Ben Gilbert

I think when the ordinary consumer sees Costco, they're like, oh, I love Costco.

But when someone who's listened to the Acquired episode on Costco thinks about Costco, they see all the gears turning of the machine.

There has to be some way that we can expose something.

And then our third criteria is it has to be important in the world.

And I think that's something we picked up later.

I mean, we used to do these little $10 million acquisitions.

And now when we're going to go spend...

two months of our life researching and making that like the Acquired episode.

It has to be something worthy of the Acquired stage.

Yes.

Oh, it wasn't a business when we started.

It was just like, I mean, we didn't make money until our third year.

Yes.

David never once raised the issue.

I'm depending on this for my livelihood, and it's my only thing, so I should own more or get a greater share.

That never once came up.

That's great.

It never crossed my mind.

It would actually break it if we ever started trying to figure out little carve-outs or pieces of the pie for, well, I did this, therefore I should get... It's true collaboration.

It's funny you bring up Sequoia because it's actually benchmarky in that way.