Today we're excited to have a longtime friend of the Acquired family on ACQ2, Rob Meyerson. Rob was the President of Blue Origin for 15 years, and today is an investor and advisor to space industry startups. Ben recorded this interview live at the fantastic aerospace industry conference, ASCEND, where Rob is the Executive Producer. In this interview, we cover:How Blue Origin started, and what it was like in the early days (spoiler: they weren't yet building rockets!)Rob’s experience working directly for Jeff BezosWhat’s changed about SpaceX since May of 2020, when we did our Acquired episode on the companyRob’s theses about what sectors of commercial space are poised for growth in the next few yearsSponsors:Vanta

Ben and David go on "This Week in Startups" with Jason Calacanis for a holiday special! Discussion includes:- Talking TWIST and All-In this year with everything from politics to weight loss to private jets- Acquired's year and some of Ben and David's biggest insights from episodes- VC, valuations, and crypto investing mechanics- Use cases for crypto, and trying to get Jason (a skeptic) excited- Carveouts: our favorite books, podcasts, and TV shows from this yearSponsors:Vanta

We are very excited to bring you a special ACQ2 interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Aside from Joe's well-known work as a Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy-award-winning actor in films like 500 Days of Summer, Inception, and Looper, Joe is also the founder of  HITRECORD, a startup which brings creative collaborators together across film, music, books, and more.Ben sat down with Joe to discuss:The creator economy’s focus on the finished product vs. the creative process, and how he thinks about this at HITRECORDThe state of the film and TV industry today, amidst the shift to streaming platforms and tech companies as primary distribution channelsWhat it has been like on set playing Travis Kalanick in Showtime’s upcoming “Super Pumped”Sponsors:VantaThanks to our good friends at Fika Ventures for setting this conversation up!

The title says it all. This feels weird to release by Acquired standards -- an hour of audio with zero research! -- but we wanted to check in with y'all and say hi from parental leave.Topics covered:- Update on Dad Life- Ben's new MacBook Pro- Discussion of Acquired's approach to doing video / YouTubeSponsors:Vanta

We sit down with Adam Jackson, the cofounder and CEO of Freelance Labs, which builds the incredible Web3 project Braintrust. (Disclosure David is an investor via Kindergarten Ventures.) We talk all about what a marketplace looks like in Web3, and why it's a completely different animal than traditional Web2 marketplaces like Uber, eBay, DoorDash, etc. Prior to starting Braintrust, Adam was the CEO of Doctor on Demand, so has literally lived both sides of the table. Tune in for a FASCINATING discussion of everything that crypto/tokenization enables, and why it's such an exciting shift that unlocks massive, $000B+ opportunities like Braintrust.Sponsors:Vanta

We sit down with Roneil Rumberg, the co-founder and CEO of Audius — the decentralized music platform which currently is likely the widest-adopted Web3 project in existence with over 6m active users. This conversation was AWESOME and covers everything from Silicon Valley history, to how the music industry works, to the technical aspects and challenges of building a Web3 project today. Huge thank you to Roneil for joining us, and we're looking forward to hearing more from Audius on Acquired in the years to come!Sponsors:Vanta

Earlier this week David went on Levels' podcast, A Whole New Level, hosted by Acquired "Super LP" and Levels' head of growth, Ben Grynol. We had such a blast that we wanted to share here with the community as well! Full show notes from Levels below:When most companies start, they are single-threaded companies. More specifically, companies start with one product or revenue stream and evolve. Amazon is a great example of a company that has built an ecosystem. The company started as an e-commerce site for selling books, and now has a number of inter-related businesses that make up the entire Amazon ecosystem.Netflix is an example of a company that started as a single-threaded company – (a platform for viewing video content) – and has, for the most part, remained that way since its inception.As we build Levels, we often think about the way that our company will evolve – will it be an ecosystem for health, or will we remain focused on monitoring glucose? In this episode, David Rosenthal, (VC and Host of Acquired Podcast), dives deep into what it takes to build an ecosystem around a company.Sponsors:Vanta

Confused about everything going on with The Fed, inflation and how it affects tech and startup valuations? Or why it seems like every Jerome Powell comment brings out an army of finance's equivalent of fortune tellers and tarot card readers? So were we, so we called up the best person we know to explain everything -- Matt McBrady. Matt may be the only person who's been an academic economist, worked at the US Treasury, run a massive hedge fund AND helped start and sit on the board of two very successful startups, aQuantive and Axon/TASER. Tune in for a crash course in everything you need to know!Sponsors:Vanta‍LinksJ.P.'s Never Gonna Give you UpFollow Matt on LinkedIn to see his posts or connect with him for consulting, board opportunities, etcFor more on Matt’s academic work, check out his UVA faculty webpage

We sit down with Initialized Capital's Kim-Mai Cutler to talk about her opposite journey from us at Acquired, going from journalist to VC. We riff on how the landscape has evolved from Kim-Mai's parents' "Hewlett Packard generation" in the Valley through the TechCrunch era that se was a big part of, to today and how the nature of reporting, investing and influence -- the intersection of the two -- has changed.Sponsors:Vanta

Kyle Samani, a managing partner at Multicoin Capital, discusses their crypto mega-theses and managing a crypto investment firm. They explore DeFi, capital formation, projects like Uniswap and Compound, and the potential of a seamless financial ecosystem. The podcast also covers Helium's wireless network model, crypto tokens solving marketplace challenges, Web3 technologies, social tokens for brand affiliation, Bitcoin as digital gold, and the evolution of crypto fund management.