Ben Gilbert

Let's do a podcast.

Let's do a podcast.

Welcome to the fall 2025 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them.

I'm Ben Gilbert.

I'm David Rosenthal.

And we are your hosts.

Here's a dilemma.

Imagine you have a profitable business.

You make giant margins on every single unit you sell.

And the market you compete in is also giant.

One of the largest in the world, you might say.

But then on top of that, lucky for you, you also are a monopoly in that giant market with 90% share and a lot of lock-in.

That is correct.

But then, imagine this.

In your research lab, your brilliant scientists come up with an invention.

This particular invention, when combined with a whole bunch of your old inventions by all your other brilliant scientists, turns out to create the product that is much better for most purposes than your current product.

So you launched the new product based on this new invention, right?

Right.

I mean, especially because out of pure benevolence, your scientists had published research papers about how awesome the new invention is and lots of the inventions before also.

So now there's new startup competitors quickly commercializing that invention.