Acquired LIVE from Chase Center: A Celebration of Technology, Podcasting, and Meta's Future

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal take Acquired live to 6,000 fans at Chase Center, featuring insights from Spotify's Daniel Ek on podcasting's evolution, corrections to past episode grades with Emily Chang, and an extensive conversation with Mark Zuckerberg about Meta's journey through existential challenges and bold bets on the future.

Key Takeaways

• Acquired has reached 5 million hours listened on Spotify alone, tripling in the last year through pure word-of-mouth growth
• Daniel Ek reveals Spotify's strategy of deliberate planning over "move fast and break things," spending extensive time discussing before building
• Emily Chang helps correct past episode grades: YouTube now worth potentially $500 billion, LinkedIn 5x'd revenue since Microsoft acquisition
• Taylor Swift generated an estimated $550+ million in free cash flow in 2023, potentially justifying an $11 billion enterprise valuation
• Mark Zuckerberg reflects that his biggest mistake was a 20-year political miscalculation starting in 2016, accepting blame for things Meta wasn't responsible for
• Meta's dual voting structure stems from a 2006 Yahoo acquisition attempt where the board tried to fire Zuckerberg for rejecting a $1 billion offer
• The company's "learning through suffering" philosophy and technology-first approach enabled survival through nine major competitive threats
• Zuckerberg's current focus has shifted from building "good" products to building "awesome" products that inspire and uplift humanity
• Meta's open-source AI strategy (Llama) and AR/VR investments represent a $50+ billion bet on owning the next computing platform to avoid platform taxes

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–15:45 — Opening Celebration and Acquired Growth: Ben and David welcome 6,000 fans to Chase Center, sharing behind-the-scenes bloopers and introducing the evening's format as a technology celebration rather than traditional episode
• 15:45–32:30 — State of Acquired with Daniel Ek: Spotify's CEO presents Acquired's remarkable growth metrics, discusses the podcasting industry's evolution, and shares insights on his friendship with Mark Zuckerberg and strategic partnerships
• 32:30–48:15 — Correcting the Record with Emily Chang: Bloomberg's Emily Chang helps revisit controversial past episode grades, including YouTube (upgraded to A+), LinkedIn's success under Microsoft, SpaceX's Starlink dominance, and Taylor Swift's billion-dollar enterprise value
• 48:15–01:04:00 — Sponsor Segments and Jensen Huang Clarification: Presentations from JP Morgan Payments executives on their global scale, plus Jensen Huang's video message clarifying his misunderstood quote about whether he'd start Nvidia again
• 01:04:00–01:47:00 — Mark Zuckerberg Interview - Part 1: Meta's journey through existential challenges, the HTML5 mobile mistake, political miscalculations starting in 2016, and the 2006 Yahoo acquisition attempt that led to dual-class voting structure
• 01:47:00–02:15:00 — Mark Zuckerberg Interview - Part 2: Meta's technology-first culture, open-source strategy with AI and infrastructure, the shift from building "good" to "awesome" products, and the $50+ billion bet on AR/VR as the next computing platform
• 02:15:00–02:30:00 — Platform Wars and Founder Advice: Zuckerberg's vision for open platforms versus Apple's closed ecosystem, the ideological battle for the next generation of computing, and advice for current founders to "do something you care about"

Opening Celebration and Acquired Growth: From Basement Podcast to Arena Spectacle

The evening opened with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal addressing 6,000 fans at San Francisco's Chase Center, marking an unprecedented moment in podcasting history. Rather than their typical deep historical analysis, the hosts threw their usual playbook "out the window" to celebrate technology, the San Francisco Bay Area, and most importantly, their community of listeners who had gathered in person for the first time.

The format began with an extended behind-the-scenes look at what listeners miss in a typical Acquired recording session. Through a carefully edited montage of bloopers and outtakes, the audience experienced the reality of nine-hour recording sessions, including bathroom breaks, technical difficulties, timeline confusion, and the constant struggle to keep complex historical narratives coherent while managing information overload.

• Ben and David revealed they record for nine hours to produce three-to-five-hour episodes, with extensive cutting and re-recording to maintain quality
• The hosts acknowledged their growth from recording "in their basements" to having professional production support from JP Morgan Payments' marketing team
• Jamie Dimon appeared via video to welcome everyone to Chase Center, highlighting JP Morgan's year-long partnership with Acquired
• The evening was structured as three acts with Mark Zuckerberg as the final headliner, plus multiple surprise guests and segments throughout
• Rather than their traditional historical deep-dive format, the live show focused on present-day conversations and updates to past coverage

This opening segment established the celebratory tone while acknowledging the surreal nature of a podcast that started as a side project reaching arena-scale audiences. The hosts' self-deprecating humor about their recording process and genuine amazement at the turnout created an intimate atmosphere despite the massive venue, setting the stage for an evening that balanced entertainment with substantive technology discussions.

State of Acquired with Daniel Ek: Podcasting's Evolution and Strategic Partnerships

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek joined as the first major guest to discuss both Acquired's remarkable growth and the broader evolution of podcasting as a medium. His presentation included exclusive data showing Acquired's trajectory from a small podcast to a global phenomenon, with metrics that surprised even the hosts about their international reach and engagement levels.

Ek revealed that Acquired has generated over 5 million listening hours on Spotify alone, with that number tripling in the most recent year. The show has added more than 250,000 followers on Spotify, with that growth also tripling year-over-year. Perhaps most remarkably, Acquired has achieved truly global reach, with significant growth in markets like Mexico (5x growth), Hong Kong, Israel, and Singapore, demonstrating that business storytelling transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries.

• Spotify has grown from a few million podcast listeners in 2019 to over 150 million people listening to podcasts on the platform today
• Acquired's growth comes entirely through word-of-mouth, with each listener telling approximately one other person about the show annually
• The Wall Street Journal article about Acquired in May created a visible inflection point in their growth curve, representing a new form of word-of-mouth marketing
• Ek positioned Acquired as helping broaden the podcasting medium by creating both broad appeal and deep content that attracts people to podcasting who weren't previous listeners
• The hosts' original total addressable market estimate was maybe one million people (business school students and those interested in business), which has proven dramatically conservative

Ek shared insights about his 15-year friendship with Mark Zuckerberg, including their early collaboration on social music features when Spotify was invite-only and Facebook was experimenting with social sharing. He described how Spotify's status updates showing what friends were listening to became one of their most enduring features, though the broader vision of social music evolved toward products like Jam that enable shared listening experiences rather than passive social broadcasting.

The conversation revealed Spotify's distinctive approach to product development, which Ek described as "talk is cheap" - meaning they invest heavily in discussion and planning before building, contrary to the typical Silicon Valley "move fast and break things" mentality. This methodical approach stems from Spotify's need to convince entire industries (record labels, publishers) to support changes, making iteration cycles longer but requiring higher certainty about direction before committing resources.

Correcting the Record with Emily Chang: Revisiting Controversial Episode Grades

Bloomberg's Emily Chang joined to address one of the most frequent listener requests: revisiting past episodes where Ben and David's predictions or grades had proven spectacularly wrong. This segment provided both entertainment and substantive updates on how major technology companies had evolved since their original Acquired coverage.

The most dramatic correction involved YouTube, which David had graded as a "C" in 2016, with Ben suggesting it could be "as bad as a C-minus." Their primary criticism was that YouTube wasn't a destination site where people discovered content. Emily presented current analyst estimates valuing YouTube at potentially $500 billion if spun out from Google - nearly double Netflix's valuation and representing one of the most successful acquisitions in technology history.

• YouTube now generates $35-40 billion in annual revenue, up from $5 billion when Acquired covered the Google acquisition
• The company has become both the second-largest search engine and second-largest social media property globally
• YouTube TV is on track to become the largest cable provider in the United States, representing a complete reimagining of television distribution
• However, YouTube pays out 55% of revenue to creators (45% on shorts), creating questions about long-term profitability despite strategic value
• Ben and David upgraded their assessment to "A+" based on strategic value to Google, though acknowledged the challenging economics of creator revenue sharing

The LinkedIn revision proved equally dramatic. Microsoft's acquisition, which received mixed reactions initially, had resulted in 5x revenue growth over eight years to $16 billion annually. LinkedIn had essentially created a $100+ billion business (based on comparable company valuations) that exists within Microsoft's broader ecosystem, validating Satya Nadella's platform strategy and demonstrating how acquired companies could thrive within larger technology platforms.

Emily's new reporting revealed that Reed Hoffman, LinkedIn's co-founder, described Nadella as operating Microsoft like a "re-founder," shifting from cutthroat competition toward collaboration, cloud services, and AI investments. This transformation enabled LinkedIn to evolve from a professional networking site into a content platform generating $5 billion in advertising revenue from creator-generated content that barely existed at acquisition.

The Taylor Swift analysis proved most entertaining, with David presenting a detailed enterprise valuation argument. Based on her estimated $550+ million in free cash flow during 2023 (combining streaming revenue, Eras Tour profits, and concert film distribution), he argued for an $11 billion enterprise valuation using Disney's 20x multiple - dramatically higher than Forbes' $1.1 billion net worth estimate. The analysis highlighted how traditional celebrity net worth calculations fail to account for ongoing cash generation capabilities and brand durability.

Sponsor Segments and Jensen Huang Clarification: Global Infrastructure and Entrepreneurial Context

The evening included presentations from JP Morgan Payments' global co-heads Max Neukirchen and Umar Farooq, who provided perspective on the infrastructure underlying global technology companies. Their business moves approximately $10 trillion daily - roughly one dollar in every four that moves globally - across 160 countries, serving as the "backbone" for many companies featured on Acquired.

The JP Morgan executives emphasized their role in enabling companies to "receive money, hold money, send money, safeguard money against fraud" while extracting insights to help businesses grow. Their scale creates unique challenges and opportunities, particularly in fraud detection where they deploy AI systems to combat increasingly sophisticated attacks. They've also built the largest financial blockchain ecosystem globally, processing larger transaction volumes than crypto blockchains.

• JP Morgan Payments serves companies from coffee shops to multinational corporations, providing the "last payment solution you will ever need"
• Their blockchain-based JPM Coin processes institutional transactions at scale, demonstrating enterprise blockchain adoption beyond cryptocurrency speculation
• The company's embedded finance solutions often operate invisibly within other platforms, handling payment processing without end users realizing JP Morgan's involvement
• Innovation includes AI-powered fraud detection, extensive embedded finance capabilities, and blockchain infrastructure for institutional clients
• Their client base includes many companies previously featured on Acquired, creating synergies between payment infrastructure and technology company growth

Jensen Huang appeared via video to clarify his widely misunderstood quote about whether he would start Nvidia again knowing what he knows now. The clip had gone viral after Ben and David's interview, with Jensen's "absolutely not" answer being interpreted as regret about founding the company. His clarification revealed the quote's actual meaning: that entrepreneurship's "superpower is partly your ignorance" about how difficult the journey will be.

Jensen explained that if he could compress 31 years of challenges, hardships, and suffering into the brain of a 29-year-old, that person would never start the company. The entrepreneurial journey requires not knowing how difficult it will be, making ignorance a valuable asset for taking on seemingly impossible challenges. This perspective aligned with themes that would emerge later in Mark Zuckerberg's discussion about "learning through suffering" and the necessity of underestimating challenges to attempt ambitious projects.

Mark Zuckerberg Interview - Part 1: Meta's Journey Through Existential Challenges

Mark Zuckerberg's entrance as the evening's headliner created the most energy of the night, with 6,000 attendees welcoming the founder and CEO who has become synonymous with social media's evolution. His custom t-shirt featuring the Greek phrase "pathei mathos" (learning through suffering) immediately established themes that would define the conversation about Meta's two-decade journey through repeated existential challenges.

Ben and David opened by quantifying something unprecedented in technology history: Meta had faced more existential threats than any meaningful company during its first 20 years. The list included MySpace, Twitter, Instagram competition, Snapchat's Stories format, TikTok's rise, Apple's App Tracking Transparency policy, and ChatGPT's AI breakthrough - nine major challenges where conventional wisdom suggested Meta was obsolete, yet the company had not only survived but thrived.

• Zuckerberg attributed Meta's resilience to being a "technology company focused on human connection" rather than defining themselves as a specific type of app or platform
• The company's engineering-first culture enabled platform-to-platform transitions because they invested in underlying technology rather than just product experiences
• Meta's strategy of "learning faster than every other company" through rapid iteration and feedback loops created competitive advantages during platform shifts
• Zuckerberg described their approach as optimizing for "creating your luck" by positioning to catch opportunities regardless of direction
• The dual-class voting structure enabled long-term thinking during painful transitions that public market investors might not tolerate

The conversation delved into Meta's most significant technical mistake: betting on HTML5 for mobile applications around the 2012 IPO. Zuckerberg explained how their web development background led them to create a cross-platform solution that prioritized development velocity over native performance. When mobile usage exploded while their HTML5 apps performed poorly, the company faced simultaneous technical rebuilding and business model transformation challenges.

The HTML5 decision coincided with mobile becoming the dominant platform while Meta had no mobile advertising revenue model. The company needed to simultaneously rewrite their applications from scratch and invent feed-based advertising - both technically and culturally challenging transitions. Zuckerberg described the painful but necessary decision to pause all feature development for over a year to focus entirely on the mobile transition, recognizing that companies attempting rewrites while adding features typically fail to complete either successfully.

This period taught crucial lessons about strategic clarity during crises. Zuckerberg noted that "when you're losing, it's usually pretty clear what you have to do" - the challenge becomes having "pain tolerance" to execute necessary changes. The mobile crisis, while resulting in a 50% stock price decline, provided a template for navigating future existential challenges through focused execution rather than scattered responses.

Mark Zuckerberg Interview - Part 2: Technology Strategy and the Quest for "Awesome" Products

The conversation's second half explored Zuckerberg's evolution from young founder to long-term technology strategist, including his most significant strategic regret and current vision for Meta's next chapter. His reflection on political challenges beginning in 2016 revealed sophisticated thinking about corporate crisis management versus political dynamics.

Zuckerberg identified his political strategy beginning in 2016 as potentially a "20-year mistake" - longer-lasting than the 18-month mobile transition. He described accepting responsibility for societal problems that Meta wasn't necessarily causing, operating under traditional corporate crisis management principles rather than recognizing the political nature of many criticisms. This approach inadvertently invited additional blame for problems beyond the company's control or influence.

• Zuckerberg distinguished between corporate crises (where taking responsibility helps solve problems) and political attacks (where acceptance of blame often invites additional criticism)
• He emphasized the importance of academic research to provide third-party validation of industry impacts rather than companies defending themselves
• The political miscalculation has required developing new frameworks for distinguishing legitimate criticism from political targeting
• Meta's brand rehabilitation strategy focuses on "running toward" future vision rather than "running away from" past controversies
• The company expects another 10 years of work to fully recover from political brand challenges while continuing business growth

The discussion revealed Zuckerberg's philosophical evolution toward building "awesome" rather than merely "good" products. While Meta's current applications serve over 3.3 billion daily users because they're useful and solve real problems, Zuckerberg wants the company's next phase to create products that are "uplifting and inspiring" rather than just functional. This vision drives massive investments in Reality Labs and advanced AI research.

Zuckerberg's personal evolution during COVID provided reflection time that led to doubling down on long-term technology bets despite expected investor resistance. The decision to increase Reality Labs investment during a recession demonstrated commitment to 10-15 year vision over short-term market sentiment. He acknowledged that without dual-class voting control, investor pressure might have prevented these strategic investments.

The Meta AI glasses represent this evolution perfectly. Originally conceived as practice for full AR glasses, the Ray-Ban partnership became valuable when AI capabilities transformed the product's potential. Zuckerberg described a Saturday phone call where he asked teams to integrate Meta AI into the glasses, resulting in a Tuesday prototype that validated AI as the primary feature rather than just camera/audio capabilities.

The company's open-source AI strategy (Llama) and infrastructure projects (Open Compute) follow a consistent pattern: releasing technology where Meta needs industry standardization rather than proprietary advantage. By making AI models and hardware designs open source, Meta creates competitive supply chains and industry standards that benefit their scale while enabling broader ecosystem development.

Platform Wars and Founder Advice: Open Versus Closed Computing Architectures

The evening concluded with Zuckerberg's vision for the next generation of computing platforms and his advice for current entrepreneurs. His analysis of platform evolution revealed deep strategic thinking about how closed versus open architectures have competed across computing generations, with Meta betting heavily on open platforms winning the next round.

Zuckerberg argued that recency bias from iPhone's success has created assumptions that closed, integrated platforms are inherently superior. However, he noted that in the PC era, Windows' open ecosystem dominated despite Apple's superior integration. His goal for AR/VR platforms is ensuring open systems win, creating opportunities for independent developers to build without seeking permission from platform owners.

• Apple represents Meta's primary competitor not just in products but in fundamental platform architecture philosophy
• The competition will be "deeply values-driven and ideological" about whether future platforms enable innovation without permission
• Meta's glasses, AI models, and infrastructure investments all aim to create open alternatives to closed platform approaches
• Zuckerberg estimates Meta loses roughly half their potential profitability to platform taxes and restrictions from current closed platforms
• The AR/VR investment represents betting that controlling platform architecture provides strategic value worth short-term profitability sacrifice

The platform strategy connects to Meta's broader technology philosophy. Rather than building products for existing platforms, Zuckerberg wants to create "ideal experiences" from first principles. This vision drives everything from AI glasses that provide contextual assistance without requiring phone interaction to holographic presence enabling remote collaboration that feels physically real.

Zuckerberg's founder advice emphasized authenticity over pattern matching: "do something that you care about" rather than copying successful company strategies. He shared his daughter's aspiration to have people want to be like her (rather than wanting to be like Taylor Swift), representing the next generation's entrepreneurial ambition to create entirely new categories rather than follow existing paths.

The conversation ended with Zuckerberg receiving a custom t-shirt with GPS coordinates representing both Kirkland House (where he wrote Facebook's first code) and Chase Center, symbolizing the journey from college dorm room to global technology leadership. This gesture captured the evening's theme of celebrating how far technology entrepreneurship has come while acknowledging the continuing importance of individual founders willing to take on seemingly impossible challenges.

Conclusion

Acquired's live evening at Chase Center demonstrated podcasting's evolution from intimate medium to arena-scale entertainment while maintaining substantive technology discourse. The format successfully balanced celebration with education, using the unique venue to create memorable moments - from behind-the-scenes bloopers to Daniel Ek's growth metrics, Emily Chang's grade corrections, and Mark Zuckerberg's extensive reflections on Meta's journey.

The event proved that thoughtful technology analysis can engage massive audiences when presented authentically by hosts who genuinely love the stories they tell. Most importantly, the evening validated the power of word-of-mouth growth in creating genuine community around shared interests in business history and technology innovation.

Practical Implications

• Long-term thinking advantages: Zuckerberg's dual-class voting structure enabled Meta to survive multiple existential challenges by prioritizing 10-20 year vision over quarterly results during painful transitions

• Platform dependency risks: Meta's experience with mobile platforms and current investments in owning AR/VR infrastructure illustrate the strategic value of controlling technology stacks versus building on others' platforms

• Crisis management frameworks: Distinguishing between corporate crises (where taking responsibility helps) and political attacks (where acceptance invites additional blame) requires different response strategies

• Open source as competitive strategy: Companies can create industry standards and competitive supply chains by open-sourcing technology where they need ecosystem development rather than proprietary advantage

• Iteration versus integration trade-offs: Meta's "ship early and iterate" approach contrasts with Apple's integration strategy, showing multiple paths to technology leadership depending on market position and capabilities • Podcasting medium maturation: Acquired's growth demonstrates that educational content can achieve mainstream entertainment scale when authentically presented by passionate experts

• Product philosophy evolution: The transition from building "good" (useful) products to "awesome" (inspiring) products reflects founder maturation and company resource accumulation enabling higher ambitions

• Entrepreneurial ignorance as advantage: Founders' "superpower is partly ignorance" about challenge difficulty, suggesting the importance of underestimating obstacles when attempting ambitious projects