Past daily clips
Every morning, ExpertsFM picks one moment from Acquired and cuts it to the part worth hearing.
Add to Claude to get the daily clip and apply it to your work.
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PlayWednesday, November 11, 2026 · 3 min
Amazon poached Walmart's logistics brain, then outgrew Walmart's model
How a dozen Walmart defectors, a lawsuit, and the shift from distribution centers to fulfillment centers built the moat that beat eBay and Walmart.
Amazon.com · 2:02:21 to 2:05:10 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayTuesday, November 10, 2026 · 2 min
Why Trader Joe's founder chose not to go national
Joe Coulombe invented Trader Joe's but wanted every store within a day's drive of home, a vivid counterpoint to empire-builder founders.
Trader Joe’s · 2:04:19 to 2:06:29 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayMonday, November 9, 2026 · 2 min
How Starbucks built a national brand without marketing spend
Hear how Costco, United Airlines and grocery shelves became Starbucks' free billboards, letting it build a national brand without spending on marketing.
Starbucks (with Howard Schultz) · 1:08:04 to 1:09:57 · Howard Schultz (guest), with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlaySunday, November 8, 2026 · 2.5 min
How a $100 price cap gave the NES a proto-GPU
Hear how Yamauchi's strict price limit pushed Nintendo to split out graphics processing, years before NVIDIA, and birthed its 'withered technology' philosophy.
Nintendo's Origins · 1:54:45 to 1:57:21 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlaySaturday, November 7, 2026 · 2.5 min
Hershey kept its bar at a nickel for seventy years
Hear how a sacred nickel price led Hershey to halve its bar, then botch the fix in 1969.
Mars Inc. (the chocolate story) · 2:37:56 to 2:40:36 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayFriday, November 6, 2026 · 1.5 min
How Riot bought its first players by buying DotA fan sites
Mitch Lasky explains why he backed Riot: they bought DotA fan websites and redirected a frustrated audience to League of Legends.
Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming · 1:01:48 to 1:03:30 · Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins (guests, Benchmark), with the hosts -
PlayThursday, November 5, 2026 · 2 min
The junior engineer who wrote Microsoft's internet playbook
How a young Microsoft engineer's 1994 memo coined 'embrace and extend' and mapped the browser-war strategy before Netscape even existed.
Microsoft Volume II · 13:25 to 15:39 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayWednesday, November 4, 2026 · 2 min
How PlayStation quietly killed Sega's arcade empire
A fresh read on Sega's collapse: owning a console locked it out of Sony's platform while PlayStation gutted its $7 billion arcade market.
Short: The Death of Sega · 38:25 to 40:15 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayTuesday, November 3, 2026 · 2.5 min
Why Uber's scale edge disappears when riders open two apps
Chenyi Shi explains how multi-homing erases a platform's scale advantage, and Ben reveals that Uber killed his ride-sharing metasearch startup over exactly this.
Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi) · 20:58 to 23:14 · Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi (guests), with the hosts -
PlayMonday, November 2, 2026 · 2.5 min
Steve Ballmer counts how many real tricks a company has
Ballmer's framework for judging companies by independent revenue engines, applied live to Google, TSMC, Nvidia, IBM, and Microsoft itself.
The Steve Ballmer Interview · 1:28:16 to 1:30:33 · Steve Ballmer (guest), with the hosts -
PlaySunday, November 1, 2026 · 2.5 min
Why nobody can copy the full Hermès bundle
A sharp breakdown of why Louis Vuitton, Supreme, and Paris artisans each offer only part of what Hermès sells, and why that matters.
Hermès · 3:40:32 to 3:43:05 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlaySaturday, October 31, 2026 · 2.5 min
Ferrari casts its own engines while rivals share platforms
Hear how Ferrari pours raw aluminum into its own Maranello foundry while a Lamborghini Urus is essentially a Volkswagen Touareg underneath.
Ferrari · 2:06:34 to 2:08:49 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayFriday, October 30, 2026 · 2 min
Why Ben Thompson thinks micropayments for articles are terrible
Ben Thompson explains the timing mismatch that breaks per-article pricing, and why subscriptions let the money fund the work instead.
Stratechery (with Ben Thompson) · 9:06 to 11:05 · Ben Thompson (guest) -
PlayThursday, October 29, 2026 · 2.5 min
Why Converse couldn't copy Nike's Jordan royalty deal
Hear how Nike turned being small and cash-strapped into a deal structure that Converse, with its many stars, couldn't match.
Nike · 2:14:03 to 2:16:30 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayWednesday, October 28, 2026 · 2 min
Bernie Ecclestone gives away F1 TV rights to own them
How Bernie sold F1 rights to 92 European broadcasters for almost nothing, required every race on air, then took over the feed himself.
Formula 1 · 52:37 to 54:46 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayTuesday, October 27, 2026 · 3 min
Why Renaissance runs one model while rivals run silos
Learn how Renaissance's single shared model turned every researcher's work into a firm-wide asset, unlike Citadel's competing pods.
Renaissance Technologies · 1:22:27 to 1:25:15 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayMonday, October 26, 2026 · 2.5 min
Why Google's $50M Android buy came just in time
How 350 versions of mobile Google Maps signaled the threat, and why skipping Android would have handed smartphones to Microsoft, not Apple.
Google Part II: Alphabet · 2:34:06 to 2:36:29 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlaySunday, October 25, 2026 · 2 min
Jamie Dimon says JPMorgan is really a giant community bank
Dimon explains how JPMorgan works like a small-town bank at global scale, and why he cut the businesses that made Citi a sprawl.
The Jamie Dimon Interview · 54:53 to 56:40 · Jamie Dimon (guest), with the hosts -
PlaySaturday, October 24, 2026 · 1.5 min
Why Uber Eats is secretly a driver recruiting machine
Dara explains how food delivery's lighter onboarding gets new earners working faster, which feeds Uber's ride supply and marketplace liquidity.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi · 21:32 to 22:48 · Dara Khosrowshahi (guest), responding to the hosts -
PlayFriday, October 23, 2026 · 3 min
Coke's brand power shows up in volume, not price
Why Coke never charges a premium, how every can doubles as a billboard, and the one experiment that proved its brand's strength.
Coca-Cola · 3:41:10 to 3:43:58 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayThursday, October 22, 2026 · 4.5 min
How being first nearly killed Nvidia
Hear how Microsoft's DirectX triangle standard, Sega's exit and falling memory prices left early Nvidia building for a world that vanished.
Nvidia Part I: The GPU Company (1993-2006) · 36:04 to 40:34 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayWednesday, October 21, 2026 · 2.5 min
Why aggregating creators isn't the margin dream it looks like
Daniel Ek explains why open creator platforms hide costs, like moderation, that keep growing at scale and undercut the high-margin story.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek · 19:03 to 21:23 · Daniel Ek (guest), with the hosts -
PlayTuesday, October 20, 2026 · 1 min
Jensen's one non-negotiable rule behind CUDA's moat
Jensen explains why every NVIDIA chip in 30 years, about 300 million GPUs, stays architecturally compatible, and calls it the company's only non-negotiable rule.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang · 52:54 to 53:44 · Jensen Huang (guest), with the hosts -
PlayMonday, October 19, 2026 · 2 min
Why CAA almost never lost a client in 25 years
Michael Ovitz explains how team coverage, literary agents on actors, and firm-wide pay made CAA nearly impossible to leave.
CAA (with Michael Ovitz) · 1:02:59 to 1:05:08 · Michael Ovitz (guest), with the hosts -
PlaySunday, October 18, 2026 · 2 min
How IKEA designs a ten dollar table backwards from price
Hear how IKEA's breathtaking-price rule, with no loss leaders allowed, forced it to rebuild manufacturing around scrap wood and sell 20 million LACK tables yearly.
IKEA · 1:10:16 to 1:12:28 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlaySaturday, October 17, 2026 · 1.5 min
Is Rolex really luxury, or just brilliant industrial engineering
Ben and David spar over whether a million-watch-a-year maker counts as luxury, landing on a sharper definition: managing the market rather than participating in it.
Rolex · 3:24:40 to 3:26:18 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayFriday, October 16, 2026 · 2.5 min
How New Jersey law let Standard Oil dodge Ohio
Hear how a quirk in New Jersey corporate law let Rockefeller restructure Standard Oil on paper while running everything exactly as before.
Standard Oil Part II · 8:54 to 11:18 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayThursday, October 15, 2026 · 2.5 min
Why Peloton raised its bike price by a thousand dollars
Hear how charging more made Peloton's bike seem better and quietly picked customers who churn about 9% a year, against roughly 50% for typical consumer businesses.
Peloton · 43:28 to 45:58 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayWednesday, October 14, 2026 · 3 min
How Costco gets suppliers to fund its inventory
Costco sells inventory before paying for it, and a deliberately tiny SKU count is the hidden lever that makes this possible.
Costco · 56:57 to 59:45 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayTuesday, October 13, 2026 · 2.5 min
Why Google could outspend every rival for search distribution
How Google's ad auction earned more per search as it grew, letting it pay partners up to 100% revenue share.
Google Part I: Origins of Search · 2:33:13 to 2:35:44 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayMonday, October 12, 2026 · 2.5 min
Why the IPL auction beats a salary cap
A clever mechanism-design lesson: NFL quarterbacks game the cap with side deals, while the IPL auction makes collusion pointless.
Indian Premier League Cricket · 2:06:27 to 2:09:01 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlaySunday, October 11, 2026 · 1 min
Spotify found audiobooks hiding in Germany's music charts
Daniel Ek explains how audiobooks topping German music charts, despite a terrible experience, revealed Spotify's next big product before anyone planned it.
Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg) · 37:18 to 38:28 · Daniel Ek (guest), with the hosts -
PlaySaturday, October 10, 2026 · 2.5 min
How a bug report helped Altimeter win Snowflake
Brad Gerstner explains how Altimeter won a contested Snowflake round at $175 million by testing the product and sending founders a bug report.
Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner) · 1:00:44 to 1:03:23 · Brad Gerstner (guest), with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts) -
PlayFriday, October 9, 2026 · 2.5 min
Lion King on Broadway out-grossed every movie ever made
A dismissed brand extension turns out to be an $11 billion asset, worth an extra hit movie every year for thirty years.
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · 45:06 to 47:42 · Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal (hosts)
