Acquired
About this creator
Acquired is a long-form business podcast that breaks down the companies, acquisitions, and strategic decisions behind iconic businesses.
Why they're in the library
Included for clear, credible perspective as long-form business podcast that breaks down the companies, acquisitions, and strategic decisions behind iconic businesses.
Showing 168 digests for Acquired.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Jensen Huang on building NVIDIA from near-death to AI dominance
Acquired
October 16, 2023
Founder interviews
9
Business models
8
AI strategy & adoption
6
How NVIDIA bet everything on one unprototyped chip — and survived
Targeting zero-billion-dollar markets a decade before they exist
Why the Mellanox acquisition redefined NVIDIA as a data centre company
AI strategy & adoption
Podcast
Nvidia and the AI era: how GPU dominance became inevitable
Acquired
September 6, 2023
AI strategy & adoption
9
Case studies
7
Long-term planning
6
Nvidia's decade of data centre prep made it the only AI infrastructure supplier
CUDA's 10,000 person-year head start locks developers in for a generation
Q2 FY24: data centre revenue doubled in a single quarter to $10.3 billion
How Nike built the world's largest athletic brand from a car-trunk shoe business
Acquired
July 25, 2023
Origin stories
10
Branding
7
Business models
6
Nike earns $300M/year for Jordan — passively, 20 years after retirement
Phil Knight funded a $50B company almost entirely through debt, no VC
Athletes are billboards: Nike pays to sponsor leagues it doesn't sell jerseys for
Porsche: how a Nazi-founded engineering firm became the world's most loved performance brand
Acquired
June 27, 2023
Origin stories
10
Business models
7
Branding
6
Porsche royalties on every VW Beetle sold funded the sports car empire
From 4,100 U.S. sales in 1992 to a 100X market-cap recovery in one decade
SUVs now drive two-thirds of revenue without denting the brand's Ferrari-adjacent status
Founder interviews
Podcast
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on turning around a verb
Acquired
June 13, 2023
Founder interviews
10
Business models
9
Pricing strategy
7
Why eliminating high-vote shares ended Uber's existential power struggle
Uber doesn't set ride prices — the marketplace does, and it's self-regulating
The supply-led playbook borrowed from Booking.com that rescued Uber post-pandemic
Lockheed Martin: Skunk Works, Silicon Valley, and the cold war secret space program
Acquired
May 30, 2023
Origin stories
9
Culture building
7
Business models
5
A secret satellite program made the U-2 spy plane obsolete within months
Lockheed built Silicon Valley: 30,000 employees, Jerry Wozniak included
Kelly Johnson's 14 rules produced world-changing hardware with tiny teams
Founder interviews
Podcast
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on building an audio platform and creator economy
Acquired
May 18, 2023
Founder interviews
10
Business models
8
Product-market fit
7
Spotify would not exist if it had launched in the US first.
Podcasting's higher margin potential is offset by moderation costs at scale.
Culture, not features, determines whether a company can keep stacking growth curves.
Competitive analysis
Podcast
How Sony and internal dysfunction killed Sega's gaming empire
Acquired
April 18, 2023
Competitive analysis
9
Business models
8
Management
6
Sony didn't just beat Sega in consoles — it destroyed their arcade business too
Sega's chaotic hardware decisions were panicked responses to an incoming Sony tsunami
Steve Race said '299' and walked off stage — Sega died that afternoon
Nintendo: How a toy company won and lost the console wars — then won again
Acquired
April 11, 2023
Case studies
9
Competitive analysis
8
Business models
7
Sega's four-point plan took Nintendo from 100% to 50% market share in one generation.
The Game Boy and DS generated ~$50B, silently saving Nintendo through three home console disasters.
The Switch succeeded by abandoning casual gaming and returning to quality mid-core IP.
Competitive analysis
Podcast
How to build a second billion-dollar business using power theory
Acquired
April 4, 2023
Competitive analysis
9
Business models
7
Half of S&P 100 profits come from non-original businesses.
Expanding inside your power umbrella is radically lower risk.
Co-action — new need, shared skills — drives 90% of new corporate value.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How obsessive study of founder history compounds into an edge
Acquired
March 29, 2023
Founder interviews
9
Productivity & habits
7
Reading founder biographies is game tape — pattern recognition, not inspiration
Charlie Munger at 99: indifference to problems is itself a competitive advantage
Interest rates are gravity; most 2010s genius was just zero-rate physics
How Nintendo rescued and dominated the global video game industry
Acquired
March 16, 2023
Origin stories
10
Business models
7
Nintendo revived a market that had collapsed 97% — and captured 95% of it
Shigeru Miyamoto invented narrative-driven game design by accident, to save bad inventory
Nintendo's App Store-style lockout chip and royalty model predated Apple's by two decades
How Bernard Arnault built the world's greatest luxury empire
Acquired
February 21, 2023
Origin stories
9
Business models
8
Exit strategy
5
From $15 million to $200 billion by mastering the hostile takeover playbook
Why luxury brands have natural diseconomies of scale but luxury groups do not
The Gucci miss that accidentally created LVMH's biggest rival, Kering
How Ben Thompson built Stratechery: subscriptions, aggregation theory, and the creator economy
Acquired
December 6, 2022
Origin stories
9
Business models
8
Subscriptions fund work up front — ads make creators serve platforms, not readers
Naming 'aggregation theory' made it stick; the idea predated the label by years
Find your pond: the internet rewards niche dominance, not generalist competition
Qualcomm: how CDMA patents built a wireless monopoly
Acquired
November 15, 2022
Case studies
10
Business models
7
Bootstrapping
5
Hedy Lamarr's WWII torpedo patent became the seed of modern wireless
Qualcomm patented CDMA in 1986, years before any carrier adopted it
Licensing fees on every smartphone sold remain the real profit engine