Holiday Special 2022

Ben Gilbert 0:00 How do I open again? Welcome.

David Rosenthal 0:02 Wait, what is this show? What are we doing? [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 0:04 Welcome to How I Built This.

David Rosenthal 0:05 Welcome. [laughing] No.

Ben Gilbert 0:09 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 0:09 No, nothing against How I Built This, but that's not us.

Ben Gilbert 0:11 All right, let's start. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 0:12 Okay. [laughing]

Speaker 0:14 Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down, say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth?

Ben Gilbert 0:30 Welcome to this special episode of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert, and I am the co-founder and managing director of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs, and our venture fund, PSL Ventures.

David Rosenthal 0:44 And I'm David Rosenthal, and I am an angel investor based in San Francisco. But today, Ben, you are hosting me at your lovely home here in Seattle.

Ben Gilbert 0:53 Welcome to the studio.

David Rosenthal 0:54 [laughing] It's great to be here.

Ben Gilbert 0:56 And we are your hosts. Ho, ho, ho.

David Rosenthal 0:59 Ho, ho, ho, happy holidays.

Ben Gilbert 1:00 Happy holidays. [hip hop music]

David Rosenthal 1:02 Man, I, uh, I don't know about you, but, uh, I'm ready to put a bow on 2022. [laughing] Well, we have much to talk about.

Ben Gilbert 1:10 Yep. Well, listeners, normally I have, like, a script, like, a thing that I'm looking at in front of me to know what to say now, but I don't really on this one, other than to say join the Slack. There are great people there-

David Rosenthal 1:20 Yes

Ben Gilbert 1:20 ... including probably you, if you're listening to this episode. We don't think this is an entry point for a lot of people into Acquired. We think this is probably if you're a fan, you're gonna listen to this, but I don't think this is gonna be anyone's sort of first show, so we're gonna try and go a little, uh, a little deeper and nerdier than normal.

David Rosenthal 1:38 We've got a little agenda. We're gonna recap 2022 for the show, for tech, for us, talk a little bit about what's ahead in 2023. We've got some extra, extra fun carve-outs.

Ben Gilbert 1:48 Indeed. Well, we would be remiss if we did not thank our good friends at Vanta. So before we dive in, over to our conversation with founder and CEO Christina Cacioppo.

David Rosenthal 2:01 One of the things we've talked about over the season, Christina, is how security and compliance has really evolved in these few years that Vanta has been, uh, really pushing the market forward, and it's no longer just about, like, check the box, playing defense as a company, and especially as a startup. It's actually about playing offense. Given all that and the kind of central role that Vanta is now playing in this space, how do you see security and compliance evolving?

Speaker 2:28 Really excited about the future, so I think a handful of things we're seeing. This concept of, you know, security and compliance and basically proving the security you have to your buyers has just become table stakes to B2B companies. When raising the seed round for Vanta in 2018, walked around and totaled the VCs that were gonna SOC 2 all their startups, and many of them very reasonably looked at me perplexed and said: "But my startups don't get SOC 2, so what are you talking about?" But now we serve a majority of the current YC batch, so people in YC right now, and again, like, YC is all about just getting revenue, but these reports just help you unlock that, and they do that by, like, opening up new markets, whether it's international or enterprise or healthcare or regulated industries. And I think particularly in the 2022 funding environment, so much is about revenue growth from secure, trusted sources, and so I think we're gonna see more companies move upmarket faster than we might have otherwise, and these big companies know that, you know, they're only as secure as their vendors are. If your vendor gets breached, looks like you did. It doesn't matter it was them, and so there's just... I think we're gonna see more and more scrutiny here over time, and that's gonna filter down into higher expectations for startups. So having stable customers that aren't gonna go out of business on you and hopefully are gonna expand over time, and one of the things these security and compliance certifications and reporting helps you do as a founder is sell to those big companies and prove your credibility. And, you know, you might not have the tenure of a kind of more established competitor, but you have their practices. You are taking good care of the customer data that you've been entrusted with and are ultimately gonna be a good and trusted business partner for the long run.

Ben Gilbert 4:16 Our thanks to Vanta. If you want to become a customer, along with 4,000 other companies, you can click the link in the show notes or go to vanta.com/acquired. With that, this is not investment advice. This is probably the episode of the year where we will come closest to things that might be interpreted as investment advice as we talk about things that we have liked and didn't like and predict the future and all that, so do your own research. All right, David, what are we starting with?

David Rosenthal 4:43 All right, I think we gotta recap 2022. [chuckles] Despite the craziness of the year of 2022 in the, um, broader world, tech, markets, economy, this was a pretty great year for the show. I have down here my signature Acquired episodes-

Ben Gilbert 5:00 Mm

David Rosenthal 5:00 ... and favorite memories from the year. We started the year with Taylor Swift.

Ben Gilbert 5:06 Yes.

David Rosenthal 5:06 Isn't that crazy that that was, like-

Ben Gilbert 5:08 This year

David Rosenthal 5:08 ... January? That feels like three years ago.

Ben Gilbert 5:10 Well, we knew that at the end of the year she was gonna drop Midnight. It seemed appropriate that in the year where she was gonna put on the concert and announce the tickets for the concert series with the most demand in human history, that we should, of course, kick the year off with a Taylor episode, predicting the future as usual here on Acquired.

David Rosenthal 5:26 I think 2023, we might need to line her up for a follow-up. We should do an Acquired session-

Ben Gilbert 5:32 With Taylor

David Rosenthal 5:32 ... with Taylor.

Ben Gilbert 5:32 Naturally.

David Rosenthal 5:33 Taylor, we'll come to you. We'll come to your studio.

Ben Gilbert 5:35 Or maybe the Long Pond.

David Rosenthal 5:37 Yeah, Long Pond. Great.

Ben Gilbert 5:38 I was reflecting on this. It's pretty crazy that I think the announcement was that they had 900 stadiums' worth of demand-

David Rosenthal 5:46 Whew

Ben Gilbert 5:46 ... showing up to ticketmaster.com, and there's 50 shows. I think it's something like 35 stadiums, but a lot of them have two nights. Like, there's two nights in Seattle here, and I'm sure not all 900 stadiums' worth can be counted as, like, actual demand. Like, I have to imagine when-... you know, there's a U2 concert or something, there are 100 stadiums worth of demand for 50 shows or something like that. So clearly not necessarily all purchase intent, or not all purchase intent at the available prices, but still, there was just no way to service the amount of demand. Like, I actually don't know how you solve this problem. Do you make all tickets $10,000 so that you actually find the correct price equilibrium for the demand?

David Rosenthal 6:29 You know, kinda like we were talking about on our most recent episode with Ben Thompson and Stratechery, and he's like, "The obvious thing that I should do is raise prices to maximize revenue, but then that's pretty quickly gonna lead to limiting my reach and impact."

Ben Gilbert 6:40 Right.

David Rosenthal 6:40 I think Taylor cares a lot about her reach and impact.

Ben Gilbert 6:44 And she could probably make the most money on this tour by having $10,000 tickets exclusively and still fill all 50 stadiums. I don't know what the price... Maybe $2,000 tickets she could do it. But if you're playing for a 50-year career, then you sort of have to, like, nurture the fan base over time and recognize that the-

David Rosenthal 7:02 Right

Ben Gilbert 7:03 - it's about the out years.

David Rosenthal 7:03 If she did that, that would be like a... That would truly be a farewell tour [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 7:06 Yes.

David Rosenthal 7:06 Because that would create so much-

Ben Gilbert 7:08 Ride off into the sunset

David Rosenthal 7:09 ... so much, uh, negative reaction.

Ben Gilbert 7:11 Which, of course, would create even more demand if you knew it was her farewell tour. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 7:15 Ah, this is making me think, though, and reflecting back on that episode 11 months ago, so I don't remember exactly everything we said, but I don't remember talking as much about the obvious point that this raises for me, which is Taylor is a rock star in the internet. She's probably, like, the first really, really big internet rock star, and the thing about the internet is the markets are bigger than you can ever imagine. The demand is larger than you can ever imagine. Even in niche products, like, like for Stratechery or for Acquired, like, these niches are bigger than you could ever imagine. Now think about a mainstream pop star. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 7:54 So the internet enables two things: It enables the niches to exist, so there's way more artists that can make a living today, I think, than if you think back to, like, the '60s or something, where the labels would pick the 10 bands of the year, and that's kind of it. But why is it that Taylor Swift is bigger than the Beatles? Like, would the Beatles have had this much demand, too, when the only promotion that existed was from the labels in a sort of, like, the labels pick the winners, and then those are the winners world?

David Rosenthal 8:26 Well, there's multiple things going on here. Like, one is the disintermediation or at least the reduction of power of the middlemen, of the labels-

Ben Gilbert 8:37 Yep

David Rosenthal 8:37 ... and everything else in the middle of the value chain, and, like, so much more of the value is now accruing directly to Taylor.

Ben Gilbert 8:43 But that's not an argument for why there's so much more demand to see her live.

David Rosenthal 8:46 I, I think there also is a lot more demand for Taylor than there was for the Beatles.

Ben Gilbert 8:51 Just because the internet having several ways to reach a customer means that the most popular artist in the world is going to have just way more distribution, period-

David Rosenthal 9:05 Way more distribution-

Ben Gilbert 9:05 - than-

David Rosenthal 9:05 Way more touchpoints

Ben Gilbert 9:06 ... the labels-

David Rosenthal 9:07 There's also so much less-

Ben Gilbert 9:08 to the Beatles

David Rosenthal 9:08 ... friction, right? As hard as it was, and all the news about how hard it was to get tickets to these Taylor concerts, everybody knew when they were going on sale, that it was happening-

Ben Gilbert 9:18 Right

David Rosenthal 9:18 ... through social media and the mainstream media amplifying that, and it was hard to secure a ticket but very easy to log on to Ticketmaster. [chuckles] Or maybe not that easy, but, uh, compared to... I don't even know how you would've gotten a ticket to a Beatles show back in the day.

Ben Gilbert 9:34 Yeah, I assume you have to, like, go to the stadium box office and line up-

David Rosenthal 9:37 Yeah, yeah

Ben Gilbert 9:37 ... the day that they're going on sale, and you would only know when they're going on sale because of radio ads and print ads.

David Rosenthal 9:43 Maybe you read about it in the newspaper.

Ben Gilbert 9:46 This is a thing I was thinking about when, um, I was caught up in the Friday night... Was it Friday night? Whatever it was, that people were like, "Twitter's going down. Like, it's gonna basically turn off tomorrow," and I, like, mentally knew this is a system that would degrade slowly and fade into irrelevance, not, "It's going to turn off tomorrow." But putting myself in the head space of Twitter doesn't exist soon-

David Rosenthal 10:08 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 10:09 - I was like, "How would I know if stuff is taking off? How will I know what the general consensus is around something? How will I know that the tenor has shifted, and this thing is not interesting anymore, and that thing is interesting?" Would I start reading The New York Times many times a day and going deep into many of the sections? I'm certainly not gonna log on to Facebook.

David Rosenthal 10:31 Which you can't really even get that same kind of, um, experience or understanding from-

Ben Gilbert 10:36 No, that's super, like-

David Rosenthal 10:37 - any kind of centralized publication.

Ben Gilbert 10:39 Correct, and it's the centralization that makes it, like, less valuable. You'd never be able to, like, say, "Oh, nobody's talking about that," because The New York Times is not a place where you go to find out if people are talking about something. It's a place where you get news, and so you'd literally have to, like, in person, go to events and have a bunch of conversations to know what people are talking about. Okay, Twitter doesn't exist tomorrow. Where do you go to find out what people in the world are talking about right now? I think it's TikTok.

David Rosenthal 11:09 Yeah, but I think it would be a much less efficient experience because it's all video.

Ben Gilbert 11:15 The number of new tidbits of information you can consume per minute in Twitter is high and reasonably low in TikTok.

David Rosenthal 11:21 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 11:21 It's 10 to 20 versus two to three.

David Rosenthal 11:24 Yep. All right, well, I don't know how we got from T. Swift to-

Ben Gilbert 11:27 I-

David Rosenthal 11:27 - to Twitter and TikTok, but-

Ben Gilbert 11:28 It's a holiday special, dude.

David Rosenthal 11:28 It's a holiday special!

Ben Gilbert 11:29 We're doing it-

David Rosenthal 11:29 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 11:29 ... formatless, except for the pretty robust format that you fleshed out here.

David Rosenthal 11:33 [chuckles] Well, you know me, I can't not prepare for an episode. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 11:36 [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 11:36 Even a holiday special. Okay, next one on my list, Sony. Sony Corporation.

Ben Gilbert 11:42 Which I didn't think would be that interesting when we started doing it.

David Rosenthal 11:45 It was your idea to do it, right?

Ben Gilbert 11:46 I know. It was, but I found myself being like, "God, is this actually an interesting company?" I had wanted to read Made in Japan, 'cause I'd heard it was amazing. But as I looked back at, like, trademark Acquired episodes, TSMC, The New York Times, like, I just didn't think it would be one of those, and it very clearly, especially in the numbers, did become one of those. It has it all. I mean, it has the genius founder, it has the-... probably the most adversity that we've ever talked about in any founding story in all of Acquired?

David Rosenthal 12:17 It's really hard to think offhand of a greater adversity that a company and founders have overcome than Japan in 1945. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 12:26 It also has so many chapters. I mean, the craziest thing to me is if you look at the business as of the time we did the episode, they had five separate business units, all of which did a double-digit percentage of their revenue, so it's super diverse, and all of which did a double-digit percentage of their operating income. So, like, you have five businesses that are all reasonably the same size in top and bottom line in one house.

David Rosenthal 12:52 Well, and that we got well over two hours into the episode before we mentioned PlayStation. And then, like, the PlayStation story in and of itself, we could do an episode on.

Ben Gilbert 13:01 I mean, the fact that we got from, like, rice cookers and World War II to, like, that crazy coda about Spider-Man is nuts.

David Rosenthal 13:09 In the back of my mind, I've been percolating, it could be fun to do a whole episode just on Xbox. A, we need to do a Microsoft series-

Ben Gilbert 13:19 Yep

David Rosenthal 13:19 ... at some point. We've talked a lot about and around Microsoft on the show, but we've never covered Microsoft.

Ben Gilbert 13:25 And Apple.

David Rosenthal 13:26 And Apple. We've not done Microsoft, we've not done-

Ben Gilbert 13:28 Or Google. We have not done the Google IPO.

David Rosenthal 13:30 Apple, Google, Oracle.

Ben Gilbert 13:32 If we just wanted to cheat and, like, spike the numbers as much as possible, we just, like, take the whole next season and just do, you know, Fang, basically.

David Rosenthal 13:43 I think we should do one of those companies a year. Not even a season, I think one a year.

Ben Gilbert 13:49 It's gonna take three episodes to do each one.

David Rosenthal 13:51 We were able to fit Amazon into two episodes, but Amazon is only a, what? 27-year-old company.

Ben Gilbert 13:59 And we didn't talk about a bunch of stuff.

David Rosenthal 14:01 Right.

Ben Gilbert 14:01 That was the way we skipped it. We didn't really talk about Alexa at all.

David Rosenthal 14:05 Right. Sorry, everybody, if we just lit up here. Although, I think there's enough voice personalization in those devices that if a piece of media says the A word, I don't think it lights up anymore.

Ben Gilbert 14:14 Well, it might be 'cause I have the Sonos ones, and the firmware on the ph- Sonos ones is different than the ones that Amazon actually makes, but mine will just, like, light up when people say things that are not that word and are just, like, in a movie, like, when dialogue sounds too much like that name.

David Rosenthal 14:29 Like that word?

Ben Gilbert 14:30 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 14:30 Interesting. Here's my proposal: I think we should do one of these big tech companies a year for two reasons. One, you know, for Microsoft, for Apple, I think those are gonna be three-plus episodes to do it right.

Ben Gilbert 14:43 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 14:44 Even at Acquired length episodes, so it's a huge lift, but also I think we should spread it out. Like, 'cause like you said, you know, the cheat code would be if we just do them all back-to-back.

Ben Gilbert 14:54 Right.

David Rosenthal 14:54 But we have a diversity of interests here on Acquired. We wanna go for many years.

Ben Gilbert 14:59 I even have a lot of fear around, like, doing a three-part Microsoft series, where, like, are people gonna be like, "I'm just out for the next three months?" 'Cause next year, listeners, what we've decided is... And this is a little bit approximate, but we're gonna average it. Every month, we're gonna do a season episode and a special. So either a, a season being, like, Apple part one, or a special being an interview with someone, or an Acquired sessions, or something that kinda doesn't fit the normal format. And, like, that literally means that it's like, "Oh, you're doing a three-part Microsoft thing? Well, I'm out for Q1 on Acquired."

David Rosenthal 15:33 I actually think about this. I've experienced this on, um, one of my carve-outs for... extended carve-outs later, one of my favorite video game podcasts, Resonant Arc. They're a video game story book club, so they choose a game-

Ben Gilbert 15:45 Yep

David Rosenthal 15:45 ... and then they'll do, you know, 10 to 20 episodes playing through the game, dissecting the story, all the, like, literary, from a literary perspective. It's really cool. I love it. But if they choose a game that I don't have a large affinity for, then it's anywhere from one to two months that I'm not listening to that show.

Ben Gilbert 16:02 Right, and three months is certainly long enough for someone to permanently change behavior. I don't think it's good for us if someone decides to take a three-month break from Acquired, 'cause the pers- it's not 100% chance they come back.

David Rosenthal 16:13 Hmm. Yeah, we gotta think about the right way to do this.

Ben Gilbert 16:17 Maybe I'm too focused on the downside, and maybe it will turn out that, like, while we may alienate some people, it's the largest thing in Acquired history. Because I was shocked that, and we'll keep going here on big episodes, but that the Amazon episode was by far the biggest in Acquired history. I- when David pitched me on this idea, I was like, "Hmm, I don't know." Brad Stone has written some excellent books on this. There's been documentaries. Jeff Bezos is the most studied CEO in the world, I think, until this recent Elon madness. What can we bring to the world in the Amazon canon?

David Rosenthal 16:51 Which, by the way, I think that has become, this year, as something that's crystallized for me about Acquired and the show and what we do, I think that should always be our, our lens. Like, what can we add-

Ben Gilbert 17:02 Yep

David Rosenthal 17:03 ... by doing this? 'Cause there's lots of voices out there saying lots of things.

Ben Gilbert 17:06 Yep.

David Rosenthal 17:07 Spoiler alert: this is part of why we haven't covered Twitter, 'cause like-

Ben Gilbert 17:10 There's nothing new to add.

David Rosenthal 17:11 What can we add?

Ben Gilbert 17:11 All the best tech journalists in the world are covering it every single day. I mean, you have Matt Levine, you have Dan Primack. Every single day, they're reporting the newest thing with not just reporting, but true analysis behind it. You have then Ben Thompson the following day writing a reaction piece that's like, "Here's my even more thoughtful take on what happened."

David Rosenthal 17:33 You have Casey Newton, who has a whole platform dedicated to this.

Ben Gilbert 17:36 And a bunch of access, and a bunch of insiders sending him stuff, breaking it real time on Twitter. So it's one of these things where we're like, "There's no daylight here for us to talk about it." We actually felt the same way about FTX, which, I mean, you could argue that we did have a part to play in FTX because Sam was on the show last year. But, like, there was so much good coverage and good reporting going on, and we're not reporters, and we don't do stuff in real time, blah, blah, blah, that it felt like the right way to have Acquired add to the conversation is go do 100 hours of research on Enron and try and sort of-... indirectly draw as many parallels as we can. Like, we don't wanna hit people over the head with, like, "This is just like in FTX, where they had this." It's more like, how can we bring up ideas for people that they can draw their own parallels?

David Rosenthal 18:24 It's been interesting to watch this past week. I- who knows if it was coincidental or not, but I think at least two major news outlets have run pieces in the past week with a title like-

Ben Gilbert 18:36 I don't know

David Rosenthal 18:36 ... How FTX Compares to Enron [chuckles] .

Ben Gilbert 18:38 It was obvious. It's obvious to draw that parallel.

David Rosenthal 18:41 They were probably in the works anyway, but-

Ben Gilbert 18:42 Yes. Is it worth sharing more on that now?

David Rosenthal 18:45 Yeah, yeah, let's, uh, we... This is a holiday special. We can, we can break the format.

Ben Gilbert 18:48 Yeah. Every time people write us in and they're like, "Oh, you've gotta do a take on this," it's like, I almost never have a take in real time.

David Rosenthal 18:56 Yep. That's not what we do.

Ben Gilbert 18:58 I suppose the traditional Acquired format of a company buying another company, we are some of the most well-positioned people in the world to have a take on why that acquisition happened, what will make it go well, what could kill it.

David Rosenthal 19:13 Just like you killed grading this season, which by the way, I love that. I was so surprised-

Ben Gilbert 19:21 It has its place sometimes

David Rosenthal 19:22 ... and thrilled when you threw it. Yeah, yeah, but, like, look, things need to evolve. Next year's gonna be our eighth year into the show.

Ben Gilbert 19:27 Yep.

David Rosenthal 19:28 I thought Ben Thompson just said it perfectly on our most recent episode with him, where he was like, "You know, when I was young, I used to think when I got old that I would, like, still be cool, and I would never be one of those old people. And now that I'm old, I'm like..." Old, quote, unquote, in [chuckles] relatively.

Ben Gilbert 19:45 [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 19:45 "Now that I'm older, I think two things: one, being old is pretty great, and two, I look at my peers who are still trying to be young, and it just looks kinda-

Ben Gilbert 19:53 Right

David Rosenthal 19:54 ... sad." Like, you gotta change, you gotta evolve. And the show has changed and evolved to a point where I think, like, we are a different show than the show that used to do, oh, breaking, you know, emergency pod on a big acquisition.

Ben Gilbert 20:05 Whole Foods got bought today. Cancel everything today, so we can do some quick research. At- there are times where it still makes sense for us to do those, like John Foley bringing in a new CEO.

David Rosenthal 20:15 The Barry McCarthy connection, and that is a take that has not aged well. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 20:19 Yeah, I, I think you're right, that it's okay that we're something different now than, than what the show was.

David Rosenthal 20:26 I'm curious what everybody listening thinks.

Ben Gilbert 20:28 Yeah. Last point on this FTX saga, which again, we're watching it play out in real time. I don't know that that's where Acquired shines because we, we try to make evergreen pieces that sort of stand the test of time, and, like, every week, it's so different than it was the previous week. These are kind of excuses. We probably just should directly say, we totally had Sam on. We'd wanted to tell the extraordinary story of FTX, which was extraordinary, I mean, in, now in a different way than we thought.

David Rosenthal 20:57 You, you cannot argue that it is an extraordinary story.

Ben Gilbert 21:00 I do wanna say I'm sorry if the exposure that FTX got from Acquired, and every other publication in the world, but-

David Rosenthal 21:07 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 21:08 ... but from Acquired caused you to-

David Rosenthal 21:08 I mean, certainly, we, we lent our platform-

Ben Gilbert 21:10 Yeah

David Rosenthal 21:10 ... to Sam and to FTX, and, um, yeah, I do feel bad about that. I don't think there's any way we could have known at the time, and I don't wanna stop having interesting people and companies on the show, you know, up-and-coming companies, so... But y- yeah, like, it, you know, it sucks, and, like, a lot of people lost a lot of money.

Ben Gilbert 21:32 Yeah. So sorry if you were, like, on the fence on FTX, and you were like, "I don't know if this thing's legit or not," and then Acquired legitimized that for you. Next.

David Rosenthal 21:42 Just to... If you've not listened to the Sony episode, I'm sure most of you have, but, like, it's so good. Oh, my gosh, talk about, like, the opposite of a fraud. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 21:49 We made this thing. It's amazing.

David Rosenthal 21:51 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 21:51 You should listen. [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 21:52 Yeah, right, sorry.

Ben Gilbert 21:54 Sony-

David Rosenthal 21:54 The Sony story-

Ben Gilbert 21:55 The Sony story itself

David Rosenthal 21:55 ... uh, re- whether you like our telling of it or not, but just, like, it is a vastly underappreciated company and an underappreciated journey overcoming adversity.

Ben Gilbert 22:06 Yep.

David Rosenthal 22:07 Okay, Sony. Dude, we did NVIDIA this year. [chuckles] We did a lot this year.

Ben Gilbert 22:13 Yeah. I'm trying to think which of our Silicon episodes I feel the strongest about in terms of, like, enlightening me about the way the world works. I think it's first TSMC-

David Rosenthal 22:27 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 22:27 ... but NVIDIA is... The thing that's the most interesting about the NVIDIA story, I think, is Jensen bet the company three separate times, and truly bet the company. Like, if this initiative fails, it will go to zero, and it worked three separate times. The first time is when they shipped the card in, whatever it was, nine months instead of two years, and they designed the whole thing in emulation, never tested it, and shipped it to customers, and it worked. I mean, it worked enough... And maybe I'm forgetting the story in its entirety, but I think there was a bet-the-company moment around programmable shaders-

David Rosenthal 23:10 Right

Ben Gilbert 23:10 ... and then a third one-

David Rosenthal 23:11 Right

Ben Gilbert 23:11 ... around the, like, seven-year investment before the market was there in AI and CUDA and building their own developer ecosystem.

David Rosenthal 23:19 Obviously, OpenAI existed. I'm trying to remember if DALL-E was out at the time when we did the NVIDIA episode. Certainly, GP- GPT-3 was.

Ben Gilbert 23:26 Well, interestingly enough, I think DALL-E 1 was, but it got no acclaim.

David Rosenthal 23:29 Right.

Ben Gilbert 23:30 The one that lit the world on fire was DALL-E 2.

David Rosenthal 23:32 Was DALL-E 2, yep. But now, as we record this, ChatGPT came out last week. Like, we were thinking about the, you know, AI renaissance and how important AI is, like, just in a general sense when we did those episodes.

Ben Gilbert 23:44 NVIDIA's stock had that crazy run long before we did the episode, like two years before we did the episode-

David Rosenthal 23:50 Yep

Ben Gilbert 23:50 ... at the beginning of COVID, and so it's interesting that I don't think that was around gaming. I think that was around AI, the thing that was sort of selling that story, and so it, in a way, the, like, craziest NVIDIA bulls that were, uh, sort of buying at the top and selling the story as much as humanly possible... When, when did it peak? I don't know, late 2021 maybe. They were kind of right. I don't think they knew that the next year would-... make AI's developments as obvious-

David Rosenthal 24:21 Mm-hmm

Ben Gilbert 24:22 -as it has, but everybody who believed that AI was gonna be this complete step change in the way that we use computers, and decided that buying NVIDIA at a very high price was the way to endorse that belief, like, that ended up happening very quickly soon after.

David Rosenthal 24:38 Yep. The moment when it really hit me was when we were recording the LP episode that we did with Jale at Mutiny, and at some point, just kind of-

Ben Gilbert 24:48 Just cavalierly, it was like, "Oh, yeah, we have a GPT-3-based feature in our product."

David Rosenthal 24:52 Right, and I was like, "Whoa, okay, you are dynamically rewriting copy on your customers' websites using GPT-3. Okay, that kind of blows my mind."

Ben Gilbert 25:05 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 25:06 Like, I can now see the business use cases for this.

Ben Gilbert 25:10 You say you can see them, but we're in this very interesting moment where we've all seen three pretty amazing proof of concepts in the last six months. We saw DALL-E 2, GPT-3, and now ChatGPT, which to me is actually the most interesting, because the most meaningful change is that it changed the modality that you interact with the AI model, but it's either the same or a s- I think it's, like, GPT-3 and a half or something. It's a very similar model, but we're interacting with it in a new way, and it's stateful, rather than being stateless, as in it sort of can preserve state, and you can ask it more questions about... And so I think there's a little bit of a, like, a crypto moment here, where it's the first time someone explains to you a decentralized world computer. You're like, "Whoa, that unlocks a whole world of possibilities," and you say, "What are they?" And someone says, "Let me think about that."

David Rosenthal 26:01 Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 26:02 I feel very similar with ChatGPT right now. I'm looking at it, I'm like: Whoa, this unlocks a whole world of possibilities. And someone says, "What is it?" And I'm like, "I feel better than I did about the decentralized world computer, but I still can't articulate to you," like, when the App Store launched, like, "Oh, this will be an, an $80 billion on-demand car service market." Like, that's not-

David Rosenthal 26:22 Well, I think this is just naturally how markets play out, though, right? Like, we look back now, and we're like, "Oh, when the App Store launched, it was obvious," but was it at the time? I think we probably would've felt very similarly back in that moment of, like-

Ben Gilbert 26:36 Right

David Rosenthal 26:36 ... "Oh, apps on your phone. Cool."

Ben Gilbert 26:40 When I first saw the iPhone, I thought, "This device changes everything," 'cause I was like... I wanted one so bad.

David Rosenthal 26:48 Oh, so bad.

Ben Gilbert 26:48 I mean, I, I had a coworker at Cisco-

David Rosenthal 26:50 We watched the keynote so many times between the keynote and when, it was, like, six months before the-

Ben Gilbert 26:54 Really?

David Rosenthal 26:55 -phone came out. I was so hyped for it.

Ben Gilbert 26:58 I just remember seeing the device on my coworker's desk at Cisco and thinking, like, "I need one of these things. This is, like, so much of the money that I have-

David Rosenthal 27:05 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 27:05 ... would be used to buy one." And so I, I think I bought the 3G the next year-

David Rosenthal 27:08 Oh

Ben Gilbert 27:09 ... or six months in or something.

David Rosenthal 27:09 Oh, I got one day one. I didn't camp out overnight, but I waited in line for hours. I got day-one release.

Ben Gilbert 27:14 Whoa.

David Rosenthal 27:14 I got the original one. I had just graduated from college. It was the summer I graduated. I graduated, but I hadn't started work yet, but I had my signing bonus.

Ben Gilbert 27:22 Ah. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 27:22 And I was like, "This is where I am spending my money."

Ben Gilbert 27:26 I waited in line just to wait in line. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 27:30 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 27:30 Like, I went to the Apple Store-

David Rosenthal 27:31 You waited in line, and you didn't buy one?

Ben Gilbert 27:32 I didn't have enough money. I was 17, 18.

David Rosenthal 27:34 Well, that's right, 'cause you had to pay full price. There was no carrier subsidization for the original iPhone.

Ben Gilbert 27:39 Correct, and so it was fun to just... I brought my little point-and-shoot camera. I took pictures of all the people, uh, you know, getting their first iPhones and playing with them and setting up and-

David Rosenthal 27:47 Did your dad go with you?

Ben Gilbert 27:48 No, I went with my friend George. I remember feeling like, "This device is amazing." I remember really wanting to make apps for it, so I made this to-do list app.

David Rosenthal 27:55 And you couldn't make apps until the next year.

Ben Gilbert 27:57 Right. I sort of missed that whole first year of, like, you can't make apps. I don't think I was thinking about it then, but, like, the app that I made was a to-do list. It's not like I was like, "Oh, my God, this is gonna be a way that you can hail cars or order groceries," or it was like, "Let me do the smallest possible thing on this," and I think that's actually just how I think about products. I'm not a Travis Kalanick-like person. I think I always sort of think in terms of, like, what product can I fully conceptualize of and see in my head and understand all the hard stuff involved in it and draw a nice, neat box around it and just work toward shipping that thing that I can fully imagine? Uh, it's almost like I wanna be able to do everything myself-

David Rosenthal 28:38 Mm

Ben Gilbert 28:38 ... which is why I think Acquired has sort of come out the way that it has, rather than us doing a bunch of hard stuff.

David Rosenthal 28:45 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 28:45 I very much shy away from, like, "Ooh, you'd have to, like, send a bunch of people into grocery stores and, like, figure out all their inventory to, like, load it" ... I just wouldn't do that.

David Rosenthal 28:55 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 28:55 But the idea of, like, okay, there's this really nice, neat package called an Acquired episode, and it contains these components, and David and I can make it ourselves, and-

David Rosenthal 29:05 What do you think the, uh, what would've happened otherwise would be if, uh, if we did the hard stuff? [inhaling] Well, like, one thing w- we've been very explicit about, and a trade-off for the show and Acquired as an entity and a business-

Ben Gilbert 29:22 Yeah

David Rosenthal 29:22 ... is, um, we don't wanna have a lot of employees. We don't wanna have a team.

Ben Gilbert 29:25 Right.

David Rosenthal 29:25 We don't wanna have-

Ben Gilbert 29:26 There'd be more shows. I think we would've tried to turn it into a network. We would've taken people up on the book offers. There could be, like, a Netflix show. There could be-

David Rosenthal 29:34 I'm trying to think. Is there anything we could've done or, or still do that would just be, like, a fundamentally different thing? Like, everything you're describing would be building a Gimlet or the like, and, like-

Ben Gilbert 29:46 Yep

David Rosenthal 29:47 ... that would be great. You know, we probably would make more money, but that's, that's, like, not what we wanna do. But is there anything that would be like an Uber versus a to-do app?

Ben Gilbert 29:57 It depends what on the believability spectrum you're willing to call part of Acquired. Like, we could have launched a new podcast app for Acquired and other podcasts, and then tried to-

David Rosenthal 30:06 We thought about it with Glow.

Ben Gilbert 30:07 We did. Glow was originally gonna be, yeah, a new, a new app with payments built in.

David Rosenthal 30:12 Oh, man. That would've been [chuckles] a boondoggle.

Ben Gilbert 30:14 Yeah. I'll validate your point. When the App Store first came out, you could stare at it and go, "This is gonna change everything," but it was only a select few people who actually-... saw the particular massive use case with the new thing.

David Rosenthal 30:27 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 30:27 And that's how I feel about ChatGPT right now. I'm like, "This thing's scary powerful, and I don't actually know what to do with it yet."

David Rosenthal 30:33 Yeah, most people, I think, are also in the same mode that you and I are, of like, "Oh, I can see how this could rewrite copy dynamically on a website."

Ben Gilbert 30:43 Right.

David Rosenthal 30:43 And I see that being- But that's the to-do list version [chuckles] of what-

Ben Gilbert 30:47 Right

David Rosenthal 30:48 ... AI can do.

Ben Gilbert 30:49 Yep.

David Rosenthal 30:50 Mm. Man, this is fun. We're only, like, halfway through the year, too. Okay, so we did NVIDIA.

Ben Gilbert 30:55 Yep.

David Rosenthal 30:56 That was so fun, and I learned so much, and now it's just so much more important. Almost like T-Swift, you know, the same dynamic.

Ben Gilbert 31:03 Yep.

David Rosenthal 31:05 Then we did Amazon, and, and I include Walmart in Amazon. I'm so glad we did Walmart-

Ben Gilbert 31:12 Walmart first

David Rosenthal 31:12 ... first. That's why, I have in my head, I was like, "Did we do two Am- episodes on Amazon or three?" We really did three.

Ben Gilbert 31:18 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 31:18 Episode one was Walmart.

Ben Gilbert 31:20 Yep. In order to understand the role of retail in America today, you sort of first need to understand that everything we think of as a retailer, or most things we think of as retailer, are actually discounters.

David Rosenthal 31:37 Yes.

Ben Gilbert 31:38 And I totally didn't get that before doing the Walmart episode. I was like, "Well, there's, like, stores, like Walmart and Target, and there's department stores, which are, like, more expensive and opinionated, and then the brands that have sort of their own stores." But, like, I didn't con- conceptualize that the most common place that you buy things are actually discounters. And Walmart was really the company that single-handedly created the wave of the modern store, period-

David Rosenthal 32:07 Yep

Ben Gilbert 32:08 ... which then Amazon could take digital.

David Rosenthal 32:10 Yes. Yes. Well, and I was so blown away learning about, with Walmart, how much of a tech company they were.

Ben Gilbert 32:22 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 32:22 Like, I think we said on the episode, and I, I still think, that they were the first applied technology company in America.

Ben Gilbert 32:30 I think this is, uh, silly. I think you've said this a few times now. I don't, I don't agree with it.

David Rosenthal 32:33 Okay.

Ben Gilbert 32:33 Like, uh, okay, so technology at its purest definition is anything that enhances the productivity of a human. So, like, the wheel is technology, because with the same number of calories burned, you're able to go farther.

David Rosenthal 32:50 Fair.

Ben Gilbert 32:50 Or a navigational instrument, which means you're able to get somewhere in a shorter amount of time. So, I mean, maybe you could scope it to, like, applied-

David Rosenthal 32:58 Well, I guess what I-

Ben Gilbert 32:58 ... digital technology, or like-

David Rosenthal 32:59 What makes me s- wanna say that is they were a company who did business in an established sector.

Ben Gilbert 33:07 Yep.

David Rosenthal 33:08 And they transformed the way they worked, and ultimately the whole sector, by applying technology to it.

Ben Gilbert 33:16 So did Standard Oil, by applying technology to the old way that you used to extract oil from the ground.

David Rosenthal 33:24 Fair enough. I mean, I guess, like, you could say the car companies-

Ben Gilbert 33:27 Or the lighting, the way people light their homes.

David Rosenthal 33:29 But those... I guess the distinction I'm trying to draw, which may not be a valid one, is I think in all those cases, the business was the technology.

Ben Gilbert 33:38 Mm.

David Rosenthal 33:39 Here, it was a separate existing part of the economy, that they were in that business, and they used technology to transform the way they do it. Maybe it's a meaningless distinction.

Ben Gilbert 33:51 Mm. It's interesting.

David Rosenthal 33:53 I just feel like today, like, Walmart would've been, like, a hot venture-backed startup.

Ben Gilbert 33:58 Well, it's interesting, the, the question with tech- applying technology to an existing market is always: What are you using the technology for? I always think about this with tech-enabled businesses. Okay, what are you using technology for, and how does it make your financial statements of your business at maturity look better? Are you using it to consolidate back office operations to make your company more operationally efficient, and thus lower your cost structure, and thus with the same amount of revenue, you just run at better margins? Or are you using it because you're able to get better distribution? Like, the internet enables you to generate way more revenue, 'cause you're able to reach way more customers on the same set of costs. And so I always think about it as like, what are you actually using technology for in your business, and does that make it a meaningfully better business than non-tech-enabled incumbents? I think there's a lot of stuff in the world today that is a tech-enabled thing-

David Rosenthal 34:56 Yep

Ben Gilbert 34:56 ... that is not all that tech-enabled when you look at the financials.

David Rosenthal 34:59 Yep. But Walmart is a perfect example of a tech-enabled business that is, like, the right way to do it.

Ben Gilbert 35:05 And why? What previously large number did it collapse in their financials to a small number because of technology?

David Rosenthal 35:12 Well, certainly the coordination of the distribution-

Ben Gilbert 35:17 Yep

David Rosenthal 35:18 ... and the way Walmart built their supply chain was vastly different than all of the theretofore traditional retailers-

Ben Gilbert 35:27 Mm-hmm

David Rosenthal 35:28 ... and way more efficient, and made their financials work in a way that just wouldn't work for other, other retailers.

Ben Gilbert 35:33 It legitimately enabled them to have lower prices to get more customers.

David Rosenthal 35:36 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 35:36 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 35:36 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 35:37 Yeah, that's a strong argument. Agree to disagree that they were the first that sort of-

David Rosenthal 35:41 Fair

Ben Gilbert 35:41 ... like, brought technology, but, uh, but yeah, that's a good point.

David Rosenthal 35:45 Benchmark?

Ben Gilbert 35:46 Benchmark.

David Rosenthal 35:47 Benchmark was super cool.

Ben Gilbert 35:48 I mean, that, like, a pinch me moment for you and I both.

David Rosenthal 35:52 I think we should lean into that format as much as possible going forward, of we tell a story, and then we have the protagonist on.

Ben Gilbert 36:03 Yeah. I think Acquired has been a bunch of iterations to find our way to that format. That does feel like the platonic ideal of an Acquired... A way Acquired talks about a topic, I do think, is probably you and I spending three hours diving deep from everything we can find, telling the story in the way that we sort of see it.

David Rosenthal 36:21 I used to think, "Oh, what, what can make us different and better is we're gonna spend more time preparing-... than any other interviewer. We're gonna take this super seriously. We only do one of these interviews a month. This is like-

Ben Gilbert 36:34 Which is a tactic, not a strategy.

David Rosenthal 36:35 Exactly. And, like, yeah, we probably do more preparation for our interviews than eighty, ninety percent of other interviewers out there, but there are other really good interviewers-

Ben Gilbert 36:46 Very good, yep

David Rosenthal 36:47 ... like Ben Thompson.

Ben Gilbert 36:48 Yep.

David Rosenthal 36:48 But what-

Ben Gilbert 36:48 Patrick O'Shaughnessy.

David Rosenthal 36:49 Patrick O'Shaughnessy.

Ben Gilbert 36:50 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 36:50 Exactly. But what we did with Benchmark, that's something that only we can uniquely do.

Ben Gilbert 36:56 It's interesting. I- only as aggressive, but it's something that our format and the set of trade-offs that we make in our business makes it easier for us to do that than for someone else. I always think about strategy as about trade-offs. Like, what's the original, um, Michael Porter journal entry? It's called Competitive Strategy, and it's great. It's like, for anyone who hasn't read it, it was in the Harvard Business Review, I think, when it first came out, something like twenty pages. It's very cogent, it's very straightforward, and he talks a lot about how there's operational efficiency and there's strategy. And operational efficiency is, we're just gonna be better. We're gonna be more efficient. We're gonna do it for cheaper costs. You and I are gonna do more research than anybody else. But there's real strategy, which is trade-offs.

David Rosenthal 37:41 Right.

Ben Gilbert 37:41 It's the Southwest model.

David Rosenthal 37:42 The, the former is not a strategy.

Ben Gilbert 37:43 Right. There's sort of the Southwest model of, like, we are going to have a different model for where we keep planes than every other airline. We're not gonna use the hub and spoke model. We're gonna... Everywhere that we fly to, and a constrained set of places that we fly to, is going to be a pseudo hub for us, and we're gonna keep our planes sort of diversified, and we're only gonna have one model of airplane, so that way they're easier to service, and there's a whole bunch of trade-offs involved with that, but that's our strategy. Even though it's- comes with a lot of downsides, we're gonna lean into the upsides. And I think, like, the lean into the upsides thing for us is, if you're doing a super high-velocity show, Benchmark's probably not gonna feel like you're giving them a unique spotlight, in a way, to do something like that. If you do things that may or may not enable deep trust from listeners, then there's people that are not gonna wanna come on the show 'cause they don't know how they're gonna come across. But if you always sort of lean into this, "We have very few guests, we think they're people that you really should hear from"... Which, by the way, this is why the SBF thing burns me up so much, is 'cause, like, we try to be ridiculously selective. Then it enables you to create content with people that otherwise are not going to go do the circuit.

David Rosenthal 39:02 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 39:03 Not to mention, when we do three hours of content about the thing before, it enables us to come in with that prepared mind.

David Rosenthal 39:08 That's what I was gonna say, too. There's an element, in the case of the Benchmark episodes, it actually was all pre-planned in advance that we were gonna do the episode just us, and then we were gonna do the dinner with them. That was planned before we even released the first episode. But I do think we've experienced, in the past with the show, there are times where we will engage with a company or a CEO or a firm before having done any Acquired content on them, and they're like... They don't engage fully.

Ben Gilbert 39:41 Right.

David Rosenthal 39:41 And then we do an episode just us, and then it completely changes-

Ben Gilbert 39:45 Yep

David Rosenthal 39:45 ... the tenor of the conversation.

Ben Gilbert 39:47 Yeah, it's like being willing to do the work to prove that you're as serious about caring about this topic as you say you are, and by us having the format of you and I just doing these deep dives on companies, that is a differentiated strategy than an interview show.

David Rosenthal 40:01 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 40:02 Okay. Enron, kind of talked about it. It's super recent. I have nothing to add other than, one, I think it's fun to add little corrections and additions to-

David Rosenthal 40:10 Oh, yeah

Ben Gilbert 40:11 ... as we go through here.

David Rosenthal 40:11 Yeah, we've got a few of these.

Ben Gilbert 40:13 On the Enron one, I neglected to point out that there is a company today called Enron Oil and Gas that's like an eighty billion dollar company, publicly traded as EOG.

David Rosenthal 40:22 Yeah, a listener, uh, wrote- emailed us about this.

Ben Gilbert 40:24 Yep. That's the upstream production business. So the oil and gas industry over the last thirty years has sort of fragmented into upstream and downstream, and-

David Rosenthal 40:32 And, and midstream.

Ben Gilbert 40:34 Oh, I-

David Rosenthal 40:34 Midstream is the pipelines.

Ben Gilbert 40:35 Yeah, that makes sense. And I think EOG is sort of their upstream business that spun off, but it is a publicly traded company that still bears the Enron name.

David Rosenthal 40:43 Yeah. I should have looked this up. Did they change the name officially to EOG, or is the actual name-

Ben Gilbert 40:47 I don't know

David Rosenthal 40:48 ... Enron Oil and Gas?

Ben Gilbert 40:48 It's a good question. It's a good question. It is actually called EOG Resources. Like, the name of the company is EOG.

David Rosenthal 40:54 That makes sense, like the, uh, Accenture to Arthur Andersen and to, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 40:58 Yeah. Although there is, after many rebrands and iterations, some subset of Arthur Andersen was preserved as a tax organization that is now called-

David Rosenthal 41:10 Oh

Ben Gilbert 41:10 ... Andersen Tax again.

David Rosenthal 41:12 Oh, interesting!

Ben Gilbert 41:14 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 41:15 'Cause I guess tax is separate from audit, right?

Ben Gilbert 41:18 Right. They had tax, audit, and consulting-

David Rosenthal 41:19 Mm-hmm

Ben Gilbert 41:19 ... and consulting became Accenture. I assume audit is what went away entirely, and I think they spun off tax in its own new name that is now Andersen Tax.

David Rosenthal 41:29 Andersen Tax. Interesting.

Ben Gilbert 41:31 Which is crazy to me that there was enough brand equity in Andersen left to sort of go back to Andersen.

David Rosenthal 41:36 Right, you would have think that... You would have thought that, um-

Ben Gilbert 41:39 There's gotta be a story there.

David Rosenthal 41:41 Hmm. It could be an LP episode.

Ben Gilbert 41:43 It could be an LP episode.

David Rosenthal 41:45 We talked a minute ago about trade-offs, when we were talking about the Benchmark-

Ben Gilbert 41:49 Yep

David Rosenthal 41:49 ... two-parter. What, in your mind, are the biggest trade-offs that we make here on Acquired?

Ben Gilbert 41:54 I think we make a ton of trade-offs. I think we are an, maybe to a fault, purist organization. That, and that's the first one. We're two people.

David Rosenthal 42:03 Organization. [chuckles] You're looking at the whole organization here.

Ben Gilbert 42:05 But, like, okay, not a lot of content.

David Rosenthal 42:07 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 42:07 Right? A common wisdom is to release content every week. We don't do that. That has downsides, such as it's hard to become a top show in the charts if you're not constantly producing new content. It works against the algorithms. But it has upsides of, now we can go do really, really deep research. A second one being really long episodes. That's a massive trade-off. Like, lots of people don't wanna listen to you when you do that, but the people who do, really like it.... another one being, people often ask, like, "Do another show, bring on other hosts. You could leverage the podcast feed to promote other episodes of your new spin-off show with your new host, where you have some of the economics of that." There's, like, a lack of purity to me that that's not Acquired, then. That's- I don't know why we would do that. [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 42:49 It doesn't fit in the box.

Ben Gilbert 42:50 It's one of those things where it's like, sure, you could make more money doing that, but it goes in the too-hard pile. I think you and I have a really big too-hard pile.

David Rosenthal 42:57 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 42:58 In some ways, that's strategy. It's like if you actually believe in the set of trade-offs that you have, then you have to be willing to have a really big too-hard pile when there's a lot of people telling you there's low-hanging fruit to be done. But often, that low-hanging fruit is counter to your strategic trade-offs.

David Rosenthal 43:13 It's interesting. I feel like you've always been this way, I think, in your life.

Ben Gilbert 43:20 I'm cranky.

David Rosenthal 43:21 [laughing] Oh, you're so-- you're not cranky, though. You're wonderful.

Ben Gilbert 43:27 But I'm cranky about things like this. Like, I-

David Rosenthal 43:29 You're persnickety, you're not cranky.

Ben Gilbert 43:30 I'm persnickety.

David Rosenthal 43:31 You're persnickety.

Ben Gilbert 43:32 Yes.

David Rosenthal 43:32 Yes, for sure.

Ben Gilbert 43:33 Jerry Seinfeld said it really well on The Tim Ferriss Show, which is one of the best podcast interviews in history. That's my first carve out of the night.

David Rosenthal 43:40 Ooh!

Ben Gilbert 43:41 Tim asked him, like, how does he come up with all the bits? Like, how does he observe things? And his comment is, "There's so many things that annoy me."

David Rosenthal 43:47 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 43:48 "I sit there, and all I can see in the world is all the things that are, like, a little bit wrong, and that just really bother me, and then I write them down. And then I polish, polish, polish, polish, polish." And I'm not Jerry Seinfeld, and I don't... It's not to that extent, but, like-

David Rosenthal 44:00 Very different, uh, application-

Ben Gilbert 44:02 Right

David Rosenthal 44:02 ... of this, but a similar trait.

Ben Gilbert 44:04 Like, we ship an Acquired episode, all I can see are the 16 ways that we could have made it better. I'm proud that it's out there, but, like, really, all I can see are the flaws.

David Rosenthal 44:13 I think my hunch is right, that you've always been this way.

Ben Gilbert 44:15 Yes.

David Rosenthal 44:15 I've become much more this way-

Ben Gilbert 44:18 Hmm

David Rosenthal 44:19 ... over time. I used to be not this way at all. I used to be like, "I believe you can do everything. Trade-offs," like the old, uh, Jim Mora, the Colts coach, uh, "Playoffs? playoffs? I was like, trade-offs.

Ben Gilbert 44:32 [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 44:33 Trade-offs!" As I've become older, though, like, I completely have shifted and embrace trade-offs now.

Ben Gilbert 44:39 Oh, yeah, you don't even answer email.

David Rosenthal 44:40 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 44:41 I mean, it's honestly crazy.

David Rosenthal 44:42 It's like a joke now, yeah. [laughing] But this is like-

Ben Gilbert 44:45 It's not a joke when I'm trying to get a hold of you! [laughing]

David Rosenthal 44:47 I know. I feel so bad. The only person I feel bad about with it is you. [laughing] As I really-- You bear a huge brunt of that. Thank you.

Ben Gilbert 44:54 You're also pretty good about, like, "I said I was gonna be done working today at 6:00, and so I'm just, like, not really doing anything after 6:00, even if the texts look kind of important. That's fine." [laughing]

David Rosenthal 45:06 [chuckles] Well-

Ben Gilbert 45:07 And I-

David Rosenthal 45:07 ... that's called parenthood, but- [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 45:08 Ah, that's true. Yeah, parenthood has probably forced you to lean into some of that more.

David Rosenthal 45:12 Yes. I was leaning this way anyway, for sure, but, like, it was like a massive, like, tidal wave behind... I felt like I was at, like, a water park, like, and a wave machine came along, and, like, I was heading this direction anyway, floating along, and then just, like, whoosh.

Ben Gilbert 45:25 The issue now that, now that you're doing it pretty aggressively, is you and I amplify each other. Because I have this thing where I'm like, "Oh, this is a thing that David would say, like, not worth it." Like, this is, like, probably a good time to talk about this. We did a lot of live stuff-

David Rosenthal 45:38 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 45:39 ... this year.

David Rosenthal 45:39 Let's talk about this.

Ben Gilbert 45:40 And, like, I-

David Rosenthal 45:40 Some of which were super cool. Like, there were some amazing-

Ben Gilbert 45:43 Wonderful

David Rosenthal 45:43 ... opportunities we got in 2022.

Ben Gilbert 45:45 But for lots of reasons, they're way harder than doing your and my normal thing. And are they worth it? Are they that much incrementally better for how much harder they are for us? Probably not, in almost all cases. There are cases where it is, but-

David Rosenthal 45:59 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 45:59 ... in almost all cases, no. And so I think this is one of the things where, like, you inspire me to be more persnickety. You ask the question, and then I went to a place of like, "Oh, well, that's easy. We should not do anything live, because the juice is almost never worth the squeeze." Which is probably too far.

David Rosenthal 46:15 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 46:15 Like, there's probably some middle ground where it's like, if PitchBook offers us the ability to do another arena show, like, "Oh, my God, we should do an arena show." But the litany of things that make this way harder, and frankly, way less listenable after the fact-

David Rosenthal 46:30 Yeah, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 46:30 It's actually a worse product most of the time.

David Rosenthal 46:31 The artifacts of... So let's recount the sorta, like, cool live stuff we did this year. We did the [chuckles] arena show.

Ben Gilbert 46:40 [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 46:40 It still is, like-

Ben Gilbert 46:41 Surreal.

David Rosenthal 46:41 I, I can't say that without laughing. It's just-

Ben Gilbert 46:43 Pinch me moment-

David Rosenthal 46:44 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 46:44 ... at least number two of the year.

David Rosenthal 46:45 Yeah, yeah. Wow. We did the arena show. We then also did a big live show in another country-

Ben Gilbert 46:52 Yep

David Rosenthal 46:53 ... for the first time.

Ben Gilbert 46:53 Yep.

David Rosenthal 46:54 Uh, in, uh-

Ben Gilbert 46:55 Lisbon

David Rosenthal 46:55 ... in Portugal.

Ben Gilbert 46:55 With Solana.

David Rosenthal 46:56 Uh, with Solana at Breakpoint. That was a whole another crazy set of experiences, and amazing.

Ben Gilbert 47:01 Yep.

David Rosenthal 47:01 Uh-

Ben Gilbert 47:01 We did the LP show live at the TCV event.

David Rosenthal 47:03 Yep. The Benchmark dinner, although it wasn't a-

Ben Gilbert 47:08 Live in front of an audience

David Rosenthal 47:09 ... live public event, the amount of production effort that-

Ben Gilbert 47:12 Totally

David Rosenthal 47:13 ... we had down in San Francisco-

Ben Gilbert 47:14 I was down in San Francisco for three days.

David Rosenthal 47:14 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 47:14 We set up three cameras. We bought a bunch of new microphones. We tested all the microphones. Big production lift.

David Rosenthal 47:19 Big, big production lift.

Ben Gilbert 47:21 I mean, guests... So things that make production harder: guests.

David Rosenthal 47:25 Yes.

Ben Gilbert 47:25 Total wild card. They might cancel on you, they might reschedule, blah, blah, blah.

David Rosenthal 47:29 They might not use the equipment we send them.

Ben Gilbert 47:30 Yes. In person changes it, way harder. Like, you and I are sitting here now, it took an extra hour to set this up, to have this beautiful f- roaring fire next to us.

David Rosenthal 47:39 Yeah, we haven't even mentioned, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 47:40 These three cameras, although now that I'm looking at it, there's only two cameras on, because here's a trade-off we make: We don't have an engineer, and we don't have a sound person or a video person who works with us. So if you've been watching this on video for I don't know how long, the last, like... I'm gonna guess that thing shut off half-hour ago?

David Rosenthal 47:57 We lost our live shot.

Ben Gilbert 47:57 We lost a third camera. So talk about trade-offs, and especially in-

David Rosenthal 48:01 I knew I should have brought my camera. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 48:03 [chuckles] Especially in shooting stuff, like, live in person, there's a whole new web of things that could go wrong that just don't happen when it's you and I on Zoom.

David Rosenthal 48:15 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 48:16 Now, add a live audience, that massively compounds it. First of all, the sound quality is gonna be way worse, so that bothers me as a persnickety person. The audience gets antsy in their seats, 'cause no one can sit still for four hours. No one wants to attend a four-hour... I mean, when you're at a sporting event, you, halftime, quarters, you know, you go get concessions, you whatever. So it makes the product different, and I think worse-

David Rosenthal 48:40 Yep

Ben Gilbert 48:40 ... for the 150-plus thousand people who are going to listen after the fact. So it's this interesting compromise, where for all those people, it's a worse product, but for the people in the room, that's what we're optimizing for in the moment.

David Rosenthal 48:52 ... and I don't even know that we optimized for that. It's so funny, my, um, ah, man, the arena show, like, it- let's just take a step back. It was so cool.

Ben Gilbert 48:59 Um, amazing.

David Rosenthal 49:00 Um, um, it was so cool, and everybody who came- the fact that so many people came and flew in from all over the world!

Ben Gilbert 49:08 Yep, we did a Brooks run with people in the morning-

David Rosenthal 49:10 It was so cool.

Ben Gilbert 49:11 We did a dinner with some sort of, like, friends of the show, and previous guests, and sponsors the night before at Canlis, who we've had on the show, and that adapting episode.

David Rosenthal 49:18 It was so special.

Ben Gilbert 49:20 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 49:20 But it's so... You know, looking back on it, I'm gonna have to talk about it, 'cause you actually lived this, again, yourself this year, but the farther we get from it, the more in my mind and in my emotions, the space the arena show occupies is just like Jenny and my wedding.

Ben Gilbert 49:35 [laughing] Yes.

David Rosenthal 49:35 Like, all the ups-

Ben Gilbert 49:37 Hundred percent

David Rosenthal 49:37 ... all the amazingness, special feelings of it, and, like, my most vivid memories, looking back on both events, are just a huge amount of stress [chuckles] and being like, "Are people having fun right now?"

Ben Gilbert 49:48 Oh, I-

David Rosenthal 49:48 "Like, is this going well?" Like, [chuckles] you know, did we do this right?

Ben Gilbert 49:51 I mostly remember the upside of both of them, of, of, of, of my wedding-

David Rosenthal 49:54 Oh, I remember the upside, too

Ben Gilbert 49:56 ... and of the Acquired live show.

David Rosenthal 49:56 And, uh, you know, uh, but every time I think about it, I can't not think about, uh, you know, us being on stage in the middle of the show, and, uh, when we got to act two, and Anu was on, and we didn't have breaks planned, and, like, people needed to go to the bathroom and get food, and, like-

Ben Gilbert 50:08 And, and PitchBook was paying for all the free food, and booze, and everything up, and so of course, people are gonna go.

David Rosenthal 50:13 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 50:13 Like, after the first act ends, it's like, "Okay, well, now is a good time to go-"

David Rosenthal 50:17 Of course

Ben Gilbert 50:17 ... "take advantage of the open bar." [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 50:18 Of course. I was just like, "Oh, we should've planned that better!"

Ben Gilbert 50:21 How did we not plan for that? Anyway, all that to say, some of the live shows we've done are the most special experiences of the year.

David Rosenthal 50:31 Yes.

Ben Gilbert 50:32 They have hidden value for Acquired in a bunch of ways, like getting to actually talk with real people, like, getting to hang out with the thousand people that came to the arena show. Like, life-changingly cool to get to meet so many folks, and also-

David Rosenthal 50:46 I will always, always remember that night, especially the after-party afterwards.

Ben Gilbert 50:50 Yes. Walking into Queen Anne Beer Hall was very cool, and just hanging out for hours. And also, at least 10, if not 20, times as much work for a product that I continue to believe was worse for people who listened to it than our average Acquired episode.

David Rosenthal 51:05 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 51:05 So it's like, again, it's a set of trade-offs that we just have to be intentional about making next year, rather than being like, "Ooh, that would be a fun conference to speak at."

David Rosenthal 51:14 Right, right.

Ben Gilbert 51:14 Oh, my God, I forgot about Capital Camp!

David Rosenthal 51:16 Oh, Capital Camp, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 51:17 That was so cool.

David Rosenthal 51:19 That was cool. That was a relatively low trade-off because, uh, Patrick, and Brent-

Ben Gilbert 51:24 Oh

David Rosenthal 51:24 ... and Clayton and the team there, [exhales] they took care of-

Ben Gilbert 51:27 Yep

David Rosenthal 51:27 ... everything.

Ben Gilbert 51:28 Yep, absolutely. It was different, too, 'cause we created a talk for it, so it was less issues because there was no guest, so there was no sort of, like, guest risk, but, like, it was the first time-

David Rosenthal 51:41 Guest risk. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 51:41 I'm such a, like, VC.

David Rosenthal 51:42 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 51:42 Well, is it technology risk, is it guest risk? [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 51:44 [chuckles] Is there guest risk?

Ben Gilbert 51:45 Uh, but the only thing that we had done that was similar was the Acquired Top 10, the Best Acquisitions of All Time episode that we did.

David Rosenthal 51:53 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 51:53 And so we had, like, a little bit of confidence that you and I could produce a sort of talk about a thing that wasn't the entire history and strategy of a company, but that was a totally new format for us.

David Rosenthal 52:04 Yep. I'm curious what you think. I'm, I'm so glad we did Capital Camp, and like, that, you know, work time was a fun switch-up, but I think it was an inferior format to the normal show. Like...

Ben Gilbert 52:14 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 52:14 I was thinking, like, but we put together a deck for it, and like, but I mean-

Ben Gilbert 52:18 I mean, a deck-

David Rosenthal 52:19 ... you did most of it, but like-

Ben Gilbert 52:20 It was a set of pictures.

David Rosenthal 52:21 A set of pictures, but like-

Ben Gilbert 52:22 It was some graphs

David Rosenthal 52:22 ... I haven't made a deck in years. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 52:25 [laughing] Yeah. That was cool, though. I mean, the nice thing about doing that is then we have a product we can sort of, like, take on the road, too. I think we can share this publicly. You gave that talk again at an internal Fundrise event.

David Rosenthal 52:37 Yes, which was super cool. I would love to do more of that. Like, I got to meet everybody at Fundrise, like the, you know, our biggest partner for the year, and, like, the whole team, like, all 300 people at the company were there at the offsite. It was very cool.

Ben Gilbert 52:51 All this to say, it leads me to believe that much like all the other trade-offs we make, we just need to figure out how do we 80/20 it? What are the things that we care the most about, and how do we not do the long tail of stuff? So I think it means pick, like, one episode per year to do a massive live show, and throw the Acquired Super Bowl/wedding, and maybe once a year is even too often, 'cause God, it's a lift. But two, then feel free to do a bunch of in-person stuff with our partners, with our sponsors, with people that we, like, work with on the show anyway, and wanna just, like, continue to build deeper relationships with, but those aren't necessarily episodes.

David Rosenthal 53:29 Yep. That has been a huge highlight for me for the year, is I think we have found a way I don't know that anybody would've thought was, like, possible as a podcast, as a media business, to, like, really build deep relationships with our sponsors and our partners. I think almost every single one of them, we did something like the Fundrise All Hands or, you know, a conference, and most of them now... A, a very large percentage of our sponsors, we've invested in.

Ben Gilbert 53:59 Yeah. What, five of them?

David Rosenthal 54:01 I think five, yeah. Vanta, and we should talk about Vanta in a, in a big way. Modern Treasury, Vouch, Mystery, Standard Metrics, we've invested in.

Ben Gilbert 54:10 And what was Standard Metrics called when they sponsored?

David Rosenthal 54:13 Quaister.

Ben Gilbert 54:13 Quaister, that's right.

David Rosenthal 54:14 That was their original name. Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 54:15 Back in the day.

David Rosenthal 54:16 Just like we, for our listeners and our audience, you know, we've kinda always thought... I think it's been one of our core tenets from the beginning, of like, we treat our audience as, like, equals to, like, more impressive than us. Like, when we started the show, especially. Now, and even the folks who are listening to us are the folks who we want to invest in, we wanna do business with, we wanna do-

Ben Gilbert 54:36 Well, that's what eats me alive when I get something wrong in an episode, and it's a black mark to me, and I can't do anything but see it. It's like, you know, I'm thinking of the people who I know listen to the show, who are listening to that and thinking, "Uh, he didn't quite get that right," 'cause that's how I envision our audience.

David Rosenthal 54:50 Not that we didn't always think this way, but it's really come to-... we realize now, we think of our sponsors the same way as our, you know, our partners, as like these are amazing companies. Like, how can we build as deep a relationship with them as possible?

Ben Gilbert 55:02 Yep, totally agree. I mean, the sponsorship model is another way that we make a pretty significant trade-off. So we only do six-month, season-long sponsorships, and we are ridiculously choosy about the people that we do that with. And because it's a six-month-long thing to an audience of 250,000 people that happen to be probably the most valuable audience in the world in terms of CEOs, founders, engineers, capital allocators-

David Rosenthal 55:37 Certainly the set. I mean-

Ben Gilbert 55:38 The set.

David Rosenthal 55:39 It would be, um, hubris of us to claim that we singularly at Acquired have the most-

Ben Gilbert 55:44 No, but-

David Rosenthal 55:45 ... but of the, you know, our niche of media-

Ben Gilbert 55:48 Right

David Rosenthal 55:49 ... the listeners to our niche of media, I, I think unquestionably are the most valuable-

Ben Gilbert 55:54 Right

David Rosenthal 55:54 ... audience in the world.

Ben Gilbert 55:55 So it's a big-ticket item whenever a sponsor decides that they wanna work with us, for the duration, for the reach, and for the magnitude of who you're reaching when you reach them. And so it's like a big freaking commitment.

David Rosenthal 56:09 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 56:09 And there's a trade-off there in our business model, which is we're not gonna work with that many people when we do, but when we do, we wanna go as deep as possible. And so that means that we can't do things like engage with agencies or engage with dynamic ad insertion networks, or a lot of other things that would make our lives easier.

David Rosenthal 56:26 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 56:26 It probably also means that we can't outsource sales. Like, you and I are the ones talking to the CEOs of the companies who sponsor, which again, lots of trade-offs. They're very busy people, they're often hard to get ahold of, but they're people that we get to build a really real relationship with.

David Rosenthal 56:41 Yep. This is one of my favorite trade-offs we've made, kinda like I've been saying, is like, these are the types of people who we would want anyway-

Ben Gilbert 56:48 Right

David Rosenthal 56:48 ... to build deep relationships with.

Ben Gilbert 56:49 Right.

David Rosenthal 56:49 So why wouldn't we lean into that as much as possible? On the completely opposite end of the spectrum, though, something that I think highlights the trade-off and that I've really come to appreciate this year, in the very beginning of Acquired, we c- did YouTube, and we've been saying for years and years, "We gotta reto- redo YouTube."

Ben Gilbert 57:06 At this point, it's almost a MacGuffin-

David Rosenthal 57:08 Yeah [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 57:08 ... where like, it's like Seattle's NBA team.

David Rosenthal 57:10 Yes!

Ben Gilbert 57:10 It's like maybe we should never redo it, so we can always talk about the fact that-

David Rosenthal 57:12 Well, of course, Seattle's gonna get an NBA team. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 57:15 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 57:15 Of course, Acquired is gonna redo YouTube. But I was so negative on YouTube in the episode, and the intervening years, I feel like, have just been a journey for me of, like, really coming to appreciate what a incredible product and business YouTube is. And this year, my big YouTube appreciation has been they enable, for many, many creators, people to make their livelihoods with the exact opposite trade-off of what we do. You can just focus on content, and you, if you have an audience and can build an audience, can make a good to great living on YouTube and never engage with business, never engage with-

Ben Gilbert 57:57 Yeah

David Rosenthal 57:57 ... ad sales.

Ben Gilbert 57:57 This is how I felt as an app developer.

David Rosenthal 57:59 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 57:59 I was like, "Wow, there's a money fountain."

David Rosenthal 58:01 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 58:01 I write software, I upload it to the store, and money comes out the other side.

David Rosenthal 58:04 Which obviously, like, that's not the decision we would make-

Ben Gilbert 58:08 Yep

David Rosenthal 58:08 ... but for the long tail, you know, and mass mar- and other niches of media that don't have as valuable an audience as us-

Ben Gilbert 58:15 Yep

David Rosenthal 58:16 ... that is an amazing thing. And most creators don't want to be businesspeople. Like, we want to be businesspeople. We want to be entrepreneurs.

Ben Gilbert 58:24 Right. By the way, I think it makes the content better that we are, because then you get first-party insights, rather than, like, if we were journalists sort of shooting from the sidelines. Like, some of the stuff I've already talked about on this episode today is the strategic conversation that came out of a board meeting that I was in earlier. And so, like, us engaging [chuckles] in business makes the show what it is, too.

David Rosenthal 58:46 [chuckles] It's funny. That reminds me of another trade-off, one of the things that like... Really, this is driven by being a parent, but, uh, yeah-

Ben Gilbert 58:52 Yeah

David Rosenthal 58:52 ... I don't, I don't do boards anymore. [laughing] I just can't.

Ben Gilbert 58:55 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 58:56 Never say never, but, uh, man, you know, thinking back on times in my life when I was on, you know, five, six, seven boards, and, uh, as you are now, [chuckles] and, uh-

Ben Gilbert 59:07 I'm on three.

David Rosenthal 59:08 Okay, that's more manageable.

Ben Gilbert 59:09 It sort of makes it work. It's like you pick very few companies, and you go very deep. I mean, it's a very Acquired way of-

David Rosenthal 59:15 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 59:16 ... of doing it.

David Rosenthal 59:17 Three is a, a, a manageable number. Um-

Ben Gilbert 59:19 Yep.

David Rosenthal 59:20 But even still, like, to do it right, you really gotta engage.

Ben Gilbert 59:24 Yep. All right, what's next on the agenda?

David Rosenthal 59:27 Relatedly, show growth.

Ben Gilbert 59:30 Show growth.

David Rosenthal 59:31 It was so fun talking to Ben Thompson about this and his growth trajectory and curve. We pretty amazingly doubled our audience again this year.

Ben Gilbert 59:43 Which has basically been true every year since we started seven years ago, which this is always one of these things where if a startup is only doubling year over year in the first two or three years, it's like, okay, well, it's not gonna be a breakout company. But if you can actually keep doubling for seven, eight, nine years, the numbers get pretty big.

David Rosenthal 1:00:04 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:00:04 And so it feels very different transitioning from 2020 to today-

David Rosenthal 1:00:11 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:00:11 ... sort of looking over a two-year span, where-

David Rosenthal 1:00:14 Even from last year to today. So we, we hit over a quarter million subscribers, um-

Ben Gilbert 1:00:19 Which was 62,000 just 24 months ago.

David Rosenthal 1:00:23 I know.

Ben Gilbert 1:00:24 So that's the crazy... Like, that's the place where this sort of, like, out years of compounding is starting to show up for us.

David Rosenthal 1:00:31 And the thing that's been crazy to me is there still have been some kind of step change. Like, the Amazon episode-

Ben Gilbert 1:00:40 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:00:40 ... was, that was a step change for us.

Ben Gilbert 1:00:42 For sure. Yeah, I think the previous highest episode to Amazon had gotten just over 100,000 downloads, and that one got 170,000.

David Rosenthal 1:00:52 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:00:53 And-

David Rosenthal 1:00:53 In the first 90 days-

Ben Gilbert 1:00:54 In the first 90 days

David Rosenthal 1:00:54 ... that's how we look at it.

Ben Gilbert 1:00:55 And when we say a quarter million, that is the unique-... number of people who listen to, it's basically our monthly active listener count-

David Rosenthal 1:01:04 Yep

Ben Gilbert 1:01:04 - across all platforms, who engage with at least one episode.

David Rosenthal 1:01:06 'Cause not all of you listen to every episode, [chuckles] sadly. The cool thing about podcasts, and for us, and you know, that it is an open ecosystem that's not controlled by algorithms, it does mean growth takes longer, and it's harder, and you have to do these step change functions, but then people become subscribers, and they stick around. Amazon was a huge step change moment for us in terms of growth, and many of those new people subscribed.

Ben Gilbert 1:01:37 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:01:37 And so thus, the subsequent episodes, Benchmark, Enron [chuckles] -

Ben Gilbert 1:01:42 Like, the two Benchmark episodes were both way higher than the 100,000 that we were at before Amazon, and then Enron now is charting to look pretty similar to Amazon. They're early, we're only five or six days in, but, like, it is-

David Rosenthal 1:01:55 Which shouldn't be-

Ben Gilbert 1:01:55 - unbelievable how sticky.

David Rosenthal 1:01:56 I don't think is a reflection on, you know, the Benchmark episodes. I think we're great... We're such a cool experience, but it's more niche.

Ben Gilbert 1:02:02 It's chronological.

David Rosenthal 1:02:02 Like, it's a venture capital firm versus, like, Amazon. Everybody cares about Amazon.

Ben Gilbert 1:02:05 Yes, yes, exactly. There's also this chronological thing where, like, every three or four episodes is our biggest episode ever, and not necessarily because the content is more interesting, but because when you find a podcast you like, you stick around. So there is this sort of, like, cumulative effect where we drop a new episode, if we had dropped this in 2016, it would have gotten a couple thousand listens. But because it's dropped on top of the entire base of people who are subscribed to Acquired, it's really meaningful. And I thought Ben brought up this really interesting point where he sort of asserted, "Podcasts are great because they're really sticky, but they're terrible to grow."

David Rosenthal 1:02:47 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:02:47 He basically said, "I don't know how you would grow a podcast if you didn't also have a w- a writing platform that was easily forwardable, because podcasts are really hard to share." And that sort of explains the reason why, no matter how hard we try, we've really never been able to more than double in any year. 'Cause podcasts are sort of an inherently unshareable mechanism, so unless there's something that happens, like you get feed dropped for free in an NPR podcast that brings you 100,000 new listeners right away, or we had NVIDIA Part Two, I think, got a large promotion-

David Rosenthal 1:03:20 Oh, yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:03:20 ... on Spotify.

David Rosenthal 1:03:21 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:21 And that brought us a bunch of new listeners that were subscribed to Spotify.

David Rosenthal 1:03:23 Spotify has been a great partner to us this year.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:25 Yeah, they have.

David Rosenthal 1:03:26 We really only started kind of more directly working with them-

Ben Gilbert 1:03:29 January this year

David Rosenthal 1:03:29 ... in January, with the Taylor Swift episode.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:31 Which is why n- what was our stat? 98%-

David Rosenthal 1:03:35 Oh, yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:03:35 ... of the people who listen on Spotify today were not listeners-

David Rosenthal 1:03:39 Found us this year

Ben Gilbert 1:03:40 ... last year, yeah. [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 1:03:42 Yeah. And we should be clear about w- what I'm mean by directly working with Spotify. We're, we're not owned by Spotify. There's no economic relationship or ad sales or... [chuckles] Like, like we've been saying, we do all that in-house.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:51 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:03:51 That's our business model. But-

Ben Gilbert 1:03:53 They assign you a creator manager.

David Rosenthal 1:03:55 Yeah, we have-

Ben Gilbert 1:03:55 There's people that we know that we can contact at the company

David Rosenthal 1:03:57 ... relationships at Spotify in a way that we don't have with any of the other platforms. I mean, I think technically, we have a manager at Apple. Like, I don't know who that person is.

Ben Gilbert 1:04:05 No. No, no, no, no, no.

David Rosenthal 1:04:06 We never hear from them.

Ben Gilbert 1:04:06 We found someone's email address-

David Rosenthal 1:04:07 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:04:07 ... but they're not assigned there.

David Rosenthal 1:04:08 Yeah. Spotify has done a great job of, at least from my perspective, you know, engaging with us as creators, and I think striking a good balance between, like, podcasting is an open ecosystem with all the benefits and trade-offs that we've just been talking about.

Ben Gilbert 1:04:22 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:04:23 But you can also, [chuckles] like, do it better than Apple. Apple's been such a terrible steward-

Ben Gilbert 1:04:28 I-

David Rosenthal 1:04:28 ... of this industry.

Ben Gilbert 1:04:29 You've brought this up before. Terrible in one respect, but, like, they're the reason why we have a direct connection with our listeners.

David Rosenthal 1:04:35 Yeah, it's like they're-

Ben Gilbert 1:04:36 Them abdicating the creation of a platform and an intermediary is the reason why we have this really sticky relationship with listeners.

David Rosenthal 1:04:45 Right. Such a good point, such a good point. Their internal strategy failure at Apple [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:04:51 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 1:04:51 ... And execution, too. Like, I just feel like if you're an Apple shareholder, you should be really angry at management about how they have mismanaged, like, fumbled the ball-

Ben Gilbert 1:05:02 But

David Rosenthal 1:05:02 ... on podcasting.

Ben Gilbert 1:05:03 But delighted in many other ways, [chuckles] so.

David Rosenthal 1:05:05 But delighted in other ways. You know, for us, as... Yeah, I, I agree. Especially the type of business we have-

Ben Gilbert 1:05:10 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:05:10 ... at Acquired is really enabled by the lack of algorithmic-

Ben Gilbert 1:05:14 Yep

David Rosenthal 1:05:14 ... stranglehold on this medium.

Ben Gilbert 1:05:16 So it does sort of beg this interesting question that Ben threw out, which is, how do you grow a podcast when you don't have a secondary shareable component? And I think we have tried to do this with the Acquired website. Each episode has a page. That page has a bunch of show notes. That page has a transcript. There's sort of a reason to consume it on that page. You can sign up via email on that page. You can join the Slack from that page.

David Rosenthal 1:05:44 Which the Slack now has almost 15,000-

Ben Gilbert 1:05:47 14,000, 15,000.

David Rosenthal 1:05:47 Over 14,000 members.

Ben Gilbert 1:05:49 Our preferred way to share an episode is the page, because we sort of feel that that URL is, like, a nice way to package it up for someone and say, "Listen to this." Unfortunately, our episodes are four hours long, so it doesn't come with a deep link. Like, it would be really nice if, as you scroll down the page and as you move through the transcript or as you watch the video or as you consume the audio, that was always updating the URL, so that at any given point, you copy the URL-

David Rosenthal 1:06:18 Ah

Ben Gilbert 1:06:18 ... it's like, this is exactly the-

David Rosenthal 1:06:19 Kinda like Overcast has the, um, share timestamp.

Ben Gilbert 1:06:23 Share timestamp, yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:06:23 Yeah. And you can do it on YouTube, too.

Ben Gilbert 1:06:24 Yeah. But, like, those are inherently flawed because you don't know if someone likes to use that platform. So, like, when I share that Overcast link with people, I'm like, "Are they gonna be like, 'What is this podcast player that I don't use? Why are you sharing it to me in this weird way?'" There's a bunch of reasons that contribute to podcasts being sort of inherently unshareable. Our episodes being really long make them especially hard to share, sort of moments, insights, and there's been a zillion sort of, like, clip apps over the years.

David Rosenthal 1:06:51 But I do think, actually, you know, we have not grown in the same way that, like, a viral product grows, but we've had really nice growth as a podcast. And I think, actually, growth happens because we infiltrate a-... network, particularly a company network, and then we get shared within the company, like in a company Slack or Teams, or just friend networks within, within a company.

Ben Gilbert 1:07:17 Yep. It's kind of interesting, like, I'm not particularly interested in additional growth.

David Rosenthal 1:07:22 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:07:23 Like, I-

David Rosenthal 1:07:23 Especially at this point.

Ben Gilbert 1:07:24 Yeah. And-

David Rosenthal 1:07:25 I mean, it's, it's great. It would be nice, and I think Ben was kind of making this same point in the episode we did with him. For all of us, additional growth is great, but not by trading off any of the things that we really care about that drive our business.

Ben Gilbert 1:07:39 Right, or changing the audience mix.

David Rosenthal 1:07:41 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:07:41 I was wildly relieved this year from the... How many people took the survey? 1,500 people or so that answered the survey, which thank you, if you did.

David Rosenthal 1:07:49 Yeah. Thank you.

Ben Gilbert 1:07:50 Um, that the audience mix stayed pretty much the same from two, two and a half years ago, the last time we ran a survey, which was awesome. I was like, "Wow, we managed to get 200,000 more of basically the same type of person." And it was heartening talking to Ben, 'cause it sounded like he thought that he had bumped up against the market, that he was starting to saturate, and then sort of accelerated through it again. And so it feels like Ben, I think he probably has close to a million people that consume Stratechery.com for free in a given year. And so if he doesn't feel like he's bumping up against the TAM, and we have a reasonably overlapping audience, that feels like pretty good proxy for us to say, "Well, we could probably at least 4X from here."

David Rosenthal 1:08:34 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 1:08:34 But I don't, I don't really have, like, a strong desire to do... I think it would make our lives generally worse if we did.

David Rosenthal 1:08:42 I think it would be neutral. I, I mean, in some ways it would be better, in some ways it would be worse, but-

Ben Gilbert 1:08:46 If we were a video podcast, it would make it worse because we're right at the limit right now, where like, we have all the benefits of when we drop an episode, it really matters to the people that we care about it mattering to, and we don't get recognized on the street. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:09:00 [laughing] The episode with Ben was about Stratechery, obviously, so we didn't really talk about this, but I kept thinking about it and wanting to explore more, and we should do here. Our business model is very different than Ben's, and-

Ben Gilbert 1:09:12 Yep

David Rosenthal 1:09:12 ... growth, again, like, nice to have for us, comes with some set of trade-offs. There's some downsides to it, some upsides. Neutral to, you know, I don't know, you could argue maybe you think it's slightly negative to grow, may- maybe I think it's slightly positive. Like, it's in the neutral zone. But because of our business model and everything we were talking about, like, the deepening of the engagement with the right people and the right sponsors, that's what drives our excitement about the business and the business itself.

Ben Gilbert 1:09:41 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:09:42 In a way that for Ben, it's different because he actually does need to grow his business to keep growing the number of consumers, 'cause some percentage of them will convert to paying anyway.

Ben Gilbert 1:09:50 Right. You're saying, for his revenue to grow, he must grow the number of subscribers, which means if subscribers are always a fraction, a fixed fraction of the set of people-

David Rosenthal 1:10:01 Of audience

Ben Gilbert 1:10:02 ... who are reading anything on Stratechery, he must grow the top line. Whereas what you're saying for us is, the revenue is not necessarily directly connected to audience size.

David Rosenthal 1:10:15 Right. It's connected, but it's not directly connected. And as we evolve the business model more, I mean, this is a good place to talk about Vanta.

Ben Gilbert 1:10:22 That's a good point.

David Rosenthal 1:10:22 Yeah, one of our couple biggest sponsors and partners on the show this year, we, and kinda through Kindergarten, and, and, and you, too, invested almost $10 million in the company this year. [chuckles] So, like, that's a very-

Ben Gilbert 1:10:35 Mostly Kindergarten, very small-

David Rosenthal 1:10:36 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:10:36 ... part for me. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:10:37 Very small bet. [laughing] And most of that capital came from the Acquired audience community, like the LP capital that-

Ben Gilbert 1:10:47 Yep

David Rosenthal 1:10:47 ... backed that SPV came in very large part from the Acquired audience. And so that's not... Like, growing the audience, of course, increases the number of super high-quality people, and we care about growing the high-quality people in the audience, and the bigger that size is great, but it's not directly tied to-

Ben Gilbert 1:11:06 Right

David Rosenthal 1:11:06 ... the business model. And like, that was a transformational moment for us. Obviously, Vanta is an amazing company, but that's a whole new business.

Ben Gilbert 1:11:12 It was at least an insight. You could sort of test the hypothesis of, like... 'Cause you and I have invested small amounts personally in our-

David Rosenthal 1:11:18 Yep

Ben Gilbert 1:11:18 ... our sponsors before, 'cause we get insight into their business from getting to work directly with CEOs on those, and we're like, "That's a really interesting-

David Rosenthal 1:11:24 And we see what our audience resonates with-

Ben Gilbert 1:11:25 Right

David Rosenthal 1:11:25 ... with the products.

Ben Gilbert 1:11:26 Right. That's a really interesting thing. We should invest a little bit. But your insight of, "Okay, this is a growth round. This is a company that's doing really well." I can sort of see how well they're doing, both from getting to, like, look at the investment pitch, but also-

David Rosenthal 1:11:41 But also the reaction of our-

Ben Gilbert 1:11:42 Our

David Rosenthal 1:11:42 ... community to the sponsorship.

Ben Gilbert 1:11:43 Right. Could I invest a meaningful amount of capital in this?

David Rosenthal 1:11:46 How could we put together a meaningful amount of capital?

Ben Gilbert 1:11:47 And do I, as a host of Acquired, have relationships with the owners of capital, the stewards of capital, who want to invest in this opportunity? It was a really interesting way for you to sort of, like, prove out that hypothesis a little bit.

David Rosenthal 1:12:02 Yeah. There is no strategic plan for Kindergarten Ventures, period. [laughing] It is very much, like, a-

Ben Gilbert 1:12:07 You, y'all may be shocked-

David Rosenthal 1:12:08 Yeah [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:12:08 ... that there's no, uh, strategic plan.

David Rosenthal 1:12:09 Period. But it's not like we, uh, did a, you know, an offsite. Like, a... We didn't do a, um, end-of-year, uh, special for Kindergarten [chuckles] like we're doing now for Acquired, and discuss our strategy and say, "You know, I think we should find a opportunity to do a $10 million SPV this year." But no, it came naturally from everything we're talking about here on Acquired.

Ben Gilbert 1:12:27 Yep. And just to put a finer point on the business being not entirely connected to the audience size, there were years where the audience would 2X, but revenue would 10X-

David Rosenthal 1:12:41 Yep

Ben Gilbert 1:12:41 ... just because it was a wildly under-monetized asset before.

David Rosenthal 1:12:45 Well, there were several years where revenue was zero. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:12:48 Yeah, yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:12:48 This was not a business.

Ben Gilbert 1:12:49 That's true. But it... You know, who's to say that we necessarily have the business model optimized? Do I think that there should be more sponsorships and episodes? No. In fact, I think we should probably be a little bit tighter on them, and shorter on them, and find more ways to make the sponsorship segments even more differentiated, where we're not just-... giving the high-level pitch on the company, but doing more Vouch Insurance 101 type stuff, where we can sort of, like, find a key insight with the company and storytell that together. I think leaning into the strategic differentiation that we have on... And I know that sounds like jargon, but, like, we are, I think, the only ones who work this closely-

David Rosenthal 1:13:29 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:13:29 ... with our sponsors. So what does that enable us to do that no other podcast could do? I think that's, like, the lens that I wanna keep taking to it. And so to your point, the business is probably still unoptimized, and it will probably grow directionally with audience, but can grow in other ways, too.

David Rosenthal 1:13:47 Would this be the perfect point?

Ben Gilbert 1:13:48 To do what?

David Rosenthal 1:13:49 To talk about our friends at Brex?

Ben Gilbert 1:13:51 Yes. Let's talk about our friends at Brex.

David Rosenthal 1:13:54 What we were planning to do for this sponsor segment for them is actually perfect for this episode.

Ben Gilbert 1:13:58 [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 1:13:58 We didn't plan it this way, but they wanted to talk about how they've innovated twice, and they have these two successful, now separate, products, and they really are two products within Brex. This is so perfect. When we started Acquired, I think most people listening don't know this-

Ben Gilbert 1:14:12 It's true

David Rosenthal 1:14:12 ... we had two ideas for the show. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:14:13 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:14:14 One was-

Ben Gilbert 1:14:15 Acquisitions that actually went well.

David Rosenthal 1:14:16 Yes, which more-

Ben Gilbert 1:14:18 Is theoretically what this is.

David Rosenthal 1:14:20 Which we did, and it has now morphed into this.

Ben Gilbert 1:14:22 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:14:22 The other idea that we had for a podcast to do together-

Ben Gilbert 1:14:25 Companies that had two massive innovations.

David Rosenthal 1:14:29 Two successful innovations.

Ben Gilbert 1:14:30 Which, by the way, I think that's why I'm so drawn to the NVIDIA story, is because that is what they sort of like these bet the company big innovations, or like Apple with the Mac and the iPod and the iPhone, or Microsoft with Windows and Office, and I think this is a great place to talk about Brex's two big innovations.

David Rosenthal 1:14:48 Totally. Which, you know, they started with corporate card for startups. They were the first corporate card for startups. That was like-

Ben Gilbert 1:14:55 Modern, incredible UI, really flexible, customizable product that felt super mobile-friendly.

David Rosenthal 1:15:01 Well, and that you could just get actual, like, good underwriting and, like, available credit and credit card products as a startup-

Ben Gilbert 1:15:09 Yep

David Rosenthal 1:15:09 ... whereas most traditional [chuckles] banks would be like, "You're a startup. You don't have revenue." But, like, these companies were good credit risk. They had raised a lot of money from big VCs. Anyway, massive innovation and the first time. The second time that they've innovated recently is for a whole different set of customers, which are large enterprises, 'cause a huge number of those startups that started with Brex have now grown up and matured into large enterprises. So what they've gotten into now is not just credit cards, but spend management. Brex works seamlessly for spend management across 100-plus countries and currencies, but the even bigger product innovation is they've built in compliance and controls to the start of the spend management process, not to the end. So rather than, like, approving expenses after they're registered on the card, and you've gotta track down the receipts and do all the nightmare that you and I remember from working at larger companies than Acquired-

Ben Gilbert 1:16:04 Yep

David Rosenthal 1:16:04 ... it's all set of guidelines are, are set upfront by policy teams, by finance, by compliance, and then anything that is, by Brex's algorithms, within compliance gets automatically approved. You don't need the receipts. You don't need to [chuckles] like, approve every single thing that goes through. It's just automatically done, and it's only the outliers that get flagged. So that is a huge, huge productivity savings for growth enterprises. Go to brex.com/acquired to sign up, and this is perfect for the end of the year, the holiday season. We put our heads together a couple weeks ago with the Brex team and said, "We, we wanna do something for the community and people who sign up with Acquired." You can... If you sign up for Brex via that link, or if you have already in the past signed up for Brex because you heard about them on Acquired, just email us, let us know.

Ben Gilbert 1:16:50 hello@acquired.fm.

David Rosenthal 1:16:52 You can get a free Acquired t-shirt from the merch store, and we now have several different T-shirts to choose from.

Ben Gilbert 1:16:59 Our thanks to Brex for a great, great season.

David Rosenthal 1:17:02 Indeed. There are a few terms and conditions that apply. Those are in the show notes, uh, and on the website. But thank you, Brex.

Ben Gilbert 1:17:09 All right, David, what is next on the year in review agenda?

David Rosenthal 1:17:12 Next, we gotta talk about next year, 2023.

Ben Gilbert 1:17:15 Yes.

David Rosenthal 1:17:15 Looking ahead. Okay, first question for us: What episodes, topics, guests are we thinking about?

Ben Gilbert 1:17:23 Oh!

David Rosenthal 1:17:23 What should we, um... What's on the docket?

Ben Gilbert 1:17:25 Hang on, let me bust out my list.

David Rosenthal 1:17:27 One that feels like an obvious one we should do at some point next year is OpenAI.

Ben Gilbert 1:17:31 Yeah, absolutely.

David Rosenthal 1:17:33 We talked about doing it at various points this year, and especially, like, fitting in with the whole NVIDIA series, but, um-

Ben Gilbert 1:17:40 It's funny-

David Rosenthal 1:17:40 ... now it feels like we gotta do it.

Ben Gilbert 1:17:41 We almost did it 12 months ago. Like, I remember last year over the holidays doing some prep work for it, and that, I think, would've been kind of disastrous, 'cause we would've done it, and I think way undersold. Like, we wouldn't have been-

David Rosenthal 1:17:56 Would've been way too early.

Ben Gilbert 1:17:56 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:17:57 If we do end up doing it, and do it, you know, relatively early next year, it's sort of ironic that the next Elon company that we'll cover after our old [laugh] SpaceX episode is [chuckles] OpenAI. We didn't, didn't do anything on Twitter.

Ben Gilbert 1:18:10 I kind of forgot-

David Rosenthal 1:18:10 We haven't done any revisiting of Tesla

Ben Gilbert 1:18:12 ... this is an Elon company. It is crazy. God, he's got his fingers in everything.

David Rosenthal 1:18:16 The Twitter is just... Oh, my gosh, there's just so much drama. There's so much drama. I don't, I don't like having just drama on Acquired.

Ben Gilbert 1:18:22 That is true, and I think part of the reason why we haven't done a Twitter episode since we interviewed Dick Costolo in early 2021, maybe-

David Rosenthal 1:18:30 Yeah, way before all this

Ben Gilbert 1:18:32 ... is, like, the story feels less like a business story and more like a TMZ story, which-

David Rosenthal 1:18:37 Yes

Ben Gilbert 1:18:38 ... isn't our cup of tea.

David Rosenthal 1:18:39 Yes. I don't ever wanna feel like TMZ. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:18:43 I won't say that, like, I'm not interested in reading all the TMZ drama about it. It's totally fascinating, and, you know, if you can run a company on 80% less people than you were running it before, and nothing goes terribly wrong, that's super interesting for the world to know. Now, of course, it does look like all sorts of things are going wrong, but to the extent that they can turn it around, and the business can be generating as much revenue as it was before on a massively lower cost basis-... I'm very curious to know what the second-order effects of that are.

David Rosenthal 1:19:12 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:19:12 But the story that we know so far-

David Rosenthal 1:19:13 That is an interesting, actually-

Ben Gilbert 1:19:14 Is TNC

David Rosenthal 1:19:14 ... business discuss. But yeah, like, that's not the- we don't actually know that yet.

Ben Gilbert 1:19:19 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:19:19 And everything that is being discussed is, yeah, it's just drama.

Ben Gilbert 1:19:23 Okay, so OpenAI, that's a good candidate.

David Rosenthal 1:19:25 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 1:19:26 I was perusing the world's richest people list the other day, and, uh, saw, uh-

David Rosenthal 1:19:30 For-

Ben Gilbert 1:19:30 Just-

David Rosenthal 1:19:31 Acquired ideas, or [chuckles] just that's what you do in your free time?

Ben Gilbert 1:19:33 I, you know. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:19:35 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:19:36 Lots of the names are very familiar to us and Acquired listeners. The one that is not is Bernard Arnault-

David Rosenthal 1:19:41 Mm

Ben Gilbert 1:19:41 ... which, one of the world's top five wealthiest people, and not in tech, not in finance, but in luxury brands. I think it'd be pretty interesting to go down the path of, like, really deeply unpacking brand power-

David Rosenthal 1:19:56 Yes

Ben Gilbert 1:19:56 ... and brand power-

David Rosenthal 1:19:57 Yes

Ben Gilbert 1:19:57 ... over generations, and the concept of a house of brands, and what brands mean to people. And why you can know that it's the exact same leather that you're buying elsewhere, but because it has this mark on it, you pay 500 times more for it. I would love to figure out what the right starting place is for luxury, and, and do that on Acquired.

David Rosenthal 1:20:16 Yeah. The point and the reason to do it is what you said, the under, like, brand.

Ben Gilbert 1:20:21 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:20:22 How did these amazing, durable brands get built?

Ben Gilbert 1:20:26 Yep. I continue to wanna do Epic Healthcare. I think they're, like, a huge force in the American economy, and I don't know if that episode will be a hero's journey or a- [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 1:20:35 A villain

Ben Gilbert 1:20:36 ... a villain, but-

David Rosenthal 1:20:36 Is it an Enron or a NVIDIA? [chuckles] I suspect, [exhales] without having done any research, I suspect more of an Enron.

Ben Gilbert 1:20:44 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:20:45 But probably not a fraud, but just a-

Ben Gilbert 1:20:46 Open question whether it's good for the world.

David Rosenthal 1:20:48 Yes.

Ben Gilbert 1:20:48 Creates, uh, some value, certainly, captures a lot of it. Does it capture more than it creates? Open question.

David Rosenthal 1:20:54 One thing I definitely want to do more of, and figure out how it's gonna evolve, is Sessions. So we did the session with Jason Calacanis.

Ben Gilbert 1:21:04 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:21:04 That was really fun, and felt like a really cool way to do something orthogonal to the core Acquired approach, but still really fun. Maybe Sessions, or a format like Sessions, ends up being what we do with protagonists of stories after we've done an episode, just us on them.

Ben Gilbert 1:21:28 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:21:29 Maybe we keep doing it with interesting people, maybe both. But that felt like a really cool, different type of interview than-

Ben Gilbert 1:21:40 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:21:40 ... just a standard podcast interview.

Ben Gilbert 1:21:41 I feel like if Sessions evolves into talking to people who do fascinating work about things that aren't necessarily their work, that's a pretty interesting use of the format. That's something that I want to explore. 'Cause it, that statement can kinda take two directions, and I think either would make for an interesting Sessions' reason for existence. One is talking to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company about things that aren't their company. They probably think about a lot of really interesting stuff, and have a bunch of really interesting ideas, and they probably can't say a lot of the most interesting thoughts they have about their company, because they're publicly traded, and there's all sorts of SEC stuff involved, but there's other conversations we can have with them.

David Rosenthal 1:22:23 Yeah, but they're people, and, like, they have feelings and emotions.

Ben Gilbert 1:22:26 And those aren't the reasons people typically are trying to get them to come on podcasts.

David Rosenthal 1:22:29 Yeah. That's one thing, actually, that my wife Jenny pointed out to me after listening to the session we did with Jason, [chuckles] and she was like, "It was interesting. It was good. You guys could've gone way harder on diving into the emotional side of Jason's lived experience-

Ben Gilbert 1:22:47 Mm

David Rosenthal 1:22:47 ... and his feelings, and, like, especially when he, he mentioned, you know, Tony Hsieh's passing, and how that really impacted him, and, like, led to him de- deciding to make some changes in how he approached life and his work for the next few years." Like, she's like, "That was an opportunity that you just let fall on the floor. Like, you could've gone way deeper-

Ben Gilbert 1:23:06 Mm

David Rosenthal 1:23:06 ... into that."

Ben Gilbert 1:23:07 Yeah. I think that's a great point. The other thing that I was sort of implying in that statement is, we could have people on almost as a prop. Like, we're not interviewing them, but they're instead a piece of whatever discussion you and I wanted to have anyway. Like, you know, what if we had Eric Vishria just, like, hanging out next to you on the couch, and we weren't talking about Benchmark, but Eric was just, like, chiming in on a lot of this stuff and sharing his ideas? He's not the subject of the interview, he's a piece of the show.

David Rosenthal 1:23:38 Oh.

Ben Gilbert 1:23:38 He's a part of the conversation. He's a foil to bounce ideas off of.

David Rosenthal 1:23:43 I would, for sure, do that with Eric. That would be an amazing and a great privilege. You know who would be [laughing] truly the most interesting person to have as playing that role, would be Peter Fenton.

Ben Gilbert 1:23:57 Oh, yeah. [laughing] You're right. I, I, I-

David Rosenthal 1:23:59 So things that Peter said-

Ben Gilbert 1:24:00 ... sorry, I used Eric as the example. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:24:01 We, we, um... You know, we- oh, my gosh, that was, uh, the whole Benchmark crew is amazing. That dinner was amazing. There were a few things that Peter said that when we were talking about the Principal program and Blake, uh, one of us, I can't remember if it was me or you, asked, you know, "So why do you guys have a principal, you know, uh, in, like a, like a junior [chuckles] investment person, when clearly, like, your whole ethos is you don't do that?" And Peter's response, well, it was like, uh, "Because forced consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:24:27 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:24:27 Which is a famous quote from... I can't remember where it's from now. It's from some famous-

Ben Gilbert 1:24:30 It, it just, like, it, like, leapt out of him.

David Rosenthal 1:24:31 It just, like, that was the immediate response that leapt out of him, and it's like, wow, I never thought that- [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:24:38 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:24:38 ... that would show up on a podcast.

Ben Gilbert 1:24:41 Yeah. Yeah, that was great.

David Rosenthal 1:24:43 That was so great.

Ben Gilbert 1:24:43 Peter, Peter's one of a kind.

David Rosenthal 1:24:44 He is one of a kind.

Ben Gilbert 1:24:46 Other episodes that I wanna do, I wanna do Intuit. I think that's a far more interesting and successful business than people realize. In the vein of consumer brands, we gotta do Nike at some point.

David Rosenthal 1:24:57 Oh, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:24:58 I wanna continue going back in time from Walmart, and do Sears.

David Rosenthal 1:25:02 Nike's one that I really wanna do. I know we said we don't do lives. I actually don't think this should be a live show. I wanna go on site. I wanna go to Oregon.

Ben Gilbert 1:25:10 Mm-hmm.

David Rosenthal 1:25:12 Go to Eugene.

Ben Gilbert 1:25:13 Get a workout in. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:25:14 But I feel like there's, like-... I don't know. I, I mean, I'd just be curious to see. I've never been, but the facility's there, and, like, because it's such a athletic, like, a physical thing, I wanna go see-

Ben Gilbert 1:25:26 Right

David Rosenthal 1:25:26 ... what it's like.

Ben Gilbert 1:25:28 Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, that feels like something that we need to experience more physically. I don't know, you could make that argument for a lot of them. Like TSMC, the episode would've been much better if you and I got to witness chips being fabbed-

David Rosenthal 1:25:39 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:25:39 ... and feel what it was like to be in a bunny suit.

David Rosenthal 1:25:41 The little bit I know, I think mostly from The Last Dance, but, like, the... You know, one of the key, key moments in Nike's history is the signing of the deal with Michael Jordan.

Ben Gilbert 1:25:50 Michael Jordan. Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:25:51 But, like, what did it feel like when Michael came out to the campus?

Ben Gilbert 1:25:56 Yeah, there's... Feeling the history there-

David Rosenthal 1:25:58 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:25:58 ... has to be a, a big thing. All right, so before we get to our extended carve-outs, in sort of reviewing 2022, you and I both had big 2022s.

David Rosenthal 1:26:09 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:26:09 So that's probably worth [chuckles] uh, worth-

David Rosenthal 1:26:10 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:26:10 ... chatting about a little bit.

David Rosenthal 1:26:11 We did- I love... This is, uh... We didn't intend it this way. This is becoming much like the Benchmark dinner that we recorded everything, obviously, before dinner, 'cause we didn't wanna eat dinner before we went out. This is-

Ben Gilbert 1:26:20 We got a lot of good comments of, like, "Why are they just sitting there with cheese and on their plates? Like, aren't they gonna eat? Aren't they gonna eat real food?" And like, we did afterwards.

David Rosenthal 1:26:27 Yeah, yeah. But, like, that would not make for good [chuckles] video content.

Ben Gilbert 1:26:30 Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink.

David Rosenthal 1:26:31 Yeah, uh, audio or video content.

Ben Gilbert 1:26:33 Video or audio content. [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 1:26:35 We are going to, after we finish recording here, we're gonna go out to, uh-

Ben Gilbert 1:26:38 Celebrate 2022

David Rosenthal 1:26:38 ... celebrate a holiday dinner for Acquired, for the two of us. But I feel like this is, like, the pre-record. This is the recording version, so at which we would definitely talk about our personal lives. Well, you had by far-

Ben Gilbert 1:26:49 I had probably the biggest-

David Rosenthal 1:26:50 ... the biggest event

Ben Gilbert 1:26:50 ... life event that you could have.

David Rosenthal 1:26:51 Yeah, you had a-

Ben Gilbert 1:26:52 Yes. I got married. It was wonderful.

David Rosenthal 1:26:56 I was here. It was great.

Ben Gilbert 1:26:57 You were here. It was really cool, 'cause in some ways I thought it wasn't going to feel different afterwards. I think a lot of people in our generation sort of, like, date for a long time, and live together, and feel like life partners, but there's something totally different about being married.

David Rosenthal 1:27:11 Totally.

Ben Gilbert 1:27:11 You know, having the ring on every day as a reminder, and the sense of, like, longevity associated with it is really cool and a really totally different psychological place than I thought.

David Rosenthal 1:27:22 Well, and you go through this process and project together-

Ben Gilbert 1:27:25 Yes

David Rosenthal 1:27:25 ... of the wedding. [chuckles] Like, from the moment you get engaged until the wedding, is this like, uh, you know, you're like a butterfly going into... like, a caterpillar going into a cocoon. It's like a transformational period.

Ben Gilbert 1:27:37 Yes.

David Rosenthal 1:27:37 Um, and I say, like, I was here. You did the [chuckles] wedding at your house af- right after moving. Like, oh, my gosh.

Ben Gilbert 1:27:42 I didn't wanna play the 2022 venue game.

David Rosenthal 1:27:44 Yeah. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:27:45 Like, two times more people got married this year. It was just like, "You're not getting a venue, and if you are, you're getting a terrible date, and you're paying a lot of money for it, and you're not gonna get any of the things that you want out of it."

David Rosenthal 1:27:55 That was probably half of CPI inflation right there, was wedding venues. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:28:00 David was one of my groomsmen. You and I have some great pictures together. Thank you for coming up and being a part of it.

David Rosenthal 1:28:05 You did a amazing job, given that, you know, you two planned it all yourself. You were the venue. It was at your house. Like, it was, uh-

Ben Gilbert 1:28:14 We're literally sitting where the DJ was-

David Rosenthal 1:28:16 That's right

Ben Gilbert 1:28:16 ... like, DJing-

David Rosenthal 1:28:18 Uh-huh

Ben Gilbert 1:28:18 ... onto the dance floor out there.

David Rosenthal 1:28:19 It's so fun going to weddings after having been married, 'cause you're like, "Oh, good, I just get to enjoy all of the [chuckles] the fruits of the couple's labor."

Ben Gilbert 1:28:28 [laughing] Yeah. It really is. When people say it's, like, the happiest day of your life, no doubt, the happiest day of my life, and I think the, like, energy and love and just overwhelming force that you feel from your closest friends and family when you're, like, walking down the aisle and you feel all that energy on you is crazy, and it's an indescribable moment really.

David Rosenthal 1:28:49 Yeah. Um, it was, it was super cool. That was, I think, the biggest personal life event. What else for you this year-

Ben Gilbert 1:28:56 Let's see

David Rosenthal 1:28:57 ... reflecting on 2022?

Ben Gilbert 1:28:58 We took a vacation to Italy. I'd never been to Italy before, and that was, like, a s- absolutely spectacular time. Rome, Cinque Terre, Florence, Capri. God, the island of Capri is incredible.

David Rosenthal 1:29:11 I've never been.

Ben Gilbert 1:29:12 It's just amazing.

David Rosenthal 1:29:13 How would you, uh-

Ben Gilbert 1:29:14 It's beautiful.

David Rosenthal 1:29:14 Have you been to Greece?

Ben Gilbert 1:29:15 I have not.

David Rosenthal 1:29:16 Oh, okay. I was curious how it compares to Greece.

Ben Gilbert 1:29:18 I think it's similar to some of the sort of Grecian islands.

David Rosenthal 1:29:21 Greece islands.

Ben Gilbert 1:29:21 This one has, uh, some cool history associated with it because at, at one point, the Roman emperor was sort of fleeing, and I don't know if it was paranoia or it was legitimate, but just thought that everyone in Rome was coming to try and to kill him. And so he, like, fled to Capri and ruled from the island-

David Rosenthal 1:29:37 Oh

Ben Gilbert 1:29:38 ... uh, where he could sort of see in every direction to sort of fortify. It was remote work-

David Rosenthal 1:29:43 Remote work [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:29:45 ... before remote work. Yeah, that's, like, one of my-

David Rosenthal 1:29:46 He was, he was a-

Ben Gilbert 1:29:47 That would be a carve-out for me

David Rosenthal 1:29:48 ... a pre-digital nomad.

Ben Gilbert 1:29:49 Yes. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:29:51 Ah. That's the cool thing about Italy and, um, every European country compared to here, but I feel like especially Italy, the sense of history, especially for, you know, us two history buffs, like-

Ben Gilbert 1:30:02 Yep

David Rosenthal 1:30:03 ... you know, you walk around Rome or Florence, and... I mean, Rome especially, but Florence in its own right is still ancient history compared to America. But, like Rome, like, you're talking about the ancient Roman times.

Ben Gilbert 1:30:13 And you... I mean, actually walking around the Forum is wild because you're, like, literally looking at pillars that are 3,000 years old-

David Rosenthal 1:30:21 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:30:21 ... at least 2,000 years old.

David Rosenthal 1:30:22 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:30:23 So we're thinking about where to go on a, a honeymoon, probably early to mid next year, and I, I, like, I wanna [chuckles] go back to Italy. This is a, a magical place.

David Rosenthal 1:30:32 This is the problem as you get older and you have cool travel experiences. You're like, "I wanna go back to those places," but you also wanna experience new places.

Ben Gilbert 1:30:40 The rest of the world, right. Like, I will die without seeing most of the world, no matter how much I travel, and so should I try and put a dent in that as much as possible, or should I say, "You know, there's this one spot in Hawaii that I really like, and so every single year I'm going back there?"

David Rosenthal 1:30:56 Clearly, the answer is both.

Ben Gilbert 1:30:57 Both. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:31:00 [laughing] Maybe you had some other plan for carve-outs, but, like, I mean, I feel like I'm, like, decently up on, like, the latest, like, tech and gadgets and stuff, but, like, you're like... You, you made some interesting decisions about-

Ben Gilbert 1:31:11 Oh, yeah

David Rosenthal 1:31:11 ... your personal technology.

Ben Gilbert 1:31:11 We're gonna review my Apple, Apple year in review?

David Rosenthal 1:31:13 Yeah, yeah. Can we do an Apple year in review for Ben?

Ben Gilbert 1:31:15 Yeah, let's do it. So got the iPad Mini.... for Acquired, we both-

David Rosenthal 1:31:19 Yep

Ben Gilbert 1:31:19 -are rocking the,

David Rosenthal 1:31:20 Got it

Ben Gilbert 1:31:20 the Mini 'cause it's, uh, very, very good for on stage.

David Rosenthal 1:31:22 Great.

Ben Gilbert 1:31:22 As we did more live stuff, it's just game changer for that.

David Rosenthal 1:31:25 This is the perfect device for live events and a- any kind of where you're not sitting in front of a computer monitor.

Ben Gilbert 1:31:31 Yeah. Easy to hold it in one hand. I really want the big iPad Pro, but I have basically no use for it. Like, this is actually the device that suits my use case. I think a little over a year ago, I got the MacBook Pro 16-inch, which is-

David Rosenthal 1:31:46 Which has the lovely Fire.

Ben Gilbert 1:31:47 Right here. This is our Fire-

David Rosenthal 1:31:48 Yep

Ben Gilbert 1:31:48 ... which is a, the, the finest computer I've ever owned. It's a tank-

David Rosenthal 1:31:51 The display is amazing.

Ben Gilbert 1:31:51 It's heavy. Yes, the display is unbelievable. I mean, everything about this thing is nuts. I do have envy. The M2 MacBook Air, that thing is sexy.

David Rosenthal 1:31:59 Ah, it is.

Ben Gilbert 1:31:59 Like, so thin, so light. A lot of the capability of this one, but when I'm traveling, and because what we do is so everything intensive, it's bandwidth intensive, it's storage intensive. I- the SD slot-

David Rosenthal 1:32:13 It's gear intensive

Ben Gilbert 1:32:14 ... having, like, you just need, like, a desktop computer with you all the time. We're transferring hundreds of gigabytes back and forth after we record for all the multiple camera videos. I want the good webcam that comes on this computer in case we have to do a remote episode. I want the screen space 'cause I'm also a venture capitalist, and I'm doing spreadsheet-y things. I have a hard time with a travel computer. So if they made an 18-inch computer, and they made it three pounds heavier, I might buy that one, too.

David Rosenthal 1:32:42 When you're doing purely personal travel, do you not bring this and just bring the iPad?

Ben Gilbert 1:32:48 No, absolutely not.

David Rosenthal 1:32:49 Oh, so you still bring this?

Ben Gilbert 1:32:50 Yeah, yeah. The- purely personal travel, what are you talking about?

David Rosenthal 1:32:52 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:32:52 I don't... There's not a single day where I'm on personal vacation where I'm not also doing something.

David Rosenthal 1:33:00 Yeah, that's true. That's... Even [chuckles] for yours truly, that's-

Ben Gilbert 1:33:02 I mean, we're small business-

David Rosenthal 1:33:03 True

Ben Gilbert 1:33:03 ... owners.

David Rosenthal 1:33:03 Yeah, we are. We are small business owners.

Ben Gilbert 1:33:04 There are things every single day-

David Rosenthal 1:33:05 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:33:05 ... where there's no one else that can do it, and so either it doesn't happen, or we have to do it.

David Rosenthal 1:33:11 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 1:33:11 And that's on top of, like, me being a professional venture capitalist, where, like, there's real obligations that come with-

David Rosenthal 1:33:18 Right

Ben Gilbert 1:33:18 ... and that you don't necessarily need the heaviest computer you can find for, but, like, you need to be pretty responsive on a lot of things, and sometimes if you're-

David Rosenthal 1:33:26 That's true, like if we need to um-

Ben Gilbert 1:33:28 ... reviewing a document or a, y- you need a real computer.

David Rosenthal 1:33:29 We need to make edits to an episode or something like-

Ben Gilbert 1:33:32 I need to bust out Audition.

David Rosenthal 1:33:33 You can't do that on an iPad. Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:33:34 Yeah. And I could do that on a smaller computer, and, a- and, and maybe this is totally overkill. Like, when you got here today, I had left to go to a board meeting and then a lunch and then meet someone for coffee for a nonprofit that I'm, I'm working with, and none of those things required a computer, but I brought my backpack with my computer in it to all three, even though I kn- knew I would never take it out. Because if something came up, I would need to be able to, like, get away for five minutes, do something on my computer, put it back in my bag, and then go back to whatever I was doing.

David Rosenthal 1:34:05 I love it. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:34:06 You just never know.

David Rosenthal 1:34:07 You never know.

Ben Gilbert 1:34:07 And I'm probably overly paranoid on that, but it's like the one time you get burned changes your behavior forever.

David Rosenthal 1:34:12 Okay, so opposite of this and where I thought you were gonna start.

Ben Gilbert 1:34:16 So I really like to take pictures. I'm a very big nerd about, like, understanding all the physics and as much of the black box that Apple will let you understand of the computational photography engine. But I also have, like, I think it's tendinosis? Something's up with my wrists. They fatigue super easily, and I get basically tennis elbow, and it's probably from having my computer with me all the time and, and, like, constantly-

David Rosenthal 1:34:38 It's having that beast on you

Ben Gilbert 1:34:39 ... being hunched over a computer.

David Rosenthal 1:34:40 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:34:40 So I have the iPhone 13 Mini. It's the correctly sized phone. It's the correct weight for a phone. Uh, it's the correct sort of reachability for a phone, which I know Apple used to name a feature, which is a stupid feature. And so I was like, "Gosh, there's no iPhone 14 Mini." I would pay literally anything. I don't know if that is exactly right, but, like, four or five X the current iPhone prices-

David Rosenthal 1:35:02 You have a high willingness to pay

Ben Gilbert 1:35:03 ... for an iPhone 14 Pro Mini.

David Rosenthal 1:35:05 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:35:06 Like, Apple, if there's a test one in a lab somewhere, please send it to me. I will... Again, like, no price sensitivity around it. But I was like, "I should try the new phone and just, like, play with the cameras and stuff." I got it. As you would suspect, it was too big. It was too heavy. I waited 13 days until the 14-day return deadline, returned it, went back to my 13 Mini, and I'm thinking about buying another 13 Mini, because-

David Rosenthal 1:35:29 Oh

Ben Gilbert 1:35:29 ... like, at some point, the battery's gonna die on this one.

David Rosenthal 1:35:31 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 1:35:31 And if they never make another Mini again, like-

David Rosenthal 1:35:33 You wanna have one, like, on-

Ben Gilbert 1:35:35 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:35:35 ... in cold storage.

Ben Gilbert 1:35:35 It's just like my, uh, Nikes upstairs-

David Rosenthal 1:35:37 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:35:37 ... that I've got stacked in the closet.

David Rosenthal 1:35:39 It is the perfect size phone. So I have, um, I have a 12 Mini right now. I didn't upgrade to the 13. [chuckles] I probably should have, because-

Ben Gilbert 1:35:47 Dude, you totally... U- upgrade right now before they run out.

David Rosenthal 1:35:49 Well, I've realized I finally need to upgrade the 12 Mini, and the biggest driving factor for me as a new parent was the camera. And so I actually... Well, I haven't gotten it yet. It's, 'cause it's on backorder-

Ben Gilbert 1:35:59 Oh!

David Rosenthal 1:35:59 ... but I went to the 14 Pro.

Ben Gilbert 1:36:00 Wow.

David Rosenthal 1:36:01 Um, which I have never had any of the Pro iPhones. Like, I care about technology a lot, but I was just never compelled by... I don't care that much- didn't- used to not care that much about photography.

Ben Gilbert 1:36:12 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:36:12 And so I was just never that compelled by the Pro versions, and I really cared about size, but now with a little one-

Ben Gilbert 1:36:19 If I was a parent, I think I would buy the 14 Pro also.

David Rosenthal 1:36:21 Well, it's a double whammy. What I cared most about size was for portability when out and about. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:36:30 [chuckles] Which that part of your life has gone away.

David Rosenthal 1:36:32 That part of my life is... I particularly like exercising. Now, [chuckles] my exercise is primarily walking a stroller, which has a lot of carrying capacity, and I didn't care that much about photo quality. I took very few photos before, I mean, and now just, like, some of the best advice... And I, I love talking to people who have older kids-

Ben Gilbert 1:36:50 Hmm

David Rosenthal 1:36:50 ... and being like, 'cause y- you just realize time just slips away, like-

Ben Gilbert 1:36:54 Mm-hmm

David Rosenthal 1:36:54 ... when you have a kid. And, um, almost universally, "I wish I'd taken more photos. I especially wish I'd taken more videos-

Ben Gilbert 1:37:00 Hmm

David Rosenthal 1:37:00 ... uh, throughout the..." And so, like, I'm like, "Ah, all right, so the Pro I have on order," but I, I'm conflicted about it. Like, I'm really gonna miss the form factor.

Ben Gilbert 1:37:08 You are. You're really gonna miss it. Yeah, it's, like, not gonna fit in your pocket.

David Rosenthal 1:37:12 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:37:13 It's gonna be-

David Rosenthal 1:37:14 It's gonna be a transition.

Ben Gilbert 1:37:16 And also, the camera mountain on this one is so large that the phone actually rocks when you're leaving it on a table and typing. It's fascinating to see the set of trade-offs Apple's been okay with in the name of getting the very best-... photos that they can out of this thing.

David Rosenthal 1:37:31 Which, as a parent now, I'm like, I see the business reason [chuckles] for doing that.

Ben Gilbert 1:37:34 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:37:34 Okay, so keep going on the lineup, 'cause you've got another important large device.

Ben Gilbert 1:37:38 Yeah, so I bought the Apple Watch-

David Rosenthal 1:37:39 You're having trouble lifting your arm there, I see. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:37:40 It's really heavy. Uh, f- I was about to say the Apple Watch 14. The Apple Watch Ultra, which I'm sure next year is gonna be the Apple Watch Ultra 2 or the Apple Watch 2 Ultra. I'm curious how they'll name... Apple Watch Ultra second generation, I imagine, is what they'll do. Anyway, this thing is actually super light relative to how large it is, and, uh, you made the joke about lifting your arm. I, like, don't feel it anymore, and I think that happens with all watches over time. You sort of, like, get used to the weight. But one of the big things that sold me on it is, 'cause I thought the reason I was gonna hate it was the weight, I, like, put it on and I'm like, "This..." I think it's the titanium. Remarkably light for how large it is. It's big. For sure, it's big.

David Rosenthal 1:38:17 It's beautiful, though.

Ben Gilbert 1:38:17 The screen is s- yeah, super clear. Like, you can look at pictures on it. It's really bright. It's 2,000 nits, so, like, it has a flashlight button because it functions as a fairly effective flashlight. The battery lasts, like, almost three days-

David Rosenthal 1:38:29 Wow

Ben Gilbert 1:38:29 ... which is totally game-changing if you... I, I think I've tracked every single night of sleep for four or five years now, and so that's, like, a thing that I- that's a use case I really care about. I haven't done anything extreme in it yet. Like, I've climbed Mount St. Helens.

David Rosenthal 1:38:43 Got this great photo behind me.

Ben Gilbert 1:38:45 Yeah, that's Iceland, that I did with my dad. He used to do this big backpacking trip every summer, and I have not adventured in this thing yet, mostly 'cause I, I've just been doing less adventuring over the last year or two. But, um, I totally expect to use it for the stated purposes, but it's been awesome for me, even not for the Ultra-type purposes that it's advertised for.

David Rosenthal 1:39:06 The photo viewing, I would imagine, is a really... I would never think I wanna view photos-

Ben Gilbert 1:39:12 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:39:12 ... on my w- wrist, but, like, actually, I, I think that could be pretty useful.

Ben Gilbert 1:39:14 There, there's a good number of times where I'm like, "Okay, cool, I, I saw it clearly enough now where I don't need to also pull it up on my phone."

David Rosenthal 1:39:19 Yeah, when you're getting photos in a text chat.

Ben Gilbert 1:39:21 Yes, exactly.

David Rosenthal 1:39:22 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 1:39:22 The other interesting thing is the screen is just large enough where it kind of feels like a small phone and less like a big watch, and I think it's the edge-to-edge display, the fact that they have the, like, you know, raised-

David Rosenthal 1:39:35 Bezel around it

Ben Gilbert 1:39:35 ... bezel around it, yeah. It has an on-screen keyboard that you can use the finger swiping on-

David Rosenthal 1:39:41 Oh.

Ben Gilbert 1:39:41 -and so I literally can just, like, s- swipe on the keyboard to respond to text messages. So I can't decide if that's, like, really nerdy and, like, Casio mid-'80s, and, like, that's not actually useful, but I've probably done it 30 or 40 times since I've gotten it to r- respond to text messages real quick, and that's been pretty nice.

David Rosenthal 1:40:00 The one thing I wish they had added that, to me, would be a maybe not killer feature, but, like, a really, really nice to have, would be some sort of biometric authentication in the watch. 'Cause what I don't like is when I... Well, maybe with a Ultra, I wouldn't have to take it off to charge it as much, but when I put my watch back on-

Ben Gilbert 1:40:18 Ah

David Rosenthal 1:40:18 ... after I'm charging it, then I gotta enter my PIN code every time, which, you know, like, first-world problems, right?

Ben Gilbert 1:40:22 Unless-

David Rosenthal 1:40:22 But, like, I don't understand why they can't put a Touch ID sensor. I mean, I know they're trying to save as much space as possible in there-

Ben Gilbert 1:40:27 Right

David Rosenthal 1:40:27 ... but, like-

Ben Gilbert 1:40:28 No, that's good. You're right, there's no biometric on it, but I think a feature that it does have is if you put it on, and then you take out your phone before you need to type in the passcode on your watch, and you Face ID on your phone, your watch is auto-unlocked.

David Rosenthal 1:40:43 Yes, that is true, but I've found that to be kinda janky.

Ben Gilbert 1:40:45 I have found that to be kind of janky, too.

David Rosenthal 1:40:46 Yeah, I can't, like, reliably trust-

Ben Gilbert 1:40:49 Yes

David Rosenthal 1:40:49 ... that it's gonna work.

Ben Gilbert 1:40:49 Totally agree. I'm like, "Why do I still need to type in a passcode? I swear I shouldn't need a passcode right now."

David Rosenthal 1:40:54 And, [chuckles] one of the things I found, maybe I need a different watch band to solve the problem, but toddlers really like to grab shiny things- [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:41:02 ... with screens, and, uh, especially ones that are on your wrist while you're changing diapers. And so the amount of times a day [chuckles] that I enter my passcode on my watch is, uh, a lot larger than it used to be, shall we say. All right, so let's go with your Apple... We'll go reverse order for you. Give me your Apple lineup, and then let's get into your year in review.

David Rosenthal 1:41:19 Ooh, okay. So I'm still rocking the 2020 original OG M1 MacBook Air.

Ben Gilbert 1:41:26 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:41:27 Which there's so much more performant machines out there like this now, but, like, I still have tons of headroom.

Ben Gilbert 1:41:32 Right, I'm not sure you'd notice the performance difference.

David Rosenthal 1:41:34 Yeah, and, like, the leap forward that that M1 chip was, was just incredible. I mean, performance, battery life, price point.

Ben Gilbert 1:41:46 Yeah, it's crazy.

David Rosenthal 1:41:47 I don't know what these 2020 original M1 MacBook Airs are going for on, like, eBay or Craigslist or whatnot right now.

Ben Gilbert 1:41:54 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:41:54 Whatever they're going for, like, I bet $500-ish, maybe less, the amount of performance and longevity that you can get for that dollar amount-

Ben Gilbert 1:42:04 Yeah, it's crazy

David Rosenthal 1:42:05 ... is crazy.

Ben Gilbert 1:42:06 You're right. If it's only $500, it's way better than... Let's say you have, like, a 2018 or 2019 Intel machine. It's so worth it to trade up to even an old M1, 'cause they're just not that different after three years.

David Rosenthal 1:42:23 Yep, totally. I can't imagine anything that a normal human [chuckles] would need to do on a computer that the M1 MacBook can't handle.

Ben Gilbert 1:42:35 Yep, okay, so keeping that guy.

David Rosenthal 1:42:36 Uh, okay, so there's that. Uh, we talked about my phone. I'm currently rocking the 12 mini. Very mixed emotions about transitioning to the 14 Pro.

Ben Gilbert 1:42:44 Yep.

David Rosenthal 1:42:45 And I'm rocking the, uh, original SE Apple Watch.

Ben Gilbert 1:42:50 I forgot they made a Watch SE.

David Rosenthal 1:42:52 They have two now. There's a new SE 2. I don't know exactly what the SE 2 has feature set. I'm very tempted by the Ultra for all the reasons we discussed.

Ben Gilbert 1:43:02 Highly recommend it.

David Rosenthal 1:43:03 My decision for going with the SE originally was it didn't have the always-on screen, and I actively did not want the always-on screen.

Ben Gilbert 1:43:11 Mm.

David Rosenthal 1:43:13 How do you find... Do you... Does it... Do you find it distracts you at all?

Ben Gilbert 1:43:15 I like it now, especially with the Wayfinder watch face that comes on the Ultra. When it's off, you still see the watch hands, but everything else, it's a black background, and then when you turn it, it's got sort of the white-

David Rosenthal 1:43:25 Mm

Ben Gilbert 1:43:26 ... face comes on. So I, I like it.

David Rosenthal 1:43:28 Nice.

Ben Gilbert 1:43:29 ... I did not like the always-on display on the phone when I had the 14 Pro. It was, like, loud.

David Rosenthal 1:43:35 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:43:35 It felt like-

David Rosenthal 1:43:35 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:43:35 ... my phone didn't, it's, like, really on.

David Rosenthal 1:43:38 Yeah. [chuckles] But on the, on the watch, it, uh- yeah, d- it's, it's subtle.

Ben Gilbert 1:43:41 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:43:41 It's not, like, noticeable.

Ben Gilbert 1:43:43 I will say, too, I was in a coffee meeting today where I did need to call an Uber so that I could get back here so that we could record, and, like, it was quite nice being able to, like, have the watch at a super-

David Rosenthal 1:43:55 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 1:43:56 What's the angle? Juice angle.

David Rosenthal 1:43:56 'Cause there's the social, like, thing about, uh-

Ben Gilbert 1:43:58 Checking your watch

David Rosenthal 1:43:59 ... checking your watch.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:00 But having it, like, being able to see the time when I was looking at it at, like, 170-degree angle, and I used to definitely be the person that's, like, jerking my wrist or, like, tapping it to try to see the time. So that's like-

David Rosenthal 1:44:11 That is one.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:12 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:44:12 Yeah, I'll do, like, I'll, I'll put my hands under the table and then, like, tap it-

Ben Gilbert 1:44:16 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:44:16 ... like, surreptitiously.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:17 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:44:18 And then on the iPad side, the iPad Mini, I had the one really only negative experience, besides the just amount of work that we and PitchBook put into the Arena show, was my old iPad got stolen after the Arena show.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:31 Criminal.

David Rosenthal 1:44:33 Literally criminal. I could still see it on, like, the map on the Find My Devices. It was somewhere up, uh, like Northgate or somewhere, like, north of Seattle and, like, but-

Ben Gilbert 1:44:40 It's like one of these things where you're like, "Just 'cause I know where that is, it does not mean I should go there and get it." [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 1:44:44 Yeah. No, [laughing] definitely not. Oh, man. But the Mini, I really like the Mini. It's not nearly as good for watching and consuming content.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:53 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:44:53 I have an old iPad that we keep in the kitchen for when I'm doing the dishes and stuff.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:56 And that you have ProMotion on, right? Like, the Minis don't have a ProMotion display, the 120 hertz.

David Rosenthal 1:45:03 Yeah. Oh, no, I've got, like, an old, old iPad-

Ben Gilbert 1:45:05 Oh, okay

David Rosenthal 1:45:05 ... that I don't think has ProMotion.

Ben Gilbert 1:45:06 I feel like you used to have one with a ProMotion display.

David Rosenthal 1:45:09 You know what? Maybe it does. I think it's an original, the first iPad Pro that they made in 2017.

Ben Gilbert 1:45:14 Yeah, that one did.

David Rosenthal 1:45:14 Okay, you're right, it does have ProMotion. It does have ProMotion.

Ben Gilbert 1:45:17 'Cause that I actually missed when I was downgrading from the new iPhone down to the 13 Mini-

David Rosenthal 1:45:22 Mm

Ben Gilbert 1:45:22 ... 'cause the non-Pro iPhones have never had ProMotion.

David Rosenthal 1:45:24 Right, that's the, goes up to 120-

Ben Gilbert 1:45:26 Hertz

David Rosenthal 1:45:26 ... hertz refresh rate-

Ben Gilbert 1:45:27 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:45:28 ... on the screen.

Ben Gilbert 1:45:28 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:45:28 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:45:29 Butter.

David Rosenthal 1:45:30 The Mini is great, though, for events. It's also really good... I've stopped- I use a, I have a Kindle Oasis that I use for reading fiction-

Ben Gilbert 1:45:38 Ooh

David Rosenthal 1:45:38 ... at home, but when I travel, I no longer bring the Kindle Oasis and I use this as a Kindle. It's great for that.

Ben Gilbert 1:45:44 I find, like, for, uh, for outdoor stuff, you can't beat the Kindle.

David Rosenthal 1:45:50 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:45:50 I also find that night, reading in bed, the iPad, even in the lightest setting, is kind of too bright.

David Rosenthal 1:45:57 That's true. When going to the beach, I'll still bring the Kindle. I w- I wouldn't, I wouldn't feel good bringing this to a beach.

Ben Gilbert 1:46:03 Yeah, that's a good point, 'cause they're not waterproof. Unlike iPhones, iPads are not waterproof. The device that's still in my lineup that blows my mind is, uh, in 2012, as a college graduation gift, my uncle got me the $70 Kindle, and that is still the Kindle that I use-

David Rosenthal 1:46:23 Wow

Ben Gilbert 1:46:23 ... and take on vacation. It's such a good product.

David Rosenthal 1:46:25 They are, like, industrial strength.

Ben Gilbert 1:46:28 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:46:29 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:46:29 And super light. Like, I looked at getting the Oasis, but it's actually heavier than my 2012 model.

David Rosenthal 1:46:35 The nice thing about the Oasis is it's got the page turn buttons-

Ben Gilbert 1:46:38 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:46:38 ... which I like.

Ben Gilbert 1:46:38 And the Paperwhite is a really nice-

David Rosenthal 1:46:40 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:46:41 I'm envious of the Paperwhite, for sure. My Kindle is actually worthless in bed, because you need to light it-

David Rosenthal 1:46:46 Right

Ben Gilbert 1:46:46 ... with a-

David Rosenthal 1:46:47 Right. Jenny and I got the Oasis for that very reason. Jenny's a night owl, and I'm a morning person.

Ben Gilbert 1:46:53 Mm.

David Rosenthal 1:46:53 And Jenny is a huge reader. She has a PhD in literature, and, um, I'm a huge reader, too, but she puts me to shame. She would stay up reading [chuckles] at night with the light on, [chuckles] and I was just like, "I'm buying you this." [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:47:05 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:47:05 "Turn the light on."

Ben Gilbert 1:47:06 "It's for you and for me."

David Rosenthal 1:47:07 "It's for you, but mostly for me." [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:47:10 [laughing] All right, so your 2022 personal year.

David Rosenthal 1:47:13 Ooh, 2022 personal year. Well, this was the year of, uh, adjusting to life as a parent. Our daughter was born towards the end of 2021, so that was like, most of the year was preparing and, you know, then, like, the first couple months are like, [whooshes] It's... I mean, of course, we're thinking back now on the FTX interview when we, when we had Sam on.

Ben Gilbert 1:47:34 Was that your first interview back?

David Rosenthal 1:47:35 It was in there. I mean, I was still in the fog of war. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:47:39 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:47:39 Like, it was, uh... I know we released the interview, uh, beginning of December.

Ben Gilbert 1:47:44 Oh, we switched it with the Michael Lobitz episode. I think Michael, we interviewed Michael first.

David Rosenthal 1:47:48 Right. That's right, that's right. But all of that, she was no more than two months old, probably less. Like, [chuckles] it's such a fog. Yeah, those first few months, but then this year has been, you know, Jenny went back to work, and she works in person. She works at San Francisco Ballet, like, it's an in-person physical art form. They put on physical performances. She needs to be in the office every day and weekends and nights. So yeah, this year was just about figuring out [chuckles] life, like, with a lot of changes. But we met early in college-

Ben Gilbert 1:48:19 Right

David Rosenthal 1:48:19 ... so we were like babies, you know? And then we were-

Ben Gilbert 1:48:21 You were together for 17 years before having a kid, 16 years?

David Rosenthal 1:48:25 Uh, 16 years. Yeah, 16 years before having a kid, [chuckles] which were wonderful 16 years, and I'm glad we had all that time together pre-baby, but we hadn't had to, like, really renegotiate our relationship [chuckles] in a long time. So, uh, it was like, oh, wow, flexing old muscles again.

Ben Gilbert 1:48:40 Yeah, I bet.

David Rosenthal 1:48:41 But the last time was when we got married, and, like, we didn't expect, and, you know, so hearing you talk about, um, things are different when you get married, like, they really are.

Ben Gilbert 1:48:49 All your life systems have to change. Your notion of self is only about one person, but after you're married, your notion of self includes another person whose emotions-

David Rosenthal 1:49:02 Oh, just wait [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:49:03 ... y- you can't actually feel. So, like, when you're, like, looking out for yourself, you have to account for things that you currently don't know, which I think is this, like, very interesting phenomenon.

David Rosenthal 1:49:14 Yeah, and that is so true about getting married, but then having a kid, I think that's, like, the biggest, um... Well, there's so many huge things, but one is, like, you now have this other being. Like, when you get married, yes, you have to account for the other person, and you're, like, in it together. You're no longer just you.

Ben Gilbert 1:49:30 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:49:30 But that other person-

Ben Gilbert 1:49:31 You're checking on decisions. You're, like, trying to figure out-

David Rosenthal 1:49:33 ... you know, is, like, a responsible adult- [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:49:35 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:49:35 ... hopefully. [laughing] You know, can keep themselves alive.

Ben Gilbert 1:49:39 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:49:39 Can, like, if we're going late recording an Acquired episode, she'll be fine.

Ben Gilbert 1:49:43 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:49:43 You know? [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:49:43 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:49:44 When you have a kid, [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:49:46 ... right, kid starves.

David Rosenthal 1:49:48 Yeah, like you can't, like, twenty-four seven, somebody needs to have as, like, a pretty foreground in their mental processes, like, I need the, like, algorithm of how I'm behaving needs to have at the forefront, "Keep this kid alive and happy." [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:50:03 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:50:03 And they're incapable of doing so on their own. And, you know, you love this person so incredibly much in just really, like, unfathomable ways, and so it's like, yeah, how do you, like, then integrate that back with your life? So that was- it's been a lot of figuring that out for us.

Ben Gilbert 1:50:22 Hmm.

David Rosenthal 1:50:23 And now, like, we're now at such a good age. Not that it's still not difficult. She's a little over a year old now, 14 months, and, like, it's so fun. Like, it's always been fun. I've always... I've not been- I think a lot of parents, and especially a lot of dads, they don't love their kids immediately, and, like, that's a very normal thing of like, you know... Well, moms, too, have this, but, like, kid pops out, and you're like, "Whoa!" [chuckles] You know?

Ben Gilbert 1:50:44 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:50:44 But there's, there's no instant love. I had the instant love, [chuckles] like instant.

Ben Gilbert 1:50:48 Mm.

David Rosenthal 1:50:48 Uh, like very, very powerful, and I still feel that, but, like, also, like, as they become more of a person, like, she's walking now, she's talking, like, a little bit, and like, but she, like, so clearly has a personality, and, like, every day, I'm like: Oh, wow! Like, you are even more of a person than you were yesterday, and, like, it's so fun. And it's, like, also a lot easier than the... Just, like, the early days are so physically demanding-

Ben Gilbert 1:51:11 I bet

David Rosenthal 1:51:12 ... like, on everybody, especially moms, but, like, any, any caregiver.

Ben Gilbert 1:51:16 It's one of these things that, like, you can describe it, but having not experienced it, I don't actually know what it's like. It's like, oh-

David Rosenthal 1:51:21 Oh, yeah, there's no way

Ben Gilbert 1:51:22 ... cool, cool words, David.

David Rosenthal 1:51:22 There's no... Yeah, yeah, right. [laughing] Exa- [chuckles] exactly. Highly, highly recommend it, but, uh, you know, in due time.

Ben Gilbert 1:51:28 Yeah. Other stuff for you this year personally?

David Rosenthal 1:51:31 It's sort of crazy looking back on it, like, so much changes when you parent. But, um, we were both intentional about this, but also I think it just naturally happened because it is important and part of our lives. We didn't actually [chuckles] travel any less. Like, we didn't travel in the early, early months-

Ben Gilbert 1:51:47 Mm-hmm

David Rosenthal 1:51:47 ... but we did... What did we do? Eight or nine trips with the baby in 2022, including going to Portugal. We made that a family trip when we went for Breakpoint, which, like, actually was great. Like, really hard, very different. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:52:04 It seemed very hard-

David Rosenthal 1:52:05 It, it-

Ben Gilbert 1:52:05 ... I'm gonna say, from the outside.

David Rosenthal 1:52:06 It was hard. It was hard, but I'm really glad we did it. I'm really glad we did it. Then the other big thing for us this year, we'd spent a lot of time over the last couple of years thinking about where we wanted to live in general, and then in anticipation of having a baby, and then after having the baby. Jenny and I went around the axle so many times about California. We were pretty sure we were gonna stay in California, and probably the Bay Area. Jenny's family's there, and, and we genuinely really love it there. But do we move to the suburbs? Where do we move? Do we stay in the city? We were in the city before, and we ultimately decided to stay in the city, to stay in the same neighborhood. We moved houses, but, you know, the plan for now is we're just, like, gonna stay for the perpetuity in the city, and which some people, I think, are like: "That's crazy. Why would you... You know, why would you live in San Francisco, period?" [chuckles] Especially post-pandemic, why would you raise kids in San Francisco? It's actually great. Like, for us, it's been amazing. We can walk. We don't have to drive.

Ben Gilbert 1:53:04 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:53:04 We don't have to get her in the car. There's so much great stuff. She really enjoys it, like, she's a city kid. Like, after Breakpoint, we went out in the countryside in Portugal for a couple days. The baby was so bored. [chuckles] She was like-

Ben Gilbert 1:53:17 Really?

David Rosenthal 1:53:17 ... "Get me back to Lisbon." [chuckles] Like-

Ben Gilbert 1:53:19 Oh, wow.

David Rosenthal 1:53:20 Um, so it's actually been really great for us, staying in the city.

Ben Gilbert 1:53:23 Wow.

David Rosenthal 1:53:23 We'll see as she gets older, but, um, but that's the plan.

Ben Gilbert 1:53:27 That's great.

David Rosenthal 1:53:28 Well, this is the perfect spot to thank our next sponsor of the episode, our very good friends over at Tiny.

Ben Gilbert 1:53:37 Our final sponsor of the season-

David Rosenthal 1:53:39 I know!

Ben Gilbert 1:53:40 -the year.

David Rosenthal 1:53:40 Crazy. Tiny, as you all know by now, is the Berkshire Hathaway of the internet, and has built and acquired the world's premier collection of truly wonderful internet businesses.

Ben Gilbert 1:53:53 Yeah, truly. And when people refer to them as the Berkshire Hathaway of the internet, it makes sense on two angles: One, Berkshire doesn't really invest in tech businesses. I mean, recently, they've... Obviously, a quarter of Berkshire's, or something, is Apple, and then, uh, recently, it invested in TSMC, which was fascinating.

David Rosenthal 1:54:08 Saw that.

Ben Gilbert 1:54:09 But also, the wonderful internet businesses that Tiny is buying, these companies that are doing, what is it? About f- five million in-

David Rosenthal 1:54:15 Five million in annual occurring revenue, 30 to 40% operating margins.

Ben Gilbert 1:54:19 Or the ability to quickly get there, if you sort of could move your business around and get to that level. That's extremely interesting to Tiny and extremely not interesting to Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire is at a scale where that is no longer something that could move the needle for them, but it could have for Warren in 1980.

David Rosenthal 1:54:34 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:54:34 I always just thought that was an apt analogy. Rather than saying everything that we normally say about Tiny on this episode, I think we should just sort of leave you with this thing. If you are a founder, or you're a venture investor, or you're friends with a founder or a venture investor who's just working with a company that is no longer a fit for venture capital, that has raised venture capital, but that's just not the right way to run the business going forward, just call Tiny. And when I say call, I mean email-

David Rosenthal 1:55:02 Email

Ben Gilbert 1:55:02 ... because it's 2022 [chuckles] going on 2023. And I think there are just so many businesses out there, like Acquired, that should be run by the founders, that can grow modestly every year, that can be nice, profitable businesses, that take advantage of the internet, either for distribution or, as we were discussing earlier, for making a more efficient back of house to have better profitability than sort of non-tech-enabled counterparts. And these are the types of businesses that may or may not make sense for venture capital, which needs super fast-growing businesses, gigantic markets, the potential-

David Rosenthal 1:55:39 Or the ability for an exit

Ben Gilbert 1:55:40 ... IPO.

David Rosenthal 1:55:40 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:55:41 And especially with the IPO markets and really a lot of the M&A markets being effectively closed right now, uh-... Tiny's a great option.

David Rosenthal 1:55:48 Yeah. So email hi@tiny.com. Tell them Ben and David sent you. They are truly great folks. They are a pleasure to do business with, and we can't thank them and vouch for them enough.

Ben Gilbert 1:56:00 Yep. Thanks, Tiny. Carve outs?

David Rosenthal 1:56:03 Carve outs. Let's do it.

Ben Gilbert 1:56:04 All right, should we start with books?

David Rosenthal 1:56:06 Let's do it.

Ben Gilbert 1:56:07 All right. I can't remember if I recommended this one, 'cause I read it over the holidays last year. I think it might have been my first carve out of 2022, Project Hail Mary.

David Rosenthal 1:56:17 Oh, yeah. I think I read it on your recommendation.

Ben Gilbert 1:56:20 That's right.

David Rosenthal 1:56:20 Can vouch, very good.

Ben Gilbert 1:56:22 I think it's the best fiction I've ever read. Definitely the best sci-fi I've ever read.

David Rosenthal 1:56:25 Whoa!

Ben Gilbert 1:56:25 I think it's the best fiction I've ever read. The premise arrives at you in real time as you read it, so I don't wanna give away the premise. Unless otherwise stated, this is a spoiler-free-

David Rosenthal 1:56:34 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:56:34 ... uh, carve outs. The coolest thing about Project Hail Mary is how it is basically all in our universe. There's no big leap. Like, in Star Trek, you have to, like, take this leap of like, well, there's warp drive, and you don't really understand how it works, and that's fine. And now that we accept this black box, now we can go do other stuff. There's not, like, an accepted black box in Project Hail Mary. There's just, like, all the known rules of physics that we know about, and-

David Rosenthal 1:57:03 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:57:03 -then you go from there.

David Rosenthal 1:57:04 It's, uh... It's hard sci-fi, I think is the term, right?

Ben Gilbert 1:57:05 Is that what they call it?

David Rosenthal 1:57:06 Yeah, where it's like everything is, like, laws of physics-

Ben Gilbert 1:57:09 Right

David Rosenthal 1:57:10 ... explanations for everything.

Ben Gilbert 1:57:11 Right. So that was super cool. Another book that I finished about two months ago that I thought was exceptional, and every single person who listens to Acquired should read it. I think it expands even broader than this audience, but this audience in particular would l- eat it up, called The Psychology of Money-

David Rosenthal 1:57:27 Oh, yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:57:27 ... by Morgan Housel.

David Rosenthal 1:57:28 We got to talk to Morgan, uh, recently.

Ben Gilbert 1:57:30 That was really fun.

David Rosenthal 1:57:31 It was really fun.

Ben Gilbert 1:57:31 And when we hopped on that call with him, it was like I was two-thirds through the book, and so it was really fun, like, getting to talk about some of the concepts with him while I was in real time digesting them. But he's unbelievably-

David Rosenthal 1:57:43 I suspect, I-

Ben Gilbert 1:57:43 ... pithy and a real class act

David Rosenthal 1:57:44 I need to read the book. I haven't read it. I, I need to read it, and, yes, I agree, total class act. I suspect it's a really good one to read now, post-

Ben Gilbert 1:57:51 Oh, so good

David Rosenthal 1:57:51 ... 2020 and 2021 bubble, when, like, everything was crazy.

Ben Gilbert 1:57:54 It would've been great to read it during 2020 [chuckles] -

David Rosenthal 1:57:55 Yeah, right

Ben Gilbert 1:57:56 ... also. [laughs]

David Rosenthal 1:57:56 [laughs] Yeah. Yes. Uh...

Ben Gilbert 1:58:00 But it includes... I think I've, I've made it a carve out before, the, um, Morgan's essay, How All This Happened, and every chapter of Psychology of Money is one of his essays. And so if you liked... If you read How All This Happened, which is this m- amazing path of World War II through today, through the American economy and a lot of politics, and why different things happened, and how everything led to the next thing, The Psychology of Money is awesome, 'cause it incorporates all of that sort of like factual history with just really good perspectives and some citations of research on what actually makes people happy and what investment strategies work when your goal is happiness.

David Rosenthal 1:58:42 Hmm. I certainly don't account for enough of that in my own financial planning.

Ben Gilbert 1:58:47 Yeah. Morgan makes a very strong argument in the book to basically put as much into S&P 500 index funds when you're as young as you possibly can and just never sell anything. [chuckles] It's, like, the most boring style of investing possible that will probably beat whatever you do.

David Rosenthal 1:59:05 Yep. I gotta pick that up and read it. That'll be a good, uh, over the holidays book. Anything else you got in books?

Ben Gilbert 1:59:12 I do, actually. I'm halfway through it, and I was tempted to not talk about it, 'cause I, I wanna use it for a future carve out, but it's already so good, and this is another one where, like, listeners of the show will especially eat this up, The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby.

David Rosenthal 1:59:24 Ah. Is it worth reading, even if you're already steeped in the industry?

Ben Gilbert 1:59:27 Yes. You and I have done research on 250 companies and all these venture funds, and talked to the people that started a lot of these venture funds, and Sebastian knows more, and he just goes deeper. I mean, he just talks about these investments that, like... We think we've talked about the in- best investments of all time. There are more, and like-

David Rosenthal 1:59:42 Oh.

Ben Gilbert 1:59:43 He cites them all numerically. He cites returns on early venture capital funds. He takes you all the way through proto-venture capital. Like, I mean, there's George Doriot and then Arthur Rock, and he talks about, like, how all those partnerships sort of led to the next ones, and how certain structures were bad, and then the invention of the private limited partnership fixed all these problems. Y- you're gonna love it.

David Rosenthal 2:00:05 Okay. I might find that under the tree.

Ben Gilbert 2:00:08 That's all I got for books.

David Rosenthal 2:00:09 Oh, that's all you got? All right. My books, I've got two Acquired books that I can't believe we did both of these episodes this year, and we completely whiffed on this very obvious sort of like pun and fun-

Ben Gilbert 2:00:25 Uh-oh

David Rosenthal 2:00:25 ... moment.

Ben Gilbert 2:00:26 You know I don't like whiffs.

David Rosenthal 2:00:28 I know. I, I'm embarrassed by this. [chuckles] Like, mostly for me, this is, like, an ultimate, like, David Rosenthal, like, dad joke moment. My top two Acquired books, and they genuinely are also my top two Acquired books for the year, Made in Japan and Made in America.

Ben Gilbert 2:00:43 I made that joke.

David Rosenthal 2:00:44 Did you?

Ben Gilbert 2:00:44 Totally made that joke.

David Rosenthal 2:00:45 Oh, did you? Oh, wow, I can't believe I forgot that.

Ben Gilbert 2:00:47 I swear I did.

David Rosenthal 2:00:48 Did you? We'll have to go back through the transcripts.

Ben Gilbert 2:00:49 Or at least, like, observed that in some capacity. Maybe it was a tweet?

David Rosenthal 2:00:54 Maybe I just have dad brain.

Ben Gilbert 2:00:55 But isn't that crazy, that-

David Rosenthal 2:00:57 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 2:00:57 ... they're both named that?

David Rosenthal 2:00:58 And they're both so good.

Ben Gilbert 2:01:00 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 2:01:01 It's great.

Ben Gilbert 2:01:01 I agree.

David Rosenthal 2:01:01 Highly recommend. Non-Acquired books that I read this year, I think I did this as a carve out, uh, The Godfather series, the books.

Ben Gilbert 2:01:08 Yep.

David Rosenthal 2:01:09 Mario Puzo's books, they are so good, as good or better than the movies, and the movies are, uh, in my opinion, some of the best of all time.

Ben Gilbert 2:01:16 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 2:01:17 And then the other one is Masters of Doom. I don't know if I talked about that on the show.

Ben Gilbert 2:01:20 Hmm. We've thought about doing an id episode.

David Rosenthal 2:01:23 And then Lex did that, like, huge interview with Carmack, so it felt less urgent for us to do it. But, um, a really well-written book. And then the author of Masters of Doom, David Kushner, just did a follow-up piece, I think in Vanity Fair, of a-

Ben Gilbert 2:01:39 Oh, wow

David Rosenthal 2:01:39 ... follow-up interview. Did you see, I think-

Ben Gilbert 2:01:41 No

David Rosenthal 2:01:41 ... did I send this to you? With, um, Stevie Case, who's the CRO at Vanta.

Ben Gilbert 2:01:46 Whoa!

David Rosenthal 2:01:46 And Stevie is a prominent figure in the book, and she was the first, the first or one of the first, professional female gamers. Ended up working-... Did she work at id? She may have worked briefly at id, but then she joined Romero at his next company after Romero and Carmack broke up.

Ben Gilbert 2:02:03 Oh, crazy.

David Rosenthal 2:02:04 Anyway, crazy story, and then she went on, she came out to Silicon Valley, ended up working at Twilio, and now is the CRO at Vanta.

Ben Gilbert 2:02:09 Oh, you did tell me about this. I'm not sure I read the article, but I remember hearing, yeah.

David Rosenthal 2:02:13 Yeah. So good, both the book and the follow-up article. Great.

Ben Gilbert 2:02:17 Huh, cool.

David Rosenthal 2:02:17 And so Stevie's story is, is amazing. So that's my, that's my article carve-out, too, which is our next category.

Ben Gilbert 2:02:24 Mine was how all this happened.

David Rosenthal 2:02:25 Yeah, perfect.

Ben Gilbert 2:02:26 Podcasts?

David Rosenthal 2:02:27 Podcasts. I already mentioned Resonant Arc, my favorite video game podcast. Got All-In. Resonant Arc and All-In are, like, my go-to, must-listen every episode.

Ben Gilbert 2:02:38 Yep.

David Rosenthal 2:02:38 Two shout-outs, though, that I discovered this year and have become friends, David Senra and the Founders Podcast.

Ben Gilbert 2:02:45 Yep.

David Rosenthal 2:02:45 Of course, wonderful show, and we've become close with David, and, like, when you hear David on the show, he is exactly that same way in real life, too. [laughing] Like, it's so great. We- he's come out to California. We've hung out a bunch. A, love him. The other one, I've been a huge MKBHD fan on YouTube, as I know you have-

Ben Gilbert 2:03:01 Yep

David Rosenthal 2:03:02 ... been, too. Uh, The Waveform Podcast-

Ben Gilbert 2:03:05 Mm

David Rosenthal 2:03:05 ... that they do is great. I've started, like, regularly listening. I really like it, and, um, our buddy, David Imel, who's on the MKBHD team, he's regularly on, a host, a, a co-host on that. They rotate through the team-

Ben Gilbert 2:03:16 Mm

David Rosenthal 2:03:16 ... on the Waveform Podcast, and, like, it's in the same vein as kind of the Verge podcasts. Like, it's all about the products of tech, but it's really well done.

Ben Gilbert 2:03:24 I've become an increasingly large fan of The Verge. I don't know how I sort of slept on it. In my head, it was like, "Oh, another one of these, like, Engadget, Gizmodo-type things," but, like, that was wrong. It is my [chuckles] this is, like, embarrassing to say, new favorite publication. Like, Nilay is so smart, and I, I'll basically go listen to Nilay talk wherever he is. Like, that is a way to for sure get me to go listen to an episode of whatever the podcast is. So I sort of, like, first ... And over COVID, I think, was like, "I'll listen to Nilay in any situation." And then, like, with The Verge redesign, I sort of... I don't think I realized how unbelievably thoughtful the team there is and how strategic they are. They're one of the few publications that thinks about the fact that they're a business, too, and thinks about the way to marry their business with their editorial and how they can uniquely show up in the world based on what they do differently than other people. And, like, I think the new Verge redesign is genius. Like, I don't know if it'll work or not, but I love the attempt. They're also one of the few news sites in the world that actually gets a ton of direct traffic, so that's a huge thing that plays to their advantage, that then they can do interesting things with. There's people that come to them to solve a problem in their life or to fill a need.

David Rosenthal 2:04:43 It's so true. I mean, even me, I mean, you're way deeper in the product side, as a fan of the product side of tech, than I am, but any time there's a new Apple device or-

Ben Gilbert 2:04:52 Right

David Rosenthal 2:04:52 ... there's a couple places I will go directly. I will go to MKBHD and all the various properties that he and they have now, and I'll go to The Verge. And I might consume some other stuff that comes to me on social media, but, like-

Ben Gilbert 2:05:03 Yeah

David Rosenthal 2:05:03 ... I will directly go to those two properties. And I feel like my impression of Nilay is that, like, he is world-class on the product side of tech, but he also gets the business side. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 2:05:15 Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure.

David Rosenthal 2:05:17 Which is super rare.

Ben Gilbert 2:05:18 Super rare, and then, like, his, his, like, legal background, he gets all the, like, interesting IP, copyright stuff that's going on in technology. I just feel like he's... There's that Scott Adams aphorism, "You don't want to be top 1% at anything. You want to be top 25% at the right three things-

David Rosenthal 2:05:34 Mm

Ben Gilbert 2:05:34 ... and figure out how to marry them together."

David Rosenthal 2:05:36 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:05:36 I feel like that's Nilay. I'll also say, I think The Verge has been the thing that's surprisingly the most helpful for me for acquired research this year. Like, I did a ton of Qualcomm research on The Verge, 'cause they've done so much reporting on Qualcomm over the years. So big Verge fan. I know that's- we don't have publication as, like, a category, but-

David Rosenthal 2:05:57 I think they've got podcasts.

Ben Gilbert 2:05:58 Yeah, they do.

David Rosenthal 2:05:59 Like, they've got some podcasts.

Ben Gilbert 2:06:00 So back to podcasts, I already said the episode of Tim Ferriss with Jerry Seinfeld from a couple years ago, so good. The episode of Huberman Lab, What Alcohol Does to Your Body?

David Rosenthal 2:06:10 Oh, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:06:11 Dude, it's, mm, scary, scary stuff, and, like, moderation is also bad. There's no, like, "Well, I only had one drink this week," and that's devastating to your body versus zero. And this is certainly not medical advice, but go listen to that podcast. It's just un- unbelievable, the research studies that he's citing, where it's just so much more bad for you in every way than I ever thought, and I thought it was bad for you.

David Rosenthal 2:06:35 Yeah, you were already starting to drink less, right?

Ben Gilbert 2:06:38 Yeah, yeah. I mean, we both opened tonight with cocktails, but, um, well, you gotta live.

David Rosenthal 2:06:43 Eh, this is a celebratory event.

Ben Gilbert 2:06:44 That's right, that's right. My last podcast recommendation is SmartLess, any episode.

David Rosenthal 2:06:49 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 2:06:49 So fun. It's just so fun to go live in their world for an episode.

David Rosenthal 2:06:53 You've liked that one for a while, right?

Ben Gilbert 2:06:55 Last six months or so.

David Rosenthal 2:06:55 Yeah, I feel like you've been big on that. All right, music.

Ben Gilbert 2:06:59 Music. I don't think I discovered any new music this year. I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift: Midnights. I did a ton of prep for our wedding, curating a bunch of different playlists for, like, different segments of the day.

David Rosenthal 2:07:11 Oh, that's right. You, uh, put together all the playlists yourself, too, right?

Ben Gilbert 2:07:15 Yeah. I mean, the DJ did all the work that a great DJ does, but I sent him very highly manicured playlists that took several months to put together with a lot of opinion in it. So, you know, here's the dance, here's the cocktail hour, here's dinner, here's... So I was looking at my, like, Spotify year in review, and I was like, "All this is, like, my favorite songs from over the course of my life and my wife's life," and that's where most of my music listening went this year. I'll also say, most of my audio time, like, even when I'm in the gym now, is podcasts or Audible books, mostly in service of acquired research.

David Rosenthal 2:07:49 Mm-hmm.

Ben Gilbert 2:07:50 I just listen to way less music than I used to.

David Rosenthal 2:07:52 I feel like you do a large part of your acquired book research via audiobooks, right?

Ben Gilbert 2:07:57 Almost e- exclusively.

David Rosenthal 2:07:59 Wow!

Ben Gilbert 2:07:59 It was-... painful for me to read the whole Qualcomm book, but the only way to get it was to get the paperback book.

David Rosenthal 2:08:03 Right, the only way available-

Ben Gilbert 2:08:04 Yeah

David Rosenthal 2:08:04 ... paperback. It's interesting, whereas I've gone the total opposite direction. I pretty much only do physical paper copies-

Ben Gilbert 2:08:11 Mm

David Rosenthal 2:08:11 ... for acquired research.

Ben Gilbert 2:08:12 I admire your attention span.

David Rosenthal 2:08:14 I'm interested to try, I do have an Apple Pencil for our iPad minis.

Ben Gilbert 2:08:17 Mm.

David Rosenthal 2:08:18 And I wish I could write with the Apple Pencil directly in the book.

Ben Gilbert 2:08:23 I find that to be a useless device.

David Rosenthal 2:08:23 Yeah, I do.

Ben Gilbert 2:08:24 I bought that, and I thought it'd be so cool, and I never use it.

David Rosenthal 2:08:26 I agree. I agree. It's just, like, I don't know if it's a DRM thing or, like, a font size thing that changes the page, but, like, really just wanna be able to write with the Apple Pencil directly on an e-book the same way I do on a physical book.

Ben Gilbert 2:08:39 Mm.

David Rosenthal 2:08:39 And for whatever reason, the tech gods just-

Ben Gilbert 2:08:43 Are not letting you

David Rosenthal 2:08:44 ... have not let me do that.

Ben Gilbert 2:08:44 Mm.

David Rosenthal 2:08:45 I have new music.

Ben Gilbert 2:08:47 Oh, yeah?

David Rosenthal 2:08:47 Shockingly. You would not think that me knowing me, and as a new parent, would discover new music this year, but the baby loves Olivia Rodrigo.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:00 Ah. [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:09:01 [laughs] Less so now, but when, uh... When she was, like, I don't know, between ages like two months and six months, they'll go through moments.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:11 Right.

David Rosenthal 2:09:12 Olivia Rodrigo, almost without fail, turn on Driver's License-

Ben Gilbert 2:09:16 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:09:16 ... like, she would just be rapt in attention and, like, immediately calm down. [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 2:09:21 Amazing.

David Rosenthal 2:09:22 We're like, "I guess we have a teenager?" Like- [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 2:09:25 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:09:25 So I listened to a lot of Olivia Rodrigo this year.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:28 Huh.

David Rosenthal 2:09:29 And she's very talented.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:30 Huh.

David Rosenthal 2:09:30 Very impressive.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:31 All right. I gotta add it to, uh, to my Spotify.

David Rosenthal 2:09:34 [laughs] Uh, TV and movies.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:37 Yes. Andor was my carve-out very easily.

David Rosenthal 2:09:40 You gotta carry everything here, 'cause I've, I did none, none of this.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:42 Freaking exceptional.

David Rosenthal 2:09:43 I rewatched Black Panther recently. It was just as good.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:46 Great movie.

David Rosenthal 2:09:46 But that's all I got.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:47 So Andor, I saw the new Top Gun. That was unbelievably fun.

David Rosenthal 2:09:50 Oh, yeah, so fun.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:51 Like, put that on a big 4K TV with some surround sound and just enjoy.

David Rosenthal 2:09:55 Jenny and I watched that, uh, on a laptop, uh-

Ben Gilbert 2:09:58 Oh, brutal.

David Rosenthal 2:09:58 [laughs] Uh, yeah, we, we gotta go. I think they're re-releasing it in theaters for the holidays.

Ben Gilbert 2:10:02 Oh, really?

David Rosenthal 2:10:02 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:10:03 We can go upstairs after this and watch. It's a 75-inch, like-

David Rosenthal 2:10:07 Ooh.

Ben Gilbert 2:10:08 Like, it's, it's a very good, uh-

David Rosenthal 2:10:10 Nice

Ben Gilbert 2:10:10 ... it's a very good experience.

David Rosenthal 2:10:11 Nice.

Ben Gilbert 2:10:12 I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, the movie, and that movie gives you all the feels. That is a great, great movie. Great one to watch together if you're looking for something to watch with your partner. Weird movie, kind of a sci-fi, kind of a rom-com, but it's like a family dynamics movie. Sad parts, happy parts, and visually stunning.

David Rosenthal 2:10:35 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 2:10:36 So, and great acting. I don't even really wanna talk about what it's about, 'cause it's, it's one of these that I just don't wanna spoil it, but basically everyone will like this movie.

David Rosenthal 2:10:44 Great. Good holiday movie?

Ben Gilbert 2:10:45 Great holiday movie. I haven't watched Season 1 yet, 'cause it felt like I just wanted to catch up as soon as possible because everyone was talking about it. I'm now up to date on White Lotus: Season 2. That is a wild show. It's basically, the premise is, like, you get, I don't know, eight to 10 rich people that show up at this beautiful hotel, the White Lotus, in Sicily, and they're in three or four different groups, so the plot sort of follows different groups. But the thing that runs through everyone is, like, everyone is extremely set in life, very wealthy, and, like, deeply unhappy.

David Rosenthal 2:11:21 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 2:11:21 And then crazy, problematic stuff ensues from there. And it's visually stunning, and the acting is great, and you're simultaneously very mad at all these characters for doing stuff that they shouldn't be doing, but you also totally understand. The characters are so well-established that you understand based on their flaws as humans, why they're falling into these traps.

David Rosenthal 2:11:41 Are they real people? Is it reality or is it fiction?

Ben Gilbert 2:11:43 No, fiction.

David Rosenthal 2:11:44 Fiction?

Ben Gilbert 2:11:44 Yeah, just very, very well-written fiction. And the first one was in Hawaii.

David Rosenthal 2:11:48 Mm-hmm.

Ben Gilbert 2:11:48 So it's... And I think it's a almost a completely different cast, but, like, sort of the same general premise in Italy.

David Rosenthal 2:11:54 So each season is a different set of people?

Ben Gilbert 2:11:56 I think that's what they're doing, yeah.

David Rosenthal 2:11:57 Interesting.

Ben Gilbert 2:11:58 Lastly, [laughs] I, I watched a lot of TV this year. The Vow on Netflix is great, like, trash TV to leave on in the background. It is, um, two seasons long, and it is a documentary about a cult. And unbelievably, the cult leader is so wrapped up, I mean, maybe not unbelievably for a cult leader, in self-glorification, that, like-

David Rosenthal 2:12:22 [laughs] That sounds very believable for a cult leader

Ben Gilbert 2:12:24 ... 15, 20 years ago, he started recruiting filmmakers to join the cult, so they would shoot all this footage.

David Rosenthal 2:12:32 [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 2:12:32 So there's all this, like, very, very high production value footage over the entire life of the cult, all the way through the trial, which was only a few years ago. It was the NXIVM cult. And, like, dude went to prison for life, and a bunch of other people went to prison, 'cause, like, they did terrible cult stuff. And the whole thing is just, like, perfectly documented-

David Rosenthal 2:12:53 Wow

Ben Gilbert 2:12:53 ... the entire time. 'Cause I think it was, like, part of the arrest that, like, all this document, all this stuff-

David Rosenthal 2:12:59 Seized as evidence

Ben Gilbert 2:12:59 ... became public footage. Yeah. So-

David Rosenthal 2:13:02 Wow.

Ben Gilbert 2:13:02 Or maybe they, maybe Netflix bought it, I don't know, but either way, very, very good background TV.

David Rosenthal 2:13:06 Great.

Ben Gilbert 2:13:07 Apps?

David Rosenthal 2:13:08 The only new app that I started using this year that had any meaningful impact was our baby monitor app. [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 2:13:17 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:13:17 Uh, I just, like, everything's ossified, and, uh... What about you? Do you have anything new this-

Ben Gilbert 2:13:21 I have a few apps since moving houses that are sort of tied to, like, IoT-

David Rosenthal 2:13:25 Mm

Ben Gilbert 2:13:25 ... type things. The only one that's not that I really like, that I started using this year, is, uh, Flighty, which is Ryan Jones's... He's an indie developer. He previously did WeatherLine-

David Rosenthal 2:13:35 Mm

Ben Gilbert 2:13:35 ... which was my favorite weather app, and Flighty is sort of like the modern TripIt. The best way to explain it is, like-

David Rosenthal 2:13:41 Ah

Ben Gilbert 2:13:41 ... unbelievably good UI to tell you real-time information about your flight, and it's tied into, like, every available API with every available airline. So you get information from Flighty before the airline notifies you of it, and often before it even displays on gates when you're in the airport-

David Rosenthal 2:13:59 Okay, I gotta get this

Ben Gilbert 2:14:00 ... on a push before. So-

David Rosenthal 2:14:01 I gotta get this for flying back in a couple days.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:02 Dude, when, when you get, like, a 30-second heads-up on a change before the mass of people-

David Rosenthal 2:14:08 Oh, that's huge

Ben Gilbert 2:14:08 ... are behind you, it's-... very valuable.

David Rosenthal 2:14:10 That's huge.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:12 Very valuable.

David Rosenthal 2:14:12 That is an edge. That's alpha.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:13 That's, that's alpha right there. [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:14:14 That's alpha. [laughs] Although now we just gave it to everybody.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:18 I think he was even featured in the Apple keynote, so we're not giving anybody any distribution here that they didn't otherwise already earn. But Ryan's just a, a just amazing indie developer. It's been really fun to, like, watch, um... I haven't met him or anything, but watch the success of his apps over the years, and this is just a fantastic experience.

David Rosenthal 2:14:35 It'd be fun to do maybe it'd be an LP show or two, but we should have some indie developers-

Ben Gilbert 2:14:40 Yeah

David Rosenthal 2:14:41 ... on. Like, those are interesting business stories.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:43 Totally. All right, products? I have one that actually comes with an app.

David Rosenthal 2:14:48 Great.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:49 Mine is the Roborock S7 Max.

David Rosenthal 2:14:53 Roborock S7 Max. Can I guess what the... Is this a robo vacuum?

Ben Gilbert 2:14:56 Yes. [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:14:57 [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 2:14:58 It's the competitor to Roomba, and I think it's a Xiaomi company. You know how Xiaomi-

David Rosenthal 2:15:03 Mm, yeah

Ben Gilbert 2:15:03 ... owns, like, large stakes in a whole bunch of companies that they, like, manufacture for? I think it's that, but it's just, like, I had a Roomba, and I actually returned it to get the Roborock instead, and the S7 Max is the, like... I mean, it's, like, the worst product name of all time, but it's, like, the souped-up, self-emptying, also has a lightweight mop built in. It's the first time I've actually had, like, a robot where you actually can say, like, "This thing is robust enough that it's just gonna make my life easier without failing, or getting stuck, or needing some kind of intervention." It just does its job.

David Rosenthal 2:15:37 What's prevented me from ever seriously considering robot vacuums is stairs. So you just need one for each floor?

Ben Gilbert 2:15:44 Exactly.

David Rosenthal 2:15:44 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:15:45 Or you can move it, but-

David Rosenthal 2:15:46 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 2:15:47 ... I went for two Roborocks.

David Rosenthal 2:15:49 Given the Xiaomi, um, involvement or potential, I would imagine you could probably get two for less than the cost of a Roomba.

Ben Gilbert 2:15:58 No, they're very expensive.

David Rosenthal 2:15:59 Oh, they're very expensive?

Ben Gilbert 2:15:59 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 2:16:00 Oh, wow!

Ben Gilbert 2:16:00 I was expecting that, too. No, they're, they're, um, they're premium-priced.

David Rosenthal 2:16:04 Oh, interesting.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:05 But great, fantastic product, yeah.

David Rosenthal 2:16:07 I guess that is the solution, you just do one for each floor.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:10 Yep.

David Rosenthal 2:16:10 Yeah, interesting.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:11 Or get used to carrying it. It's fine.

David Rosenthal 2:16:13 I mean, I guess-

Ben Gilbert 2:16:13 You're gonna walk upstairs-

David Rosenthal 2:16:14 ... still better than getting a vacuum

Ben Gilbert 2:16:15 ... to, like, go to bed, so you may as well just, like, carry this thing under your arm and set it down, and then start it in the morning or something.

David Rosenthal 2:16:21 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's great, I never thought about that.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:24 Just saved you 1,000 bucks right there. [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:16:29 [laughs] Uh.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:31 All right, that's all I got.

David Rosenthal 2:16:32 That's all your product... Okay, let's see. I, uh, I'm intentionally gonna limit a parenting product to, to, [laughs] to just one.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:39 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:16:40 I could really do a whole another show about this.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:40 At some point, you should curate... Yeah, like, this is may- maybe-

David Rosenthal 2:16:43 I should do a list, yeah

Ben Gilbert 2:16:43 ... listeners want this.

David Rosenthal 2:16:44 Yeah, maybe. Well, I mean, not all, but, uh, a subset do.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:48 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:16:48 So my, my just one, this is a super pro tip that I never would've thought of, but diaper bags are, like, big. [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 2:16:56 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:16:56 You know? Uh, brilliant idea. I wish I could take credit for this, but I can't. Put the key essentials of a diaper bag, which are diapers, wipes, changing pad, in a pouch. You know, like, you can get, like, a nice, like, pouch or whatever, like, printed or, like, you know, I, I don't even know where ours is from, and then you can just move that pouch into whatever bag or... You can either carry the pouch yourself, or put it in your backpack, or put it in whatever.

Ben Gilbert 2:17:21 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 2:17:21 Like, rather than having a dedicated diaper bag-

Ben Gilbert 2:17:23 Mm

David Rosenthal 2:17:23 ... keep the core essentials of the diaper bag in a pouch that you can then put in other things. [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 2:17:28 [laughs] God, dude, this show is getting worse and worse.

David Rosenthal 2:17:31 This show, okay, we, we- [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 2:17:32 Listen, listeners, if you're still listening, I'm sorry. [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:17:36 [laughs] I'm sorry, too.

Ben Gilbert 2:17:36 We'll, we'll be back next year with better content. [laughs]

David Rosenthal 2:17:41 Oh, boy.

Ben Gilbert 2:17:42 But by the way, at some point, if I'm ever a parent, I'm totally gonna be like, "Thank you for all this."

David Rosenthal 2:17:46 Yeah, just give me the back catalog. I'll, I'll just do the... I'll make a list for you.

Ben Gilbert 2:17:48 Good.

David Rosenthal 2:17:49 On the universal product appeal, couple quick ones. One, I went back, actually, to the Apple keyboard. I had a mechanical keyboard, which I really liked, but I went back to the Apple one for Touch ID built in.

Ben Gilbert 2:18:03 Mm.

David Rosenthal 2:18:03 Like, it actually- it's so convenient.

Ben Gilbert 2:18:05 It is really nice.

David Rosenthal 2:18:06 It's so convenient.

Ben Gilbert 2:18:07 I have the Microsoft Ergonomic Sculpt Two, and I love it, but I think I type my password two dozen times a day more than I would if I just had my Touch ID.

David Rosenthal 2:18:17 I seriously doubt they'll do this, but actually, they could sell it for 100 bucks and make a ton of margin.

Ben Gilbert 2:18:21 Just a little standalone-

David Rosenthal 2:18:22 Standalone Touch ID dongle, and that-

Ben Gilbert 2:18:25 Yeah

David Rosenthal 2:18:25 ... that's like built in.

Ben Gilbert 2:18:25 I'd buy that for sure.

David Rosenthal 2:18:26 Yeah, totally. Bunch of Elgato gear-

Ben Gilbert 2:18:30 Oh

David Rosenthal 2:18:30 ... including the sound panel. Their sound panels are so good, so easy to put up. I don't know if listeners noticed from-

Ben Gilbert 2:18:36 By the way, we have four Elgato lights in this room right now, an Elgato [laughs] Stream Deck. David and I use the Elgato preamps, the Wave XLR.

David Rosenthal 2:18:45 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 2:18:46 And then also the camera, the wide camera that somehow turned off again, is, uh, mounted on the Elgato boom arm, where my mic is normally on my desk.

David Rosenthal 2:18:55 Yep, they make such good stuff. The sound panels in particular are really, really good, and really, they have frames around them, and then sticky stuff to mount, so, like, it literally-

Ben Gilbert 2:19:06 Oh, that's cool

David Rosenthal 2:19:06 ... I've put up, uh, I don't know, probably 12 of them in total. Took less than an hour.

Ben Gilbert 2:19:12 Oh, we also use the Cam Link, the Cam Link 4K-

David Rosenthal 2:19:15 Yes

Ben Gilbert 2:19:15 ... the way that we pipe our cameras into our computer as webcams.

David Rosenthal 2:19:19 Yep. Huge, huge Elgato fans.

Ben Gilbert 2:19:22 Nice.

David Rosenthal 2:19:23 All right, and then you added to the agenda a final new carve-out section of places-

Ben Gilbert 2:19:30 Places

David Rosenthal 2:19:30 ... this year.

Ben Gilbert 2:19:31 Uh, Capri. That is my-

David Rosenthal 2:19:33 [laughs] That you already-

Ben Gilbert 2:19:34 Yeah

David Rosenthal 2:19:34 ... discussed.

Ben Gilbert 2:19:35 Yes. Any for you?

David Rosenthal 2:19:38 No, we didn't really go anywhere new, despite all our travels. We've been to Portugal and Lisbon before. We went back to Santa Barbara. We try and go there every year, at least once a year. That's the beach for us. Santa Barbara's just amazing. Lovely, lovely. Probably one of the loveliest places-

Ben Gilbert 2:19:55 Yeah

David Rosenthal 2:19:55 ... on Earth, and very accessible from California.

Ben Gilbert 2:19:58 We gotta find more... We did the EA episode down there. We gotta f- we gotta find more Acquired-related reasons to go.

David Rosenthal 2:20:02 Yeah, that's right. Tripp lives down there. He's got it figured out.

Ben Gilbert 2:20:04 That's right. Well, with that, listeners, I think we will see you in 2023. Our huge thank you to Vanta.... to our good friends at Brex, and to our friends at Tiny. As mentioned on Brex, sign up, brex.com/acquired, and you can get a free Acquired t-shirt. If you have a company that you wanna sell to Tiny, or you think they should buy that is someone else's company, email them at hi@tiny.com. Vanta, you know Vanta by now. Go get your SOC 2 or other compliance certificates from them, vanta.com/acquired. We would love to see you in the Slack. We'll be hanging out there over the holidays. If you wanna listen to the LP show, we actually just recorded two other great LP shows that'll be coming out soon. You can join and get those two weeks early at acquired.fm/lp, or you can search Acquired LP Show in any podcast player and get access to them two weeks after LPs get them. Anything else, David?

David Rosenthal 2:21:07 One very, very important last thing, a big thank you-

Ben Gilbert 2:21:12 Yeah

David Rosenthal 2:21:12 ... to all of you. We, uh, we talked about it a lot on this episode. We truly have the best audience in the world, the best community in the world. Ben and I just pinch ourselves, like, literally on a weekly, if not daily, basis, that we get to do this, that I get to do this as a living, [chuckles] and, um, it's all thanks to you all. We just get so much joy out of putting this show together. I mean, clearly, we can talk for hours just about the year [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 2:21:41 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 2:21:41 and all the fun that we had.

Ben Gilbert 2:21:41 Whether or not that's interesting to other people-

David Rosenthal 2:21:43 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 2:21:43 ... remains to be seen, but every business should know their source of power and their source of, um, differentiation, and, and ours is all of you. So thank you so much for being on the journey with us. It's been an amazing seven years, and, uh, here's to seven more.

David Rosenthal 2:21:56 Indeed. Happy holidays.

Ben Gilbert 2:21:57 Happy holidays.

Speaker 2:21:59 Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Huh! [singing]