David Rosenthal of “Acquired Live,” a live episode of the popular business stories podcast, which is coming to San Francisco’s Chase Center Sept. 10.
Lindsay Thomas/Acquired
When David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert started the “Acquired” podcast in 2015, it was a fun way for the venture capitalists to explore tech company acquisition stories that interested them.
While other top business podcasts, such as “Morning Brew Daily” and “The Journal,” tend to be short and digestible, each “Acquired” episode clocks in at three to four hours as Rosenthal and Gilbert dissect everything from Microsoft and Starbucks to the drama surrounding Taylor Swift’s music catalog. The show boasts about 1.1 million unique listeners each month and is among the top ranking shows on Spotify.
“We had zero expectations,” Rosenthal told the Chronicle, reflecting on the early days of the podcast, which they launched while co-workers at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle. “The crazy thing is we’ve been doing this for almost 10 years … and for the first few years, we didn’t think about any of it. It was just what Ben and I did after work. It was like a hobby.”
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Now the pair plan to take over San Francisco’s Chase Center on Tuesday, Sept. 10, with Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the special guest, for a live recording of the show.
“Acquired” Live: 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 10. $50. Chase Center, 1 Warriors Way, S.F. 888-479-4667. www.chasecenter.com
Rosenthal, an alumnus of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, moved to San Francisco in 2017 with his wife, Jennie Scholick, who grew up in Marin and is the director of education and training at the San Francisco Ballet. “Acquired” is now Rosenthal and Gilbert’s full-time job, though Gilbert continues to work as a venture partner at Pioneer Square Labs Seattle.
For Rosenthal, the local arena event is as much a celebration of the Bay Area as it is of the community the podcast has built — there are currently 30,000 people on its dedicated Slack, the business messaging app.
“We want to do something really incredible, and we want to do a San Francisco Bay Area company (Meta, headquartered in Menlo Park) for all sorts of reasons,” Rosenthal said, specifically noting that “there’s this AI moment happening right now, and we really want to celebrate all of that.”
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Ahead of his Chase Center appearance (the current season of “Acquired” is sponsored by JP Morgan, which has a naming rights partnership with the home of the Golden State Warriors), Rosenthal talked to the Chronicle about the upcoming event — which the host teased will include a few special surprises for the audience — the growth of “Acquired” and his love for San Francisco.
Ben Gilbert, left, and David Rosenthal started the podcast “Acquired” in 2015 while working at Madrona Venture Group.
Lindsay Thomas/Acquired
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Why do you think “Acquired” has resonated with so many people?
A: In the early days, we focused mostly on technology companies. We were in the tech industry ourselves and so it was like, “Oh, people want to get smarter about our industry.” Now it’s become much more of a story-driven and history podcast.
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I think our best hypothesis of why it resonates is that the stories of these companies are in many ways among the most, if not the most, important stories of our time. I mean, the impact that Facebook and Meta has on the world, or Apple or Microsoft, it’s on the order of nation-states, maybe even more so. These are both incredible journeys and stories — and I mean incredible in all senses of the word, in just the ups and downs and the drama. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Q: How did you go about building the strong community surrounding this podcast, such as on Slack?
A: Totally by accident. I think because we always made this show — especially back in the day and still to now — as what our interests are, what turns us on and what we want to listen to.
The people who listen have always sort of fallen into the same type of model. Like, people who are curious, people who want to learn about the world, people who value history, people who, by and large, are business-minded — although these days we have plenty of non-business-minded folks who listen just for the stories.
The Slack community just started as a large experiment years ago, when Slack was first starting. The venture capital firm that Ben and I worked at in Seattle didn’t use Slack, but most of the companies that we invested in did, so I really felt like I needed to understand how to use Slack to relate to the companies that we were investing in. And Slack has a free plan, so I thought, “Well, let’s make one for ‘Acquired.’ … Fast-forward to now, we’ve got 30,000 people that are in there, and it’s by and large extremely simple.
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Q: Can you describe your research process for the podcast?
A: When we first started, Ben and I would pick a night and get together and make stuff up. It was just easy to say whatever popped into our minds about the topic. We now make one episode a month, so the whole month is dedicated to making the episode. Until recently, that mostly looked like reading every book that there is on a company, watching lots and lots of YouTube videos of talks that the founders and CEO have given … and then also reading journalistic pieces, everything you can find on the internet.
We still do that, (but) what we’ve added now, as the show has gotten bigger and more well-known, is we’re really 50/50 — or probably even more — primary research now. So we’re mostly interviewing people as we prepare, but we don’t record or use any of that. We’re not making a documentary. It’s like we’re writing a book. So when we just did our Microsoft series, we talked to dozens and dozens of people who were involved in the company in the early days and through its history.
Q: You mentioned your wife works at the San Francisco Ballet. Given your experience in tech and AI, I’m wondering what you thought about “Mere Mortals,” the AI-themed ballet by Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton that premiered in January 2024.
A: We were there opening night. It was amazing. … You could never do something like that with just AI, and you couldn’t do it with just humans. (Ballet Artistic Director) Tamara (Rojo) is so great. I’m so pumped about where the Ballet is and what they’re doing in the arts in San Francisco.
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Q: What’s your favorite part about living in San Francisco?
A: Oh, man. Where do I even start?
During COVID, I had already gone full time on “Acquired” … and Jennie worked at the San Francisco Ballet, but in-person arts performances weren’t happening. And so we sort of asked ourselves, “Is there any other place in the entire world that we would want to live?” We took inventory of the entire world, and we decided we want to live in Noe Valley.
There’s no other place like San Francisco. The whole area is beautiful. It has culture. It is a real international big city. … We just went down the list. There’s the ocean, there’s the mountains and then there’s Jennie’s family. It’s just overwhelming that there are so many things we love about it.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Ben Gilbert’s status with the podcast; he is full time. It also misspelled the name of David Rosenthal’s wife, Jennie.
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