What Other Businesses Ever Had 95% Global Market Share?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I think Nintendo is such a perfect case study of this, of like this dichotomy and they are both so true. Both are really important. What other businesses ever have had 95% market share? Or maybe the interesting one might be like what businesses today? Cause this isn't like a narrowly scoped market. This 95% represents global video games. I mean, I guess at a certain point, Facebook had something like that of social networking across all of their family of products. And WhatsApp, like during that, hey day.

You may think you know the Nintendo story: a plumber named Mario, a princess named Zelda… and didn’t they buy the Seattle Mariners at some point? We thought we knew it too. And then we started researching and were blown away.

The lovable Disney-like Nintendo that we know today is a 130 year-old a playing card company (i.e. gambling), forged in the shadowy world of the Yakuza and shaped by a four-generation cycle of bitter family betrayal. And its unlikely transformation into a global multi-billion dollar media monopoly was led by an iron-fisted patriarch who — amazingly — never played a video game in his life! Get ready for one of our favorite stories Acquired has ever told — we couldn’t make this one up if we tried!

ACQ2 Show + LP Program: