The Acquired Podcast Hosts: How They Started and Grew a Multimillion Dollar Podcast

What could you get for it, you think? I would not be interested in having any conversations for, you know, less than Uh on the order of like what you got like the hustle or um Uh morning brew or you know, stuff like that. Tens of millions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I mean I just think like the value of what we've built both as a business and revenue and our audience uh and our durability is you know. What's up? We got a uh crossover episode. Call me Tib Hardaway. We got

The guys from acquired Yeah, you like that. You like that. That's good. Yeah, th that's for the uh the five percent of of listeners who who know about basketball. So we got uh the guys from Acquired are here. We're doing kind of um A joint episode, a uh the old Alabama wedding, as I like to call it. You know, just we're just getting we're getting cousins together here. Because you guys got a podcast that is uh pretty awesome. I remember

When I was working at a at our previous startup, a guy came to me and was like, There's a podcast you're gonna love. It's called Acquired. And I go, What is it? He goes, It's like the backstories of these like of all great tech acquisitions, like how it all went down, they go into like all the nerdy details. And then I binged you guys for like six days straight. Um, and so that was that's how I kind of first got into it a couple of years ago. So welcome to the show.

David and Ben. Thank you. We did a super fun crossover with you a couple of years ago now. But it was just with Sean, Sam, you were Oh. Traveling the world, doing amazing things. Uh that's what he said. He was like you're probably do something amazing. I was like, uh probably just like a doctor's appointment or something. You guys have totally come up since then. The uh I mean you were big back then, but uh I was like

Within the first couple of months, I think, of you starting this and uh It's just been awesome to watch how far you've come. That that was kind of an R even though it was year four or five for us, that was kind of our early days too,'cause uh Sean, you're right, that we were mostly about acquisitions at that point and we talked about the Bebo acquisition as part of the episode. And now we do these like three, four hour entire, you know, history and strategy of a company, regardless of whether there was a transaction, but Um yeah, that that feels like uh

I don't know. The funny thing about exponential growth is it feels like a lifetime ago all the time. I always think about that like when you pick a niche And then you kind of are gonna run out. But the niche can get you somewhere. So for example, I was thinking about this with Coffeezilla, the YouTube guy who exposes people's scams. And I'm like and then he did one the other day that was like He DM'd a celebrity to promote some NFT thing, like, Hey, we'll pay you to promote this NFT thing and like the white paper

said like this shit's a scam or whatever, but he didn't read it. Obviously he's just promoted it and he's like ha Scammer. And I'm like But you ki that's kind of entrapment. Like you cre you're running out of people to like to to cover here. You have to not create scammers. Like I don't think that's like Ally G back in the day. Yeah, exactly. But like that wasn't his original stake, but I was like, Yeah, you're not gonna like you're trying to be on this YouTube once a week treadmill. And There's not once a week gonna be a giant Logan Paul like celebrity name did this bad thing and I'm gonna be the exposer. It's like

What are you gonna do next Tuesday?'Cause there's not like this isn't that that current. Uh but you guys did a good job of of switching it up. People said that to us, Sean. They go, You're gonna run out of ideas. And I was like, Yeah, we might But then it just kinda like morphed into like us saying a lot of like It's like people are when I I someone yesterday was like, What's your podcast about? I was like, Well The name's pretty bad and it's definitely a lot about business, but we also make a lot of horrible jokes too, so people kind of like it for that reason. Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot. Your niche earns you the right to exist.

But it's in in media, but it's your um Yeah, your sort of demeanor and your the way that you look at the world that then gives you license to expand from there. So like if David and Flavor, my friend, it's just like if David and I had started with like we're a podcast that talks about businesses, it's like cool next. But if you like pitch people on really specifically what their what you'd like the job to be done of your show and their life is.

Then you can sort of like expand and explore from there. Right. Like Ben sh Ben should a the Ben producer Ben should have been like, you know Yeah. Mormons taking over the world. Started with the Mormon community, then expanded from there. I remember talking to the guys from Wait But Why, that great blog. Yeah. And um

This guy guys, is there a team? Childhood friend Andrew who does like the back end, all the business stuff. They have like a really interesting business. They like acquire companies that are completely unrelated to white by why like that's how they make their money. And then they just do wick away for fun. Like th that's kind of the the the model. But I was asking him about content. 'Cause I was like, you know, I admire Waypa Wise, so tell me about this. And I was like, you know, I'm trying to figure this out.

I kinda like to talk about this and I kinda like to talk about this and he's like You need your uh like your flagship franchise. And you do your franchise and then people will love that franchise, but they'll also love you. And they'll you'll earn the right to talk to them about like, oh, you want to talk about like mindset stuff. Cool, but unless you think mindset is the right place to start. Wait.

Earn the the trust on the business side and then say, by the way Here's my mindset stuff. And then you'll get some percentage of the people to cross over and then a new audience there too. You just keep launching new franchises after that. It's so true. It's also like The we even you guys, you know, you you started several years after us, but like I think you're still working. When did you guys start? Three years ago.

N uh tw September of twenty nineteen, I think, or July of the three. Yeah, we were twenty fifteen. But even in twenty ninth, like it was still kinda early ish enough days in podcasting that like the medium was The mainstream portion of podcasting meeting was still Early enough that people were looking for new stuff. And like that I think has changed now. In a pretty big way.

The way that it started was basically like I was in Austin or somewhere. I I was living in San Francisco at the time and Sean texted me and he was like Hey, I have an idea for a podcast. Here's the pilot. Do you guys want to does Hustle want to be the publisher? And I listened to it. And I I like I just listened to the intro and I was like, Yep, we're in. Let's just air this exact one next week. And we'll start. By the way, that that was a little bit of a fib. I I basically told you I was like, Hey You know, why don't I was like, why don't you do podcasts?

And Sam was like uh like I gotta hire somebody to do it. I don't know. We'll we'll just focus on this email thing. I was like, Well I got a podcast. I'm gonna do a podcast. Will you be the publisher? He's like and I was like I'm I already I knew that To seal the deal, I needed to send him a file, but I hadn't recorded yet. So I go, I already did the first episode. Uh You want like take a listen to it. And then I like

Just ghosted him on Messenger for twenty four hours so I could go record the episode, then came back and was like, Oh my bad, here's the file. So there really wasn't an episode when I first messaged you, but I was like I got the vibe that if this is good if I get like a good first thirty five seconds. This is done. And uh so that's what I went and did. Yeah, and we were like we're in. And then he did it his way. It was called My First Million'cause it was like first million users revenue, whatever.

And it was great. It was great as it was, but like there there was one time like three months in where a guest didn't show up. And he was like Uh I booked the space. Do you just want to come and like talk? And I was like, I guess. And we did that, and then it kinda like did well. But like our the first episode he did by himself, it got sixty five thousand downloads, and we are like Do podcasting. Podcasting's easy. This is gonna be awesome. And then over the next twelve months, it basically went down to like as low as like maybe 10 or 15,000. And then since then, it's basically just been a slow grind. Now we're anywhere from a hundred to two hundred thousand.

per d per episode if you include The YouTube. Our YouTube is is pretty weak. It's like twenty to fifty thousand, twenty to a hundred thousand, and then the RSS feed, which is like iTunes and all that stuff. That's um Maybe a hundred. Uh or something like that.

What uh where are you guys at? Because like no one talks about this stuff. Like I whenever you Google I remember we were Googling like how do we get to a hundred thousand downloads, but Everyone out there was like, Here's how you get your first thousand, first ten thousand. I was like, Okay, but like how do we get bigger? We're we're Almost the exact same scale. with a very different journey. I mean, every journey is unique on this stuff. Uh so our

Episodes get about two hundred thousand downloads, listens, whatever you want to call it. Um Uh, which is interesting'cause Spotify has become so much more of the market now. Uh Per episode. But

Unlike you guys, we do like one episode a month. You know, one to two episodes a month. And they're really, really long. So uh we have w with a few exceptions that we can talk about, we've never had like kind of Big spike viral. you know, break out moments. It's been a you know, eight year journey from like

Zero up to that. Um We don't really have spikes. Like there's spiky stuff, but it's not like a true like virality moment. Interesting. You guys so one thing that's interesting about content and media is Everybody measures the number. Nobody measures the quality. Because the quality's way harder to understand. But Clearly there's a difference between 200,000 people listening to an episode of Acquired.

Versus 200,000 views on a TikTok. Okay, we get that because it's kind of short versus long. But even if it was A podcast about sports versus a podcast about business acquisitions. the type of people that are gonna listen to your thing are just inherently more valuable. Um

Have you guys Thought about that, seeing that? Do you guys I feel more better. That is the whole business.

the business side, although it's become a great business. Um That is the whole business side. And and also on the content side too. Like we made we started doing this. Four. Us to learn.

And then we're like Well, who, you know, would also want to learn from the you know, people like us. And that's kinda who we make it for. Like Um so we struggle with YouTube with TikTok with Twitter.

Like we're not good on any of those other platforms, even though we do atomize content and do it now. Because like we don't it it's just not kinda How we designed the show. To to to ground it, uh Forty percent of acquired listeners are C level or VP level executives.

twenty three percent are currently founders, twelve percent were previously founders. And if you break down by job Seventeen percent are engineers, fifteen percent are actively CEOs today, and twelve percent are product managers. And so Like

The whole business for us and to David's point, it didn't start as a business, but where we are today. is like I don't really want millions of listeners. I want acquired to s like kind of slow its growth but saturate

the niche that we're in,'cause I think it's the most valuable audience in the world. Right. And I don't know exactly what that leads to, but like all the conversations David and I get to have with our listeners. because of who they are are like super fascinating. Well what will it lead to? So like You know, you do you you can probably make a great living off of just the advertising, but I'm looking at your site, you don't sell anything.

Um what's it gonna lead to? Well, we do have merch. That hoodie you're wearing right now is pretty dope. This is Marquez's hoodie, yeah. Um Which uh uh David Iml, who's on Marquez's team, is a uh uh become a good friend and is an acquired listener and uh he hooked me up with this. This this hoodie rocks. Yeah. I sent a picture to our merch person. I screenshot it uh and I had that moment where I was like, you know that thing where you're on a zoom call? I don't know if you guys do this, but you screenshot and it's like makes the really loud ass sound of like a screenshot has been taken and then you gotta like address it like it was a fart during the during the call. I was really worried that when I'm gonna go to the case. This is uh total digression and we'll come back to it, but um Fourth Wall uh makes the so Marquez is an investor in Fourth Wall. Walker Williams, the founder, he was the founder of Teespring, uh

Awesome guy. We've gotten to know him. Um We're we're talking to them now, I think, yeah, merch. Yeah, they're uh they are great. And they made this fully custom for Marquez, uh and it's It's not a good thing. What's his name? Brownley? Is that his name? M K B H D, yeah. The uh the you I mean I'm first named like he's Oprah. Like you know I was like that guy. Well he has like twenty million YouTube subscribers. I mean, I just know him as like the guy who inter uh reviews uh uh tech, but he also like has interviewed Tesla uh E Elon and all these like great guys. I mean he's cool.

I don't know them. Pretty large scale. T V production studio at this point as a as a YouTuber. Um He's also like one of the best ultimate Frisbee players in the world.

Oh really? Yeah, he's a professional ultimate prisbee player as well. I can see that. Do you uh so like When we'll just talk real insider baseball for a second and then we'll m move on. But with podcasting, a lot of people asked us how to start it and stuff like that. And I'm like uh I don't know how to grow it. It's quite challenging. But what I've really enjoyed getting to know is like Andrew Huberman. I I'm you know, I'm acquaintances, but not friends friends with him really, but like we'll chat every once in a while. And he's like on spot. We see each other with our shirts off, but we I mean I wouldn't call each other friends, but like we've sauna together. This is like oh I was probably at a doctor's appointment for like I your life is just like I listen to you guys, I'm like wow.

No, bro. I like he was he was on our he was on our pod. So like I know him like an hour plus like five text messages exchange. So like that's at the extent that I know him. Uh, but he I think they're if you look at Spotify when he releases an episode, it's typically the most popular on uh the charts, and I think they're in the million Mark, million per uh episode, which is how we like to measure it. Is there anyone else in the business category that's in the two hundred five I mean, all in's probably four hundred, maybe five hundred thousand. Do you know like how big do you have to be to be some of the biggest? Of course there's Dave Ramsey. He's he's in a whole different category. Yeah, it's funny, it depends,'cause like business kind of gets lumped in with all these other like personal finance type categories. But I think in our ilk

Um budgeting category and move Dave Ramsey's ass over there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh You know, and it's it's all into like has been an amazing breakout. They've become more of a mainstream news and political show too. I mean, they still talk tech and business, but um That I think is a lot of their audience and they're huge now.

But yeah, our category, I would say like Invest like the best probably is the most directly Comparable in terms of size and audience. Also founders and David Sunrah. Um

He's part of the Colossus Network with Patrick. Um Well Jason's other show This Week in Startups, uh that we go on all the time. But Logan Bartlett has

Um a much smaller audience'cause he's much newer, but like A plus guests and really I mean he's I think he's he's got The the most valuable niche of niche in terms of the people who listen to his show. Why? Because of VCs? Uh It's like

Silicon Valley insiders. For lack of a better I mean it's VCs, it's founders, but I think like His interviews I always feel like he pulls out. Most valuable. Small boy stuff right there. Let me Sam, let me ask you a different question that I've actually never asked. So so you so David said something a second ago, which was kinda like The paraphrase would be We made the podcast.

Summarize your your position, David? A hundred percent. And I feel like that with this podcast I started the milk road that way, but it quickly transformed into like crypto, which is actually not what I I actually people know this, I've said this. I don't read or consume the news. So it's really funny that we made a news

Like thing. It got it big and then sold it. But like truthfully it didn't end up becoming The thing that like I made this for me, for people like me out there. Sam, do you subscribe to that like I guess like in theory

You could say the best thing to do is to scratch your own itch to build the product you want, be the you know, make it for people like you. Then you're not guessing. But then in practice, sometimes, you know, the mass market is not where you're at and you go for that. So what Sam, what's your take on that? I think we it w it started M FM started that way and it is mostly that way. Every once in a while, you know, Sean we'll be like, We need more views. Let's like get this guess and sometimes we give into it, sometimes we don't. The hustle started out because I liked the news, and then about a uh two years in I was like I don't care about the news anymore, but this is my job, so I'm gonna keep doing it. Um

I don't I don't I listen to zero business podcasts now. I basically only listen to like crime and fiction and things like that. And so I don't listen to business podcasts anymore, but I think this podcast has mostly stayed of just like who what do I want to do? What does Sean wanna do? What do we want to talk about? So it's yeah. The it's mostly stayed that way. But we we do like have to fight. Like I was messaging Sean like this. Uh this last night and I was like Dude, we need to be stricter about our guests because we've had like a bunch of people uh like who asked to come on and we're like

Yeah, they're huge. And then I'm like Wait, I don't give a shit about this person. I don't like I don't I wouldn't want to have a like if this person invited me over for dinner, I wouldn't be excited. And so we definitely have to fight that. I I would assume you know this is that it's the case for us, although it's different'cause we tell stories, but um

For you guys. Like the reason your audience is here is for you, right? Like it's not for Your guests, right? Yeah, I think sometimes though the The guests, you know, I basically told Sam I said there's three to three three or four types of guests. Four of the here's the four that I think exist. There's the people that are like us and they're just bringing a different like flavor, new fresh idea. So like for example, when you guys first came on, you guys you got the shtick. You knew what we do on this podcast. I remember you guys came with a bunch of business ideas. You're like, oh

This Airbnb Wi Fi network that's like, you know, Oh my God, you remember even the the idea, yeah. As soon as I saw your face, that idea came back to me, right? I got like the Some people have photographic memory, I have a idea memory. I can remember any idea. So That was like you guys got the shtick, so you came on, you brought ideas, which is great because audience loves that. Steph Smith is a great example of this. She comes on, she brings ideas, people like her, even though she's not The big name. you know, famous O CEO of X, she does an amazing job.

So that's like number one. Number two is basically like They are the big name. So somebody who a bunch of people are gonna click on it might bring new audience. It's like you're legit famous in some way. Yep. You had uh Pomp on recently. Yeah well how he would be three, which is internet famous. So it's like legit famous, it's like, you know, they're they've that kind of like outside. Like Paris Hilton or something. Yeah, like they don't have a podcast or they don't have a newsletter. They don't have like an internet community. They're just like famous, famous. Then there's your internet famous and the last one is personal like we want to nerd out with them. And so that would be like Ariel Hawani. Yeah, we we had Ariel Hawani on like

I don't know how much of our audience about that, but I cared. I wanted to have that conversation. Um and we've had you know, Sam was like, Oh, this guy Ken Rideout is awesome. He's like this fifty year old like marathon record breaker block guy, like I just want to talk to him. And it's like great, let's do that. So it's kinda like We are gonna be so into the conversation And we are sure that this person's interesting to us, it'll be interesting to some portion of the audience. And so it's like

And I think the one you get tripped up on the most is just the the legit famous person because they they don't actually listen to the pod. They may not bring bring the juice. And it's almost like the expectations are high and you almost disappoint'cause it's like, Oh All right. Well that was kind of a lame conversation with that person.

And they don't have any of their own distribution. The nice thing about internet famous is at least they can help distribute the content. But real regular famous people, it's like unless they're getting put in people magazine or cast in the latest movie, they actually have no way to reach an audience. Yeah. You know who does that for us is Darmesh, the founder of HubSpot. Every time he comes on He get it get his episodes get really popular. And he's always doing he is popular and his content is great. And also he always does some internet marketing stuff where he he kills it. He kills it for us every time.

That's that's the best kinda guess. Come on and promote. Right. And he pays the bills too. So he's the sponsor, he's the guest. He grrives the girl. Damascus come on acquired. The crazy thing we notice about guests recently just looking at our analytics and the the the Two things.

And both of them are true one hundred percent of the time without fail. One. Every single time we set a new episode record, it is an episode that is like Just David and I doing Nintendo, L VMH, Berkshire Hathaway, like our canonical three hour format.

And two Every single time we have a guest on It is. Less listened to than our previous episode. Yeah.

Interesting. Just last question is how do you guys prepare for that? Do you just like both read the same book and take notes and then just tell a story? We mostly read different stuff, but uh We've kinda architected I mean, this is our like our differentiation as a show.

Which is so anti all the rules of podcasting, but I think it's what makes us special is We Have carved out that like we can take a month. In our lives.

And Do, you know it's kind of like if you were writing a term paper in college. Like we can do the research. Independently, each of us. on a company on a topic.

And then we come together and it's like a I don't know, it's like a thesis defense or something that we do. Like between the two of us to have basically consumed every piece of content on the company. Like every other podcast that's ever been done, all the big books that have been written, all the talks given by the founder. Try and find a bunch of weird stuff. Like Talks given at industry conferences that have low view counts on YouTube. obviously read all the sources of all of the Wikipedia page for the companies. It's basically like

No one should be able to DM us after the episode and be like Oh, did you Did you see this important piece of information on the company? We we want to always be like defensively No, we have consumed everything about this company. And I think like I think the magic is that like if we

If the output of that were a term paper, it would be really boring and nobody would read it. But because the output of that is Ben and I as really good friends, like talking about it. Like That kinda makes it magical. Yeah. The the phrase we've been noodling on is conversational audiobooks. Oh, that's cool.

To describe what it is. Are there any odd commonalities that you've seen amongst like the savages that you've done stories on? So, for example, Ben Wilson has, you know, he does uh How to Think Over the World and it's historical figures. And he's like, you know, it's weird. John Rockefeller, Edison, and all and Napoleon, a bunch of these other people, they ate really lightly. Like they didn't eat a ton of food. Because they said that when they over ate, they felt brain fog and a but for a bunch of different reasons. Are there any uh strange commonalities that you've you've found amongst like these conquerors of the world? Well, we talk more about companies than we do about people. Like Ben and David Senter over at founders like or or companies. Yeah. Or c or companies. I mean it's the classic like being contrarian and right.

And you have to be both contrarian and right. But the people that we're studying and the companies that were studying. Are such extreme outliers. Like they're such the they're they're four standard deviations from the mean in terms of like How did a company do? And so They

Work. They're sort of like an N of one. Like there's one TSM C in the world. There's one L VMH who owns All the most valuable luxury brands except Hermes. Uh, and th it sort of happens in a unique way every time. And so I guess the

The biggest takeaway for me is like Mm. It usually is the founder doing something that like literally everybody else had left for dead. And and and when I say that I mean like Bernard Arnaud going and buying Christian Dior from the French government out of bankruptcy.

In when was that? The eighties, David. Eighties, yep. Or like literally no one else was bidding on this like dead asset. Or uh the the example for starting T S M C is like Zero other people thought that you should be starting A foundry

when you have no chip IP to make other people's chip designs. Like that was there were zero other people that thought that was the big fault. Like there is no there is no formula every story is unique, but Mm. Big, big category is like something that has been left for dead. Like sometimes it's inventing something new, whole cloth, but like really big category is like

Oh, this thing is Over and down. David Nintendo. Yeah, Nintendo, Google. Video game crash of of nineteen eighty three, like The market for video games in the United States went from three billion dollars to a hundred million dollars over the course of two years. Everybody was running screaming from the industry and they thought, Oh, video games were a fad and it's over.

And then you have Nintendo that comes in, launches the NES, and then within five years has ninety five percent market share and has grown the industry back to a three billion dollar industry. It's easy. Nut job bets. Has that Has that like given you guys any confidence to succeed, do you think? Like'cause Sean and I talked to all these awesome people.

And like we'll talk to there there are a handful of people and I I said this a bunch. There's a handful of people who we talk to and we say Oh, you're definitely like significantly smarter than we are or you're you're significant you have this part that's more significant than us. And then there's other people who we'll talk to that are worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and it's like well You're not like twenty times smarter than us, even though you're twenty times richer, but like you might be a little bit or sometimes a little bit less. And that's given us confidence, at least me for sure, because I'm like, Oh, you definitely are insecure. You uh question yourself, you doubt yourself, but you still went through with it. It's a good question. Like I know how to be contrarian. I'm not sure I know how to be right yet. Like we're halfway there, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Like I I I I you know, we know how to make Everyone tells you you should make short podcasts that release every single week and you should have guests on to help build your audience. And we do basically none of those things. And everything that has worked for us is doing the exact opposite of those. And so

Does that mean keep doing the opposite of every piece of advice everyone gives you because that's the path to success? I don't think so. But if we overfit to the data that we've observed so far. That is what it would look like. And so I I'm hesitant to like keep being contrarian for the sense of being contrarian, but but it I think the the important part that comes with this is like

Having a uh iterative feedback loop with your customers or in our case with our listeners to understand like What makes you love this and how do we lean harder into that. And and sort of shut out.

general advice and pay more attention to like By the way, I picked up a little poker tail. On People who are uncontra How do you tell a real contrarian versus a wannabe contrarian? This is a tell I picked up over time, which is Uh in the tech world, I think because of Peter Thiel, there's this like kind of like real sex appeal

To be contrary. And um you put it in your Twitter bio, you're probably not exactly uh Same with Polymath. Yeah, Polymath's another one of them. Um as me and Sam have have joked about, like or like if you're an engineer being like slightly on the spectrum, it's like oh yeah, yeah, that's a another indicator of success. It's like here we go. The one that is I think a tell when it comes to being contrarian is how excited are you That you have this contrarian idea because

That shows people who are contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, meaning that they're really excited to tell you. How The I think everybody else thinks A, but it's actually B. Um whereas the real people I've seen that are contrarian, they just see a And they're almost like I'm confused why people don't think A. A is clearly right.

Um Uh they're not they don't spend time trying to like convince the whole world of it. Like you know, if if they're asked, they tell the truth. And then when people react in a big way, like, Oh man, I can't believe you think that. And they're like, I can't believe you don't think that. Um, it just seems like the truth to them. And so that's what I've noticed is like if you if you watch old videos of like, you know, Peter Thiel talking or like I think Bology is is somebody who's like this today. Um They sp they They're happy to

Explain their point of view. And they explain it like this is just what's gonna happen, or this is what I th I believe to be true. But they don't Um Get high on the idea. of of being a contrarian. It's a subtle difference. There's a bunch of people I've met in real life that that I kind of

I've noticed this on it's hard to explain, but you'll see next time you kind of run into somebody who's who's over eager and over excited about the fact that they have this contrarian opinion. It's they're kind of just performing socially versus they actually believe that. It reminds me a lot of um it's like we all know this guy or girl who likes the idea of a relationship more than they like their current relationship. And they're they're very excited to like have this particular lifestyle and you can sort of tell you're into that. new lifestyle you have more than the person you're actually with. Right.

Did you want a boyfriend or did you want Ben? Right? Like who did you actually want here? Let me tell a story. It's interesting, though. Like oh, there you go. I was just gonna tell one on the thing, Sam, you talked about, like what are the interesting success patterns. Um It reminded me of an experience I had uh a while back. I went to China when I was maybe twenty one years old and got to go to the Alibaba like Alibaba flew out a bunch of entrepreneurs To go like meet with it was supposed to be Jack Ma, but we ended up meeting with this guy, David Way, who's like their Jack Ma's right hand man. He was the guy who was running Alibaba at the time.

And I didn't even know what Alibaba was. Like Alibaba's a big deal like now. I'm now I'm like Now I would have taken that really seriously. I I had no idea who they were at the time. And we get there and somebody asked him this question. They raise their hand, they go, What do you think is the most important things for success? uh for the success of a company. Alibaba is a multi billion dollar company. Um, you know, what what made it successful? And he goes

Um He goes, models for success are misleading. They cannot be copied due to the like unique combination of luck, timing, all these other things. But he goes, But what you can ask me is a better question, which is What are the common keys to failure? And he goes, They're always the same. And he goes, We study the the things that lead to failure and just tried to avoid those. So he goes, uh you know, I leaned in and I was like please blow my mind, sir. Go ahead. Yeah. And he's like um He goes, there's three things that lead to failure money, plans, and technology. He goes, so our plan was no money, no plants, no technology. And I go, What? This is crazy'cause like a tech company worth like forty billion dollars. Like, what are you talking about?

And he goes, he goes, All right, here we go. Money. Money makes people stupid. And when problems come up, their first instinct becomes throw money at it, rather than attacking it with creativity. So basically uh w way back when Google was uh Google was like dominating with AdWords. And so there the people at Alibaba were like, we need to make our version of AdWords. And he goes, You know, this is no ordin it's like you know, building this type of ad network is not like super simple. Um he goes, so Jack Ma cut a check for two hundred fifty thousand dollars to build this project and Latim like laugh like You're you're missing three zeros on the back of this. Like, what are you talking about? Two hundred fifty K.

And he goes, That's how much money it took me to start Alibaba. Um, like I I I had less than that starting the whole company. So if you need more than that for a feature, we're doing it wrong. He's like they're like, Well, how are we supposed to do this? He goes, Do exactly what I did with Alibaba. He's like So he moved nineteen people into his apartment where he had started out. You're gonna work there. He's like you need uh servers to to run the ad servers?

Cool, go find some. Like uh go get some used junk servers and like re-rig them, get them, refurbish them and make them work. And they go, but there's no redundancy. He goes, if you're building within where you need redundancy, like we've we've done this wrong, right? Like uh you know that this is you need to build build this so that it works without redundancy first. And um and so he he did that for that was uh that was the no money. Then he's like no technology. He's like Everybody wants to call us a tech company. No, we are a service company. We're here to serve our users. If you don't think of yourself like you're in the service industry, you're in the wrong industry. And uh this last one was plan. And it's like, all right, well, dude, how'd you do this like Why no plans? Why are plans bad? He goes.

Um He goes, Well, you know, you guys are fifty young entrepreneurs who got flown out here to do this. I I assume in America you guys have done something good. Otherwise, why would we have picked you? He goes, How many of you are doing what you initially plan to do? And like nobody's hand went up. And he was like, exactly. And he goes, uh plan is plans are fine, but they always change. That's the only thing we know about plans. The mission never wavers. Sometimes you'll need a plan to get others to believe, but remember, you should not believe that plan. You should follow your gut and adapt constantly to the circumstances. Don't follow the plan you wrote when you started. Follow your mission, follow your vision, follow the why. If you do that, you will be successful. And I was like, damn. Did you Did you write all this down? Yeah, you read notes.

So many years ago after that after that event, I wrote I tried to write a book. in like two weeks and I wrote half of it. And so this was one of my chapters in that book. Uh, and I just found the PDF on my computer when you were talking about awesome. That's hilarious. That's amazing that you did that, because that was years ago. What a great story. It's so applicable. I love that that's applicable. To Alibaba.

Uh Just as much as like I'm thinking about you guys and us and like how we started the conversation, like Yeah. We had no money. We had I guess we had technology in that like podcasting and the internet is inherent leverage. It wasn't. None of us were like, We're building a tech company. Or we're building a product. It was like no, it's like

Exactly. And like it's funny, like I We See a lot, I'm sure you guys do too. People come to us like, Oh, how do I start a podcast? How do I start a successful podcast? We see like big companies come, the like offline celebrities that wanna start podcasts. And it's like

They come with money, technology, and a plan and are like Not how it's gonna work. Not it's gonna suck. You guys probably see this with your episodes. Like how many of them started doing what they're doing? Like I I don't know. I haven't listened to all the recent ones, but like I don't know. Was Nintendo what we think of Nintendo today or did it start with? Dude, Nintendo was making Wait, wait, real quick. Do either of you know the origin story of Nintendo? Or or have a guess at how old Nintendo is. I think it's really old. I remember reading it once. I don't I don't remember off the top of my head, but it was is it like Sony over there like selling rice or something and then that now they're who they are? It's even better. Yeah. It's a hundred and thirty year old company. Yeah. Started in eighteen ninety. And

Their original business Was Making Hanafuda cards. Which is the Japanese version of US playing cards, but US playing cards were illegal to import, like because people from the US Could w it was not legal to be in the country.

And David, I think you at this point, they literally would execute you if you came into the street. Well the Nintendo started right after this, but before the Metis restoration, like Japan went through this multi hundred year period of strict isolationism where Like You would be executed if you were a foreigner and you entered the country. Likewise, if you were a Japanese person and you left the country and came back, you would also be executed. But like playing cards are this thing that like has product market fit. So they're like, how do we name something like playing cards. Universal human need. So it literally started making Hanafuda cards and their distribution channel was through the Yakuza to illegal casinos.

Yeah. Yakuza being like the mafia. The Japanese pop. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They started making these playing cards and like a very small part of the market was like, Oh, you have a pack of playing cards in your house, but just like Everywhere. The market is casinos'cause you use a fresh deck for each

And so that there's no cheating. And yeah, so Nintendo is like deeply embedded with the Akuza. And for like sixty years this was their business before they started making toys. Wow. And then what, some like visionary within the company was like, uh hey, this new thing is cool. Crazy family like really tragedy of like this cycle of um

Death and uh just like terrible parenting in the family. But actually not the same family because they had no sons and they needed sons, so they were marrying their daughters off to people who could take over the the business. Yeah, exactly. And uh one of these guys was basically just like so pissed off at like the family legacy. that uh this is Firoshi Yamauchi who started the modern Nintendo. Uh, he was like, I want to diversify the business, I want to get out of this. And he did a partnership with Disney in nineteen fifty nine. Yeah, nineteen fifty nine. He

Nintendo brought Disney and Disney IP into Japan. post World War Two Check this out. I literally have the cards. Some acquired fans sent them to me. Oh wow. Started cards.

Yeah, and then they brought toys and then they started making their own toys because they had like lock on the retail distributors. Uh yeah. So Started his cards and they were like then they went said to all these uh retailers they were like, Oh, you want the Disney products? You're gonna take our products too. Was that Jiminy Cricket as the Joker?

Jiminy Cricket as the Joker and Mickey Mouse golfing on this old school card deck. That's amazing. That's like you gotta wear that with you gotta wear gloves if you're gonna touch that or something. That's like a a ancient artifact. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the clients whole history. Call, support tickets, emails, and

Here's a test from three days ago I totally missed. Hub Spot Grow Better. Can I ask you guys a a couple Rapid fire questions. Uh about some of the companies that you've you've discussed. Number one.

Which company of all of everyone that you uh went over Would you want to own? Like which which one's what's the one that you envy? Well, though those are two different questions. Which would you want to like own the stock of and which do you want or which do you want to like uh be an investor in or or actually own the company? Yeah, yeah. The second. Actually own and which one do you envy most?

Actually. Own I think is the NFL. Yeah. The most Like durable franchise.

And own is always a funny question,'cause what's your entry price? Like do I have to buy stuff at today's prices or but if I think about sort of like durability of the asset and I sort of ig ignore um where things are trading in what market values today. The NFL is seven lay of entrenched in our society. And to be an American at this point means to have the NFL in your life. And

They also David, you pointed this out on our episode. Everyone thinks Really cute to like stack rank all the the media franchises. Marvel's worth this. And you know, all the way at the top of the charts, Pokemon's worth this. But like the NFL is worth so much more than any of those. The NFL TV contract alone is twelve billion dollars a year. The most recent set of rights they parcelled up was like

No, isn't it? Uh now it's like eighteen or nineteen billion a year, I think. Something insane. But and they recently signed a ten year deal, so it's like a Hundred and fifty billion dollar deal. The NFL has all the franchises, but is there basically like this like top level Holdco that owns like the p the media rights and the franchises? It's communist capitalism. They all own it all together, but the NFL, unlike any of the other leagues out there is this is there's starting to be a few little cracks in this, but like they negotiate with The

T V contracts and now all the streaming and everything. Unified as a league. So there's no like you know like how the Yankees have the yes network, like their own TV network? It's none of that in the NFL. It's all together and it's all equal revenue share. Have you guys done an episode on M L B A M? Yes, way back when Disney was actually the first investment before the acquisition. These guys could tell you the the full version, the accurate version. I'll give you the the dumb version, which is the major leageball had created a

Heck. Like a tech team, basically a tech company inside of Major League Baseball, co-owned by like the the teams. And the job was like hey, like people are trying to listen to this on the radio. We need to like do digital streaming audio. Ichiro'cause when Ichiro came over from Japan, they needed to stream. Ichiro Suzuki, the guy who played on the Mariners. Yeah. It was like a phenomenon. And so people in Japan wanted to watch or l watch wasn't even an option. I think it was listen to the games. So they needed dig internet streaming audio.

And so they built this thing, they started offering it, and then each team would use it. So it was like oh each team co funded it. So they would like Cut a check. And then that developed technology for all of them. But then they s ended up spinning it out as a multi billion dollar company because they're the best at video streaming now. Like they stream if you want to watch Game of Thrones, it's M L B A M's video tech that streams Game of Thrones so that when whatever

Ten million people click play as soon as the episode drops. That like the thing doesn't crash, which is kinda kind of an a you know, just an amazing thing. And so that like spin out of like who would have ever thought like One of the big tech companies, you know, unicorn tech companies came out of like this baseball co op co funded thing. It's like kind of an insane story. And it was in like two thousand and four or something that they started working on it. They had a five year head start on having the insight that this infrastructure was gonna be important over Netflix. Like everyone thinks like oh Netflix, you know, is in with the ISPs and it's the best in the world that this like

Spam Tech was doing that five years earlier. Yeah. And it ended up getting acquired by Disney and like is a huge part of SPN streaming, like all the um ESPN plus Disney Plus, like it's

It's crazy. Is there is there a certain founder, CEO, leader who you would rank as the the person you'd least want to compete against Whether they're w whether historical or modern. H here's another way of phrasing that I heard that I like. There's somebody was talking about the NFL draft and there's like four QBs that were competing and they're like, Well, this guy's got good arm, this guy's good at running, this guy's a great leader, blah blah blah. And then this guy asked this question I love, he goes

Let's say they were all went on vacation and they rented a car and they're walking out to the to the Jeep. Who th who do they throw the keys to to drive this car? It's like who's the leader, who's the alpha amongst alphas amongst these Q B. So so who's that in the CEO. I think we gotta say Jensen, uh Jensen Long from NVIDIA. Like he's such a badass. So Like I don't know anything about NVIDIA because I just know it's a killer stock. So NVIDIA makes the chips that are in computers and and and does it involves display. Like you get like a NVIDIA G yeah, is is that right? Yeah, so Nvidia is uh is in their

Sort of. Third major act as a company. Yeah. But loosely defined as like they um popularized the idea of a GPU in addition to the CPU. And originally the use case was for video games. In the nineties. And you know, I think everyone who ever built PCs remembers like

Oh man, I gotta get this hot new GPU to slide in the card'cause it's better than the integrated graphics thing from Intel. Um And so that was sort of their market for a while and uh it was all about uh gaming PCs. But then Like again, five, six, seven years before the rest of the market.

Jensen basically made this bet. Where he saw researchers using the the GPUs, the gaming graphics. To do AI research. And he was like, I think we should lean really heavily into this. And so he spent billions of dollars and thousands of headcount for five years.

To build up this like whole software stack called CUDA. That If AI and ML was gonna become a thing.

then people were going to use CUDA to develop exclusively on NVIDIA's hardware. And so by the time it did become a thing Like five years ago. NVIDIA had this enormous moat around it as being the platform to develop AI on. And it just so happened that

The technology, this like super heavy parallel processing matrix math technology that makes gaming graphics chips work. Is the very same math. That powers what ML is all based on.

But other than so NVIDIA for the listeners, it's I just looked it up. It's a six hundred fifty billion dollar company. So one of the I don't know, top twenty, thirty biggest businesses in the world. But other than him being correct What makes this person like a savage or or That they're just like there's so many points. In history, he is a nineteen wives. Let me No, he actually he's a total family man. He's been married to the same person he met in college, they have two kids, like he's

Uh but Like he's got a giant tattoo of the company's logo on his shoulder. Uh, he wears leather jackets, he drives really fast cars. He's like um He's the guy's guy like Elon accepts not like right. Like Elon accepts right and like leads with kindness and uh But like he I mean they're like

In each phase of the company. The absolute rational thing to do was like basically shut it down and like you know like talk about being left for dead. Like this company was left for dead multiple times. And he's Built like just single handedly this dude.

created the AI revolution that we are in today. Like NVIDIA and CUDA is essentially like you can think about it as like the Android plus iOS Of AI Like.

No NVIDIA and no cuda, no decision by Jensen to do this. We are not living in the world we're living in today. Which is the thing. For the thing you're actually looking for, which is like who is the most savage. person to compete against. That answer is Bernard Arnaud from LVMH. The richest man in the world today. Uh. And he got there not by being the founder of a business.

that happened to have product market fit and appreciated wildly. It's because of his deal prowess. And the way that he was able to effectively outsmart the rest of the market to hoover up seventy of the the history's most important and trusted brands. into one umbrella and then find leverage.

in every single thing he does to expand the empire. Is there anyone who you think is overrated, who's on a pedestal, and you think, I don't think that person's that great. I think uh it it worked out, but I think they're overrated. A very unacquire question, I see.

Yeah. Dave and I are nice people. We are. We don't um well pick a dead person. One that I like to I I like to talk about Dead person. Uh you can pick anyone, but somebody who's like No, I think one that I like to talk about here is um I don't know the overrated is right, but like I I think a lot about in investing about um There's this great Buffett quote, not one of his most well known ones, but um

Uh it's something like you wanna own a business that uh, you know, even an idiot could run because someday someone will, you know? And I think about uh Uh to me what that means is like You want to own a business, you want to invest in a business that like literally you cannot kill it. There's nothing you can do to stop this juggernaut. Uh, and to me that's Airbnb. And we talked about this a lot on the episode we did.

It's just like the most amazing global network effect of all time. And literally like I don't You know, this is my opinion, but I don't think there's anything that any manager could uh do to change the like to inflect the trajectory of that ship, you know? Uh I uh

I like uh there's a st long story, I don't feel like telling it, but I h had a job at Airbnb when I was like twenty two and I like dropped out of school and moved out. And then I got denied, whatever. And so I didn't end up working there, but I got the interview with the founders. And then years later, my wife ended up working there. And during work from home for COVID, Brian would give these talks every Thursday. And we lived in a small apartment. So I like w inevitably would hear it. I think that I agree with you. It's a market once you have a marketplace that's working, it's hard to screw it up. Uh eBay is doing a good job though. But uh I you know, if it works, like it's it's a good it's a great thing. It's a quite durable. But I would listen to Brian Chesley give these thirty minute like Thursday talks. That guy is bad to the bone. I read a little bit uh I I read the Walsh uh the Walt Disney biography and he reminded me exact of him he is a you know like I think someone said there's a difference between a missionary and a mercenary. Mercenaries are hired guns who are ruthless, but missionaries they they really care about what they're doing.

I I sense that with him. That guy, I think, is uh is is a bit killer. I think that he's uh people think of him as this nice guy, of which I think he is. I think he's way, way more of a killer than people give him credit for, and he's very wise. That he's a really good leader. Um but that's cool. I I like Airbnb and I think it And I think it's cool that I I agree. Th it probably would be um hard to kill. And last question, which person who you covered would you would kick your ass physically and you'd least want to have a physical confrontation with? I mean actually Jensen. Yeah. You think he you think you think so? Well he's getting up there in age, but like yeah, no, he like

He lifts. Uh He's just like such a character. Uh Mm.

Well, I certainly I mean, we're coming right off of Nintendo, but like Um Hiroshi Yamauchi back in the day, not because he was physically intimidating, but like literally like the Oh I got you. Do not cross. Oh Douglione. Yeah, of course. Like we sat Dave and I walked in to interview Douglione. It's a great story. And uh Doug Rioni's the founder of Sequoia. Yeah. Uh the founder.

Yeah. Got it. A bit a head honcho at one point of of one of the best uh venture capital firms ever. through Google and you know the the the true heyday of of Sequoia. Which Yeah, or you could argue that was recently, but amazing era of Sequoia. And uh so we a lot of times like with guests.

We'll get to like spend some time beforehand and get to know them and go out to dinner afterwards and build real relationship and we like email or text and You guys know the drill. And so with with Doug. We uh we didn't communicate with him at all beforehand. It was all with uh w some some other lovely people at Sequoia. And we walk in and we set up and someone walks in the room and then they go, Okay, are you um

Are you ready? And we were like, yep. And they were like, Great, we'll go get Doug. Doug walks in. He sits down, he says hello. Are we starting?

And we were like, Uh yeah. So we hit record. And We finished so we did the whole episode. Make me laugh. Right. We finish recording and Doug goes Doug just goes, Great. Thank you so much. And he walk, gets up, and leaves the room. So every word that I've ever spoken with with Doug Leone, except for like two or three is on the record in the episode that you can listen to in our podcast feed. Uh uh uh later, um his EA did come in and say, Hey, Doug wanted to know if you guys had any feedback. He's always looking to get better.

Um and sort of like uh came in and shadow with us. But I was like, wow, that is uh Yeah, I did wanted to say thank you. Um But he doesn't waste breath. The assistants just punched you in the arm and gave you a rat right. That's from Doug. He has I think still to this day the best quote unacquired that is not uttered by Banner me quoting somebody else from history. Uh but the best live quote unacquired. He was talking about um.

after the dot com crash when uh Sequo was like kind of made this vow that no LP would lose money. Like they wouldn't take a mulligan fund. They would like work the portfolio companies. They didn't take salaries. Make sure that they have positive returns. And he said uh He's like Mike Moritz and I linked arms. Alright.

It wasn't I think it was linked our he said Mike Moritz and I decided that like we would stand there and we wouldn't flinch and you could burn cigarettes on our arms and we would like we wouldn't take a mulligan on these funds. Damn. He also has kind of an accent, right? Like he's uh doesn't he have this Italian New York uh vibe. Yeah, that's cool. Well are there are are there any more of these like tough guys or tough women like that are out there now? I mean when I hear that, it's I always think like oh that was a different generation. Uh Do they make all like Joni nowadays? Elon's like tough. Yeah. Well Elon's tough. He ain't like tough tough. Like Travis Caldic, I think, isn't it.

Is still like this. And he's a dying breed, though. Like more. Like Frank, uh my my badge is not working to get into the office. You still got teeth, don't you? That's like a when you read that guy's book, you're like all right, yeah, this would be a pretty hardcore boss to work under

Yeah. It's totally a lost art though. Like um Yeah, I don't I don't think they make'em like that anymore, unfortunately. Yeah, um before we go, do you guys have uh have any half baked business ideas you wanted to share with the uh the My First Million audience because uh that's what they love. Uh yeah.

Would love to do it. So I've had one that uh I was we were actually kicking around Uh together, Ben and me, for A while. Um But that we're not gonna do which is I think uh

you could actually start a corporate podcast agency. So An agency for companies to make their own podcast. Internal podcasts or external? Either one. Uh, and my thesis on this is that For companies.

Uh There's tremendous value to having a podcast, even if nobody listens. If people listen, like upside. But even though basically you should just assume no one will listen because we have like ever there's so many great options. Why would I listen to a a company's podcast? Right. But It is an excuse.

Relationship building conversations with customers and products. Yeah, and exactly it's it's sales enablement. Like once you have a conversation, you have it recorded, you publish it publicly. Even if there's no organic audience, you can still link to that and you can send it to customers as like a lead nurturing thing of Oh, somebody else was in this position too and they talked about why our product made their life better. Right.

Yeah, like Salesforce should have its own uh its own podcast. Yeah. Yeah. What do they charge for that? What do people charge for that? I know Ben, uh Ben our Ben Ben Wilson used to look work at uh Is it mission.org Ben or no, or it's Caspian. Caspian Studios. And I think they do that for like it. Like how does this idea work or not really? Wha w what what's the verdict on this one? Yes, it works. Yes, the customers are extremely price insensitive. So it's good. The margins are super high.

Uh we actually like combining the Two things we just talked about. We made Snowflakes podcast and Frank Slootman was on it all the time. Oh perfect. It's uh

It's a really good business. The one bad thing about it that's coming into effect right now Is When recessions hit, it's the first thing to go, right? It's just like the the margins are super good when times are good, but then when times are not good. The email you being like, Hey, can you send me the last thirty-day downloads numbers? And you're like, delete, delete the whole podcast, get rid of it. They're they're asking the question. Exactly like that. Yes. Yeah.

What else you got? What else interests you at the moment? Then you got any? Uh Or at least what deals are you seeing, uh,'cause you guys are investing. Are there any interesting deals that you're seeing or categories that you're seeing that you really like that

Don't start with the word AI. I I mean actually no. Like and and and I think that's the I think that is correct. Like I am one of these people that believes that Uh

Yeah. Yeah. Saying AI we invest in AI is a little bit of a silly thing these days because it's the same thing as twenty years ago saying we invest in software as a VC, it's like, yeah, no shit. Like I I I think it's just gonna be so quickly ubiquitous.

That like if companies aren't using AI in some capacity or starting to get a little bit like what's a cool AI use case or company that you've That you've seen and invested in or wanna invest in, whatever. Well, and by the way, I think Sean met with James Courier recently, and I think it was James on Twitter or maybe J Sean Us told us you go, I've been pitched by two hundred AI companies in the last quarter and I've invested in none. 'Cause they're all weak or something like that. I didn't see it. I haven't invested in any either.

I or I haven't invested I'm uh lots of companies I've invested in have added AI stuff to their products, but I haven't invested in some like net new AI company. In part because I don't think AI is going to be the differentiation. And I don't think it's gonna be defensible for the vast majority of companies. I think The

The value is gonna come from and the Moat is gonna come from the same thing that always creates value and motes, which is like Uh network effects with your customers or like the a data mode where someone's already fully locked into your thing and so they don't want to migrate because that would suck and they have processes around using your thing.

Uh And so I sort of Like I I believe that an enormous amount of the value from AI will accrue to these foundational models.

but you actually do have to be using the foundational models in your thing in order to be Uh like Table stakes in in the next few years because everybody's going to expect all software to just behave magically. Right.

Do you think And this will be the last question for me. Do you think that there's a world where you're gonna sell, acquired, or do one of these Spotify deals or anything like that? Have you been approached? Uh Yes.

But Not uh Not in like a um Not in not recently and not in a way that like not since we've become a real business. What could you get for it, you think?

Like we try to give them five million bucks, but they said no. Qui oh wow. We would say no to that. We would for sure say no to that. Um I don't like If uh We can talk about like I I don't Uh

I would not be interested in having any conversations for, you know, less than Uh on the order of like way you got like the hustle or um Uh morning brew or you know, stuff like that. Tens of millions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh

I mean I just think like the value of what we've built both as a business and revenue and Is in that category. I think it's a very much an open question. Like it's gotten so much bigger than we ever imagined. How much farther can it?

Go. Uh I'm curious. Would we trust our own underwriting more than an acquirer's underwriting? Because what has happened for us is it has doubled every single year for eight years. Basically no matter what we do, like we can't make it grow faster or slower than that. Uh idiots running the business here and uh it's still double. Yeah it's it's cash generative. Well have you guys built any businesses off the back of it?

So that's we're Oh w well. Oh, you think it'd glow, David? No, I'm thinking kindergarten. Um so I've a I have a fund on Angelist. I manage about thirty million dollars of capital on Angelist between two funds and four or five SPVs. Um And

Well, I used to be a professional V C before going full time unacquired and that certainly helps. Um All of that's because I've acquired. And you uh So so you did that uh you did that find. Um anything else that you guys have done that you've launched, uh off the back of it,'cause what we found was that

A podcast, like you said. It's very hard to make it grow faster than it's kind of like natural Word of mouth, virality, in interest and like kind of the TAM of that that market. Umrew hubermits are rare. Normally it's a grind. Yeah. Yeah. And uh and even him, I don't think he can make it grow much faster or slower. Just like good execution is obviously the only thing you can control, but like

A lot of people can do good execution and their growth rate will be somewhat uh Uh Linear. The slope doesn't change that much. Do you um But the thing that I think w we found was that you could build businesses off the back of this audience, whether it's a fund or other other products or services that

can be more valuable than the ad revenue of the business of the podcast itself. Do you guys Do that or think about that. Like Sean will Sean mentioned a company and they're like, Oh, we just did a million in revenue. So and it's like oh wow. I gave a company a plug that I invested in. I was like, hey, I use it for this reason, blah, blah, I was like, you know, an ad, basically, but it wasn't meant to be an ad. I was just explaining how I use this thing. And uh they booked a million dollars of AR off of uh off of that, which was like pretty crazy.

Yeah. So that happens to us all the time, uh, which is why all of our sponsor deals are these like six figure, very meaningful, um, and long term. We do these six month sponsorships. Uh and most of our sponsors are now You know, three, four, or five seasons and like it works. And so the question is, is it

More Is the right mode for us to operate in. Keep doing these big Deep sponsorship deals. with companies for cash.

Or do we try to start companies or uh d find some company that's at an inflection point and say You know, let's trade equity or Um, I think we're pretty early in the thinking there because we're like uh you know, we would have to it would have to be

really the right type of company. that is a high LTV B2B SaaS business that's reaching founders and and uh you know CEOs and technical founders. And that would have to be the audience. Like I don't think we're gonna launch an energy drink brand and have that make have that kind of pencil. But

I don't know. We're we're open to the possibility. I think there's also for us I'm I'm curious how you guys think about it'cause you are getting into this game. Uh I at least I don't want to speak for Ben. I don't want to run a company. I want to make

Tell stories. And invest. Uh So I don't really want to build products or manage teams. Uh

So I think it's likely that we'll continue going That route. I don't know. Ben has experience actually building things. So he may feel differently. But this this lets us benefit from the upside of companies acquired as channel without us have to be involved in the muck of building that company. Yeah. And maybe at some point that our desire will change there. But how do you guys you guys have built companies, you guys are building products like How do you think about this? Uh I've thought about it both ways. Like I I'm like you a little bit, where my I have the most fun.

When I get to just Tell you know, tell stories, nerd out about stuff, go learn new things, and then come back with like Go I wanna go down rabbit holes and then take the most interesting, you know, one percent of things that I found and share it on this podcast or on my newsletter. Um, and that's that's what I like to do. That's the the sort of highest enjoyment. Uh, but I also love money and so I'm like, Okay, cool. And I also like the the thing I study is

About how people make money and business and create wealth. And so I can't help myself but like apply some of the things that I learned, right? Like it's it's very hard to resist the urge to apply the things that you know once you know them. Yeah. And um but then you gotta go recruit it. So I basically played with every form you could do. So I I invest Both as startups as well as like cash flowing businesses. Like I'll buy, you know twenty, thirty percent of a cash flowing business that I think

I can help. Through the audience or Uh or just through like, you know. being a entrepreneur for fifteen years and like learning a bunch of stuff. Um

The second thing would be starting a business. So I started the milk road off of the podcast. I think the podcast helped us get the ball rolling there. Um And then I you know I've launched like courses or things like that that just are ways to to take the curiosity and say, Oh, I learned a bunch of stuff, could I teach it? Um And then And and also th thought about, you know, s you know, so buying businesses, investing in startups.

uh doing uh m building a startup on my own or not doing any of them, not being operational at all. Like I've played with kind of all of them over the past three years in different ways. Like we sold the milk road in part because Okay, that business is working and we got a great offer, but The the best part of the offer was, Oh, I don't have to operate any business anymore. If I do this, um, that's appealing to me. Whereas Sam just launched Hampton. last week or well, I think it was la last we can't. Congratulations. Thank you. I feel like You don't have to do sales for the next year based off of like, you know, the

the the blitz that you were able to to to drum up across the pod, Twitter, everywhere everywhere that you tried to do, right? Like I mean you could talk a little more about that, but seems like you crushed your demand side. Yeah, so basically in two thousand twenty two and twenty one, I was inspired by Sean. I was like, All right, fine, I'll invest a little while. And so I gave it like a six to twelve month try and I was like I hate investing. Um I totally dislike it. Um I think maybe I could be pretty good at it, but I I it's not for me. I don't like taking a minority interest in things. That's um I personally like owning all of something and

I think of myself a little bit as an artist sometimes with these companies. Like it's like my I like to be creative and that's kinda how I like to express myself. So I prefer that with and so that's why I launched Tampton was because I was like, this fits my interests. There I have a competitive advantage here. And so when I announced it Uh on the pod, we now have five thousand people who applied. And we're like and it that's it's cost eighty five hundred dollars a year to join and we're being very meticulous and very slow about who we're adding. But that's

very likely gonna be a very, very large company, I think. We have a CEO, Jordan, who's amazing. But uh like we're not taking any outside capital and I prefer Sean likes to do lots of things, and I know a lot of people like to do that lots of things, and I know a lot of people who succeed really nicely with that. Me personally, I prefer f uh focus and just doing one thing at a time. because I I don't I just my brain it's really challenging for me to jump from thing to thing to thing like an investor needs to. Um and so I prefer like spending five, ten years on something. And so I I intend to start company, uh start a company, maybe another one in the in a handful of years, I'm not sure, rather than investing. I actually think that. Sean's way of like doing cash flow businesses and owning a portion of them. That's actually the easier way, I think, to make wealth.

Um I I I just don't find enjoyment uh on it. I'm a dopamine fiend and like seeing sales come in and like making decisions, I get like it's It's my alcohol. I like getting drunk off of that. How d how do you think about the business of The pod of my first million. So the podcast is owned by HubSpot and we get paid a f we get paid strictly a performance fee. And so when it kicks ass, which it has, we get paid good money as if we have had advertisers. Yeah. Um and so but HubSpot's been great. Like not one time have they ever censored us or said

Hey, you made a bad joke. Don't say that. And so it's been pretty good. It it it there's definitely I wouldn't say complicated, but it it's a new relationship that we're definitely trying to figure out of like What to do because frankly HubSpot's an awesome partner, but at the same time, if Sean and I bounce

They they don't have shit. And so I think we're both both sides of that of that are trying to understand what we can do and how far we can push things and and we're definitely still figuring that out. There are You have some and and they're probably a Potentially more.

monetization options for the pod, right? Like how does that revenue get split up? Uh like uh you two ads. We uh turned off YouTube ads. We can't like if somebody wants to sponsor it, we don't, right? So like we leave a lot of money on the table in that regard. Um

But you get other benefits, right? So you gotta like kinda weigh those out over time and be like the the benefit. The benefits that we have are basically We don't do any of the work, so we record and then it goes on the internet. Um that's a pro and a con because if we don't like how it's done, then it's like shit, we don't like that, let's fix it. But as long as it's working well, it's awesome. We get paid without having to have any expenses. But then the flip side is Shit, we have all these this advertiser interest and we know it works really well. Let's take more deals. And so I think there's a there's a world where we do kinda actually come to a compromise and we have more ads, but

Uh that's like a it's a it's a conversation. Yeah. Yeah, is there is there a tension at all with you guys wanting to use the pod to do stuff that generates value for yourself that doesn't accrue back to the MFM. Pod? Like you launching businesses off it, or is that No, they're they're they're they're they're great with that. And any revenue outside of the pod is one hundred percent ours. Events, merch, whatever.

But Let's say that they're like We're hiring a producer now because Ben's gonna go full time on his uh new thing. Let's say let's yeah, congratulations, Ben. Let's say that uh they're moving slow. It's like hey guys, HubSpot, hurry the hell up. You know, you're going way too slow. I've got five friends right now who could hire. And so like there's tension there for things like that. Well, probably all all the business activ all the stuff you guys are launching. Outside of the pod.

Just brings attention back to the pot. It also brings credibility people do you see on YouTube or TikTok or Twitter wherever that are like, you know, basically these bit like business gurus or like, you know, g advice guys. Right. And you hear the advice guys and you like click their bio and you're like, So what are you done? What do you do? Oh Your career is giving advice. Okay, but w h where did you get that firsthand knowledge? Do you have any battle scars? Like oh no, you're You know, you're the bald barber. Uh oh, great. Like, you know, I'm not sure that I want

Not sure that I want that, right? So so I think that's also helpful, right? Because if Like Bob Barber, by the way. Thank you. Good job. I'm back to my my improv on the fly. I decided to take a few more risks of like Tee up that I'm gonna make the joke and see if my brain in that point five seconds can come up with something and if I if I fall flat you know two out of three times, that's okay. That's still one one that I get right now. Exactly. So yeah, uh basically I I think

It gives credibility, right? Like during the pod Um You know I built the milk road and sold it during like while the pod was live. So that adds some credibility. During the pod, Sam launches Hampton. It's clearly gonna be successful or already already off to to a successful start. It gives the pod credibility. And I think that's why like why does all in work really well? Like

Obviously they have good banter, they have good things to say. But I think a big part of it is like They bring a certain gravity to the room. They're participating in the story, yes, it's unfair. Like the w easiest way I explain it was all in is billionaires talking about billionaire shit. And my first millionaire my first million is millionaires talking about millionaire shit. And I've heard people like college kids come out and be like, We're we're broke guys talking about broke guy shit. And it's like all right, fantastic.

I think it adds credibility'cause there's a lot of people out there who will create content, tell you about the next big thing, but they don't invest. They don't have skin in the game. They don't know actually what's going on, or they'll tell you, you know, how to be successful and they're, you know Broken depressed. So it's like you you gotta be careful with who you listen to. It's like I'd rather listen to somebody who's done it before than somebody who hasn't. It's just as simple as that. Yep. Yeah. Which that I think is the whole unlock of podcasting that like

Is a problem with the traditional media industry. Like one of the uh it wasn't Explicitly in my our minds when we started acquired, but like I'd gone to business school. Uh I went to Stanford to get my MBA there. It was a great experience.

But like The classroom experience, like the professors, not the guests who had come in who had done stuff, but like the professors who are full time academics. And then the cases that we would do Just be like You guys didn't do this shit. Like why are you telling me about this? Like I wanna hear from the people who did it.

Or the journalists that cover the tech industry. It's like how many people going from being successful founders to entering the journalism industry and writing for a paper? Like you like Michael Michael Morowitz, by the way. Michael Morwitz, you know, uh Doug Leone's partner. Yeah. Moritz, yeah. Uh more sorry, more it's he uh journalist turned billionaire and uh like those D C in the middle there. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Those uh you know journalists to V C once I win. But the reverse pipeline doesn't exist. So like I always have to remind myself of this when I'm reading tech coverage. I'm like Okay, the the very best ones of these people have immersed themselves in the operator founder communities to be able to like pick up the Genesequa and read between the lines of what certain things mean. Like Dan Primack is one of these types of people.

But You know, a a a junior journalist coming out of journalism school writing and picking up this beat. It's like Yeah.

It's hard to say that that's a better way to learn what's going on than listening to people who are industry participants talking about what's going on. I remember once I went to a um journalists, uh somebody who worked at TechCrunch. I went to their apartment in San Francisco. And I just like walked in and I looked around.

And I was like, this is the same apartment as like everybody I know right out of college has. And I was like And then they have this pen. And then they can write. on tech crunch and then it looks like very different, but like this is a person who's just a normal they're a normal person

who this is kinda like their first gig and they're covering something that they barely like really true honestly, they barely understand. That doesn't mean they're not smart. Doesn't mean they don't have good intentions, but like It's that thing where I forget the the name of it, but it's like If you read an article about a topic you actually know about In the newspaper, you're like Oh this is

Oh, okay, I see the limitations of how much stock I should put into this, but when you read about a topic you don't know. You're like this is the truth. Oh, the New York Times is an expert and it's like There is a Delmet or something, is like what it's called, right? Do you guys remember a few years ago when one of the I think her name was Jen or something like that, one of the founders of Away Travel, like there's all these headlines saying like this woman it created a toxic workplace that's horrible. And I was like, Oh, this is a juicy story. Let's dig in. Where's the fraud? I love it. And you read the you read the Slack messages that they're publishing and you're gonna be able to do it. Listen to this.

Yeah, she's a startup. So someone like packed like she like opened up a package and it was horribly done. And She said, If this keeps what did she say? She goes, I'm just gonna have to d pack these boxes myself.

Because whoever's running this must be brain dead. And I was like, Okay, cool, let's scroll. Where's the good stuff? And they're like that's the thing when she she she said the word brain dead, and I'm like That's the toxic work environment? Like come on. Give me a break. That is that that that ain't nice, but that's not New York Times headline shit. Give me a break. Like I wanna see some. Yeah. Something like that. She bounced because of that. It wasn't Jen, it was the other woman. Not yeah, I forget what her name was, uh but like I read that article and like there's no fraud?

Like she didn't you know, like there's no alcohol involved. What's going on? Give me something good. I want cocaine and hookers. I don't want brain dead. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? At least like This is why there's so much value to like what you guys are doing that you're building businesses and talking about them that like We're investing. Ben's a full time VC. I used to be like We know what's going on in a way that if you're just a journalist, like you can't. It's structurally impossible. Well podcasts actually have more people from the field that come in and do it because a podcast is easier. You're talking, you're not writing. There's no barrier. You don't have to like edit. And like, you know, make a cool fancy TikTok thing. You know, you don't have to like layer in filters and stuff. It's just you say no, you talk. That's why you see like Reed Hoffman. Yeah, just like straight audio.

Um or even audio with the webcam, like you know, now I think that's getting a little bit easier. But basically the podcast format. I think there's a reason why you see so many like ex athletes Do this where you like you know, the same thing. Like you have skip baylists. Who will just go say how this person is they don't have the clutch gene. It's like bro, that's not a gene. Um they don't they don't you know and he'll just like they'll make fun of people and then you have JJ Reddick, who's an ex player. So good old man of the three. So good. He's phenomenal at content. His and his point of view is so much better. Then then there's and he that's why his stock is going up, like his views are just going up and to the right.

Because He's good at this. He pulls real guests. When he pulls real guests, they talk like they don't talk like they're talking to a reporter because they played with JJ or they played against him. So they actually open up about stuff, but he's also not trying to trap him in these gotcha questions. So there's like some mutual trust there. And then he'll just share like You know, when you're a player on the road like you know, this is the situation. Fans think you're practicing and blah, blah, blah, but actually here's what happens when you go and He's just saying what's g what's really going on. And so to me, when you see that

And again it's because Podcasting is a lot easier. If you told him, Hey, I need you to write like beautiful, well written blog posts every other day. It'd be very hard to do. But for him to just Oh, something happened, get on the microphone, give my point of view. They could do it. So like you get more credible experts in podcasting than I think on any other like medium.

This is probably actually a good use of AI is being able to turn the ramblings of people who are industry participants You run that transcript through and you say, write this as if it was a New York Times article with a strong lead and you know, this many words. Like it is amazing uh how I feel like I've transformed in my use of GPT over the last month where I was using it to try to answer questions, which it's fine at.

But of course that's the first thing you're gonna do with a prompt. But my use case recently has been Take lots of stuff and feed it in as the prompt. and then ask it to make it better.

So like I wrote a LinkedIn post about our most recent acquired episode and I fed it I've just pasted the whole thing into chat GPT. I was like, Can you make this like more exciting and can you make this more likely to go viral? And like all you said. You so you basically copy and paste it five hundred words, you said, Here's a LinkedIn post I wrote, make it more exciting. Let me see exactly what the prompt was. So I don't B S on the pod here.

Okay, no one can check. It's AI. Can you please act as my editor and modify this to make it more likely to go viral as a LinkedIn post? That's so funny. And it indexed way in the other direction. Like it went it Full of emojis, like fuck out. Discover the secrets. Like a lot of like And so I had to tone it down, but I totally used that to and I and it helped me rephrase a lot of things where I had like awkward phrasing that didn't flow well. It's a very good rewriter. Yeah.

That's awesome. We agree. I'm I'm gonna start doing that. Well, guys, uh you're awesome, man. Uh thank you for coming on. Um if you're listening to R Pod, go check out Acquired. If you're listening on Acquired Do as we call. Should we teach him the gentleman's agreement, Sam? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like the gentlemen's agreement and the ladies' understanding has become like you know in wrestling when the rock would take the microphone, he'd raise the people's eyebrow, and you know he's gonna hit him with like The expected thing but for some reason you get excited just to hear him say it. That's how I get feel now with your this is your catchphrase. Go ahead. This is the gentleman's agreement. And so basically the way it works is look, you're going to seven eleven, you're gonna go uh buy gas, whatever you are, and at the top, uh when you're about to pay, you uh see a little jar and it's for uh muscle dystrophy and there's all that money in there. And of course you don't take that money, you leave a l uh a dollar there. No one's gonna stop you, by the way, if you took that money.

But and that's basically what this podcast is. This podcast is free. Us four, we just dedicated hours of our uh of our day to do this, but unlike every other podcast, this one's not free. Just like that jar, you gotta leave a dollar, meaning you gotta go and subscribe to Acquired's podcasts on Spotify as well as iTunes and do the same with My First Million on our YouTube page and you click a uh you click subscribe. It's called the Gentlemen's agreement because we're not there. All right, we're just shaking our hands. Ladies agre what's it called? The ladies' understanding, the gentlemen's agreement. We're not there to help you guys out. It's just honesty. So everyone's doing it. Don't be left out. You have to do this. That that's our that's our agreement. We create the content, you click subscribe. I love it. You guys are innovators.

And there's real value. Like the it's not, you know, th for our audience, if you go and subscribe to My First Million, you're gonna get smarter. You're gonna get more ideas. Like this benefits you. So it's not, you know, you're not just pulling money out of your wallet here. You're you're doing something that's gonna Um Make your life more fun. And that's the gentleman's agreement and that's the lady's understanding. David, you wanna you wanna take us home, what were you saying? Oh, I was gonna ask uh I I could keep jamming with you guys for another hour. I was gonna ask you said Spotify. Do you like uh where do you like people to subscribe to Spotify, YouTube, we use it all over the internet. Well, you said earlier that Spotify is your main thing. So once we started doing the gentlemen's agreement, our YouTube channel went through the roof. So So uh we went from like a hundred and fifty thousand subscribers to close to two hundred and

Every pod giveaway. of YouTube premium to someone in the comments. So go go to our YouTube go to this episode on YouTube and just and just type in Premium. And we will pick somebody. We will pay for your YouTube premium so that you can listen to this pod ad free in the background. You can lock your phone and walk around and uh you can enjoy that sweet, sweet 1499 a month that we're gonna be paying for you for the year. So one year of YouTube premium in every episode. Call it it now.

Oh, I love it. That is really a reminder to go uh comment,'cause I am a YouTube premium subscriber, but I want you guys to foot the bill. Yeah. Well thanks for doing this, guys. We appreciate you and uh We'll uh we'll have you back on and thank you for everything. Like, see you guys. Catch you guys next time.

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