The Acquired Podcast Hosts: The Company They Would Like To Own &…
About This Episode
Hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri are joined by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal of the Acquired podcast for a deep dive into the business of high-end podcasting. They share research strategies for long-form content, discuss the immense value of niche executive audiences, and analyze the 'savage' leadership traits of founders like Jensen Huang and Bernard Arnault.
Episode Description
Show Notes
- 01:45- Intro to Acquired
- 01:58- What to do when your schtick runs out
- 10:00- How to scale to a big podcast
- 14:05- How big do you have to be to be at the top of the business category?
- 23:55- What commonalities are there between weird companies?
- 27:40- How to tell a real from a fake contrarian
- 34:45- Nintendo
- 37:45- Which company would you most want to own?
- 40:45- Who would you least want to compete against?
- 52:30- Business ideas
- 56:40- Will you ever sell Acquired?
- 58:20- Best ways to make money as a podcast
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- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
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- Additional episodes you might enjoy:
- #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits
- #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future
- #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto
- * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett
- #218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates
- Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More
- How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More
Links
- *Acquired podcast
- *Wait But Why
- *Marques Brownlee
- *Nintendo
- *NVIDIA
- * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.
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Check Out Sam's Stuff
- * Hampton
- * Ideation Bootcamp
- * Copy That
Check Out Shaan's Stuff
- * Power Writing Course
- * Daily Newsletter
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Key Takeaways
Build a 'flagship franchise' within a specific niche to earn the right to exist before expanding into broader topics once you have established trust and a distinct personal 'flavor'.
Avoid the 'keys to failure'—excessive capital, rigid planning, and prioritizing tech over service—as they often stifle the creativity and adaptation necessary for a startup's survival.
The most valuable media assets are built on durability and deep research; for example, the Acquired hosts aim to consume every piece of content about a company to create 'conversational audiobooks' that resist commoditization.
Business Ideas Mentioned
Corporate Podcast Production Agency
Agency
AI Executive Content Transformer
AI & Automation