Acquired

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

208 episodes 27 summaries

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Episodes

Google

We tell the story of the single greatest business ever created: Google search. From its origins as a Stanford research project called BackRub, Google...

Jun 30, 2025 219m Summary available

The Steve Ballmer Interview

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 Mic...

Jun 2, 2025 179m Summary available

Announcement: Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall!

A few weeks ago, we told you that Acquired is doing something in New York City on July 15 with our good friends at J.P. Morgan Payments. Well, the big...

Apr 28, 2025 4m Summary available

Epic Systems (MyChart)

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 large...

Apr 21, 2025 237m Summary available

Indian Premier League Cricket

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...

Mar 24, 2025 268m Summary available

Rolex

Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital succes...

Feb 24, 2025 300m Summary available

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...

Jan 27, 2025 174m Summary available

TSMC (Remastered)

We dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. F...

Jan 21, 2025 2h 27m Summary available

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 noth...

Dec 16, 2024 230m Summary available

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 competitor...

Nov 18, 2024 199m Summary available

Meta

Meta is a company everyone knows (literally, everyone). But, somehow, it’s also a company that few people feel they actually understand. Their product...

Oct 28, 2024 377m Summary available

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 Francisc...

Sep 30, 2024 144m Summary available

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 6,00...

Sep 18, 2024 88m Summary available

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 s...

Aug 8, 2024 21m

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… wh...

Jul 22, 2024 288m Summary available

Starbucks (with Howard Schultz)

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...

Jun 4, 2024 193m Summary available

Microsoft Volume I

Microsoft. After nearly a decade of Acquired episodes, we are finally ready to tackle the most valuable company ever created. The company that put a c...

Apr 22, 2024 262m Summary available

Renaissance Technologies

Renaissance Technologies is the best performing investment firm of all time. And yet no one at RenTec would consider themselves an “investor”, at leas...

Mar 18, 2024 187m Summary available

Hermès

In luxury, there’s Hermès… and there’s everyone else. Stewarded by one French family over six generations, Hermès sells the absolute pinnacle of the F...

Feb 20, 2024 247m Summary available

Novo Nordisk (Ozempic)

Last year Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, overtook LVMH to become Europe’s most valuable company. And the p...

Jan 22, 2024 222m

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