Acquired
Episodes
10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why has Acquired — seemingly against all odds — “worked”? It's a puzzling question: episodes are four hours long, they come out infrequently, ...
Coca-Cola
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall (Presented by J.P. Morgan)
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 s...
Trader Joe’s
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 s...
Google: The AI Company
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Google faces the greatest innovator's dilemma in history. They invented the Transformer — the breakthrough technology powering every modern AI syste...
Alphabet Inc.
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Jamie Dimon Interview
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We tell the story of the single greatest business ever created: Google search. From its origins as a Stanford research project called BackRub, Google ...
The Steve Ballmer Interview
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Announcement: Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall!
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Epic Systems (MyChart)
20 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 lar...
Indian Premier League Cricket
23 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 sa...
Rolex
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital succes...
TSMC Founder Morris Chang
26 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
TSMC (Remastered)
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. F...
Mars Inc. (the chocolate story)
15 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 kno...
IKEA
17 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 compet...
Meta
27 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Meta is a company everyone knows (literally, everyone). But, somehow, it’s also a company that few people feel they actually understand. Their produ...
Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 Fran...
The Mark Zuckerberg Interview
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Chase Center + Summer Update
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Summer greetings from Acquired! Two items for this “mini-episode”:Tickets are now available for our live show at Chase Center in San Francisco, wi...
Microsoft Volume II
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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… ...
Starbucks (with Howard Schultz)
03 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Microsoft Volume I
21 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Renaissance Technologies
17 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Renaissance Technologies is the best performing investment firm of all time. And yet no one at RenTec would consider themselves an “investor”, at ...
Hermès
19 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In luxury, there’s Hermès… and there’s everyone else. Stewarded by one French family over six generations, Hermès sells the absolute pinnacle ...
Novo Nordisk (Ozempic)
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last year Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, overtook LVMH to become Europe’s most valuable company. And the...
Holiday Special 2023
17 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ben has some big news. Actually, double big news! On what has become a holiday tradition here at Acquired, we cozy up to the fire to do our annual rev...
Visa
26 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
To paraphrase Visa founder Dee Hock, how many of you know Visa? Great, all of you. Now, how many of you know how it started? Or, for that matter, who ...
Charlie Munger
29 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with the legendary Charlie Munger in the only dedicated longform podcast interview that he has done in his 99 years on Earth. We’ve gott...
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We finally sit down with the man himself: Nvidia Cofounder & CEO Jensen Huang. After three parts and seven+ hours of covering the company, we thou...
Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023)
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a(nother) new era for Nvidia.We thought we’d closed the Acquired book on Nvidia back in April 2022. The story was all wrapped up: Jensen &...
Costco
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Costco is not only Charlie Munger’s favorite company of all time (plus he’s on the board, natch), it’s an absolutely fascinating study in how se...
Nike
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nike — it’s perhaps the most iconic and most prolific brand of the modern era. On any given day, swooshes adorn the feet of more people on earth t...
Porsche (with Doug DeMuro)
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nobody’s perfect — including Porsche. Despite that phrase appearing in their famous 1983 magazine advertisement, they managed to get damn-close to...
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi dropped by the Acquired studio for an Eats delivery, so we broke out the cameras and asked him to hang out for a wide-rangi...
Lockheed Martin
29 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today we bring you two absolutely incredible stories. The first is Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works division — the elite team of aviation geniuses...
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek live in Stockholm at Spotify’s amazing HQ studio (check out the video version of this episode — which plays...
Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down Benchmark’s legendary gaming investors Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins (now also of the excellent Gamecraft podcast fame) to discuss the h...
Short: The Death of Sega
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sega and the Genesis was THE underdog story of the early 90’s. In a single console generation, Sega went from ~zero to 50% US market share and dethr...
Nintendo: The Console Wars
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1980’s Nintendo was on top of the world, with the NES achieving over 90% market share of home video games globally. So how did they fall ALL ...
Interview: Hamilton Helmer & Chenyi Shi on How to Build an AWS-Like Second Business
03 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
7 Powers author Hamilton Helmer and his Strategy Capital colleague Chenyi Shi join us again to discuss their latest research on a topic that’s highl...
Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast)
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
ACQ Sessions returns with David Senra of the Founders Podcast. David is one of our very favorite people in the world — it’s impossible to spend an...
Nintendo's Origins
15 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
You may think you know the Nintendo story: a plumber named Mario, a princess named Zelda… and didn’t they buy the Seattle Mariners at some point? ...
LVMH
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We tell the full history of LVMH, and how Bernard Arnault turned a $15m investment in a bankrupt French textile company into the world’s largest ind...
The NFL
25 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The NFL — it’s almost synonymous with America today. And its history is a fascinating lens to explore the nation’s development over the last 100...
Holiday Special 2022
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Cozy up to the fire and join Acquired as we do our annual strategic review of the show and our business “in public”. We recap our perspectives on ...
Stratechery (with Ben Thompson)
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Thompson joins Acquired to discuss the business of Stratechery itself and celebrate 10 years (!) of the internet’s best strategy analysis destin...
Enron
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The FTX fraud has dominated headlines now for weeks, during which we’ve debated if and how Acquired could uniquely add to the conversation. Then we ...
Qualcomm
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Qualcomm, or “Quality Communications” — despite being one of the largest technology companies in the world, few people know the absolutely amazi...
Benchmark Part II: The Dinner
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with all five current Benchmark GPs for one of their legendary weekly dinners, during which we ask all of the unresolved burning questions...
ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We kick off ACQ Sessions with the-behind-the-scenes story of All-in, from the world’s greatest moderator himself Jason Calacanis. ACQ Sessions is ou...
Benchmark Part I
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Benchmark Capital. We tell the tale of the legendary equal partnership that accomplished something no other venture firm can claim: twice it has produ...
Amazon Web Services
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
So, how DID an online book retailer end up building the infrastructure layer that powers the entire internet? (Or at least 39% of it, per latest marke...
Howard Marks & Andrew Marks: Something of Value
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with legendary investor Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital and his son Andrew who, while less-well-known, is also an incredibly accomplished ...
Amazon.com
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Amazon. No company has impacted the internet — and all of modern life — more than this one. We’ve waited seven years to do this episode, and are...
From NFL to Startup COO to Congressman Regulating Crypto (with Rep. Anthony Gonzalez)
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is a first for Acquired: we’re joined by a sitting US Congressman (from Ben’s home state of Ohio!), Republican House Representative A...
Walmart
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We kick off Season 11 with the incredible story of the retail “granddaddy of them all” Walmart, and its founder Sam Walton. Once you study Walmart...
The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories
19 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Patrick O'Shaughnessy and Brent Beshore asked us to give a talk at their incredible Capital Camp conference, we knew we had to bring something sp...
American Dynamism (with Katherine Boyle)
05 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with a16z General Partner Katherine Boyle to discuss investing in “American Dynamism”, why it’s so important and why now is the righ...
Capital-Efficient Growth (with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan & Veeva CEO Peter Gassner)
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with the CEO founders of two of the most capital efficient success stories of all time — Zoom and Veeva Systems — to understand how th...
Arena Show Part II: Brooks Running (with CEO Jim Weber)
15 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For the final act of the Arena Show, we’re joined by Brooks CEO Jim Weber to tell the amazing story of how he transformed the company from a 3rd tie...
Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We did an Arena Show!! This evening was so big and so special, we had to split it into two episodes for the podcast feed. First up is the Idea Dinner ...
Nvidia Part II: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022)
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By 2012, NVIDIA was on a decade-long road to nowhere. Or so most rational observers of the company thought. CEO Jensen Huang was plowing all the cash ...
Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi)
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down once again with one of the world’s very best strategy thinkers, 7 Powers author Hamilton Helmer — this time joined by his impressive S...
Nvidia Part I: The GPU Company (1993-2006)
27 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
He wears signature leather jackets. He can bench press more than you. He makes cars that drive themselves. He’s cheated death — both corporate and...
Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner)
14 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We hear a lot these days about hedge funds becoming venture firms, and venture firms becoming hedge funds. But a decade before either of those approac...
SONY
07 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Born in the unlikeliest of places — the terrible, wasteland-like aftermath of post WWII Japan — Sony rose to capture the imaginations (and wallets...
Super Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
21 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with two of the most talented and respected people in Hollywood — Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — to talk about the process...
The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave)
14 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with perhaps the only person besides Marc Andreessen who’s had a major influence on each of the Web 1, 2 and 3 eras: Brave Browser CEO (...
Peloton
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Peloton journey has been one seriously wild ride. From can’t raise money to one of Tiger Global’s first venture investments, to pandemic darli...
Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version)
23 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Not only is Taylor Swift the biggest music artist of our generation by nearly every metric (it’s not even close!), with the re-recording of her orig...
CAA (with Michael Ovitz)
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Season 9 ends at the beginning — with the man who changed Hollywood forever and wrote the blueprint for A16Z’s upending of Silicon Valley a genera...
FTX (with Sam Bankman-Fried & Mario Gabriele)
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Note: This episode was published on Dec 14, 2021, approximately a year before FTX’s subsequent meltdown. The apparent negligence, fraud and self-dea...
7 Powers with Hamilton Helmer
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You've heard us talk about him every episode for the past two years... but until now most of you have never actually heard us talk to him! We've remas...
Not Boring (with Packy McCormick)
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When does a creator become a company? Who says that media companies — or venture firms — have to be organizations? How high is the ceiling on one ...
Complexity Investing & Semiconductors (with NZS Capital)
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Of our 65+ sources for the TSMC episode, one stood above the rest: a wonderful Knowledge Project episode with Brinton Johns and Jon Bathgate of NZS Ca...
Standard Oil Part II
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We bring the epic saga of Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller to a close (for now) with two of history's greatest second acts: Rockefeller's pioneeri...
Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with the one & only Michael Mauboussin to dive deep into his incredible body of work: untangling skill and luck, measuring moats, pers...
Standard Oil Part I
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's time. We dive into the *original* American capitalist mega winner, Standard Oil, and its legendary founder John D. Rockefeller. This company and ...
TSMC
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's time. We dive into the unbelievable history behind the quietest technology giant of them all — and as of recording the world's 9th (!) most val...
Kevin Rose from Web 2.0 to Web3
29 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with the one and only Kevin Rose to talk about his journey from pioneering Web 2.0 with Digg to leading the charge on Web3 and NFT + DeFi ...
Andreessen Horowitz Part II
09 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alright, backstory's out of the way, and Acquired is rolling three hours deep on the venture firm that changed the game for everyone — a16z.VC marke...
Andreessen Horowitz Part I
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We kick off Season 9 with a classic: Part I of the a16z story. How did this brand new venture firm charge out of the gates in 2009, going from zero to...
Special: Solana (with CEO Anatoly Yakovenko)
18 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We sit down with the hottest new protocol layer in crypto today: Solana, and its cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko, who is the CEO of Solana Labs. If you li...
Ethereum
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We close out Season 8 with the most ambitious organization we've ever covered on Acquired: Ethereum, and it's celebrity wunderkind founder Vitalik But...
Special: Ho Nam from Altos Ventures — A Different Approach to VC
20 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What do you get when you combine Berkshire Hathaway's approach with early-stage venture capital? Altos Ventures. We're joined by Altos's wonderful Ho ...
Berkshire Hathaway Part III
06 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's time. We wrap our Berkshire Hathaway trilogy with Warren and Charlie entering a new era: the age of the internet. Can they and Berkshire adapt to...
Special: Amazon Unbound (with Brad Stone)
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Brad Stone joins us to discuss the making of the modern Amazon, and how it's morphed from the "flywheel company" of The Everything Store into a set of...
Berkshire Hathaway Part II
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Part II of our Berkshire Hathaway Trilogy (!), we pick up the story with Warren wandering in the woods of Omaha, searching for his life's next chap...
Special: 2021 China Tech Trends (with Tech Buzz China)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We team up with two of the very best English-language analysts covering China tech today, Rui Ma and Ying Lu from the Tech Buzz China podcast, to talk...
Berkshire Hathaway Part I
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's time. After 150+ episodes on great companies, we tackle the granddaddy of them all — Berkshire Hathaway. One episode alone isn't nearly enough ...
Special: "Why Now" for Digital Health (with Levels founder Josh Clemente)
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We dive into the fast-changing world of direct-to-consumer digital health, with perhaps the best person in the world: Levels founder Josh Clemente. (S...
Rec Room Part II (with CEO Nick Fajt)
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Last Acquired left the plucky Rec Room crew in our 2018 "Part I" episode, they were a seed stage startup making a VR game that users loved but grew sl...
Meituan
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We dive into the history behind Meituan, the juggernaut Chinese "super-app" which dominates China's services economy, offering consumers everything fr...
The New York Times Company
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the entire 20th Century, you’d be hard pressed to find a better business than an American newspaper — Warren Buffett famously described them a...
Special: Sequoia Capital's Investment Playbook (with Alfred Lin)
31 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We cover Sequoia Capital a lot on this show. Not only across our now four(!) dedicated episodes, but across a stunning nearly 50% of recent season com...
Bitcoin
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We had to do it. After 12 years and 3,000,000x appreciation, we kick off Season 8 with the best investment of all-time and our biggest episode ever: B...
Special: Acquired x Indie Hackers
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As regular listeners know, we typically cover some of the biggest companies who often receive the most media attention (see Airbnb and DoorDash). But ...
Airbnb
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over 13 years after its founding, one of the defining startup companies of the past decade finally makes its public debut — and boy was it a big one...