Holiday Special 2023 (Audio)

I am loving that you also busted out the holiday sweater. Feels very appropriate.

Yes, I purchased this holiday sweater at the Seattle Nordstrom for our 2019 live show at the University of Washington.

It was, like, two months before the pandemic hit.

That's right, and I think I wore it last year, too.

I feel like you did. Yeah, we were right behind me. I wish we were doing it again this year, but, uh, seems prudent to, uh, not have a father of a toddler hop on an airplane and then sit in a confined space with me for five hours right now. [laughing]

[laughing] A lot of germs in my life right now.

Thank you for your precautions.

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?

Welcome to season thirteen, episode five, the season finale and holiday special of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

I'm David Rosenthal.

And we are your hosts. Do you see what I did there, David?

I did. I did. No technology.

No technology. Yes, I motion to, uh, you know, the whole board of directors here, that we drop technology from our intro, since I crunched the numbers, and four of the fourteen episodes we did this year were technology companies.

Ah. All right, well, it's a good thing that there are no other board members of Acquired besides you and me-

[laughing]

-because I am in full agreement.

Unanimous.

And otherwise, we would have had a deadlocked vote there, one to one.

That's true, and, uh, I don't think our charter really actually ever accounts for what to do in that circumstance. [chuckles] So yes, listeners, if you count Lockheed Martin, it's five. If you count Visa, it's six. But the minority of the episodes that we did in 2023 were tech companies, which is a very fascinating evolution to me, based on where Acquired started analyzing technology acquisitions that actually went well. But, of course, we will keep doing deep episodes on tech companies, since we are nerds, and that's where we've spent, you know, our whole careers so far. So if you liked the programming and assembly language on air from Nvidia, or I guess, assembly language pseudocode, or our Qualcomm episode, where we tried to describe how the CDMA protocol works, we're still here for you. We're just gonna do a lot of LVMH, NFL, uh-

Costco

... Visa, Costco.

Nike.

Nike, and, uh, you know, mixed in there. So what are we doing here today? Well, David and I are gonna bring you good tidings, good cheer, hopefully, and, uh, keep you company.

Yes, happy holidays. Cheers!

Cheers.

I've got my, uh, cinnamon, uh, infused hot chocolate here. It's delicious.

Ooh, you're feeling very festive. Yes, we are here to, uh, keep you company on your long drives, or flights, or workouts, or house cleaning, or whatever over the holidays. On our agenda today is a recap of Acquired this year, both the state of the franchise from the board of directors themselves. We will also be giving you some new tidbits on our favorite episodes, behind each one of them, why we picked them, how they came to be, what listeners helped us select, that sort of thing. We're gonna talk about how we see Acquired fitting into the broader media landscape, how our views about the show and the stuff that we cover have changed over time, what's in store for Acquired in 2024, new carve-outs, and answering listener questions from the Slack. And then at the end of the episode, we're gonna share a little bit about David and my investing lives and how those will be changing in 2024, as, uh, David, you and I are gonna get to do much more of our investing together.