“There’s no real secret to making the stuff we make. It’s not something where you have to be crazy talented. The thing is, you just spend a little bit longer on it than is reasonable. Most people would give up, and then you just keep going on it for three more hours making it better, doing more research, whatever the thing is that makes it better. Wherever most people would say, yea, that’s good enough, you just keep going for a little while longer. Not an eternity longer, just a bit longer.” -Nathan, quoting Alex Blumberg, Gimlet Media
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Ben and David agree to have the tables turned in a great interview by friend and longtime Acquired supporter Nathan Baschez, who was formerly the Head of Product at both Gimlet Media and Substack, and now writes the excellent Divinations newsletter on tech and business strategy.
This episode originally came about because one of Nathan’s first articles at Divinations kindly focused on Ben and Acquired, which you can read in full here: https://divinations.substack.com/p/ben-gilbert-on-how-acquired-launched
The core Divinations newsletter is free for everyone, but if you’d like special access to any of their paywalled content, Nathan shared this discount link for all Acquired LPs: https://divinations.substack.com/acquired . Check it out!
Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:
Let People Know You’re An LP on Twitter!
Show Links:
Thinking Fast and Slow Summary
Show Bookmarks:
[00:00] – Intro of Nathan Baschez
[03:32] – Nathan takes the reins; “how/when do you change your opinion on a company?”
[10:57] – The Business Strategy for Acquired / Acquired LP
[23:57] – Episode Hits, Duds, and Analytics
[37:26] – The evolution of Acquired
[46:42] – The worst moments of Acquired / analytics revisited
[53:58] – The makings of a great interview
[56:12] – What’s next for Acquired?
[61:38] – A bit more about Divination, Writing, and Nathan
People Worth Knowing:
Elon Musk
Daniel Kahneman
Eric Schmidt
Andy Rachleff
Baumeister
Trip Hawkins
Chetan Puttagunta
Rahul Vohra
Kara Swisher
Alex Blumberg
Amira Valliani
Patrick O’Shaughnessy
Vlad Magdalin
Dan Sheppard
Gilbert Arenas
Companies Mentioned in Episode:
Jetsetter
Gimlet Media
Hardbound
Snapchat
Disney +
TikTok
YouTube
Convoy
Script
Zoom
AppleTv
Tesla
Madrona
Amazon
Whole Foods
Uber
Lyft
Benchmark
Stanford GSB
Square
Superhuman
Glow
Atlassian
Activision/Blizzard
Zappos
Squarespace
Rover
WeWork
Sequoia Capital
Webflow
NBA
Episode Specific Terms:
Podcast Flywheel
Bingeable
System 1 and System 2 Thinking
Ben and David’s Affiliations:
Wave Capital, @WaveCapitalVC
Pioneer Square Labs, @psl
- Follow Acquired: @AcquiredFM, acquired.fm
- Let People Know You’re an LP on Twitter!
- Suggestions and Feedback: acquiredfm@gmail.com
What is ACQ2: The Acquired Interviews?
ACQ2 is Ben and David's conversations with expert founders and investors. Acquired the stories of great companies — and ACQ2 dives deeper into the lessons we can learn from them, often with the protagonists themselves.