David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert — of the Acquired podcast — invited me to San Francisco for a discussion on our mutual obsession: spending every waking hour studying the history of entrepreneurship and sharing those lessons on our podcasts.
So I'm about to do something that I've never done before.
I've been working on this podcast for over six years, read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, well over 100,000 pages.
And in that entire time, you have never heard another voice on this feed besides my own.
But I want to make sure you don't miss this conversation with David and Ben from the acquired podcast.
So right after my dinner with Charlie Munger, I flew directly from Los Angeles to San Francisco because David and Ben very graciously invited me to be a guest on their world class podcast.
What you're about to hear is a three hour long conversation between three people that are so obsessed with studying the history of entrepreneurship that they're dedicating it's their life's work.
They're dedicating almost every waking hour to do so, to finding great ideas from the past and then sharing those ideas on our podcasts so future generations of entrepreneurs, founders, and investors can benefit.
And as you already know, I've been obsessed with David Ogilvy ever since I was reading Warren Buffett shareholder letters.
And Warren Buffett said that David Ogilvy was a genius.
I then went and found every single book that he ever wrote or was written about him and read it.
And there's a line in one of the biographies of David Ogilvy that says David Ogilvy was building his first class business in a first class way.
Ben and David of Acquired are doing the exact same thing.
I believe that acquired and founders are perfect complements to one another.
I focus on the founder, the actual individual, and the person through biographies.
They do these hours long, really in depth company histories that are just absolutely excellent.
If you do not already follow acquired in your favorite podcast player, please do so right now and start with their episode on the history of LVMH.
It is one of the best episodes that I've ever heard, and I've been obsessed with podcasts for over 13 years now.
I would listen to that episode first, but their episode on Walmart is excellent.
Their three part series on Berkshire Hathaway, excellent.
Their episode on the NFL, sequoia Capital Benchmark, Amazon.