Best Mitch Lasky / Blake Robbins Podcasts (2025)

1
The Steve Ballmer Interview 2:59:20

12d ago2:59:20

2:59:20

We sit down with Steve Ballmer, the legendary former Microsoft CEO and owner of the LA Clippers, for an epic conversation covering his 34 years at Microsoft. Steve listened to our Microsoft episodes and had some thoughts to share — and boy, did he deliver. Steve takes us point-by-point through the original IBM DOS deal that started everything, how …

1
The Sum of the Parts (Ep. 24) 1:09:42

24d ago1:09:42

1:09:42

Mitch and Blake explore the role of consolidation -- primarily through mergers and acquistions -- in building some of the biggest and most durable companies in gaming. They begin with a discussion of the four major strategic uses of mergers and acquisitions: economies of scale, entry into new markets, control of talent and intellectual property, an…

1
AI as a Platform (Ep. 23) 52:48

1M ago52:48

52:48

Last season, Mitch and Blake discussed the implications of new Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence in games. In this episode, they return to the topic, this time focusing on games that are using AI as a platform -- meaning, the games are predicated on the use of LLMs to manage gameplay in some way. After introducing the central ideas, they…

1
Hasbro and Lego (Ep. 22) 44:33

1M ago44:33

44:33

Mitch and Blake look at two of the largest toy companies in the world, Hasbro and Lego, and discuss their divergent but ultimately very successful forays into the games business as licensors of intellectual property. Your hosts discuss how both Hasbro and Lego tried to enter the games business directly as developers and publishers of digital games …

1
The Venture Deadpool (Ep. 21) 1:06:44

2M ago1:06:44

1:06:44

Mitch and Blake address the unpleasant topic of how and why venture-backed games companies fail. They look first at the nature of venture financing and the inherent differences between venture and publisher money. This leads to a conversation about how developers who were used to working with publishers treated venture capital like production finan…

1
Announcement: Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall! 4:25

2M ago4:25

4:25

A few weeks ago, we told you that Acquired is doing something in New York City on July 15 with our good friends at J.P. Morgan Payments. Well, the big announcement is finally here: We are doing our 2025 Live Show… at Radio City Music Hall! Radio City is of course the iconic New York City theater that hosts the Rockettes and the Tony Awards, and has…

1
China (Ep. 20) 56:58

2M ago56:58

56:58

Mitch and Blake look at the current state of the vitally important Chinese gaming market, on the precipice of a bitter trade war resulting from the Trump tariffs. They review the history of the games business in China, discuss the reasons China is so competitive in the global gaming market, and look at how some of the ways the Chinese market diverg…

1
Epic Systems (MyChart) 3:57:02

2M ago3:57:02

3:57:02

What if we told you that the most important company in US healthcare was run from a farm in rural Wisconsin? And that farm contained the world’s largest subterranean auditorium, as well as Disneyland—style replicas of Hogwarts and the Emerald City? What if we told you that the person who started, runs and owns this establishment has legally ensured…

1
Valve (Ep. 19) 1:01:17

2M ago1:01:17

1:01:17

Mitch and Blake take an in-depth look at one of the most important companies in the global gaming business: Valve. They trace the company's origin as the developer of first-person shooter Half Life, their use of the Quake engine and the benefits Valve derived from their relationship with id, and their development and deployment of the Steam platfor…

1
The Mobile Gaming Duopoly (Ep. 18) 59:00

2M ago59:00

59:00

Mitch and Blake discuss the mobile duopoly in which Apple and Google exert extraordinary power by tying their app stores to hardware and software platforms. They warn that the inflexible and expensive distribution systems on iOS and Android could be models for future PC and console distribution systems. They briefly review the history of mobile dis…

1
Cycles & Survival (Ep. 17) 1:23:45

2M ago1:23:45

1:23:45

Mitch and Blake kick off Season 3 of the podcast with a high-level look at the current moment in the video game business, critiquing both the idea that the business is cyclical and we are in a downward phase of the cycle (and the naïve notion of "survive 'till '25"), as well as the idea that the business has simply matured, suggesting we are in a n…

1
Indian Premier League Cricket 4:28:07

3M ago4:28:07

4:28:07

When you saw this episode pop up in your feed, you either jumped for joy and hit play immediately (in which case you’re not reading this), or you said “Huh. That’s a surprising episode.” Well, if you’re in group two, boy do we have a treat for you! IPL is the fastest-growing, most dynamic and most disruptive force in the sports industry today… and …

1
Rolex 5:00:35

4M ago5:00:35

5:00:35

Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital successors… and demand is stronger than ever in history! Their products are comparable to a Hermès Birkin bag in price, luxury status and waitlist times… yet they produce over 1m units / year (roughly 10x a…

1
TSMC Founder Morris Chang 2:54:56

5M ago2:54:56

2:54:56

We flew to Taiwan to interview TSMC Founder Morris Chang in a rare English interview. In fact, the last long-form video interview we could find was 17 years ago at the Computer History Museum… conducted by the one-and-only Jensen Huang! This episode came about after asking ourselves a version of the Jeff Bezos “regret minimization” question: what c…

1
TSMC (Remastered) 2:27:50

5M ago2:27:50

2:27:50

We dive into the unbelievable and unlikely history behind the quietest technology giant of them all: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Founded in 1987 by the then-56 year old Morris Chang, already a legend in the semiconductor industry by virtue of his meteoric rise and fall at Texas Instruments, TSMC today manufactures nearly all the…

1
Mars Inc. (the chocolate story) 3:50:37

6M ago3:50:37

3:50:37

M&M’s, Snickers, Milky Way, Double Mint, Ben’s Rice, Pedigree, Whiskas, VCA, Banfield… all the brands you know, owned by the company you know nothing about: Mars, Incorporated. And Mars itself is 100% owned and deeply intertwined with the Mars family, who are currently the second wealthiest (and perhaps first most secretive!) family in the United S…

1
IKEA 3:19:19

7M ago3:19:19

3:19:19

IKEA may be the most singular company we’ve ever studied on Acquired. They’re a globally scaled, $50B annual revenue company with no direct competitors — yet have only ~5% market share. They’re one of the largest retailers in the world — yet sell only their own products. They generate a few billion in free cash flow every year — yet have no shareho…

1
Meta 6:17:26

8M ago6:17:26

6:17:26

Meta is a company everyone knows (literally, everyone). But, somehow, it’s also a company that few people feel they actually understand. Their products are used by more humans than any other’s in history — almost half of the entire world’s population daily. But… what is Meta? Why do they do what they do? How do they do what they do? Ask ten people …

1
Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg) 2:23:44

9M ago2:23:44

2:23:44

Here it is: the complete video of the most unbelievable night of Acquired’s nine-year life… our sold out live show at the Chase Center in San Francisco. We joked during the months (months!) of preparation leading up to this event that it was like planning a wedding for 6,000 Acquired fans, and the guest list included Jamie Dimon, Daniel Ek, Emily C…

1
The Mark Zuckerberg Interview 1:27:44

9M ago1:27:44

1:27:44

Mark is the iconic founder CEO of our time. At Chase Center on September 10, 2024, he did an unprecedented thing: a live conversation in front of 6,000 people on Meta’s company strategy, sharing stories from early Facebook history, and his thoughts on the future of AI, VR, and AR. Mark was remarkably candid in our discussion, and gave us a window i…

1
Chase Center + Summer Update 21:53

10M ago21:53

21:53

Summer greetings from Acquired! Two items for this “mini-episode”: Tickets are now available for our live show at Chase Center in San Francisco, with special guests including Mark Zuckerberg (!). The show is Tuesday, September 10th, with doors opening at 5 PM for an hour of mingling with other listeners before the show starts at 6 PM. Huge thank yo…

1
Microsoft Volume II 4:48:07

11M ago4:48:07

4:48:07

In 1999, Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world. And in 2019, Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world, again. But… what happened in the twenty years in between? The answer, as we discovered in our research, is probably not what you think. In this episode we explore and analyze the browser wars and the DOJ case, Wind…

1
Starbucks (with Howard Schultz) 3:12:59

1y ago3:12:59

3:12:59

Starbucks. You’d be hard pressed to name any brand that’s more ubiquitous in the world today. With nearly half a billion global customer purchases per week across its stores and 3rd party retail channels, a significant portion of the human population gets their daily fix in the green and white paper cup. (Including our own Ben Gilbert who famously …

1
Microsoft Volume I 4:22:29

1y ago4:22:29

4:22:29

Microsoft. After nearly a decade of Acquired episodes, we are finally ready to tackle the most valuable company ever created. The company that put a computer on every desk and in every home. The company that invented the software business model. The company that so thoroughly and completely dominated every conceivable competitor that the United Sta…

1
Renaissance Technologies 3:06:39

1y ago3:06:39

3:06:39

Renaissance Technologies is the best performing investment firm of all time. And yet no one at RenTec would consider themselves an “investor”, at least in any traditional sense of the word. It’d rather be more accurate to call them scientists — scientists who’ve discovered a system of math, computers and artificial intelligence that has evolved int…

1
Artificial Intelligence (Ep. 16) 1:13:29

1+ y ago1:13:29

1:13:29

In their final episode of Season 2, Mitch and Blake take on the complex and highly speculative topic of the impact of recent improvements in artificial intelligence on the games business. Your hosts acknowledge that the sector is moving so quickly that this episode could be obsolete by the time it airs, and warn that it's difficult at this early mo…

1
Intellectual Property (Ep. 15) 1:10:54

1+ y ago1:10:54

1:10:54

Mitch and Blake look at the ins and outs of intellectual property licensing in games. After discussing the checkered history of the practice, they look at the creative and business reasons why licensed IP continues to be valuable to game creators. After a quick look at how IP licenses actually function and what to expect from licensors, Mitch and B…

1
Distribution (Ep. 14) 1:10:23

1+ y ago1:10:23

1:10:23

In perhaps their most important episode of the series, Mitch and Blake explain what they mean when they use the term "distribution" and why it is so important to their understanding of how the video games business functions. Like they did with the term "publishing" last season, they try to recontextualize distribution as a much larger and more impo…

1
Going Global (Ep. 13) 1:07:26

1+ y ago1:07:26

1:07:26

Mitch and Blake discuss the massive expansion of gaming in emerging markets around the world. The begin with a discussion of the big-picture factors driving this expansion -- primarily mobile technology, but also new business models, payment systems, and demographics. They then take a closer look at the Middle East and North Africa, and how the dif…

1
Hermès 4:07:19

1+ y ago4:07:19

4:07:19

In luxury, there’s Hermès… and there’s everyone else. Stewarded by one French family over six generations, Hermès sells the absolute pinnacle of the French luxury dream. Loyal clients will wait years simply for the opportunity to buy one of the company’s flagship Birkin or Kelly bags. Unlike every other luxury brand, Hermès: Doesn’t increase supply…

1
Independent Intervention (Ep. 12) 1:03:59

1+ y ago1:03:59

1:03:59

Mitch and Blake explore the idea of independent game development. They attempt to define "indie" in the video game context -- something that proves more difficult that it might seem on the surface. They discuss the early successful indie developers in the 90s, and examine how the technology and business innovations that revolutionized the industry …

1
A Changing of the Guard (Ep. 11) 1:19:32

1+ y ago1:19:32

1:19:32

Mitch and Blake expand on last season's discussion of platform-based publishers by introducing a new kind of company: the game-enabling software platform. The five companies they discuss (Epic, Unity, AppLovin, Discord, and Roblox) are all pursuing customer aggregation strategies similar to the platform-based publishers, but -- with the exception o…

1
Choose Your (ad)Venture (Ep. 10) 1:11:00

1+ y ago1:11:00

1:11:00

Mitch and Blake discuss the nuances of game financing. They begin by explaining how the publishing model of advances against royalties functions, and what the expected costs and benefits are for both the developer and publisher. After a brief discussion of bootstrapping, they do a deep dive on venture capital financing for games. They reveal how ve…

1
The State of Play: 2024 (Ep. 9) 1:18:55

1+ y ago1:18:55

1:18:55

They're back! Season 2 of the GameCraft podcast kicks off with Mitch and Blake introducing the new 8-episode season, followed by an analysis of the current health of the games business. Mitch and Blake discuss the paradoxical state of the business, where a "golden age" of content is facing some increasing financial headwinds. They compare the games…

1
Novo Nordisk (Ozempic) 3:42:13

1+ y ago3:42:13

3:42:13

Last year Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, overtook LVMH to become Europe’s most valuable company. And the pull for Acquired to finally tackle healthcare (18% of US GDP!) became too strong for us to resist. While we didn’t know much about Novo Nordisk before diving in, our first thought was, “wow, seems lik…

1
Holiday Special 2023 2:16:24

1+ y ago2:16:24

2:16:24

Ben has some big news. Actually, double big news! On what has become a holiday tradition here at Acquired, we cozy up to the fire to do our annual review of the show “in public”. We reflect on what can only be described as an absolutely mind-blowing 2023 (LVMH! Jensen! Costco! Charlie! Half a million plus listeners!) and look ahead to some big thin…

1
Visa 3:42:51

1+ y ago3:42:51

3:42:51

To paraphrase Visa founder Dee Hock, how many of you know Visa? Great, all of you. Now, how many of you know how it started? Or, for that matter, who started it? Who runs and governs it? Where is it headquartered? What’s its business model? For the 11th largest market cap company in the world, Visa’s history and strategy is almost shockingly unknow…

1
Charlie Munger 1:06:46

1+ y ago1:06:46

1:06:46

We sit down with the legendary Charlie Munger in the only dedicated longform podcast interview that he has done in his 99 years on Earth. We’ve gotten to have some special conversations on Acquired over the years, but this one truly takes the cake. Over dinner at his Los Angeles home, Charlie reflected with us on his own career and his nearly 50-ye…

1
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang 1:29:54

1+ y ago1:29:54

1:29:54

We finally sit down with the man himself: Nvidia Cofounder & CEO Jensen Huang. After three parts and seven+ hours of covering the company, we thought we knew everything but — unsurprisingly — Jensen knows more. A couple teasers: we learned that the company’s initial motivation to enter the datacenter business came from perhaps not where you’d think…

1
Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023) 2:53:41

2y ago2:53:41

2:53:41

It’s a(nother) new era for Nvidia. We thought we’d closed the Acquired book on Nvidia back in April 2022. The story was all wrapped up: Jensen & crew had set out on an amazing journey to accelerate the world’s computing workloads. Along the way they’d discovered a wondrous opportunity (machine learning powered social media feed recommendations). Th…

1
Costco 2:59:41

2y ago2:59:41

2:59:41

Costco is not only Charlie Munger’s favorite company of all time (plus he’s on the board, natch), it’s an absolutely fascinating study in how seemingly opposite characteristics can combine to create incredible company value. For instance: Costco has the cheapest prices of any major retailer in America — and also the wealthiest customer base. They p…

1
Nike 4:00:30

2y ago4:00:30

4:00:30

Nike — it’s perhaps the most iconic and most prolific brand of the modern era. On any given day, swooshes adorn the feet of more people on earth than any other footwear company — by a long shot. If you read Shoe Dog or watched Air, you may think you know its history. But Shoe Dog ends in 1980, and Air… well let’s just say it’s an enjoyable piece of…

1
Porsche (with Doug DeMuro) 3:21:46

2y ago3:21:46

3:21:46

Nobody’s perfect — including Porsche. Despite that phrase appearing in their famous 1983 magazine advertisement, they managed to get damn-close to the perfect luxury business (even Bernard Arnault would be jealous!). Porsche is both quality AND quantity, owning the most prestigious brand in its market, while at the same time churning out almost hal…

1
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi 1:36:38

2y ago1:36:38

1:36:38

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi dropped by the Acquired studio for an Eats delivery, so we broke out the cameras and asked him to hang out for a wide-ranging conversation. :) We talk about his 20 years working with Barry Diller, starting his career at Allen & Company, how the Uber CEO search process ACTUALLY went down… and oh yeah, the massive transform…

1
Lockheed Martin 3:37:14

2y ago3:37:14

3:37:14

Today we bring you two absolutely incredible stories. The first is Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works division — the elite team of aviation geniuses who produced some of the greatest airplanes in history: the U-2, the Stealth Fighter, and the incomparable SR-71 Blackbird. The second story is arguably even more important, but not widely known! It's th…

1
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek 1:37:42

2y ago1:37:42

1:37:42

We sit down with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek live in Stockholm at Spotify’s amazing HQ studio (check out the video version of this episode — which plays natively on Spotify!). This was an incredibly special and timely conversation: for those who haven’t been paying attention over the past few years, after revolutionizing music Spotify has now ALSO comple…

1
Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming 2:15:23

2y ago2:15:23

2:15:23

We sit down Benchmark’s legendary gaming investors Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins (now also of the excellent Gamecraft podcast fame) to discuss the history and future of gaming business models. This episode is the perfect bookend to our Nintendo/Sega gaming series this season on Acquired — no one is more qualified than Mitch and Blake to breakdown h…

1
Short: The Death of Sega 1:07:49

2y ago1:07:49

1:07:49

Sega and the Genesis was THE underdog story of the early 90’s. In a single console generation, Sega went from ~zero to 50% US market share and dethroned Nintendo’s seemingly invincible global monopoly. But — somehow — it all then died. Two console generations later Sega was out of the hardware game entirely, and the company was sold off for pieces …

1
Nintendo: The Console Wars 3:17:16

2y ago3:17:16

3:17:16

In the 1980’s Nintendo was on top of the world, with the NES achieving over 90% market share of home video games globally. So how did they fall ALL the way down to ~10% in just a few short console generations? And how did they then build themselves back up (and down and up again) to the top of the world again? Spoiler: it all hinged on one very sma…

1
Interview: Hamilton Helmer & Chenyi Shi on How to Build an AWS-Like Second Business 1:29:30

2y ago1:29:30

1:29:30

7 Powers author Hamilton Helmer and his Strategy Capital colleague Chenyi Shi join us again to discuss their latest research on a topic that’s highly relevant to the recent Acquired canon: how to build a second business line. This incredibly important “transforming” question faces every great company who has achieved initial product success (as wel…

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Mitch Lasky / Blake Robbins Podcasts

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