Ben Gilbert

But you don't know.

You're really just making a founder bet.

And then you're trying to support it with all this structural information that is very imprecise.

Right.

You're acting like you know the third or fourth decimal place, when in reality, you barely know the first one.

Studying the businesses that we studied for Acquired helps me make Acquired far more than any investment memo I ever wrote.

In fact, I remember in one of my last few years of being a venture capitalist, one of my partners asked me how I

learned so much so quickly about different industry dynamics.

And I was like, it's not because I'm talking to all these early stage companies, none of which know what the future looks like.

It's studying these mature businesses and understanding what markets can look like at maturity.

Acquired helped me be an investor much better than the other way around.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a bunch of different answers to this.

One giant tailwind for us is a year after we started the podcast, AirPods came out.

Yeah.

And it became societally acceptable to just listen to stuff while you're moving about the world.

While you're talking to your mother.

Yes.

Yeah.

Right.