Acquired

Vanguard is the most effective vehicle ever created for participating in the fruits of American capitalism. Today it’s the single largest equity owner of the majority of corporations in the S&P 500, on behalf of 50 million clients (including, likely, many of you). And yet Vanguard itself is essentially a communist organization — it has no shareholders, makes no profits, and operates more like REI than Fidelity. If you own a Vanguard fund, you own a piece of the firm itself. Any excess margin instead gets returned to clients in the form of lower fees, which since 1975 have added up to roughly five hundred billion dollars transferred out of Wall Street managers’ pockets and into retail investors’ savings accounts. And oh yeah, it all started as a cockamamie revenge plot by a guy who’d just been fired by his partners. Today we tell the story of communist capitalism at its finest — Vanguard. Sponsors: Many thanks to our fantastic Spring '26 Season partners: J.P. Morgan WeAreDevelopers event ServiceNow Vercel Statsig Links: Sign up for email updates, get our takeaways and research photos from each episode, and vote on future topics! Our Vanguard "episode preview" in WSJ Stay the Course: The Story of Vanguard and the Index Revolution by John C. Bogle The Bogle Effect by Eric Balchunas Worldly Partners' Multi-Decade Vanguard Study Worldly Partners' Article Generational Investing: The Discipline Behind 100+x Outcomes All episode sources Carve Outs: Our WSJ pieces on Ferrari and Vanguard MacBook Pro M5 Max Michael MacKelvie on YouTube The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Brooks Vanguard sneakers More Acquired: Get email updates and vote on future episodes! Join the Slack Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store! 00:00:00 Start 00:00:41 Intro 00:05:30 Jack Bogle's Early Life & Family Ruin (1929) 00:12:34 Princeton Thesis & Mutual Funds Emerge (1949-1951) 00:27:20 Joining Wellington Management (1951) 00:30:38 The Go-Go Years & Fidelity's Ascent (1958-1965) 00:40:36 Jack Takes the Reins & The Ivest Merger (1965) 00:46:04 The Go-Go Bust & Jack's Crisis of Conscience (1970-1973) 00:53:28 Jack is Fired: The Genesis of Vanguard (1974) 01:13:03 The Journal Article That Inspired It All (1974-1976) 01:35:02 Building the Fund & Early Struggles (1976-1981) 01:44:32 The Rise of Indexing & Vanguard's Growth (1988-1992) 01:49:06 Jack's Health & The CEO Transition (1995-1996) 02:00:06 The ETF Debate & Jack's Second Firing (1999) 02:24:18 The 2008 Financial Crisis: Vanguard's Moment 02:30:46 The Warren Buffet Bet (2008-2019) 02:41:28 Fidelity & BlackRock's Resurgence (Post-2008) 02:52:04 Salim Ramji: Vanguard's First Outside CEO 03:04:43 Wellington's Comeback & Mutual Ownership 03:08:23 Analysis 03:30:58 Quintessence 03:39:35 Carve-Outs + Outro ‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Ferrari is the pinnacle of luxury scarcity — across its entire 79-year history, the company has sold just 330,000 cars at an average price today of $500,000. For context, Hermès sells that many Birkins and Kellys roughly every 2 years, and Rolex moves that many watches every 3 months. And yet this ultimate luxury product also lives under the same roof with a widely beloved professional sports team… one with 400 million rabid fans from all walks of life who live and die by the Scuderia’s performance every F1 race weekend! How is it possible that these two seemingly contradictory customer bases can coexist within the same company? And far from destroying each other’s value, only reinforce it? The answer, it turns out, is a beautiful, bloody, tragic and romantic opera that spans two families and three generations — and just might be one of the best tales we’ve ever told on Acquired. Buckle up for the story of Ferrari. Sponsors: Many thanks to our fantastic Spring '26 Season partners: J.P. Morgan Payments Vercel ServiceNow Statsig Links: Sign up for email updates, get out takeaways and research photos from each episode, and vote on future topics! Our Ferrari "episode preview" in WSJ Enzo Ferrari by Luca Dal Monte Seeing Red on IMDb Go Like Hell by A.J. Baime Stephen Wilmot's great WSJ piece on Ferrari Ferrari factory tour Worldly Partners' Multi-Decade Ferrari Study All episode sources Carve Outs: Ford v Ferrari Maison Wheat sweaters Craighill scissors Amazon grocery service Travelpro Altitude backpack More Acquired: Get email updates and vote on future episodes! Join the Slack Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store! 00:00:00 Start 00:01:08 Intro 00:06:11 Enzo Ferrari's Early Life & Tragedies (1898-1919) 00:12:39 Scuderia Ferrari: Enzo's Racing Dream (1920-1933) 00:25:08 The Prancing Horse & Ferrari's Branding 00:35:41 First Ferrari Road Cars & Le Mans Victory (1947-1949) 00:51:31 F1 & The Tragedies of Enzo's Life (1950s) 01:14:03 Ford vs. Ferrari: The Le Mans Rivalry (1963-1966) 01:21:24 Enzo Sells 50% to Fiat (1969) 01:29:10 Luca di Montezemolo's Return to F1 Glory (1971-1976) 01:52:40 Ferrari's "Pepsi Challenge" and how Luca rescued the company (1991) 02:27:41 Post-IPO Ferrari: New Models & Growth (2015-Present) 02:48:24 The FUV Purosangue & Model Range 03:07:16 Ferrari Luce: The EV Future with Jony Ive 03:12:37 Ferrari Today by the Numbers 03:29:39 Analysis 03:50:04 Carve-Outs + Thank Yous ‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Formula 1 is three competitions in one: a 200mph battle of the world's best race car drivers, the world cup of engineering where thousand-person teams spend hundreds of millions designing cars from scratch, and — as one of our listeners perfectly put it — the “Real Housewives of the Garage”, a soap opera of billionaire egos, team politics, and paddock drama that makes for incredible reality television. It's also the world's most popular annual sporting series with over 827 million fans globally — a fact that would shock most Americans, who until a recent viral Netflix series had barely heard of it. Today we tell the story of how a chaotic, deadly, and gloriously dysfunctional European racing series became one of the greatest business stories in sports. For decades, brilliant engineers and daredevil drivers dedicated their lives (and too often lost them) to a league controlled for 45 years by a single man: a former London car dealer named Bernie Ecclestone, who centralized power and extracted billions, while also undeniably single-handedly making the sport successful. Then, in a move no one saw coming, the American company Liberty Media bought the whole thing in 2017, installed a team of Fox Sports and ESPN veterans, and did what Bernie never would — professionalized it. All of a sudden famously money-losing F1 teams turned into real businesses, with the average team valuation today clocking in at an astounding $3.6 billion. Buckle up for one of our most-requested episodes: the wild story of Formula 1. Sponsors: Many thanks to our fantastic Spring '26 Season partners: J.P. Morgan Payments ServiceNow Vercel Statsig Links: Sign up for email updates and vote on future episodes! The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg Drive to Survive on Netflix F1 The Movie on Apple TV Adrian Newey, How to Build a Car Senna documentary Worldly Partners' Multi-Decade Formula One Study All episode sources Carve Outs: Cirque du Soleil Echo Super Bowl LX Mic'd Up Tonal Princess Peach: Showtime! on Nintendo Switch Daloopa for historical financial data More Acquired: Get email updates and vote on future episodes! Join the Slack Subscribe to ACQ2 Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store! 00:00:00 Start 00:00:37 Intro 00:05:52 Origins of F1: Britain, Italy, and Monaco 00:30:43 Bernie's Entrance 00:37:42 Bernie Consolidates Power 00:50:33 F1 as a Global TV Sport (Except America) 01:08:08 F1's Incredible Engineering Achievements 01:19:34 Senna's Crash and a New Era for Safety 01:33:18 The Many Owners of F1, and Bernie's Liquidity Drama 01:57:48 FOTA: The attempted breakaway series 02:05:07 RedBull, Mercedes, and Reinventing the Sport 02:42:33 Liberty Media buys F1 and Brings it to the Modern Era 03:05:03 Drive to Survive 03:26:45 Apple, TV Rights, and Success in America 03:41:52 F1: The Business Today 03:56:23 Analysis: Why Did F1 Work… and Was Bernie Necessary? 04:05:40 7 Powers 04:08:23 Bear vs. Bull Cases 04:16:32 Quintessence 04:20:08 Carve-Outs + Outro ‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

The NFL is nearly synonymous with America today. Practically nothing is more quintessentially and universally American than tuning in every Sunday (and Monday, and Thursday… and sometimes Saturdays and holidays too) to watch the world’s most beautiful ballet of violence. It generates the most revenue of any sports league globally and sets new records for team valuations each year. But it wasn’t always this way. The history of the NFL mirrors America’s own development: scrappy small-town teams rode the successive growth waves of the automobile, TV, the Internet and social media to grow larger than the even the founders’ wildest dreams. Whether you watch football or not, the NFL is one incredible business story, and one that we’ve taken more lessons from over the years for Acquired itself than perhaps any other episode we’ve made. Note: This is a remastered release of our original January 2023 episode, updated to today's Acquired production standards. It also features a full hour+ followup section at the end covering the seismic shifts in the NFL’s business since the original episode’s release. Much has happened in those three years: Taylor Swift entered the league (via merger 🙂), streaming went mainstream (and took over Thanksgiving and Christmas), sports gambling exploded from 46 million to 76 million bettors, and — in perhaps the most surprising development — private equity finally stormed the gates of the NFL. Oh, and average franchise valuations grew by 60% from $4.5 billion to over $7 billion. Communist capitalism is alive and well! We're also releasing this episode in advance of Super Bowl LX here in San Francisco, where Acquired is hosting the NFL’s inaugural Super Bowl Innovation Summit! Sponsors: Many thanks to our partners: Vanta Sierra Crusoe Sentry (+ join the list for Sentry & Vercel’s Super Bowl Fan Zone party) Links: Innovation Summit details and all Super Bowl LX Week events in San Francisco (note content from the Innovation Summit will be posted publicly the week after the Super Bowl — we’ll update this page with links when available) America’s Game Sports Illustrated’s oral history of the famous Joe Namath “pool photo” All episode sources Carve Outs: The Menu Peyton’s Places More Acquired: Get email updates and vote on future episodes! Join the Slack Subscribe to ACQ2 Check out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store! 00:00:00 Start 00:00:37 Intro - Welcome to the Remastered NFL Episode 00:06:05 Origins of Football & the Forward Pass (1869-1905) 00:14:34 The Founding of the NFL (1920) 00:41:52 Bert Bell's "Any Given Sunday" Philosophy (1946) 01:03:28 Pete Rozelle Transforms the League (1960) 01:56:34 The Creation of the Super Bowl (1966) 02:09:47 Monday Night Football Invents Modern Sports TV (1970) 02:37:19 The NFL's Business Model Explained 02:39:28 CTE & the Kaepernick Controversy (2016) 02:48:36 Analysis: Playbook & 7 Powers Analysis 03:21:04 2026 UPDATE: Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Streaming, T-Swift, Gambling & New TV Deals 03:57:11 Private Equity Enters the NFL (2024) 04:14:08 Conclusion & Thank Yous ‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.