


    More Acquired!:

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

    © Copyright 2015-2024 ACQ, LLC


    © Copyright 2024 ACQ, LLC

    ‍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.

    Show More Show Less
    3 hrs and 12 mins