Build Your SaaS

Fast Company called Acquired "the #1 tech podcast sensation." I've been a huge fan of the show for years. So, I was surprised when they contacted me and wanted to switch to Transistor for podcast hosting!

Since switching, they've had a breakout year. Their clips started showing up everywhere on my social media feed; they had chart-topping episodes on Nintendo, Nike, and Costco, and they interviewed the CEOs of NVIDIA, Uber, and Charlie Munger. 

And this was the year that Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (the co-hosts) both went full-time on the podcast. Podcasting is now their job.

With all of that activity, I thought Build your SaaS listeners would be interested in hearing my interview with David about their entire story:
  • How they got started, how they built momentum over time,
  • how they were able to double their audience every single year since 2015, 
  • And how that momentum ended up Attracting an incredibly valuable audience that they've now monetized through sponsorships. 
This interview has so much that podcasters, creators, and indie entrepreneurs will find super helpful and inspirational.

πŸ”₯ Key moments:
  • (0:00:00) – A breakout year for Acquired
  • (0:01:45) – What is the Acquired podcast about?
  • (0:02:40) – How the Acquired podcast got started (origin story)
  • (0:07:23) – How Ben and David's co-hosting relationship works
  • (0:09:00) – The 3 big goals that made them want to start Acquired
  • (0:11:38) – How did listeners respond to the first episodes?
  • (0:14:55) – The best reason to start a podcast
  • (0:15:30) – The secret to how Acquired attracts new listeners
  • (0:18:13) – How they got featured in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Spotify
  • (0:24:18) – How they got their first podcast sponsors (and why it wasn't about making money)
  • (0:27:58) – Why they give their sponsors a white glove, 11-star experience
  • (0:34:13) – How to get more word-of-mouth referrals for your podcast
  • (0:37:00) – Acquired's unconventional approach to podcast ads
  • (0:41:54) – How the Acquired podcast's growth machine works
  • (0:48:05) – Why their NVIDIA podcast episode went viral
  • (0:50:48) – Why they switched from Libsyn to Transistor for podcast hosting
  • (0:57:18) – The rise of the "independent, boutique podcaster."
  • (1:02:27) – "The future of podcasting doesn't belong to Gimlet, NYT, NPR..."
  • (1:06:22) – David Rosenthal's advice to aspiring podcasters
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Creators & Guests

Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions
Guest
David Rosenthal
Co-host of the Acquired.fm podcast
Editor
Joseph Pinheiro
Writer/Director/Editor Visual & audio storytelling. Creative vision. Passion driven. Videos. Documentaries. Podcasts. Reels & shorts.

What is Build Your SaaS?

Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Justin Jackson:

This past year, Acquired, the business podcast, had a breakout season. Everybody was talking about them. The hosts, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal were profiled in Fast Company Magazine, where they describe the podcast as the number one tech podcast sensation. Their clips started showing up everywhere on my social media feed. They had chart-topping episodes on Nintendo, Nike, and Costco.

Justin Jackson:

They interviewed the CEOs of NVIDIA, Uber, and Charlie Munger. And this was the year that Ben and David both went full time on the podcast. This is now their full time job.

Justin Jackson:

This past year is also the year that they switched their podcast hosting to Transistor. I thought it'd be interesting to sit down with David Rosenthal, one of the hosts, and talk about their entire story: How they got started, how they built momentum over time, how they were able to double their audience every single year since 2015 when they started the show, and how that momentum ended up attracting an incredibly valuable audience that they've now monetized through advertising.

Justin Jackson:

David also had a unique, countercultural perspective on podcast advertising that I think you're gonna find fascinating. There's so much in this interview that podcasters, creators and indie entrepreneurs are going to find super helpful and inspirational. I'm excited to share it with you. Here is my conversation with David Rosenthal of The Acquired Podcast.

Justin Jackson:

So, David, to get started, maybe just describe in your own words what is the Acquired podcast about.

David Rosenthal:

Oh, boy. Well, we actually just changed our tagline by unanimous vote of the board of directors, which is just Ben and me, live on our holiday special episode. We used to be the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

And now we are the podcast about just great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them.

Justin Jackson:

And this is actually the interesting part of your story. So you and your co host, Ben, you do the Acquired podcast together. How did the podcast get started? Bring me back to that point.

David Rosenthal:

Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

What year? What was going on in your lives? What was the beginning of all that?

David Rosenthal:

Everything was totally different, and to say that we didn't imagine where it would go is The understatement of the century. So, Ben and I were venture capitalists. I guess you could say we sort of still are, although Acquired is our full time thing now. We were junior VCs at a firm in Seattle called Madrona.

David Rosenthal:

Madrona is the biggest venture firm in Seattle. They were the first investors in Amazon, big investors in Snowflake, and many other great companies. Great, great firm. Top firm. And we were Kids there. There's probably, I don't know, 20, 30 people at the firm, and we were junior, mid level folks. But we were young and we didn't have kids.

David Rosenthal:

And one day, Ben had gotten really into podcasts, and We had become friends, and we were getting drinks one night after work, and, he said "hey, I kinda wanna start a podcast. I've got a couple ideas. Do you wanna riff on them?"

David Rosenthal:

So we did. And, I don't remember exactly how it happened, but his version of the story, which I will assume is correct because my memory is too hazy, was the second idea was Acquired. And the idea at that moment in time was to do a podcast about technology acquisitions that went well, because we were venture capitalists and we thought that was the idea: let's learn how to have an acquisition go well so we could be good at our jobs.

David Rosenthal:

And when he told it to me, according to him, I said, "that's such a great idea! I like it so much I'll do it with you." And that's how it all started. And that was very soon to be nine years ago. So almost a decade ago.

Justin Jackson:

And you two met at work? You were work buddies?

David Rosenthal:

Yes. We actually met before. I was already part of Madrona, and we were trying to softly recruit Ben. Ben was a superstar PM at Microsoft and we met at one of the partners' houses, Greg Gottesman, who's been a great friend and mentor to us both, and Ben and Greg went on to start Pioneer Square Labs in Seattle together. We met at his house for a Passover Seder.

Justin Jackson:

Okay.

David Rosenthal:

That was the first time we met.

Justin Jackson:

You two are junior venture capitalists at this firm and Ben has all these podcast ideas. He says, "what do you think about these podcast ideas?" He was thinking about doing them himself?

David Rosenthal:

This is where I don't know if Ben even remembers, but the way Ben tells the story, and I'll accept this as being as close to fact as we have, Was that he had been thinking about podcast ideas. He had been wanting to do it.

David Rosenthal:

He's a little younger than me, and he had just joined Madrona. He also, in his words, he liked me. He wanted to be friends with me, and I think also wanted to learn from me, so he was kind of looking for an excuse to do something together.

Justin Jackson:

Got it.

David Rosenthal:

So he wasn't necessarily asking me to do it together, but I think he was hoping I would become interested.

Justin Jackson:

Did you have any idea that the dynamic you two have would be the dynamic? This is my understanding of it. I could be wrong. But my understanding is that you do most of the research and scripting, and he handles most of the business stuff and then Some of the business analysis at the end of each episode. Is that roughly correct?

David Rosenthal:

So my role in research is to research the history of the company. And these days, we're covering 100 year old companies.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

His role in research is much more about what is happening now. So I spend a lot of time reading books. He spends a lot of time talking to people in the company, talking to people around the company, talking to analysts, talking to all sorts of folks. And he'll bring that to the episodes.

David Rosenthal:

On the business front, and for many years there was no business front to the podcast, now it also takes up quite a bit of our time and energy.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

I don't know what he would say. I would say we kinda share things equally, but we have very complimentary natural tendencies. So we can get into it if you like, but we tend to focus on different things, although we make every decision together.

Justin Jackson:

Did you have an understanding early on that there would be that complimentary skill set was there? Or were you just two kids that we were excited about an idea?

David Rosenthal:

We were two kids excited about an idea! Yeah. Certainly, one of the things that has made the partnership work and be kinda magical over the years is that we have this great complimentaryness to our skillsets, our personalities. And so I think even back in the day, that was part of the attraction to one another. Ben and I are deeply, deeply aligned on, like, what we want for Acquired, what is important, what is, you know it feels sort of hokey to say, like, our core values, especially since the company is me and Ben. Like, it's not like we have a, you know, mission statement plastered on our walls here. We don't have an office. It's just our homes. But whatever the equivalent of that is, we are, like, rock solid aligned.

David Rosenthal:

Yeah. And then everything else around it, we have this complimentary skill So so I can trust that, you know, Ben can just go off. Like, he loves designing our website and tweaking an update. Like, it's I He's on paternity leave right now, and I logged on to our website the other you know, this morning, and, he changed the color scheme on our about page. Like like, he just he's such a nerd about that stuff.

David Rosenthal:

He can go do that stuff, and I completely trust him that, like Yeah. Whatever he's gonna do is gonna be awesome.

Justin Jackson:

So starting the podcast, it sounds like you both had this curiosity that was similar. And then would you say the other motivation was just professionally like if we can dig into this and understand what makes a great tech acquisition. We'll be better at our jobs.

David Rosenthal:

Yes. Yes. When we again, not on day 1, but pretty quickly. I think we had another you know, went out and got drinks and came up with sort of three goals and three reasons that we were doing Acquired in the early days, and this has changed,

Justin Jackson:

That's what I wanna see! Where is that early Google doc!

David Rosenthal:

Yeah. Yeah. I think we actually made a Google doc. I think it exists.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah. I wanna see that. That because that's usually, that stuff is so interesting. Like, here's the doc where we brainstorm.

David Rosenthal:

Oh, man.

Justin Jackson:

Like, wouldn't it be great if we could accomplish this? So, yeah, what were those three goals?

David Rosenthal:

In priority order, goal number 1, most important was we wanna learn, to a point of, like, hey. That's kinda why we started it of, like Mhmm. In theory, this should be what we're trying to do as VCs. This was back you know, IPO has happened, but this was back in the day of, like, M&A was the primary outcome for venture backed companies. Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

You know, I think if we were starting it today, it would be a slightly different frame.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

But learn, number 1. I think Number 2 was grow our network in the sort of tech venture, startup community. We we never were even in the early days, we were never a guest driven show, But we always occasionally had guests. Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

And that really continues through to today. You know, most of what we do is just Ben and me, but we have guests. And we were super lucky when we started by virtue of being at Madrona. Madrona's influence in the ecosystem, particularly in Seattle, we could get some pretty great guests even in our first couple episodes. Mhmm.

David Rosenthal:

So that was kinda stated goal number 2. And then stated goal number 3 was to increase our influence and, you know, our awareness of Ben and me as venture capitalists in in the, Seattle Tech and broader US tech ecosystem. This all changed a lot, but that those were the original goals.

Justin Jackson:

As far as goals go, those are great. It's like we're doing this because we want to learn. We're doing this because We wanna grow our network. You know, like, we're we're doing this to help our career. And as far as starting podcasts, those are actually, pretty realistic, you know, in the beginning, and, you can't you can't lose if that's the goal.

David Rosenthal:

Totally. Especially the number one of learning. And the I mean, that probably still is, in many ways, our number one goal today, but It never was although that third goal was about our influence, we never ever ever in the history of the show have had, like, We want to get to x listeners, followers, subscribers, revenue. Yeah. Never. There's never any goal associated with that.

Justin Jackson:

I'm looking at your first episodes Pixar, Instagram, Twitch. Those were the topics for those episodes. You were reviewing those acquisitions. How'd they go? What what was the response to those initial episodes?

Justin Jackson:

Because part of what you're also learning is how to do a podcast. Yep. So what what was, like, the experience of, you know, making those first episodes? And then even more so, like, what was the response? How what where did you start?

David Rosenthal:

So this is a really different time for podcasts and for us. A really different time. So...

Justin Jackson:

It was October 15, 2015.

David Rosenthal:

I didn't really think about it as doing a show or, getting better at the show or anything. I thought about it as Ben and I would have these conversations anyway. This is a fun way to sort of put some structure around it. And I think For at least the 1st year, probably 2 years, maybe longer, I'm embarrassed to say, but I put zero thought into, for me, at least how I was coming across as a host on the show. I was just like Let her rip having conversations with my buddy.

Justin Jackson:

Did you did you share it? Like, who did you share it with? Who who who is like, okay. I gotta I gotta send a link to The guys at work, I gotta send a link. Who are you sharing it with in the early days?

David Rosenthal:

Yeah. Yeah. So then on on that front, I shared it with some friends and family, But I didn't think too much about it. Again, especially in that 1st year or 2, I really didn't think of it as, like, oh, I'm starting a podcast. I'm like, I it really was just hanging out with my buddy, Ben.

David Rosenthal:

Love this. Ben shared it with more folks, And Ben was very involved in the Startup Weekend community. Startup Weekend was this amazing organization actually headquartered in Seattle, but it was Global organization, where they would put on what was called Startup Begins. It's a nonprofit. And, The idea was just to get more people interested in building things and encouraging entrepreneurship, and Ben was a facilitator.

David Rosenthal:

So he would travel around the world, and put on the startup weekends in cities all over the world. This is while he was still at Microsoft. And so kinda through that and through his network and Microsoft And, he'd just always been kinda public, and he was not big on Twitter by any means, but had a had a following. So he shared it with A lot of folks in that ecosystem, and that helped seed things. We were also really lucky to be at Madrona, which kinda had a platform in and of itself, especially in the Seattle tech ecosystem because there were a few other venture firms and and still are there, but, you know, it's not like Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and the Bay Area where I am now where there's literally a million venture firms.

David Rosenthal:

It was, like, there's Modrona, especially back then, they were the biggest. There are a few others. If you were in the ecosystem, you paid attention to what was going on in Madrada.

Justin Jackson:

I just I love this picture you're painting because it's actually I think, it's almost the perfect reason to start a podcast. I was just I was happy to do it. I was happy to do it if nobody was listening. And to be that passionate about The topic, to be that passionate about the co host and your relationship with the co host already, that just feels Perfect. It just feels like so beautiful.

Justin Jackson:

And then for this to kind of grow organically out of that, it it just happened. I mean, actually, another thing I was I've always wondered is acquired has this characteristic that that I think a lot of people don't think about when they're making a show. So I'm wondering how strategic this was. You have scannability. If I say, hey, you have to listen to Acquired, people search Acquired on their podcast app.

Justin Jackson:

They scan through the episode titles, and it's like Nintendo, Charlie Munger, Nike, Taylor Swift. And I've seen this I recommended it to my brother. And, you know, I'm my brother's a big, like, oil worker dude and muscled and, like, tattoos and motorcycles. And I'm like, you gotta listen to this podcast. It's fascinating.

Justin Jackson:

And he's like, alright, brother. And then I he called me a bit later and he said, oh, I listened to the show. He's like, I love it. I'm like, what episode did you listen to first? Because that's always interesting.

Justin Jackson:

He scrolled through some titles. Taylor Swift, brother.

David Rosenthal:

And and Amazing.

Justin Jackson:

You have this this you know, even your first three episodes, they're all, like, interesting companies.

David Rosenthal:

This was never a a a any strategic thought put into it. We're just kinda following our own interest, but, yeah, there's something for everyone in our catalog. We've got Taylor swift. We've got Berkshire Hathaway. We've got standard oil.

David Rosenthal:

We've got NVIDIA. We've got, visa. You know, we've, we've got Costco, Go. We've got LVMH. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

And and you it almost opens up this perfect what would we call it? This perfect cycle of curiosity, which is I might not even be that interested in Costco, but Like, just seeing the name, I'm like, oh, actually, I am curious. Like, how what there's a bunch of open threads there that I'd like to see closed. And so And even early on, it's like, okay. Oh, Halo.

Justin Jackson:

Oh, that's interesting. I've always wondered how that turned out. You know? Yeah. And you have you're you're kinda answering questions that people already have floating around in their minds.

Justin Jackson:

But this was mostly just you guys were interested and you were you're solving your own questions.

David Rosenthal:

A 100%. I I, I mean, it's almost embarrassing for me to think that, but it's fun to look back. Like, there was no strategic thought put into any of this. It really was just Ben and I were nerds. We liked hanging out with each other, and, I think I think if you were talking to Ben, he would he was a little more strategic about this, or to the great benefit of the show and and, you know, and me in the long run.

David Rosenthal:

I very much in those first couple years was literally just like, oh, cool. Once or twice a month, I hang out with my buddy, Ben.

Justin Jackson:

When When did you know like, when was the first time you noticed that people were listening? Like, when did that happen?

David Rosenthal:

We were lucky because of Ben's existing kind of influence network and and Madrona's platform that we got a little bit of an initial audience. I mean, a little bit, like, Few hundred people listening in the 1st year. Few hundred, maybe a 1000 people in the 1st year. And then But it was such a different time. People were looking for new podcasts, and the players out there, You know, Pocket Cast, Overcast, you know, even Apple.

David Rosenthal:

Spotify wasn't in the game at all at this point in time. They were looking for new shows to feature, so we got featured by all the major players and platforms Fairly early on. I think some of them in the 1st year. By the end of year too, we've been featured by all

Justin Jackson:

of them,

David Rosenthal:

Which was interesting. Right? It none of them, even Apple, none of them drove huge numbers With one exception with 2 exceptions, we've never had huge spikes in growth. As you know, podcasting is not like a, a medium where you see, like, crazy Viral growth. Viral growth happen.

David Rosenthal:

But I think it was, like, enough to help us and, actually, particularly Pocket Cast.

Justin Jackson:

Oh, interesting.

David Rosenthal:

Got us, enough listeners that it kinda kept that momentum going, such that by By the end of year 2, into year 3, year 4, you know, we and I at least were Aware like, oh, it you know, a decent number of people are listening out there. It's many 1,000 people out there that are listening by year 3, year 4. So So that was kind of the the journey. And then but, again, I never really thought about it that much, in the context of This was always like a hobby for me and a way to learn and get better at my job with some ancillary benefits. And then around 2018, I started noticing at first slowly and then a lot more quickly that when I would meet and interact with people, They knew me in the context of the podcast much more than in the context of being a venture capitalist.

David Rosenthal:

Mhmm. And this was bizarre to me. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'd meet with, you know, tech founders and other folks that, you know, is a VC you meet with, you know, the ecosystem tech execs and whatnot, and I'd be like, great.

David Rosenthal:

Let's talk about, you know, the company you're starting or the company you might start or, you know, my portfolio company you might join and they'd be like, Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. But, like, your last episode, let's talk about that. And so that started to happen.

David Rosenthal:

And that's when I really was like, oh, wow. Okay. Maybe I should, like, reframe how I'm thinking

Justin Jackson:

about this. That's such a beautiful moment when that happens. It's so fun to have people, like, recognize you and go, I like your show.

David Rosenthal:

It it was it was so beautiful, so fun, All those things. It was also incredibly cognitively disorienting Okay. For me and and lots of other people, you know, kinda In my world and work, like I say, it was, you know, 2018 when this really started happening, maybe a little bit in 2017. Podcasts were starting to get a little more mainstream, but the idea that a podcast would be the main thing you did if you weren't Joe Rogan, Like, was kind of insane. And especially working in venture, you know, which is a corner of finance, like, you know, you work hard, like, people take it very seriously.

David Rosenthal:

Like, it started creating a lot of cognitive dissonance, especially people I worked with. Be like, What are you dealing with? You know, like, you're a venture capitalist. You're supposed to be being a venture capitalist and doing whatever it is venture capitalists are supposed to do. That's right.

David Rosenthal:

Why are you wasting your time with this podcast? There's the time, but then also, like, this is a distraction. People wanna talk about the podcast. We need to talk about What we're doing here at b BC. And and so for me, I start feeling like, gosh.

David Rosenthal:

I don't know. I don't know about that wisdom. I think there might be something more to hear than this, but for a lot of people in my life, they were like, They took the opposite direction.

Justin Jackson:

So there there's a moment, you know, your first 3 years, you're just doing it for the love of the game. Then 3 years in, you notice, okay, people are listening to this. But it created the this cognitive dissonance, like you said, of Now people knew that you're doing it. Your secret was out. And now people are like, what what are you doing?

Justin Jackson:

Like, why are you investing in this? Was your reaction Like, no. This is gonna be my full time job one day? Or was your reaction, this is gonna help my career, and this is gonna help me be a better venture capitalist? This is gonna bring me deals?

David Rosenthal:

Well, it was a few things. It was, my main reaction was, like, this is my hobby, and I love doing it. So, like, why would I Stop. You know, that's kinda how I'd always thought about it. And, probably most friction was with with folks was around.

David Rosenthal:

I was like, No. Like, kinda I've always been doing this. It hasn't hindered my day job, and I really love it. And, like, the idea that I would Dial back, especially as it's becoming more successful is, like, well, that's just crappy. But then also is when I started to see from interacting with people in my day job as a VC, I started to see like, oh, I really think this will help my day job.

David Rosenthal:

I really think there's a lot of potential here. And that's what was, you know, I think for most people, even just, like, Crazy to fathom in 2018. But I saw it in the conversations that was happening. You know, companies, Founders, executives that otherwise I as some random VC, you know, wouldn't take my calls. All of a sudden, they're taking my calls.

Justin Jackson:

Oh, that's cool. That's cool. And and what was it about this time you start when did you start getting sponsors?

David Rosenthal:

It was slightly before that. So We our very first sponsor was Silicon Valley. Rest in peace. I mean, it still exists, but in a in a different form. And they paid us $5,000 to sponsor.

David Rosenthal:

I believe I can go dig up the contract. I think it might have been, like, A whole year

Justin Jackson:

Okay.

David Rosenthal:

Of the show, which is

Justin Jackson:

And you're in about, what, a 1000 downloads per episode at this time, or what was the numbers you said?

David Rosenthal:

That was, I think that was 2 years into the show. So, no, we're probably at, call it, 5, 10000 downloads an episode at this point in time. But the reason we did it and and we had to, like, call in major favors with SPP to get them to do it. We were, like, it's not about the money. Should have said also when we're talking about our goals in the early days, Ben and I had as an explicit nongole, like, line item number 4 in the Google Doc, It is not a goal to make money or monetize a podcast.

Justin Jackson:

Yes. Which is so key.

David Rosenthal:

And we kept that for a long time.

Justin Jackson:

And I think it can add so much pressure on a creative endeavor to say we've gotta figure out how this makes money. To just remove that off the table and again to just do it for the love of the game; I think is such a healthy approach. But then, so what changed? What made you feel like you wanted to do that deal?

David Rosenthal:

So the reason we did it, and we literally went to our good friend who was running SVB in Seattle at the time who we knew through Modrona, and we said: "Can we please can you please sponsor the podcast? You pick a number, whatever it is. It's not about the money. We don't care if it's $1."

David Rosenthal:

We think having Silicon Valley Bank is our sponsor will add to the brand of the show and make this like, it will make it more, It'd perhaps make the content a little better, but it it was just, like, establish this thing more as, like, a Hey. This is for real in the tech ecosystem.

David Rosenthal:

You know, to our sort of points number 2 and 3 of increase our network and influence, It was through the lens of that that we decided to approach SVB of, like, oh, because back then, SVB, they were Silicon Valley Bank. They were the bank of startups of the technology ecosystem. Like, oh, this will really be a great brand halo for us.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah. Add some social proof, add Some legitimacy.

David Rosenthal:

So we did a lot of things for that sponsorship that ended up becoming hallmarks of The show and how we work with sponsors and partners now, we did things like we put the SVB logo on our album card. We put it on our website. We the sponsor Slots that we did with them weren't reads. We had folks from the bank on at the top of the episodes to give perspectives and tie like Yeah. The reason we did all these things was we were borrowing their brand.

Justin Jackson:

That's so fascinating, because it's a great attribute of the show right now is that, like, when you do an ad, you often talk to the advertiser and It becomes, interesting part of the show. Very feels organic. Feels like it fits.

David Rosenthal:

We do it in lots of different ways now, but that spirit we've had all the way through, and I think is one of the things that, hopefully, makes us a great partner to our sponsors and, I think makes us different from almost really any other podcast out there. We approach the sponsored content with the lens of, like, how do we make do you how do we use this as an opportunity rather than a tax on the show? Yeah. How do we make it interesting content? How do we make this, like, Ben and I talk about it now, like, an 11 star experience for our sponsors and our listeners, Which is a Airbnb term.

David Rosenthal:

Brian Chesky talks about how they do used to do a thought exercise of what is an 11 star Airbnb stay look like? You know? It's like, oh, the host picks you up at the airport, you know, you know, limo and cooks you dinner and all. And so I was just like, Okay. What is an 11 star podcast ad?

David Rosenthal:

And it looks as little like a traditional podcast ad as possible.

Justin Jackson:

Such an interesting ;arallel is that in Airbnb, you have this idea of "the host." But in podcasting, we also have this idea of "the host" And paralleling those two is like so great. The host says, "hey, come on in. I'm gonna give you a great experience During this show, you can trust me. This is going to be a really wonderful use of your time. I really like that." There's something about, You know, making it, comparing it to the hospitality industry, that's so great.

David Rosenthal:

That's exactly how we think of it. So fast forward to today, it was changing now. We for the first time next season, we're gonna have Fortune 500 companies as our sponsors, which is a whole another ballgame. But even, you know, before that, like, for the last couple years, a typical sponsorship for us is a growth stage, market leading, private, B2B technology a company.

David Rosenthal:

Vanta, Vouch, Modern Treasury, Statsig, Crusoe, always selling to other enterprises As a venture backed startup itself, typically having raised, you know, call it a $100,000,000 or more. And so we go to these companies and we say, okay. You're not buying a podcast ad from us. Like, you're gonna get a podcast ad. Like Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

Sure. But, like, We're gonna become partners to your company. What does that mean? When you do your annual customer or partner conference, which oftentimes these companies are getting to the stage where they're doing this for the first time. We're gonna be there with you.

David Rosenthal:

We'll emcee the conference. We'll help drive traffic to the conference. We will do dinners with your top sales prospects the night before, the night. Oh, wow. We will, We will do an ACQ 2 episode with you, the CEO of the company, because a, you're a market leading interesting company of yourself, so that's great.

David Rosenthal:

But also now Here's this 90 minute, 2 hour, you know, exploration and and discussion of what the company is that we can now mention, Linked to in the core sponsorship on the main show so it drives people down the funnel. Because these are all you know, all of our sponsors, their products are multi tens of thousands if not multi hundreds of thousands of dollar ACV products. Then we take it even we've taken it even step further over the past couple of years. We'll invest in your company. Vanta, we've invested almost $10,000,000 in Vanta.

David Rosenthal:

So it's like It's all of this 11 star experience mindsets. Like, okay. You could pay money for a podcast ad or It could look like this. Like Is it and it that I love that picture that you're painting.

Justin Jackson:

The the experience of that Is I think a lot of folks want advertisers but they don't really think about what the advertiser is getting in return. And that list you just gave us is such a good example of there's a lot of value there. There's like they get this this This content asset, like, hey, let me let me serve you by having you on the podcast. I'm gonna produce a piece of media That you can now use with here, here, and here. You can have your own content team take off with it.

Justin Jackson:

You can like....

David Rosenthal:

Post it on your own website. Do all sorts of stuff.

Justin Jackson:

It's just that's such a gift. And I I think Your approach to this, is something that more podcasters should emulate, which is, You know, it's everyone wants to just be well, they think they wanna be the podcast that just does HelloFresh ads.

Justin Jackson:

And, first of all...

Justin Jackson:

I don't think they realize

David Rosenthal:

There's nothing wrong with that.

Justin Jackson:

There's nothing wrong with that. But I don't think they realize how if you wanted to stand out, there's millions of podcasts that wanna do HelloFresh ads. But if you wanna stand out, you can carve out your own world where you say we're not in that we're not in that category. What we're doing is we're giving people an 11 star experience. And this is how we do it.

Justin Jackson:

And it's it ends up being a huge gift to them. They're giving us money but We are giving them this big big gift gifts in return that they can, you know, leverage. It's just it's fascinating.

David Rosenthal:

It's gifts, but it's also, like, it really is a partnership when we think about it. Like, we get things out of this too. When we go emcee, You know, modern treasuries, customer conference, or whatever. Their partners that are there are the largest banks in the world. So, now, we're on stage MCing, hosting this conference, and then doing a fireside chat.

David Rosenthal:

We did a fireside chat at the end of the day with Brad Kerstner from Altimeter. We are being held up on stage as, like, you know, on a pedestal to the 30 largest banks in the world. Yeah. And, like, and JPMorgan is our presenting sponsor next

Justin Jackson:

season. Wow.

David Rosenthal:

We didn't meet them at the modern treasury conference. We knew them before, but, like, all of this helps, like It's a true partnership, you know.

Justin Jackson:

It's it's it's the same way that you think about producing compelling content for the audience. It's like what would be a compelling offer for a sponsor That is just it's just right there, you know, like this is compelling. It's we're not like pushing something on somebody, they're being drawn to us because This offer has just a lot of value in it. They can see it. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

We don't have to we don't even have to tell them. They can see it, The evidence of it right there.

David Rosenthal:

2 other things I would say. 1, this approach works so well for us because It's what our audience is. Like, I think, you know, we're talking about the HelloFresh. Yeah. That's like, or any kind of, you know, programmatic stuff.

David Rosenthal:

Programmatic stuff is great. Like, you know, and, like, there's a world for all that. That is mostly a world in mass market consumer podcast. We are not a mass market consumer podcast. You know, Our biggest segment of our biggest audience segment is founders of companies.

David Rosenthal:

So, like, you know, understanding our audience and then what the right, you know, Segment of sponsors and partners and advertisers is for that is great. We're we're we happen to be in an extremely high value, high LTV segment, which is awesome. But I think the lesson applied, you know, whatever it is that you're doing, like, you can be very thoughtful about who the natural. And for us, this was just like, oh, back to the Troll. And for us, this was just like, oh, back to the SVB, conversation of that as our first sponsor.

David Rosenthal:

Like, oh, great. That is like that brand helps helps us with the brand that we wanna create have acquired for the audience that we wanna reach. Like, how can we get alignment between Did you

Justin Jackson:

always wanna Reached those people from the beginning?

David Rosenthal:

Yes. Because we were venture capitalists. And so we were like, to the extent we cared about who was listening, it was, Oh, we want founders of companies that we could potentially invest in or people who might, in the future, start companies we could invest in, or we want folks at Microsoft and Google and Apple who might buy these companies to listen. Oh, we want, you know, investment bankers at Goldman Sachs who might take them public to listen. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

I think you also have this dynamic: "people like us listen to podcasts like this." I've often seen people in the tech industry recommend your show because it's like, if you're in the tech industry, like people like us, what kinds of shows should I be listening to? And inevitably Acquire is on that list. And I think even that's a great thing for podcasters to think about, like, When people are recommending shows, like, what kind of people like this should listen to a show like this And Yeah. Figure out how you can cultivate that in kinda everything that you do.

Justin Jackson:

Because honestly....

David Rosenthal:

Which podcasts are so good for. It's the best medium for this kinda thing. Like, tribes get created around podcasting.

Justin Jackson:

Absolutely. And, like, your topic could actually be there's another audience that could have found it interesting. You know, there is a consumer, like, oh, this is just interesting. How I

David Rosenthal:

Built This exists. That is the that is the alternate version, and it's a great show, but that's the consumer version, mass market version of Wired.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah. I love that. What So did the show just keep growing organically, or was there a Yeah. Like, was there ever, like, just a big surge?

David Rosenthal:

Yeah. Let's talk about Well, one other thing I wanna say on on sponsorship because I think it's relevant for anybody who has a podcast too, and we then we can talk about growth. But, The other thing that we've really embraced from the get go and unintentionally and are now very intentional about, You're talking about HelloFresh ads and podcasts. Probably, I don't know. 90, 95% of podcast advertising out there right now is direct response.

David Rosenthal:

You know, "enter this code and check out," direct response, driving a transaction to happen. Usually consumer transaction, usually a low-dollar-value transaction. We've embraced we are not direct response.

David Rosenthal:

Like, hopefully, some direct response happens; that's great (we have landing pages for all of our sponsors). But, like, these are extremely considered purchase decisions that are very high value. And they're not gonna be made because somebody heard a podcast ad. They are going to be influenced and considered over a set of months, if not years.

David Rosenthal:

Yeah. What we are really, really great at is raising the esteem for a product and a company in the eyes of their customers, investors, partners, etcetera. And so, that's what we focus on. We don't focus on, like, hey, buy now. Hey, use this code.

David Rosenthal:

And I think this, you know, I've been surprised that How slow the whole podcast industry has been to move to this type of brand advertising. And brand advertising is By far the, like, bigger part of advertising. Like, you walk through any airport, and you realize this. You read any magazine or any newspaper. Like Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

Cartier isn't trying to get you to buy their jewelry right now when you see their ads. They're trying to build their brand.

Justin Jackson:

Exactly. If you see an ad for, Like, I'm trying to think of an ad that people would like IBM often advertises,

Justin Jackson:

You know, like, you should use our mainframes or whatever. And it's like, why are they doing that? Like, they don't want, you know, the average consumer to go, "oh, yeah. I should go buy a mainframe;" they're just trying to raise their awareness of the brand.

David Rosenthal:

Awareness, interest, esteem that the audience has for the for the company, for the brand.

Justin Jackson:

You've almost done the reverse: because at the beginning, you were using SVB's brand halo, but now you're doing the reverse. Now you are you are offering your halo to a brand to say we are going to really emphasize who you are. We're gonna raise your profile. And we're gonna do it organically.

Justin Jackson:

We're gonna do it over time. And it's going to compound and eventually people are will have heard it so many times that it's gonna be like the next time Folks are like, we need, you know, we need this kind of thing in the boardroom.

David Rosenthal:

We need a compliance solution. You know? We need, we need our business insurance, You know, etcetera. Like, which is not gonna be the next time they listen to a podcast episode. Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

Yep. But it very much still is bidirectional. Yes. Now the Acquired brand is a part to the point where it has a ton of value and we can do that for our partners, but we still think about it of our partners doing it price too. Whether that's large companies like JPMorgan's gonna be our presenting sponsor next season, we absolutely like, that is adding to our brand.

David Rosenthal:

But even the startups too, we wanna work with the very best startups, and we wanna be known as, like, oh, the Very best startups that are gonna create the most value, that are gonna be the best investments out there. They're the ones that part are part of the acquired universe that adds to us too.

Justin Jackson:

If I think about your last 6 months, your last 6 months are just incredible.

David Rosenthal:

Well, you see the data.

Justin Jackson:

But but even in terms of awareness, it's like We we did Charlie Munger's first and last podcast interview ever. We did you know, we interviewed the CEO of NVIDIA. We like, There there is and then these big episodes that just seem to resonate across the at least my, You know, my sphere of the world is like everybody's talking about the Nintendo episodes. And, you know, Daniel Ek wants to sit down with you in the same way that Daniel Ek wants to sit down with Charlie Rose. You know?

Justin Jackson:

Like, it had that feel to it. Was there a A point where it just all culminated and then you passed a line and you were like, wow, like we are really on a different level now. Like this, this has taken off because now it's like everything that you've built and experienced and done is all just Feeding you new opportunities. Like, it really is a compounding machine that's just like

David Rosenthal:

It has become a compounding machine. Yes. Yes. Hey. Thank you for that.

David Rosenthal:

And and, like, yes, it's totally wild and surreal. On the growth question, though, so I would, There's 2 answers. Mostly, 90% of the growth is that it's always been constant, And steady. We have more or less give or take for the past 8 years. We've doubled the audience every year.

Justin Jackson:

Okay.

David Rosenthal:

And it's that's pretty pretty, like, locked in. Like, we've never we've never tripled, And we've never only grown

Justin Jackson:

50%. Thing.

David Rosenthal:

You know? Like, the the band of growth, it pretty much is a 100%. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

Measure that in average downloads per episode?

David Rosenthal:

So, yeah, we we have we use kind of a custom metric for us, Because it ties to how we structure our sponsorships of number of downloads an episode gets in the first 180 days Okay. So the first 6 months. Because our sponsorships are 6 months long. So that's why we've and Transistor and you guys have been so great in helping us, like, you know, providing custom data feeds for us for that.

Justin Jackson:

And it fits your content too because you these are episodes that have a long shelf life. And so

David Rosenthal:

Yes.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

David Rosenthal:

And so even for episodes older than 6 months, they continue to get a lot of downloads, And that's why we now sell the back catalog separately as a separate sponsorship product. In aggregate, Our back catalog episodes. So our episodes we're switching how this is done, but you can generally think of that as our corpus of episodes that are older than 1 year Get, almost always pretty much guaranteed over a quarter 1000000 downloads a month. And If, you know, sometimes some companies in the news that we covered 2, 3 years ago, there's a big spike in downloads for that episode. Like, it can get 300, you know, even even more, sometimes, you know, more downloads than that, 1,000 downloads per per month Wow.

David Rosenthal:

Which is a which is a great number of downloads. Wow. But yeah. So so 90% of the growth has just been doubling every year. It's people telling their friends.

David Rosenthal:

It's organic. Like, that's That's how it's worked. We have had a couple spikes. The first spike that we saw was, As Spotify really got into the space in a big way and started getting bigger, we, They also are so great, especially compared to Apple who does nothing about having podcaster relations and, you know, Partner management and all that. So we have great folks at Spotify.

David Rosenthal:

We know lots of people there all the way up to Daniel Ekman of great relationships. We know 0 people at Apple. 0. So as they saw that we were you know, had traction traction on the platform, they Featured us a couple times. The Taylor Swift episode was the first time that they cross promoted that episode to people who listen to Taylor Swift and liked business podcasts.

David Rosenthal:

Oh, wow. And so we got a nice a nice little spike there. It wasn't wasn't huge, huge, but nice, nice little bump in the graph. When that happened and then the, the, but the, we never had any really, really huge spikes until, interviewing Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA and interviewing Charlie Munger in the past couple months. Those episodes just went, like, Crazy.

Justin Jackson:

Why did you get those in particular?

David Rosenthal:

I think they you know, it's funny because Both Jensen and and Charlie did lots of other media, did and do or do and did lots of other media. I think there's in both cases, we had done 3 episodes, 3 acquired episodes of Just Me and Ben on each of those companies. 3 on Berkshire, 3 on NVIDIA. So Ten hours of content representing hundreds of hours of research that we'd each done. Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

So when we sat down with the 2 of them, you know, Ben and I talk about this a lot. I don't think we don't think we're the best interviewers in the world, far from it. Many other people are just much better natural interviewers or More practice at interviewing folks and the like, but nobody else had ever interviewed either the 2 of those people that had done so much work on the companies. So I think they were really special interviews we were able to do with people who were just in the zeitgeist.

Justin Jackson:

I think the other thing, the other factor, is you've got your fan base that has been hearing you Fan out about both of those people forever. And so when it finally happens and it's like, Oh my gosh. My guys are interviewing their favorite guys. It's like it they there's a natural like, I wanted to share it just because it's like Look, they they got their dream. Like, they got their dream interviews.

David Rosenthal:

And I I think we have a

Justin Jackson:

fan base that is This is one of the beautiful things about podcasting is that your audience often ends up being your cheerleaders, you know. And then when you achieve something great I mean, Marc Maron had this too with the Obama interview. Anybody that had been following his story, And it's just like cheering Mark on. Like, you can do it. And and all of a sudden, it's like he's got the president in his garage.

Justin Jackson:

People talked about it because Yeah. It's like it's almost like at Thanksgiving, you wanna just share, like, hey, I gotta tell you what What happened to my buddy? It's not really my buddy, but, you know, it's it's my guy. Like, this happened for him. With Jensen, you had this Clip that was

David Rosenthal:

This moment. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

Like, could you wanna talk a bit about that? Like, was that planned or

David Rosenthal:

Sir, no. No. No. Not at all. So at the end of our interview with Jensen, We as our closing question, Ben and I thought we were being so clever, so fun.

David Rosenthal:

You know, we knew all about the history of how the company was started. The company was started. Jensen and 2 of his good friends decided to start the company over breakfast at Denny's one day famously in 19.93 and, you know, from Denny's to $1,000,000,000,000 company. And so we thought, oh, this would be really fun. You know, Jensen, Imagine Jensen was 30 years old when he started the company.

David Rosenthal:

He's 60 now. He's just crazy. He he doesn't look 60 years old. And we said, you know, Jensen, if it were magically if you're magically 30 years old again today in 2023, and you're back at Denny's With your 2 best friends, 2 smartest guys you know, and you're talking about starting a new company, what is the company you're talking about starting today? We thought this So fun.

David Rosenthal:

You know, maybe he'll say biotech. Maybe he'll say AI. You know, maybe who knows what he'll say. And he just looked at us And said, I wouldn't do it. And so if you watch the clip or listen to the episode, I started laughing.

David Rosenthal:

Cause I assume he's joking. Like this is the CEO of the media, like, but he wasn't joking. He was dead serious. And, I said, you know, I hope we haven't created too much of a problem for him. I I mean, I don't think we These things are not problems for for Jensen, but it's created a lot of he's had to deal with talking about this clip since obviously He's glad he started the company.

David Rosenthal:

Yeah. But what he was trying to say was This journey is hard. Like, really hard. That's what

Justin Jackson:

makes it such a great clip. Is it just The it's

David Rosenthal:

just good. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

It's vulnerable. It's real. It's raw. And it's human. I think that's the big part that resonated with folks.

Justin Jackson:

It's like, okay, wow. You always want like peek on the inside. And When people actually respond to that with vulnerability, it's so refreshing sometimes. It's just like, okay. And of course, all of us know, Like, he's proud of what he's done.

Justin Jackson:

Like, you can you know that, but just having the honesty of like, listen, this is super, super tough. And I gotta be I I gotta be honest about it. Yeah. But that clip, I saw

David Rosenthal:

that everywhere. Super cool.

Justin Jackson:

Do you remember what brought you to Transistor? I'm I'm always fascinated why people switched. What precipitated that?

David Rosenthal:

We were with Libsyn for a long time. The OG, o o g, podcast host. And, we, I was trying to remember if it was before after. It was it was before, but then, ultimately, you know, the SVB, well, SVB, collapsed, famously in March of this past year, which was right around we were already talking about transitioning to to you guys. Their ads were still in those old episodes when they started sponsoring.

David Rosenthal:

And, you know, we were like, gosh, like, A lot has changed since then. Obviously, a lot has changed since SPV. And to what we were talking about earlier, our back catalog, our episodes tend to be evergreen. They're getting they were now then getting, you know, a 100000, a 150,000, 200000 downloads a month. Like, this is a we should be selling this inventory.

David Rosenthal:

So we started, process of, hey, we need to switch hosts to a host that will support us to do dynamic ad insertion in our back catalog episodes, but in the way that in, like, the acquired way to do this. And I can't even remember if Lipson they probably have some sort of DAI solution, but it was not what we needed. And We evaluated every host out there in the space, including many of the big ones, One of which may or may not be owned by Spotify. But, you know, what we found was at Everyone we talked to, they either 2 categories. 1, the hosts weren't sophisticated enough to on the technology side to do what we wanted, Or they were just way too big complicated enterprise y and they were oriented around Networks, networks and agencies.

David Rosenthal:

We don't work with agencies as we work directly with companies as our sponsors, And we have ACQ2 as our second show, but that's we don't have other shows in the network. We don't have other hosts. We're never gonna be part of a network. And you guys are just this incredible sweet spot for us of you have great technology. You were willing to work with us and, very generously build a lot of, analytics and data that We needed for our business, which we're very, very appreciative of.

David Rosenthal:

Technology side was fantastic, And you weren't so, like, caught up in this network world, that we could use you in the way that We wanted to run the acquired business. So it's been perfect. We're so so happy with you guys. Wow.

Justin Jackson:

They I I remember I I think I I looked back. I got an email from David Sherry, saying hey, you've got to meet my friend, Ben. And I was a fan of the show. And I remember meeting with you and Ben initially and being like, You know, Transistor is a small company. I just wanna make sure that you know that, you know, we're small and we're not as sophisticated, you know, some of these dynamic ad insertion products are very complex and very sophisticated.

Justin Jackson:

Yep. And, yeah, I was

David Rosenthal:

I was And we were like, great. You are you are an elite boutique, and we are an elite boutique. And, like, this is this is a match made in

Justin Jackson:

heaven.

Justin Jackson:

That's It's beautiful. I I, and it's interesting actually to hear the the moment, like, the actual crux was we need to Remove all these old ads that are no longer relevant, and we need to get, you know, some dynamic ad insertion going.

David Rosenthal:

So that was the that was kind of the crux of the decision. But then, I think beyond that too, even just for our everyday, you know, current season, current episode hosting, What you guys have what you already had and then what you've built for us around the analytics, immensely helpful. Ben was doing so much manual work with our oldest to try and get to that 180 day, metric that we use. I mean, he had lots of Zapier's apps and spreadsheets and Google docs and like an insane amount of stuff that you guys have, not only simplified for us, but like, we feel a lot better about the quality of the data too. We before, we were always like, alright.

David Rosenthal:

This is kinda like we know this is directionally correct. We think it's as good as we can get, but the precision here is, Perhaps lacking.

Justin Jackson:

That's wonderful. Well, that's great. We've we've really enjoyed it's been fun for us because we were fans beforehand. And so to have You come on board and for it to work out, has been really great. And to just also, Again, your last 6 months.

Justin Jackson:

Alright. I mean, your last year has been so fun And just fun to watch, I think. Oh, well, thank you. It

David Rosenthal:

Well, it's it's no coincidence that it coincides with our Move to transistor is when all this great stuff has been happening.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah. What sorry. What do you mean by that? Just because you were able to focus on

David Rosenthal:

Working with you guys really has helped us focus and, get better analytics, focus on the content, but I think also Allow us to, you know, in our sort of marketing and selling process to our sponsors and our partners, You know, be a lot more crisp about that. Like, before, whenever we'd get into discussion around analytics and whatnot, we'd always be like, well, Ben has all these spreadsheets and, like, we're pretty It's right, you know, and it's the best we can do and now we can be like, no no. We're like very confident in our data.

Justin Jackson:

You got it. It's solid. That is so great. I there's a dozen questions that I'll have to ask you another time. You've been so generous.

Justin Jackson:

Is there anything that You haven't been able to

David Rosenthal:

say that you're like, oh, we should say I've

Justin Jackson:

got I've got something else I should say about it could be for aspiring podcasters. It could be Something about your experience that you think is relevant.

David Rosenthal:

Well, actually, I have two thoughts. 1, to continue The conversation about you guys and Transistor and our decision process and then experience switching over to you, there's It's related to what I was saying earlier about podcasts and podcast advertising being stuck in performance world, and people not appreciating what the true Potential and power of this is so much of the tech and the other hosts, other platforms out there are built for networks, And networks are built for audience scale and for directions and for like heavy programmatic advertising. But that is not, like, if you think about what the core, elements and advantages and beautiful parts of the podcast medium is it's not that. It's the opposite of that. It's the relationship between the host and the listeners.

David Rosenthal:

Yeah. So, And so, like, as I look at, like, the podcast that I admire out there, and I think the ones that are the most successful and that are the future of the industry are not the mass produced network driven shows. They're the, you know, they're the the, Huberman Labs. They're the, Tim Ferris shows. They're the I mean, call her daddy's part of Spotify, but, like, it's it's Mhmm.

David Rosenthal:

Those. It's the boutique, Highly, highly passionate about their show and their craft. You know, it's David Seneret, founders. It's, you know, it's all all those folks. So I think, for you guys, like, Transistor is such a great platform for that.

David Rosenthal:

You know, for the independent shows that it's, like, The life's work of the host where they aren't employees of some big network that's churning out their 57th show, that a lot of the other tech in the industry is built for. Like, I hope you guys are on the precipice of, Yeah. You know, having a lot of success.

Justin Jackson:

Think we could position ourselves for that. What what's the Is there positioning or a headline that comes to your mind that that you'd think about?

David Rosenthal:

Well, it's different in many ways, but I think about, like, in the venture world, you know, benchmark versus, like, Andreessen or something like that. Like, You know, we've done episodes on all these, you know, investment in VCs and investment firms. You know, Benchmark is the elite boutique partnership. There's 5 partners. There's nobody else.

David Rosenthal:

They're all, like all of their investments, they're very high touch with the founders. They're on the board. They're like, you know, You are it is the, they're like the Jerry Maguire of VCs. And then most of the other VCs out there are Big industrial conglomerates, multistage, many, many, many billions of capital under management. You know, they're the They're the agencies that Jerry Maguire was leaving when he started, you know, in the in the movie.

David Rosenthal:

And, I I think you guys could position as, you know, sort of that, you know, the benchmark type approach of We are here to support, you know, for let's take a Huberman lab, right? Like, you know, they're a boutique team that are Highly, highly dedicated to what they do. They you know, maybe they'll sell the but I I don't think they'll ever sell the to my mind, they'll never sell the pot. They're Gonna be a well, there's, like, 5 people involved in that. They work super hard.

David Rosenthal:

They care so deeply about what they do, And they probably want a lot of custom really, you know, stuff, and they're never gonna join

Justin Jackson:

the network.

David Rosenthal:

Never. Yeah. So, like, you guys should be the perfect platform

Justin Jackson:

for them. That boutique independent show. That's what I that's what I think I'm gonna be thinking about, is what's the language? How do those shows describe themselves? Like, you use this you use the words independent.

Justin Jackson:

You use the words boutique. Not a network. Not an agency. I Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

It'd be interesting to think more

David Rosenthal:

I think cell phones too is a big part of it. Cell phone, I think, is a big part of it. Like, which is related to not being part of a network, but like, you know, Andrew and his partners in the show, They own Huberman Lab. Huberman Lab is not like a division of, you know, the New York Times or

Justin Jackson:

something like that. Yeah.

David Rosenthal:

And so thus, all of the Success, all the audience growth, all the success, all the revenue, that is money in their pockets. Like, they own the equity value and the revenue

Justin Jackson:

from that.

David Rosenthal:

And that's just such a powerful driving force versus if, like, you're an employee of a network that makes a show.

Justin Jackson:

You're it's funny because your show is all Often about these big like, you're you have a venture capital background but you're you're really passionate about building a bootstrapped Business.

David Rosenthal:

Yes. It's it's quite ironic.

Justin Jackson:

Because the yeah. That's the that's the spirit For sure. Yeah. I'm gonna think about that. That that's really wonderful.

Justin Jackson:

Cool.

David Rosenthal:

And I guess the the other thing I'd say of that is that, like, The potential for that and for you guys is so big because it's, you know, a few years ago, I think people thought in this industry of, like, oh, it's be the Gimlets. It's gonna be the New York Times. It's gonna be the all the NPR shows that are gonna win and, like, no. No. No.

David Rosenthal:

No. They're losing. Like, The Huberman Labs are what Yes. Like, you know, they're gonna be the biggest part of the industry.

Justin Jackson:

Yeah. You're right. And in that sense, this is very timely because The the the headlines right now is that podcasting is is is, dying or podcasting is in trouble. Podcast industry is on fire. And, you know, from our perspective, we've we've grown every year that Transistor has been in business since 2018.

Justin Jackson:

And the we still see lots of people that want to start shows, but they're independent folks. And they have lots of different motivations. But you're right in terms of like it was like the whole world was betting on big networks Yeah. Big shows. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

And even you look at, you know, Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell had a great show. And then they Turned it into a network, like we're gonna make this into something bigger.

David Rosenthal:

Yep. Yep. And,

Justin Jackson:

and you look at what's happening in YouTube, and it's, I mean, Mr. Beast is the biggest example of this. But Mr. Beast is the independent, one show media company. And They just put everything behind that, you know, that's the all the wood behind the arrow is just for that.

Justin Jackson:

And Yep. Not a network. Disney doesn't own it. There's no, like Yep. There's no investors in it.

Justin Jackson:

It's just an independent media brand. And

David Rosenthal:

And the same thing is happening in podcasting for sure.

Justin Jackson:

I love this idea of the independent media brand. Like, this is the year 2024 is the year Of the independent media brand. That's yeah. That's cool. You know, in our industry, everybody is always, you know, there's 5000000 podcasts and the average podcast gets this many downloads.

Justin Jackson:

And I keep saying, the truth is the average podcast is actually not that good. Like If most if most podcasts are just not very good or okay, you've you to me are such a great example I'm saying we are gonna produce content at this level. We are gonna take the research seriously. We're gonna take a whole month to produce an episode. You're not on this treadmill where you have to produce an episode every day or every week.

David Rosenthal:

Oh, gosh. Yeah.

Justin Jackson:

You're taking the time to do something that's exceptional. And in that way, you really are like Hardcore history, except you actually publish every month. You know? We've yeah.

David Rosenthal:

We do always joke. We love Dan and our core history. I'm like, yeah. This this is our joke of, like, We stay motivated to, like, keep working hard. Dan works hard too, but, like, we gotta publish at least once a month because otherwise, like we just we can't we can't fall into that hole.

Justin Jackson:

But a month a monthly cadence is enough time to have, to produce a show that is a very high quality. And the truth is is that none of like all of the things we've discussed, Any sort of marketing tactic or positioning tactic or advertising tactic wouldn't matter if the product Yeah. Wasn't excellent. And I love your focus on quality. It really shows.

Justin Jackson:

And I think that's what's driven Just year after year, it's just like we're gonna gain more and more people because I can recommend an episode to my brother with confidence And know that he's gonna have a good experience. You know what I mean? And so yeah.

David Rosenthal:

Well, thank you so much. That's the, that is the best compliment you could pay us, and that's what we we, we always strive for. And I I guess that that's the last thing I would leave the audience with too for anybody who Has a podcast thinking about starting a podcast? Like, the don't 1, don't let that be a barrier and be too scared to start because it seems like, oh, well, to have a good podcast, I would need to dedicate my whole life to it. Like, no.

David Rosenthal:

No. No. No. No. Start small.

David Rosenthal:

We started small. We did a little to no research for our first Yes. Episodes. But At the same time, you can make something excellent, if you scope down small enough, and then you can, If as you have success, you can expand that scope one time. And it is much better to make something excellent than to make something not excellent.

Justin Jackson:

So if

David Rosenthal:

that takes more time, if that takes more effort, it's what like, always better to make something excellent.

Justin Jackson:

David, Thanks so much for doing this. We gotta do it again. Listen.

David Rosenthal:

Thank you.

Justin Jackson:

We gotta catch up again. Yeah. Just real big fan of what you're doing, And I can't wait to see what happens in 2024.