Best Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal Podcasts (2025)

1
Coca-Cola 4:04:28

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11d ago4:04:28

4:04:28

Coca-Cola is… sugar water. And somehow it’s also America, Christmas, summertime, friendship and happiness. Today we tell the story of how The Coca-Cola Company amazingly transmogrified a beverage into emotion in all of our collective psyches, and ALSO built one of the most incredible scale economy businesses of all-time. And oh yeah, there’s also c…

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Trader Joe’s 3:28:21

1M ago3:28:21

3:28:21

Trader Joe's breaks every rule of modern retail. They don't do e-commerce. They don't do delivery. No sales, coupons, or loyalty programs. They only stock 4,000 SKUs versus 50,000+ at normal supermarkets. Their parking lots are famously terrible and they're constantly out of your favorite items. Shoppers brave long lines and cramped aisles while ov…

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Google: The AI Company 4:06:38

2M ago4:06:38

4:06:38

Google faces the greatest innovator's dilemma in history. They invented the Transformer — the breakthrough technology powering every modern AI system from ChatGPT to Claude (and, of course, Gemini). They employed nearly all the top AI talent: Ilya Sutskever, Geoff Hinton, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei — more or less everyone who leads modern AI work…

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Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall (Presented by J.P. Morgan) 1:18

2M ago1:18

1:18

It’s finally here! Today we are releasing Acquired’s first “concert film” — the full video recording of our Radio City live show from this summer with Jamie Dimon, Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien, Barry Diller, and cameos from around the Acquired Cinematic Universe including Christina Cacioppo, Ben Clymer, and Howard Sc…

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How to Live in Everyone Else's Future (with Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke) 1:49:21

3M ago1:49:21

1:49:21

Tobi is one of the most thoughtful people in the technology industry. He's also one of the very few people who started as a programmer -- just trying to solve his own problem -- and still runs his company as CEO today even as it approaches a $200B market cap. Tobi has done this in two big ways: first, a willingness throw away his past beliefs in th…

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Alphabet Inc. 4:11:33

3M ago4:11:33

4:11:33

In its first six years from 1998 to 2004, Google built one of the greatest products of all time (and certainly the greatest business of all time) with Search. Then in its next six years from 2005 to 2011, Google built seven (!) more billion+ user products: Gmail, Maps, Drive and Docs, YouTube, Chrome, Android, and Photos — all either started from s…

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How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) 1:14:53

4M ago1:14:53

1:14:53

Is AI just better software? Or something completely different that requires a new paradigm to understand? Today we sit down with Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, two of the best product builders in the world to tackle that question. Bret and Clay are the co-founders of the AI company Sierra. Brett's resume reads like a greatest hits of Silicon Valley: c…

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The Jamie Dimon Interview 1:06:02

5M ago1:06:02

1:06:02

We sit down with Jamie Dimon for a live conversation at Radio City Music Hall, covering the incredible journey from his 1998 firing at Citgroup (where he was widely expected to become CEO) to building the most powerful bank in the world. Today JPMorgan Chase is a juggernaut — the most systemically important non-governmental financial institution in…

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Google: The Origin of Search 3:39:30

5M ago3:39:30

3:39:30

We tell the story of the single greatest business ever created: Google search. From its origins as a Stanford research project called BackRub, Google became the front door to the internet. Today it’s an essential service for over half the world, and one that generates more profit than ANY other US company — more than Apple, Microsoft, or Berkshire …

1
Building the Savannah Bananas (with Jesse Cole, Founder and Owner) 1:15:19

6M ago1:15:19

1:15:19

The Savannah Bananas have created a whole new sport. It’s baseball, but it’s not. It’s fast-paced, exciting, and incredibly entertaining. For example, if you're batting, and you step out of the batter’s box... it’s a strike. If you bunt, you’re out. If a fan catches a foul ball… you’re also out. Games are capped at two hours with no exceptions. It’…

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The Steve Ballmer Interview 2:59:20

6M ago2:59:20

2:59:20

We sit down with Steve Ballmer, the legendary former Microsoft CEO and owner of the LA Clippers, for an epic conversation covering his 34 years at Microsoft. Steve listened to our Microsoft episodes and had some thoughts to share — and boy, did he deliver. Steve takes us point-by-point through the original IBM DOS deal that started everything, how …

1
Undoing a $5 Billion Acquisition and Building a Durable Standalone Plaid (with Plaid CEO Zach Perret) 1:01:20

6M ago1:01:20

1:01:20

We sit down with Zach Perret, CEO of Plaid, to discuss the remarkable journey of Plaid and the broader fintech landscape over the past several years. Zach takes us blow-by-blow through journey of almost getting acquired by Visa, the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic… which quickly reversed with ZIRP tailwinds, and how Plaid navigated th…

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Epic Systems (MyChart) 3:55:03

8M ago3:55:03

3:55:03

What if we told you that the most important company in US healthcare was run from a farm in rural Wisconsin? And that farm contained the world’s largest subterranean auditorium, as well as Disneyland—style replicas of Hogwarts and the Emerald City? What if we told you that the person who started, runs and owns this establishment has legally ensured…

1
Indian Premier League Cricket 4:26:18

9M ago4:26:18

4:26:18

When you saw this episode pop up in your feed, you either jumped for joy and hit play immediately (in which case you’re not reading this), or you said “Huh. That’s a surprising episode.” Well, if you’re in group two, boy do we have a treat for you! IPL is the fastest-growing, most dynamic and most disruptive force in the sports industry today… and …

1
The Art of Selling Enterprise Software (with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott) 57:42

9M ago57:42

57:42

We sit down with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott for a masterclass in the art of enterprise sales — a topic where Bill ranks as one of the all-time greats by any measure. Bill started his career as a bag-carrying salesman at Xerox in New York City (alongside Howard Schultz!) back in 1983, and rose to become the company’s youngest corporate officer at…

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Rolex 4:59:34

9M ago4:59:34

4:59:34

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 Hermès Birkin bag in price, luxury status and waitlist times… yet they produce over 1m units / year (roughly 10x a…

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Building Web Apps with Just English and AI (with Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch) 58:03

10M ago58:03

58:03

Vercel has become the infrastructure platform powering modern web development over the past several years, with companies from Stripe to Adobe to Runway all building their front ends on them. Today we’re joined by founder and CEO Guillermo Rauch, who shares why Vercel has been uniquely successful in the fragmented (to say the least!) world of web d…

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TSMC Founder Morris Chang 2:56:16

10M ago2:56:16

2:56:16

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! This episode came about after asking ourselves a version of the Jeff Bezos “regret minimization” question: what c…

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TSMC (Remastered) 2:29:45

11M ago2:29:45

2:29:45

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 semiconductor industry by virtue of his meteoric rise and fall at Texas Instruments, TSMC today manufactures nearly all the…

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Mars Inc. (the chocolate story) 3:52:33

12M ago3:52:33

3:52:33

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 S…

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How ARM Became The World’s Default Chip Architecture (with ARM CEO Rene Haas) 1:14:29

1y ago1:14:29

1:14:29

ARM is an incredibly unlikely story. They were founded in Cambridge, England in 1990 to design a new chip architecture just for low-power devices (like the Apple Newton!), leaving the “serious computing” on desktop and servers to Intel’s x86. Now, nearly three decades later, ARM is the dominant architecture in all of computing today. ARM is in your…

1
IKEA 3:21:15

1y ago3:21:15

3:21:15

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 shareho…

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Why Duolingo Worked (with Luis von Ahn, CEO) 1:03:42

1y ago1:03:42

1:03:42

Duolingo has fundamentally changed the landscape of self-guided education, starting with language learning. It is now a $9B publicly traded company in a space where everyone thought you could never build a large and exciting company. We’re joined by Duolingo founder and CEO, Luis von Ahn. Luis dives into how learning English was transformative in h…

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Meta 6:19:23

1y ago6:19:23

6:19:23

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 …

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Building the Open Source AI Revolution (with Hugging Face CEO, Clem Delangue) 1:09:01

1y ago1:09:01

1:09:01

We sit down with Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue to understand the current state of the open source AI ecosystem. Hugging Face is the leading platform to host and collaborate on AI models, datasets, and applications. They also have a compute offering for AI builders to train their models directly on the platform. Clem has a contrarian take on the fu…

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Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg) 2:25:42

1y ago2:25:42

2:25:42

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 C…

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The Mark Zuckerberg Interview 1:29:41

1y ago1:29:41

1:29:41

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 i…

1
Joe Montana Interview Live from Modern Treasury Transfer 47:21

1+ y ago47:21

47:21

We sit down with legendary quarterback Joe Montana to discuss his transition from one of the greatest athletes of all time to… one of the great venture investors today. Joe shares some of the lessons that he learned winning Super Bowls with the 49ers that he applies to his investing career at Liquid 2 Ventures. Joe also goes into their firm’s strat…

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Chase Center + Summer Update 21:53

1+ y ago21:53

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 yo…

1
Microsoft Volume II 4:50:04

1+ y ago4:50:04

4:50:04

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, Wind…

Ben Gilbert And David Rosenthal Podcasts

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Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

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ACQ2 by Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

1
Coca-Cola 4:04:28

1
Trader Joe’s 3:28:21

1
Google: The AI Company 4:06:38

1
Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall (Presented by J.P. Morgan) 1:18

1
How to Live in Everyone Else's Future (with Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke) 1:49:21

1
Alphabet Inc. 4:11:33

1
How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor) 1:14:53

1
The Jamie Dimon Interview 1:06:02

1
Google: The Origin of Search 3:39:30

1
Building the Savannah Bananas (with Jesse Cole, Founder and Owner) 1:15:19

1
The Steve Ballmer Interview 2:59:20

1
Undoing a $5 Billion Acquisition and Building a Durable Standalone Plaid (with Plaid CEO Zach Perret) 1:01:20

1
Epic Systems (MyChart) 3:55:03

1
Indian Premier League Cricket 4:26:18

1
The Art of Selling Enterprise Software (with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott) 57:42

1
Rolex 4:59:34

1
Building Web Apps with Just English and AI (with Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch) 58:03

1
TSMC Founder Morris Chang 2:56:16

1
TSMC (Remastered) 2:29:45

1
Mars Inc. (the chocolate story) 3:52:33

1
How ARM Became The World’s Default Chip Architecture (with ARM CEO Rene Haas) 1:14:29

1
IKEA 3:21:15

1
Why Duolingo Worked (with Luis von Ahn, CEO) 1:03:42

1
Meta 6:19:23

1
Building the Open Source AI Revolution (with Hugging Face CEO, Clem Delangue) 1:09:01

1
Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg) 2:25:42

1
The Mark Zuckerberg Interview 1:29:41

1
Joe Montana Interview Live from Modern Treasury Transfer 47:21

1
Chase Center + Summer Update 21:53

1
Microsoft Volume II 4:50:04