David Perell

And so, David, I had always sort of been of this belief, especially when I'm working with startups, like don't count on a single press article being trajectory changing for you. That's generally true, except when it isn't.

And so, David, I had always sort of been of this belief, especially when I'm working with startups, like don't count on a single press article being trajectory changing for you. That's generally true, except when it isn't.

Yeah. So part of this is a welcome to all of you who are new listeners to the show. You know, David and I have been doing this for close to 10 years now. The audience has grown slowly and it doubled organically every year for the first nine years. And one way to think about that, because we don't really do paid marketing, what that means is

Yeah. So part of this is a welcome to all of you who are new listeners to the show. You know, David and I have been doing this for close to 10 years now. The audience has grown slowly and it doubled organically every year for the first nine years. And one way to think about that, because we don't really do paid marketing, what that means is

the whole audience base, on average, told one friend who stuck around and listened to the show every year. So in some sense, that's almost nothing to write home about. But on the other hand, it actually just kept happening.

the whole audience base, on average, told one friend who stuck around and listened to the show every year. So in some sense, that's almost nothing to write home about. But on the other hand, it actually just kept happening.

And the cool thing is, it meant that it built the audience base that we really wanted, because everyone personally recommended it to a friend rather than having an explosive growth moment. And so that's why the Slack is such a wonderful and civil place. You know, it's not like this community that sort of showed up out of nowhere.

And the cool thing is, it meant that it built the audience base that we really wanted, because everyone personally recommended it to a friend rather than having an explosive growth moment. And so that's why the Slack is such a wonderful and civil place. You know, it's not like this community that sort of showed up out of nowhere.

It's this community that's been slowly building organically by inviting other people who they know in from the real world over time. And then if I could say, what would be the single best growth event if we were going to have a outsized external force that brought a bunch of audience? The Wall Street Journal is the exact right audience to join the rest of you.

It's this community that's been slowly building organically by inviting other people who they know in from the real world over time. And then if I could say, what would be the single best growth event if we were going to have a outsized external force that brought a bunch of audience? The Wall Street Journal is the exact right audience to join the rest of you.

WSJ subscribers are among the most well-educated, thoughtful business people in the world who love nerding out on this stuff. We're delighted to have anybody here who just found out because you read the WSJ.

WSJ subscribers are among the most well-educated, thoughtful business people in the world who love nerding out on this stuff. We're delighted to have anybody here who just found out because you read the WSJ.

The dirty secret behind Acquired is every episode is about the exception. Every company we talk about is the most extreme outlier. I often find myself wondering, even though we have this playbook and this lessons learned, is the real playbook that you can't learn any lessons because they're such extreme outliers? You know, these big tech companies, they're all monopolies or near monopolies.

The dirty secret behind Acquired is every episode is about the exception. Every company we talk about is the most extreme outlier. I often find myself wondering, even though we have this playbook and this lessons learned, is the real playbook that you can't learn any lessons because they're such extreme outliers? You know, these big tech companies, they're all monopolies or near monopolies.

in the largest and most profitable markets in the world. Well, like no one else's business is that.

in the largest and most profitable markets in the world. Well, like no one else's business is that.

And so the lesson you can draw from a cash gusher that is extremely difficult to disrupt, some of the things you can apply to building your business, but it's much more interesting, which is of course why we do the history and facts, to go look at them in their first few years of life to understand how they catapulted to the position rather than trying to learn something about the companies as you perceive them today.

And so the lesson you can draw from a cash gusher that is extremely difficult to disrupt, some of the things you can apply to building your business, but it's much more interesting, which is of course why we do the history and facts, to go look at them in their first few years of life to understand how they catapulted to the position rather than trying to learn something about the companies as you perceive them today.

Yeah, part of this takeaway for me is it's sort of unclear if and what would ever be a large outsized growth event. Like when you look at our chart, it's perfectly smooth for almost a decade until there's this one point where you can see, whoa, something clearly happened and numbers jumped up from May to now. And I don't know that you can ever really plan for those.

Yeah, part of this takeaway for me is it's sort of unclear if and what would ever be a large outsized growth event. Like when you look at our chart, it's perfectly smooth for almost a decade until there's this one point where you can see, whoa, something clearly happened and numbers jumped up from May to now. And I don't know that you can ever really plan for those.