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ACQUIRED: MAKING MILLIONS FROM PODCASTING
How Acquired built their podcast to hundreds of thousands of listeners and a $10M+ valuation...
Niall Ratcliffe
July 02, 2023
Morning!
It seems like we’re living in the age of the podcast.
While most people are in awe of the TikTokers, Youtubers, and Instagram influencers…
It’s the podcasters that are making all of the money.
I’m not just talking about the Joe Rogan’ and Call Her Daddy’ of the world.
There are thousands of people who have built 8 and 9-figure companies off the back of podcasting.
This week I broke down one of those companies.
They have:
200,000+ unique downloads per episode
300,000+ monthly listeners
And are worth well over $10M+
The pair started this as a hobby back in 2015.
Today, it’s not just a podcast, it’s an 8-figure business.
And here’s how they grew viral:
I recorded an audio version of this breakdown. Let me know if you enjoy being able to consume these breakdowns in podcast format.
Breaking Down The Strategy
Meet Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal - the men behind the Acquired podcast.
Left: Ben | Right: David
In 2015, Ben and David were far from being famous podcasters. In fact, David has even admitted to never listening to podcasts pre-2015.
Instead, they were both working at venture capital firm Madrona when Ben approached David and suggested starting a podcast where they discuss successful acquisitions.
They weren’t sure anyone would listen, but they thought it would be fun to do, plus, an excuse to hang out and talk about things they were interested in.
Today, 8 years on, Acquired is much more than a passion project.
They have:
200,000+ unique listeners per episode
300,000+ monthly listeners
And the company is said to be worth well over $10M+
But how in the world did they do it?
How did 2 people who didn’t even listen to podcasts, had no idea of the online world, and had no large followings build an 8-figure podcast empire?
That’s the exact question I was asking myself at the start of this week.
So, I went on a deep dive and spent 5+ hours listening to nearly every podcast Ben & David have been on.
…and I think I figured it out.
Here are the 3 key takeaways of how Ben & David grew a $10,000,000+ podcast empire:
1) The Credible Sponsor
When most people think about bringing on sponsors they see it as a way to monetise their audience.
But Ben & David didn’t need a sponsor to monetise their podcast.
Instead, they needed a sponsor to add credibility to the podcast.
The Acquired pod is made for:
CEOs
Founders
High-level execs
These people wouldn’t just listen to two random people who work in venture capital (I’m heavily downplaying the pair’s intelligence here).
Ben & David decided that if they were able to land the right sponsor and the right brand it would add legitimacy to the pod.
So the pair leaned into their network and decided to approach Silicon Valley Bank (a very credible name at the time - especially in the VC space).
Their offer was simple:
You can pay us whatever you want
We’ll promote you on all 20+ episodes of our season
All you have to do is let us tie your brand to the show
After a tough back and forth, SVB agreed to give them $5000 to sponsor the whole season.
The money was peanuts to them, but it added legitimacy - and that’s exactly what they needed.
6 months later, the pair decided to run a customer survey to see if their ads were actually having any effect.
The results?
688 people responded to the survey
32 said that they or their company began a banking relationship with SVB due to the podcast
Each one of those relationships was worth $500,000 to SVB
This meant the Acquired pod had just generated close to $16,000,000 for their sponsor.
Not a bad ROI for SVB, but also a huge realisation for Ben & David.
Takeaway: Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do for your podcast is associate it with a brand that holds value. Otherwise you’re like a bald barber. You’re just a career advisor with no credibility.
2) Keeping A Small Blast Radius
One of the most interesting tactics Ben & David have used to grow the pod is actually… slowing down its growth.
They call this “Keeping a small blast radius”.
With most podcasts, the aim is to reach as many people as possible. They want to be as big as:
Rogan
Rich Roll
Or Huberman
But that’s not the way the Acquired boys see it.
They know their audience, they know how high-quality it is, and they know that it takes a specific type of content to satisfy them.
Stats on Acquired listeners (Source)
So, rather than pumping out clips and running ads that bring in people they don’t think their content applies to, they decided they’d prefer to grow much slower.
What this does is keep the quality of their audience stupidly high.
This also means:
Audience satisfaction is through the roof
Sponsors get a bigger ROI
They don’t have to alter their content to suit a mass audience
But most importantly, it cranks up the word-of-mouth marketing in their niche.
Because whilst their audience expands slower, the number of people paying attention to them in their “high achiever” niche increases.
They essentially opted to saturate their market rather than expand it.
So whilst they aren’t a household name podcast, they’re the podcast EVERYONE is listening to in those high-achieving circles.
With this strategy, the pair have doubled their listeners (per episode) every single year - for 8 years on the bounce.
Wow.
It clearly works.
Takeaway: If you’re willing to play the long-term game, you can soley attract the right people. Long-term these people will propel you much further than trying to throw yourself into the mass market.
3) Storytelling + Playbook Format
If there’s one singular thing that’s driven the growth of the Acquired podcast it has to be the flagship format of their podcasts.
On a recent podcast, Ben mentioned that over all the formats they’ve done over the last 8 years…
Sit down interviews
Guest episodes
And more
From their interview with David Senra
Nothing has outperformed the usual flagship episodes with this storytelling + playbook format.
Which is essentially them spending 2-3 hours telling the story of how a company was built and grown and giving you the playbook of how they did it.
This works for 2 reasons:
Reason 1: Stories hook people
No one really wants to sit down and listen to a 2-3 hour podcast where people drone on about a company’s growth strategies.
But when you rope that journey into a story and tell it in the right way you’ll have people hooked from start to finish.
Reason 2: Playbooks give them something to talk about
Although the story may hook people into listening it isn’t going to give them a clear takeaway that they can go and talk about.
But Acquired’s focus on giving away the playbook solves this.
The high-value people that listen now have a valuable piece of information that they can take away and use in their day-to-day lives.
Or more than likely talk to their peers about - further growing the pod.
Takeaway: If you want to dominate word-of-mouth podcast marketing like Ben & David did, you need to have something that hooks people + something they can takeaway. Storytelling + actionable takeaways are a great way to do this
It’s honestly insane to me just how valuable the Acquired podcast now is.
Not purely because of its size, but more so, because of how they’ve effectively dominated their space.
While everyone else focuses on getting as many eyes on them as possible, the Acquired boys focus on getting millionaires and billionaires to listen to them.
And that is more impressive than anything else.
Anyway, that’s all for today.
What did you think of the slightly new format with the takeaways? Let me know below.
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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