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

31:03Money, 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 way back when google was uh google was like dominating with adwords and so they're the people at alibaba were like we need to make our version of adwords and he goes you know this is no order 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 250 000 to build this project and latim like laughed like you're you're missing three zeros on the back of this like what are you talking about 250k and he goes, that's how much money it took me to start Alibaba.

31:40Like I had less than that starting the whole company. So if you need more than that for a feature, we're doing it wrong. And 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 19 people into his apartment where he had started. He's like, that's your office. You're going to work there. He's like, you need servers to run the ad servers. Cool. Go find some, like go get some used junk servers and like re-rig them, and get them, refurbish them and make them work. And they go, but there's no redundancy. He goes, if you're building where you need redundancy, like we've, we've done this wrong, right?

32:14Like, you know, this is, you need to build, build this so that it works without redundancy first. And, and so he, he did that for, that was the, that was the no money that 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 then his 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, he goes, well, you know, you guys are 50 young entrepreneurs who got flown out here to do this.

32:46I 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 planned to do? And like, nobody's hand went up. And he was like, Exactly. And he goes, 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.

33:16Follow the why. If you do that, you will be successful. And I was like, damn. Did you write all this down? Yeah, you read notes. So many years ago after that event, 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. And I just found the PDF on my computer when you were talking about it. 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 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 like we're like we're building a tech company or we're building a product it was like no it's like exactly and we had no plan 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 i start a successful podcast we see like big companies come the offline celebrities that want to start podcasts.

34:20And it's like, they come with money, technology, and a plan. And they're like, it's not how it's going to work. It's going to suck. You guys probably see this with your episodes. How many of them started doing what they're doing? I don't know. I haven't listened to all the recent ones, but I don't know. Was Nintendo, what were you thinking of Nintendo today? Or did it start? Oh my God. Dude, Nintendo was making... Wait, wait, real quick. Do either of you know the origin story of Nintendo? Or have a guess at how old Nintendo is? I think it's really, I remember reading it once. I don't remember off the top of my head, but is it like Sony where they were like selling rice or something and then now they're who they are?

34:53It's even better. Yeah. It's a 130-year-old company. Yeah. Started in 1890. 1889, I think. Yeah. And their original business was making Hanafuda cards, which is the Japanese version of U.S. playing cards. but US playing cards were illegal to import because people from the US, it was not legal to be in the country. And David, I think you at this point, they literally would execute you. Yeah, well, Nintendo started right after this, but before the Meiji Restoration, Japan went through this multi-hundred-year period of strict isolationism where you would be executed if you were a foreigner and you entered the country.

35:36Likewise, 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 fits they're like how do we make 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 mafia 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 else in the world, the market is casinos because you use a fresh deck for each hand so that there's no cheating.

36:13And yeah, so Nintendo is like deeply embedded with the Yakuza. And for like 60 years, this was their business before they started making toys. Wow. And then what? Some like visionary within the company was like, hey, this new thing is cool. Crazy family, like really tragedy of like this cycle of death and just like terrible parenting in the family. So it's passed down to four generations of the same 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 business. Yeah, exactly. And one of these guys was basically just like so pissed off at like the family legacy that this is Roshi Yamauchi who started the modern Nintendo.

36:56And he was like, I wanted to diversify the business. I want to get out of this. And he did a partnership with Disney. in 1959 yeah 1959 Nintendo brought Disney and Disney IP into Japan post World War 2 I literally have the cards some acquired fans sent them to me started with and then they brought toys and then they started making their own toys because they had like lock on the retail distributors yeah so started as cards and they were like then they went to all these retailers, they were like, oh, you want the Disney products? You're going to take our products, too. Was that Jiminy Cricket as the Joker?

37:36Jiminy Cricket as the Joker and Mickey Mouse golfing on this old school card deck. That's amazing. That's like you got to wear gloves if you're going to touch that or something. That's like an 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 client's whole history. calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago I totally missed. HubSpot. Grow better. Can I ask you guys a couple rapid-fire questions about some of the companies that you've discussed? Number one, which company of everyone that you've went over would you want to own?

38:23What's the one that you envy? Well, 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 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 i think that has the most like durable franchise and own is always a funny question because 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 ignore where things are trading in what market values today the nfl is seven layers 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 it's really cute to like like StackRank, all the media franchises, Marvel's worth this.

39:21And, 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$12 billion a year. The most recent set of rights they parceled up was, like,$100 billion. No, isn't it? Now it's, like,$18 or$19 billion a year, I think. Something insane. And they recently signed a 10-year deal. So it's, like, a$150 billion deal just for the TV rights. The NFL has all the franchises, but is there basically like this like top level hold co that owns like the media rights and the franchise 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 tv 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 on an episode on MLB AM?

40:18Yes. Yeah, way back when the Disney was actually the first investment before the acquisition. These guys can tell you the full version, the accurate version. I'll give you the dumb version, which is the Major League Baseball had created a tech, like a tech team, basically a tech company inside of Major League Baseball, co-owned by like 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. It was Ichiro, because when Ichiro came over from Japan, they needed to stream. Do you remember that guy, Sam? Ichiro Suzuki, the guy who played on the Mariners?

40:51Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a phenomenon. And so people in Japan wanted to watch or... And watch wasn't even an option. I think it was listen to the games. So they needed 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 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 MLB AM's Video Tech that streams Game of Thrones so that when whatever, 10 million people click play as soon as the episode drops, that like the thing doesn't crash, which is kind of, you know, just an amazing thing.

41:29And so that like spin out, 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 2004 or something that they started working on it. They had a five-year head start on having the insight that this infrastructure was going to 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, Bamtec was doing that five years earlier. Yeah. And it ended up getting acquired by Disney and like is a huge part of ESPN streaming, like all the ESPN Plus, plus Disney Plus.

42:10Like it's crazy. Is there a certain founder, CEO, leader who you would rank as the person you'd least want to compete against, whether historical or modern? Here's another phrasing that I heard that I like. There was somebody who signed with the NFL draft, and there was 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 that I loved. He goes, let's say they all went on vacation and they rented a car and they're walking out to the Jeep. who do they throw the keys to to drive this car is like who's the leader who's the alpha amongst alphas amongst these qb 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 yeah 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 90s 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 because it's better than the integrated graphics thing from Intel.

43:38And so that was sort of their market for a while. And it was all about 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 GPUs, the gaming graphics. They're like going to Best Buy and buying a bunch of NVIDIA graphics cards 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 going to become a thing, then people were going to use CUDA to develop exclusively on NVIDIA's hardware.

44:22And 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 listener, it's I just looked it up. It's a 650 billion dollar company. So one of the I don't know, top 20, 30 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 like he is a 19 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 basically like elon except not like like right like 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.

45:54Like NVIDIA and CUDA is essentially like you can think about it as like the Android plus iOS of AI. Like no NVIDIA, no CUDA, no decision by Jensen to do this. We are not living in the world we're living in today. Sam, I'll give you a different answer for the thing you're actually looking for, which is like who is the most savage person to compete against. That answer is Bernard Arnault from LVMH. He's the richest man in the world today. 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 70 of 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.

46:49Is 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 it worked out, but I think they're overrated. It's a very unacquired question. Dave and I are nice people. We are. We don't. Well, pick a dead person. One that I like to talk about. Dead person. Or you can pick anyone, but someone who's like. No, I think one that I like to talk about here is. I don't know the overrated is right, but like I think a lot about it. 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 want to own a business that, uh, you know, even an idiot could run because someday someone will, you know?

47:40And 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 on Airbnb. But like, 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 do to change the like to inflect the trajectory of that ship. You know, so my I I like there's a long story.

48:21I don't feel like telling it, but I had a job at Airbnb when I was like 22. and I like dropped to school and moved out and then I got denied, whatever. And so I didn't end up working there, but I got to 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 inevitably would hear it. I think that I agree with you. It's a mark. Once you have a marketplace that's working, it's hard to screw it up. eBay is doing a good job though. But I, you know, if it works, like it's a good, it's a great thing.

48:52It's a quite durable, but I would listen to Brian Chesky give these 30-minute Thursday talks, that guy is bad to the bone. I read a little bit. I read the Walt Disney biography, and he reminded me exactly 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 really care about what they're doing. I sense that with him. That guy, I think, is a bit killer. I think that he's, 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.

49:27And he's very wise. He's a really good leader. But that's cool. I like Airbnb. And I think it's cool. I agree. It probably would be hard to kill. And last question. Which person who you covered would kick your ass physically and you'd least want to have a physical confrontation with? I mean, actually, Jensen. Yeah. You think so? Well, he's getting up there in age. But, like, yeah. No, he lifts. he's just like such a character

49:58well I certainly I mean we're coming right off of Nintendo but like Hiroshi Yamauchi back in the day not because he was physically intimidating but like literally like that man was in bed with the Yakuza you do not cross him David and I walked in to interview Doug Lione it's a great story Doug Lione is the founder of Sequoia. Yeah. Long time managing partner. Yeah. Got it. A head honcho at one point of one of the best venture capital firms ever. Through Google and, you know, the true heyday of Sequoia, which, or you could argue that was recently, but amazing era of Sequoia. And 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.

50:47And we like email or text and you guys know the drill. And so with Doug, we didn't communicate with him at all beforehand. It was all with 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 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, yeah. So we hit record and we finished. So we did the whole episode. Make me laugh. Right. We finished recording and Doug goes. Doug just goes, great, thank you so much. And he gets up and leaves the room.

51:24So every word that I've ever spoken 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. Later, 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 and sort of like came and chatted with us. But I was like, wow, that is aggressive. Doug wanted to say thank you, but he doesn't waste. waste breath so i'll say it's the assistant the assistant just punched in the arm and gave you a raspberry said that's from doug he also had uh he has i think still to this day the best quote unacquired yes that was not uttered by ben or 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 sequoia was like kind of made this vow that no lp would lose money like they wouldn't take a mulligan fund they would work the portfolio companies.

52:20They cut fees. They didn't take salaries. Make sure that they have positive returns. And he said, he's like, Mike Moritz and I linked arms or, I think it was linked arms. He said, Mike Moritz and I decided that we would stand there and we wouldn't flinch and you could burn cigarettes on our arms and we would take a mulligan on these funds. We're like, damn. He also has kind of an accent, right? Yeah, he's got this Italian New York vibe. yeah that's cool are there 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 them like leone nowadays yeah you gotta hide it now yeah well elon's tough he ain't like tough tough like travis frank's lupman is still like this yeah yeah and he's it's a giant breed though like we need more of these yeah frank uh my my badge is not working to get into the office you still got teeth don't you he's like 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 them like that anymore unfortunately yeah um that's crazy 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 that's what they love uh yeah i would love to do 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 going to do which is i think you could actually start a corporate podcast agency.

54:06So an agency for companies to make their own podcast. Internal podcast or external? Either one. And my thesis on this is that for companies, there is tremendous value to having a podcast, even if nobody listens. If people listen, like upside. And basically, you should just assume no one will listen because we have like, there's so many great options. Why would I listen to a company's podcast? Right. But it is an excuse to have relationship-building conversations with customers and prospects. Sales and biz dev, basically. Yeah, exactly. And 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.

54:58Right, right. Yeah, like sales course should have its own podcast. Yeah. What do they charge for that? What do people charge for that? I know Ben, our Ben, Ben Wilson used to work at, is it mission.org, Ben? Or no, it was Caspian, Caspian Studios. And I think they do that for like snowflaking. And you kind of did this idea, right? Like does this idea work or not really? 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. We actually, like combining the two things we just talked about, we made Snowflake's podcast and Frank Sloopman was on it all the time.

55:35Oh, perfect. So 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 margins are super good when times are good, but then when times are not good. The email you're being like, hey, can you send me the last 30-day downloads numbers? And you're like, delete. Delete the whole podcast. Get rid of it. They're asking the question. anything 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 because 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 mean actually no like and and i think that's the i think that is correct like i am one of these people that believes that uh saying ai we invest in ai is a little bit of a silly thing these days because it's the same thing as 20 years ago saying we invest in software as a vc it's like yeah no shit like i i think it's just going to be so quickly ubiquitous that like if companies aren't using ai in some capacity you're starting to get a little bit like.

56:48What's a cool AI use case or company that you've seen and invested in or want to invest in, whatever? Well, and by the way, I think Sean met with James Currier recently and I think it was James on Twitter or maybe Sean used told us, you go, I've been pitched by 200 AI companies in the last quarter and I've invested in none because they're all weak or something like that. It's interesting. I haven't invested in any either or I haven't invested. 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 going to be defensible for the vast majority of companies.

57:30I think the value is going to come from and the moat is going to come from the same thing that always creates value and moats, which is like network effects with your customers or like a data moat 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. And so I sort of like, 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 table stakes in the next few years because everybody's going to expect all software to just behave magically.

58:16Right. Do you think, and this will be the last question for me, do you think that there's a world where you're going to sell, acquire, or do one of these Spotify deals or anything like that? Have you been approached? Good question. Yes, but not in like a 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 you know call our daddy i think we try to give him five million bucks what they said no

58:50oh wow we would say no that we would for sure say no to that um i don't like if uh uh we could talk about like i i don't uh i would not be interested in having any conversations for you know less than uh hey on the order of like what you got like the hustle or um uh morning brew or you know stuff like that uh 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 is in that category. I think it's very much an open question. Like it's gotten so much bigger than we ever imagined. How much farther can it go?

59:36Right. I'm curious how you guys think about this too. 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. We've got idiots running the business here and it still doubles. Right. it's cash generative well have you guys built any businesses off the back of it so that's yes oh you thinking glow David no I'm thinking kindergarten so I have a fund on AngelList I manage about 30 million dollars of capital on AngelList between two funds and four or five SPVs and while I used to be a professional VC before going full time on Acquired and that certainly helps all of that's because of Acquired and you uh so so you did that uh you did that fund um anything else that you guys have done that you've launched uh off the back of it because 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 interest and like kind of the tam of that that market um like the andrew huberman's are rare normally it's a grind yeah yeah and uh and even him i don't think he could make it grow much faster or slower.

1:00:54Just like good execution is obviously the only thing you control, but like a lot of people can do good execution and their growth rate will be somewhat linear. It's not going to get much fat. The slope doesn't change that much. But the thing that I think we found was that you could build businesses off the back of this audience, whether it's a fund or other products or services that can be more valuable than the ad revenue of the podcast itself. Do you guys do that or think about that? Like Sean mentioned a company and they're like, oh, we just did a million in revenue. And he's like, oh, well.

1:01:28I 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 they booked a million dollars of ARR off of that, which was pretty crazy. Yeah. So that happens to us all the time, which is why all of our sponsor deals are these like six figure, very meaningful. and long term. We do these six month sponsorships. 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?

1:02:12Or do we try to start companies or find some company that's at an inflection point and say, you know, let's trade equity or I think we're pretty early in the thinking there because we're like, 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, you know, CEOs and technical founders. And that would have to be the audience. Like, I don't think we're going to launch an energy drink brand and have that make, have that kind of pencil. But I don't know, we're open to the possibility. I think there's also for us, I'm curious how you guys think about it because you are getting into this game.

1:02:53I, 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. So I don't really want to build products or manage teams. 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. This lets us benefit from the upside of companies using Acquired as Channel without us have to be involved in the muck of building that company. 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.

1:03:28Like, how do you think about this? 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 want to go down rabbit holes and then take that most interesting, you know, 1 % of things that I found and share it on this podcast or on my newsletter. And that's, that's what I like to do. That's the sort of highest enjoyment. But I also love money. And so I'm like, okay, cool. And I also like the thing I study is about how people make money and business and create wealth.

1:03:59and 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 got to go recruit a team basically played with every form you could do so I invest both in startups as well as like cash flowing businesses like I'll buy you know 20-30 percent of a cash flowing business that I think I can help through the audience or uh or just through like, you know, being an entrepreneur for 15 years and like learning a bunch of stuff. The second thing would be starting a business.

1:04:32So I started the milk road off of the podcast. I think the podcast helped us get the ball rolling there. And then, you know, I've launched courses or things like that, that just are ways to take the curiosity and say, oh, I learned a bunch of stuff. Could I teach it? And then, and I also thought about, you know, you know, so buying businesses, investing in startups, doing, 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 best part of the offer was, oh, I don't have to operate any business anymore.

1:05:11If I do this, that's appealing to me. Whereas Sam just launched Hampton last week or I think it was last week. We can't. I saw, congratulations. Thank you. I feel like you don't have to do sales for the next year based off of like, Like, you know, the blitz that you were able to drum up across the pod, Twitter, everywhere that you tried to do, right? Like, I mean, you could talk a little more about that. But it seems like you crushed your demand side. Yeah. So basically in 2022 and 21, I was inspired by Sean. I was like, all right, fine. I'll invest a little while. And so I gave it like a 6 to 12 month try.

1:05:44And I was like, I hate investing. I totally dislike it. I think maybe I could be pretty good at it. But it's not for me. I don't like taking a minority interest in things. I personally like owning all of something. And I think of myself a little bit as an artist sometimes with these companies. I like to be creative. And that's kind of how I like to express myself. So I prefer that. And so that's why I launched Hampton was because I was like, this fits my interests. I have a competitive advantage here. And so when I announced it on the pod, we now have 5 ,000 people who applied. and we're like, and it's cost$8 ,500 a year to join.

1:06:23And 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 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 focus and just doing one thing at a time because I don't just my brain. It's really challenging for me to jump from thing to thing, like an investor needs to. And so I prefer like spending 5-10 years on something.

1:06:58And so I intend to start a company, maybe another one 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. I just don't find enjoyment on it. I'm a dopamine fiend. and like seeing sales come in and like making decisions, I get like, it's my alcohol. I like getting drunk off of that. 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 strictly a performance fee. And so when it kicks ass, which it has, we get paid good money as if we have had advertisers.

1:07:41And 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 there's definitely i wouldn't say complicated but 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 right 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 there probably are potentially more monetization options for the pod, right?

1:08:22Like, how does that revenue get split up? Like YouTube ads. We just don't. We 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. But you get other benefits, right? So you got to, like, kind of weigh those out over time and be like, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, like 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. 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.

1:08:53Let'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 world where we do actually come to a compromise and we have more ads. But it's a conversation. Yeah. 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 all great? No, they're great with that.

1:09:30And any revenue outside of the pod is 100 % ours. Events, merch, whatever. but like let's say 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 to 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 yeah well probably all all the business activity all the stuff you guys are launching outside of the pod just brings attention back to the pod right so like it also brings credibility ability, right?

1:10:04Because how many people do you see on YouTube or TikTok or Twitter, wherever that are like, you know, basically these like business gurus or like, you know, advice guys. And you hear the advice guys and you like click their bio and you're like, so what have you done? What do you do? Oh, your career is giving advice. Okay. But where'd you get that firsthand knowledge? Do you have any battle scars? Like, oh no, you're, you know, you're the bald barber. Oh, great. Like, you know, I'm not sure that I want, I'm not sure that I want that. Right. So, So I think that's also helpful, right? Because if like - Bald barber, by the way, chef's kiss.

1:10:39Oh, thank you. Good job. I'm practicing my improv on the fly. I decided to take a few more risks of like, just tee up that I'm going to make the joke and see if my brain in that 0.5 seconds could come up with something. And if I fall flat, you know, two out of three times, that's okay. That's still one that I got right. Even a blind squirrel finds it not my friend. You're doing great. Exactly. So yeah, basically I think it gives credibility, right? Like during the pod, 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.

1:11:13It's clearly going to be successful or already already off 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 as it's unfolding like the easiest way i explained 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 be like we're broke guys talking about broke guy shit that's like all right fantastic like that's that's the way to go but i think it adds credibility because 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 got to 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 yep 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 or our minds when we started acquired but like i'd gone to business school uh i went to stanford i did my mba there it was 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 want to 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 that's why like michael michael morowitz by the way michael morowitz you know uh doug leone's partner yeah moritz yeah um sorry moritz he uh journalist turned billionaire and uh like those those yes yeah yeah yeah sorry those uh you know i remember journalists to vc once i went the reverse pipeline doesn't exist so like yeah i always have to remind myself of this when i'm reading tech coverage, I'm like, okay, the very best ones of these people have immersed themselves in the operator-founder communities to be able to, like, pick up the je ne sais quoi and read between the lines of what certain things mean.

1:13:31Like, Dan Primack is one of these types of people. But, you know, a junior journalist coming out of journalism school writing and picking up this beat, it's like, 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 journalist, 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 write on TechCrunch and then it looks like very different.

1:14:15But like, this is a person who's just a normal, they're a normal person who this is kind of 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. It doesn't mean they don't have good intentions, but like, it's that thing where I forget 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.

1:14:45oh the new york times is an expert and it's like there is a probably also not an expert or something it's 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 was all these headlines saying like this woman created a toxic workplace that's horrible you gotta get and i was like oh this is a juicy story let's dig in where's the fraud i love you read that you read the slack messages that they're publishing and listen to this yeah she's running a startup up so someone like packed like she like opened up a package and it was horribly done and she said if this keeps or what did she say she goes i'm just gonna have to 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 she said the word brain dead i'm like that's the toxic work environment like come on give me a break that yeah that that ain't nice but that's not new york times headline shit give me a break like i want to see some fire for that right something like that she bounced because of that like that it wasn't she said brain dead the other woman not yeah i forget what her name was uh but like i read that article i'm 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.

1:16:12I 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 don't have to like layer in filters and stuff. It's just, you sit down, you talk. That's why you see like Reid Hoffman. Oh, the straight up audio medium? Yeah, just like straight audio. Or even audio with the webcam. Now I think that's getting a little bit easier.

1:16:41But basically the podcast format, I think there's a reason why you see so many ex-athletes do this. The same thing. You have Skip Bayless, 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. He'll just make fun of people. And then you have J.J. Redick, who's an ex-player. So good. Old man of the three. So good. He's phenomenal at content. And his point of view is so much better than there's. And 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.

1:17:20So they actually open up about stuff. But he's also not trying to trap them 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 in. And he's just saying 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 beautiful, well-written blog posts every other day, it'd be very hard to do.

1:17:49But for him to just, oh, something happened, get on the microphone, give my point of view, they could do it. So you get more credible experts in podcasting than I think on any other medium. him. 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 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.

1:18:23But of course, that's the first thing you're going to 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 that literally all you said. So you basically copy and paste it 500 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 BS on the pod here.

1:18:57Okay, no one can check. Say aye. 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 full of emojis. And you're like, chill the fuck out. Big capital letters. Discover the secrets. And so I had to tone it down. but I totally use that to, 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. I totally agree. I'm going to start doing that. Well, guys, you're awesome, man. Thank you.

1:19:34Thank you for coming on. If you're listening to our pod, go check out Acquired. If you're listening on Acquired, do as we call it. Should we teach them the gentleman's agreement, Sam? Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the ladies' understanding, right? I feel like the gentleman'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 but for some reason you get excited just to hear him say it sam you want to hear it again that's how i 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 7-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 logististry, and there's all that money in there.

1:20:17And of course, you don't take that money. You leave a dollar there. No one's going to stop you, by the way, if you took that money. But that's basically what this podcast is. This podcast is free. Us four, we just dedicated hours of our day to do this. But unlike every other podcast, this one's not free. Just like that jar, you got to leave a dollar, meaning you got to go and subscribe to Acquired's podcast on Spotify, as well as iTunes. And do the same with My First Million on our YouTube page. And you click subscribe. It's called the gentleman's agreement because we're not there. We're just shaking our hands.

1:20:49What is it called? The ladies that are standing at the gentleman'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's our agreement. We create the content. You click subscribe. I love it. You guys are innovative. And there's real value. For our audience, if you go and subscribe to My First Million, you're going to get smarter. You're going to get more ideas. This benefits you. So you're not just pulling money out of your wallet here. You're doing something that's going to make your life more fun. And that's the gentleman's agreement, and that's the lady's understanding.

1:21:22David, you want to take us home? What were you saying? Oh, I was going to ask. I could keep jamming with you guys for another hour. I was going to ask you said Spotify. Where do you like people to subscribe? Spotify, YouTube? YouTube. You said that. Well, you said earlier that Spotify is your main thing. So once we started doing the gentleman's agreement, our YouTube channel went through the roof. So we went from like 150 ,000 subscribers to close to 200 in like a month or eight weeks or something like that. Sam, we should do every pod giveaway of YouTube Premium to someone in the comments. So go to this episode on YouTube and just type in Premium.

1:22:01And 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 you can enjoy that sweet, sweet $14.99 a month that we're going to be paying for you for the year. So one year of YouTube Premium in every episode. Call it in now. Oh, I love it. That is really a reminder to go comment because I am a YouTube Premium subscriber, but I want you guys to foot the bill. Well, thanks for doing this, guys. We appreciate you and we'll have you back on and thank you for everything. Likewise. See you guys.

1:22:34Catch you guys next time.

1:22:58All right, this episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of. And then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

1:23:25It's an entrepreneur. You could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and annoyances and decided to actually fix it himself. And really any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency. Well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury is great. Highly recommend you check it out. And thank you for sponsoring the show.

1:23:50For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.