If and How to Scale the Acquired Podcast
Cold Call · HBR Presents / Brian Kenny
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Show Notes
Founded in 2015 by co-hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal as a hobby, the business podcast Acquired had become their full-time jobs by 2023, and they managed all aspects of the company. By telling in-depth stories of companies, the podcast had doubled its audience year over year, reaching one million listeners per episode. And they’d grown without a strict release schedule or relentless optimization.
Still, they felt pressure to scale. They took 2025 to evaluate the podcast’s success to date while determining if, and how, it should change its well-established and revenue-generating processes. Because maintaining the balance of work, life, and family they’d achieved was an important priority too.
How did they determine a way forward? They join Harvard Business School Professor Shane Greenstein and host Brian Kenny to discuss the case “The Acquired Podcast: Scaling the Mic.”