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Hello, acquired LPs. We are excited to be with you today together. David is checking in from paternity leave. He's not back yet from podcast or paternity, but we decided we want to have a little discussion.
Of course, we decided that you all should be involved in that discussion. I want to ask David things like, how is it being a parent? What are all the things that you didn't expect? And of course, David, you're what, three weeks in? Almost three weeks. Two and a half weeks. Crazy. I'm sure it's felt like a lot longer than that. The best analogy that I have is it's like the beginning of COVID. You know, we're just like time dilates in weird ways. You know, it both feels like forever and
And just a blink of an eye, you know, like I remember, but like, it just feels like she's always been with us. I can't even like really remember life before her, you know, like, or what it felt like. And it feels like every day is a marathon.
It is sort of this remarkable characteristic of humans that you often are like fearing a big change or gearing up for a big change. And then the change happens. And within a week, we're sort of normalized to it. And we're like, oh, life has always been this way. Like when you move or you get a new job, you're suddenly like, hasn't it always been like this? Human neuroplasticity and adaptability in action here.
Listeners, I'm sure we will dance into other topics today, but such as my very quiet, stealthy new computer that David, I know you've been holding back on asking lots of questions about it until we were on air. So I know you want to sprinkle that in. This is great. We're going to talk about, you know, my new baby and your new baby.
Very much so. And we should say LPs too. We're having some fun here. This is like a warm-up lap for me testing out recording with a baby in the house. So feel free to skip this one. But if you want to hang out with us and banter, that's what we're here for. It's like an LP call minus the 50 other people chiming in on stuff. Well, David, if you could go back three and a half weeks and tell your former self something, any wisdom to impart? Oh my gosh.
It was ridiculous, but I think I actually was kind of worried about this, that...
this whole having children and parenting thing was a vast conspiracy. Everybody says, oh, it's so great. It changes your life. It's wonderful. You'll love, you know, your kids. And I was like, yeah, like I think so. But what if they're just saying that to trick people into propagating the human race? You know, like what if it's actually horrible? And I can 100% with confidence say it's actually real. It is wonderful. I love her so much.
I can't imagine life without her. It's the absolute best. Doesn't mean it's not hard. It's hard at times, but it is not a conspiracy. It's the best. I recommend parenting to anyone who wants to do it.
Well, not to mention, how could it have possibly been a conspiracy where all these people were truly in on it in some way? What do you like get? How do I know that you haven't gotten whatever the thing is that everyone else got? That's true. I literally have one friend tell me in the couple of weeks before the baby came that I should start taking sleeping pills every night just to like stock up on sleep. And I was like,
that seems a little crazy man that wow is this gonna be that bad and has it been like how has have you slept yes a lot i slept over eight hours last night now caveat i
I think we got an incredibly easy baby. Like we lucked out on the easy baby front. I know there are far, far, far more difficult babies than ours for us and our experience. I'm sleeping a little more than Jenny because Jenny has to stay awake during the feedings, but I am getting plenty of sleep. It's just not all happening contiguously.
And are you waking up for the feedings too? Yeah. So I'm doing all the diapers and Jenny's doing the feedings. Fair is fair. Feels like, you know, she does the input. I do the output. I'm still getting the better end of the deal, but...
We had a big, big... Actually, yesterday was big on many fronts. But the biggest milestone yesterday was... It was a beautiful day. It's been beautiful weather in San Francisco. We went out for happy hour on 24th Street in Noe Valley. Baby slept through the whole thing. We had drinks. It was great. Jenny had her first hard alcohol in like a year. That was the biggest milestone. But second biggest milestone was she took a bottle for the first time. So I think...
This is the gateway. I think things are going to start to change here. But to your question, now it's a little longer. For the first couple of weeks, it was every two, two and a half hours during the night. Now we're stretching it to three, three and a half hours. So you wake up kind of like twice in the middle of the night. I set an alarm. I wake up. I go get the baby out of the bassinet, change the diaper, get her all ready, wake up Jenny, be like...
Time to feed again. And then I hand the baby off probably more than 50% of the time within the next five minutes, there needs to be another diaper change. So then I'm back in action. Once that's done, then I go back to sleep and Jenny feeds and then she puts the baby down. Okay, so logistics aside, I'm curious about your psyche. Do you look at the world in a different way now that it's not just...
sort of yourself and your significant other you're looking out for? Do you feel like a greater sense of responsibility? I don't think I feel a sense of a greater sense of responsibility, but I feel like I'm part of the club now. It's funny. San Francisco is the zip codes or the township, whatever, with the least number of children per capita in America. And
But Noe Valley in San Francisco has got to be like the top. Like they're all here. You go out, you walk around 24th Street, you will see hordes of strollers. And before I used to walk around, go for runs and whatnot. And I'd like I wouldn't even notice the strollers. Just like I was like strollers on the street, whatever. Now I look at the other parents in the eye and I'm like, oh, yeah. How are you doing? So it's like this whole like society that's existed that I've like
Just it's been all around me and I've never noticed before. It's like when you decide that you're like interested in a specific car and then suddenly you're like, wow, this car is like everywhere. Yes. Jenny and I talk about that. It's like evidence that we're in a simulation, right? It's like when you're playing Grand Theft Auto and you see one car and then it gets in the like local memory. And so it starts like showing up more and more like I think that's happening in the simulation. So now we just see strollers. We actually see them now. It's crazy.
Has your set of life goals changed or like priorities or as you think about like what's the dream set up for five years from now? Right now, no, but I think that's only because we're on the older side for first kid.
Shoot, I'm about to turn 37. We were already starting to shift to like the kinds of things in lifestyle that you would want in like typical middle age. And so if anything, having a baby now feels like, oh, great, we're even more justified in...
doing what we want. Like I would love to, it's not happening anytime soon, but to go to bed at nine o'clock every night. Like that sounds awesome. Like happy hour at four 30 or five and then going to bed by nine, sign me up. But that was the same before.
Let's take it away from you personally for a minute, because there's something I was sort of thinking about in the context of like, when I was at Microsoft, and I noticed a lot of people in their like late 30s and 40s at Microsoft with kids, or perhaps other people, you know, in the startup ecosystem with kids, my younger, probably more naive self used to think like,
Those people are like less ambitious because they have these other priorities in life now that are more important than making something of yourself, than achieving something great or building something great. How have you always thought about that? And have you sort of evolved your thinking at all on like ambition and priorities? I have had a pet theory about sort of related to this and parenting and becoming a parent for a while for the past couple of years is watching lots of friends go through it.
So my theory is becoming a parent makes you more of who you are. If you are somebody who is, I don't say ambitious or not ambitious or like whatever, like you deep down, like you really want, like put aside societal expectations, your family expert, like what do you really want? Who are you really? Once you become a parent, you're,
I think it's because you just don't have time or mental energy to try, emotional energy to try and put up masks anymore. You just become who you are. I've seen it with so many friends. People who are great people who love to go out, have fun. They have kids and we still do lots of dinner dates with them. They get babysitters. People who are kind of jerks, they become bigger jerks. People who are...
super ambitious with work. I've seen them have kids and then be like, it's even more important to me to do. I'm leaving a legacy. I'm setting an example. I want my kids to be proud of what I'm doing. That's my theory on the general human psychology about this. Yeah. You definitely need to be more focused and intentional with your time, I'm sure, because you suddenly have these
constraints where you used to have control over 100% of your time and now you're saying like, okay, there is an absolute certain amount of time that I am dedicating to family. And so whatever my personality characteristics told me to spend time on before, I just now need to fit that into tighter buckets. Yep. For personal, I think we need to check in in a few months on this because right now it's like she's on a two to three hour cycle right now where like every two to three hours she is
eliminating waste, often multiple times, maybe looking around, maybe doing a little bit of tummy time if we have time, often not, and then sleeping. And that is just rinse and repeat every two to three hours. So it's just... I get windows and stuff. I've been doing a Peloton most days, which is awesome. Jenny will feed the baby. I'll go do a Peloton. But the windows are like...
pretty small. Once she gets a little older, if we get childcare, which we will, then I think we'll check back in on what that looks like. Yeah. In some ways, this is hilarious, me asking you these questions because it's like,
interviews other man about marathon at mile 0.3 and says, how's it going? What's your view as someone who is doing a marathon for the first time on the impacts of a marathon on your life? And I'm like, oh yeah, it's great. It's easy so far. Probably those of you who are parents who are listening of older kids are probably like, oh, just wait, just wait. Yeah.
Well, listeners, as you can sort of guess too, like in part we're doing this because Dave and I really haven't caught up in the last month at all. So this is like fun to learn. The other side of things is like we have not had like a minute to
to think about what would be a good next episode and like, let's go read a book and go do 100 hours of research. David, I'm curious, are you fully checked out? Like, I know you're not reading Titan and that sort of thing, but like, are you pretty much off Twitter? How's your reset going? I think related to my theory about parenting makes you more who you are. I am actually loving life on
on the like work front right now. My ideal is I get to just like dip into email, text,
slack, Twitter, you know, research, whatever, whenever I want. And then when I don't want, I don't. And that's what I'm doing right now. It's great. Like I check email a few times a day. I look at stuff and I'm like, Hmm, I have an autoresponder on that. I'm on parental leave. And I think you're going to leave these autoresponders on forever. Aren't you? I may never take it off. I'm like, great. I feel no obligation to respond to this. This is why I'm so happy. Yeah.
Ben's probably like, oh my God, I cannot wait for David to get back and help me out here. No, I have the direct line. You've been good about like, you also can go 24 hours before you respond to a text. Take your time. I also have to say too, huge, huge thank you to you for shouldering, you know, all of, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes at Acquired in between episodes. And it has been 100% on you the past few weeks. And I
So, so appreciate it.
You bet. And I mean, it's been nice having like, what have we had three or four episodes in the can too, that we've been able to sort of release. Yeah. The last, what was it? July, August, September were a serious sprint for us to record all that. Totally. Well, when we recorded Standard Oil Part 2, that was, what did, did we record that on a Friday? I think. Sounds right. I think we recorded it on a Friday. Is that the one we redid? No, Standard Oil 1 is the one where we threw it away and started over. That was on a Sunday. Yep. That was a Sunday. Yep.
I want to say it was a Friday that we did part two and then she was born at 630 in the morning on Monday. So it was it was down to the wire. Yeah. No kidding.
So far, I'm a 10 out of 10 on it. Like, it's just... You have another kid? Yeah. So I'm an only child. Jenny has a sister. But we're a little older. And we had always said... And we've been together forever. We met in college. We just hit 15 years, Jenny and me together. And so we'd always said, we know we want kids...
Probably just one. Like, that's fine. Literally, I would say within five minutes of our daughter being born, I was like, how soon can we have another one?
We'll see. You never know with these. And it took us, as I think I've said in various places before, certainly on Twitter, if not on the show, it was a three-year journey for us to have this baby with lots and lots of twists and turns on the way. We did IVF. Jenny and I both have genetic predispositions to different types of cancer that we discovered during the pregnancy process that we then wanted to screen out. We used UCSF. They were amazing. UCSF is just
such an amazing medical institution. They're like the Rockefeller University of the West Coast. It was a total journey and you never know with this stuff, but I would 10 out of 10 do it again in a heartbeat. Fast, decisive action there, dude. Check it in a few months and see how we're feeling. But yeah, the other thing I'll say, like, because this doesn't get talked about a lot. I was really nervous ahead of time about the delivery process. Like,
I was freaking terrified, like way more so than, than Jenny. Cause I was like, I'm going to see Jenny in pain. That's going to be traumatic. It's going to be awful. There's nothing I can do. Like I can be supportive. And I read all the stuff. I watched all the videos to took the classes about being a supportive partner. It was wonderful. The whole thing. I mean like, yes, Jenny was in pain. Yes, it was hard, but every experience is different. But for us, at least I was expecting it to be like the absolute worst. And it was not that at all. And like, it was, it was a, you know, just great experience. Yeah.
Hmm. All right. We're going to have Jenny on and get her side of the story. What are you talking about? In fact, maybe we should run this whole episode by her before we release it. No, no, no. I already did. She's cool with it. Any other? I don't know if other first time dads to be feel that way, but that was probably the thing that I was the most nervous about going in. Like I was nervous about everything, but
The delivery process, like I was truly terrified. Yes, I know. And I'm sure there are delivery processes that are really hard and really traumatizing. But in retrospect, I wish I weren't as terrified. And, you know, we're just looking forward to it. See, you're so ready for the next time. Exactly. When can we start? Well, very excited for you. Excited to hear like how your perspective continues to change and like
I'm sure you'll weave it into Acquired in some way. The next billionaire titan that we end up talking about, somehow you'll find some way to work it into my experience as a dad. My vast experience as a dad. We'll definitely have more updates as we go. It's amazing too, like seeing, you know, just like these tiny little things, but you know, things that she needed like a lot of help with or that were like a big challenge in the first couple days. Yeah.
Get easier. She gets better at them. Like, she's like a human. She's, you know, like learning, growing, getting better. Like, wow. I mean, it is crazy that like we're used to humans being pretty static because our I don't know what the right.
way to describe human growth is probably logarithmic is that the right function it's like an s curve maybe extremely fast at first and then hits diminishing returns but like we're used to like you meet someone and then you meet them two or three years later and they're like pretty much the same but like you meet a baby and then like two or three months later they're like a completely different type of species yeah
Yeah, that's been wild to watch. Like, well, really until yesterday, but the first few weeks, like some babies like love to suck on things. She's one of those, but you give her a finger, like she will like literally try and swallow your whole hand. But so we're like, this baby's gonna love pacifiers. Wouldn't take them. Spat them out. We probably tried 15 different pacifiers, spat them all out, hated them.
And then yesterday, Jenny was like, I have a hunch we should try again today. And dude, it's a mother's intuition. Total magic now loves them. Capacity to learn and grow. Imagine that.
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So...
Other baby we should talk about. I'm in the depths of everything involved in being a new parent. I want to hear about what's going on in the adult world.
Reporting in live here from the adult world. Can we just put a gigantic flashing disclaimer up front that's like, that was a gross transition. And these things are incomparable. And I just have a different hunk of metal on my desk. It happens to be like one of the greatest engineered products in the history of mankind. But like, it's a hunk of metal. It's like a human being, you know? You got to stop that. Okay, okay.
I will say it has been really fun, like spending time with the acquired community through the announcement, through the ordering, through people getting theirs. I think a lot of it's in the random channel and in the Slack, but like it's been very cool as other people have evaluated getting them and have gotten them. And basically including myself, everyone's reaction is like, dear God, this thing, this thing is a fine, fine machine to tell listeners a little bit about our setup here. Like,
I have at home an LG UltraFine 5K display with an external mouse and keyboard, and then...
The mic that we're using runs through a USB interface, and that USB interface gets plugged into the computer. So you've got the USB, the high-quality sound going in. You've got it driving a monitor. Additionally, on the hardware side, we've got a camera. So this is the Alpha 7C that runs through an external capture card, which is the Cam Link 4K. So you've got 4K video coming in through a USB-C port through an external capture card. And...
on my old computer, basically,
So you plug all that in and then you have Zoom open. And I would hope to God that I could also get Audition open and click record. And then I'd try and open one window with all my research in it. And I'd try not to touch anything because if I do anything, it could just start hanging. What year was your old Mac Pro? It was mid 2017. So it's not even that old. I feel like all the Intel machines from like 2016 to 2019 were really like
I think Apple was trying to be more ambitious than the chipset let them. And we all paid the price for a while. And of course, they made dumb decisions by making pro machines, not pro machines and all that. I'd even be on a video call. And if I was using the high quality camera setup, I just would have to resign myself to like, I can't really take notes on this call. And I especially can't do things that have like, I couldn't open LinkedIn and click in the search field because whatever the hell JavaScript runs, when you click in that search field,
I think it might be hardware accelerator or something. Cause like if the GPU is already, I, I could be talking out my ass here, but something was already at a hundred percent capacity from the camera. And then opening that search field beach ball for 15 seconds. And whoever I was talking to, I just have to be like,
Sorry. So sorry. I was just gone for a while. I tried to look something up on LinkedIn and that was my fault. It was like pretty top of the line mid 2017. This was not one of the pros that wasn't really a pro. No, this was like full touch bar, you know, 2.7 gigahertz processor as a core i7. I think it was 16 gig of RAM. Yeah. So like, I think that's what my M1 Air has.
Yeah. So for the past few months, like I'm here on this, like, you know, MacBook Air, like very much like generic consumer grade, like, and it's just like a beast, like had like everything. It doesn't even have a freaking fan in it. So I got the 16 inch. The 16 inch is an interesting choice. The fans in the bottom, I have yet to hear them go on and maybe they do go on and I just can't tell. There's some like
OS extensions that you can install that'll tell you fan speed, but this thing may as well not have fans in it. And I know I'm not like running Final Cut and Cinema 4D and all that crap that it's meant for. You haven't noticed them come on at all? Not one bit. Wow. That's awesome. But picking this thing up, I will tell you, is an aircraft carrier. So you got the 16-inch, right? Got the 16-inch, got the Max. Oh, sorry to interrupt, but my big question. You've always been...
The single external monitor guy. Are you now using a dual display situation with... I'm not yet. I may. The screens look so good. So here's the funny thing is, I don't think I would use the laptop open. I think if I...
This is going to sound very posh. If I did a second display, I would get another LG 5K. Oh, nice. Ultra fine. Is that what they're calling them? Whatever. Display and put it vertically. Now that these computers can drive to high res monitor outputs. And I would just have a vertical one off to the left so I could do what you do and like have, you know, a gigantic long document open and then other stuff. Yeah.
I am such a fan of the vertical external screen. I've got the 4K version of the LG, the smaller one. So I've got my air open as a landscape display on my left with like the keyboard there and it's on a little tray on a mount. And then on the right, I've got a vertical external monitor, the LG 4K. And it is amazing. Like the vertical is such a great... Oh, so you only have one external. You have the computer's monitor and then a... Interesting. That's how I roll.
And I think it can only drive one external. I think it can only drive one. I think the M1s... I wish there was a name for the M1 Pro and the M1 Max, but...
Whatever those are, the pros, maxes, pro and max configurations of this chip are the only ones that can drive the multiple displays. The max can drive like an insane number of external. Four. It can drive four displays. That's crazy. It can drive a 4K TV plus three other monitors. And it's native screen as well? And it's native screen as well. Oh my God. I'm pretty sure simultaneously. Wow. Wow. That's awesome. Also, this name is hilarious.
What computer did you get? I got the Pro. But what chip did you get? I got the Max. Apple came out with a new line of Max, and you can either choose Pro or Max. Like, Pro is already the name of the computer, so why is it called the lower-end chip that I could get in it? It's so confusing. Back in the Steve Jobs era, I feel like Apple's nomenclature for their products mostly made sense. Like, there were some, you know, the occasional stinkers, but like, they mostly made sense.
But for the past, you know, five plus years, it's just been insanity. Like they just make the most boneheaded decisions about nomenclature. In some ways, they're getting better. So I think for a while they couldn't decide whether pro meant for professionals or it just meant this one's higher end. And it's starting to feel like pro now means like for professionals. It doesn't really apply in the AirPods case, but.
This computer, though, I made this comment in the Slack to Griff. This is not a sleek laptop the way that I've had. I've had since 2007, I've had a 13-inch MacBook Pro. I think that's right. No, I had an Air in there for a while, but I've had a bunch of 13-inch laptops. And this is just a different product that I own now. This is a computer. It's a very powerful computer that happens to be pretty portable. I can put in a backpack and stuff, but it's not...
like just a little bit bigger than an iPad and happens to have that form factor. It's like, I'm going to put down my like desktop computer here and open it up. It's a computer with a battery. Yes. Oh, by the way, the battery is just nuts. I haven't charged it in two days.
And I've been like using it a lot. At some point, you got to send me a photo of the power brick. It's either the same size or smaller than my previous power brick. It's a new type of technology in the brick that allows them to do 140 watts in a smaller footprint. Whoa. I mean, 140 watts. That's insane. Yeah, it's nuts. And the fast charge is crazy. Like this 16 inch computer, I've tested it. Like you totally can get to 50% charge super fast in like 25, 30 minutes.
Wow. That is... I mean, I know we're just rehashing the Apple keynote here, but it truly is like... Marco Arment said this on ATP, that this is like the fan service computer. They just did a bunch of stuff that they knew would make industry observers and people who want to really...
big, fast computer. Like they just did all the things and they're all really good. Like the screen is unfreaking believable. I don't think I'm going to upgrade, but the one surprise thing from the reviews and like watching video of it that is really appealing to me is the screen. It just looks awesome. I've consumed basically all media about this thing in anticipation of actually getting it. So this is going to sound familiar if you've listened to a lot of other stuff too. But like I thought a very good take was Renee Ritchie said they basically took the...
Mac Pro that you can buy right now, and granted it's an Intel chip, but it is specced out. It is the performance of that machine, which is a very expensive computer, and it is the Pro Display XDR. Now, of course, it's not 27-inch, it's 16-inch. They put it in a laptop and they sell that laptop for $2,500 to $3,500. The pricing, other than the SSD upgrades, really isn't bad. I'm sure at some point soon they'll come out with an Apple Silicon Mac Pro, which will just be like...
obscene oh it's gonna be i think it's probably a whole year before like i think we'll see maybe an imac pro i think we'll see the revamped air i think we'll maybe see mac minis i think the probably the last thing but i bet a year from now we see a mac pro that is just like it's gonna be like the ultimate mic drop right it's probably four m1 maxes stuck together or something like that to what you were saying like you could buy a current mac pro at the desktop the internet like
Getting a MacBook Pro with a Max fully spec'd out is probably almost as good, right? Like, for way cheaper. I mean, you don't get the 27-inch screen, so that's a big component of the cost of the... I mean, they make a ton of margin on the Pro Display XDR, but they could have charged a lot more for these machines given...
I was thinking about this a couple of nights ago because I was like playing with the laptop before bed and I have like a pretty nice TV at the foot of the bed. And I went to turn it on and I was like, that TV is so much worse than by far the nicest screen in that I own across any monitors or TVs or projector. I own a lot of screens is the screen on this laptop, which is crazy. Okay. So the screen itself. So it's mini LED, right?
Uh, yes. And even though it's not OLED, it does pretty remarkable blacks. Like that's been a thing that sort of surprised me in watching movies on it is that the blacks are the dark. That's awesome. The current iPad pros, I think also have this technology. The promotion. Yeah.
No, the mini LED. The mini LED, yeah. I think it's pretty comparable to the iPad Pro screen. Yep. Which my understanding of it is like OLED screens don't really scale up beyond phone size. So if you want a, you know, iPad plus size screen, you can't really do an OLED, I don't think. And so this mini LED technology is like...
You can have traditional LEDs, which, you know, everything I'm looking at on my screens here are. But mini LED is like way more little lights, like a factor of like 10 more. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's what I think it is. Anyway, it's supposed to be awesome, though.
My review so far is like all the hype is real. The keyboard feels really good to type on. The keyboard is quiet. It's nice having some actual travel on the keys again. Like for a while, I liked the butterfly keyboard. I don't think actually it's the butterfly. I think that they made another model after that. I liked the butterfly until it broke. I liked the most recent model, but like having key travel and a little bit of softness and quietness while you're typing, that's not this like super crazy clicky noise. That's very nice. I use the SD card.
thing once when I was testing our new video setup, since we're going to be trying to do YouTube in higher res. And that was nice to not need the little adapter. Yeah. One of the things that Ben has been completely covering for me while I've been parenting is the
Like Ben just texted me the other day and was like, yo, you've got a whole professional camera video set up coming your way from Amazon. Thank you. Yeah, you bet. Yeah. Which I can't wait. I'm sure it'll take us a few episodes to get in the groove, get everything right. But with our awesome editor, Steven, we're going to be massively upgrading the YouTube quality. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm pumped. I mean, in some ways, you're sort of like, why do you need this, like very high quality video setup to film yourself in a bedroom in a basement? I don't know. It's better than watching the like flat. I think it makes total sense. Like I thought that way, too, when we first started the podcast, like way back in the day when this was just for fun. You were like, this isn't just for fun.
Oh, it's always just for fun. Yeah. When we were amateurs. When we did no research and we would just spout off about acquisitions and how we felt about them. Exactly. Kind of like this episode. You get a pass. Yeah.
I didn't understand why you were the one who was like, we really should like invest in, you know, microphones and like audio quality. It's important. I was like, yeah, who cares? It's very important. Like I tell this to all podcasters, like the quality of your audio matters. Like that's your medium. That's what people are listening to. You want it to be as high quality as possible. And it should be the same with video. Yeah. Yeah.
It is remarkable how video makes... There are shortcuts, but video makes it 10 times harder. It's not like twice as much work. It's like 10 times as much work because there's so many little things to check and make sure you have right before you record. There's so many more things going through your head all the time. And you and I don't even do the editing work. I mean, the first 50 episodes of Acquired I edited personally, that was a lot. I can't imagine if I was doing that and tried to layer video on top. I just...
It's yeah, it's a totally different, different skill set. And people like our editor, Stephen, who's just the best, you know, people who are professionals at this, like are, it is such a craft. Well, and there's jump cuts in video. That's the craziest thing is you and I get away with a lot of ums and stammers and words that we can cut where you kind of can't do that in video because in audio, you know,
you know, like that little, you know, we probably cut 500 to a thousand little word whiskers and you just kind of can't in video. I've been thinking about it like a band, you know, like there's the studio album. The podcast is the studio album. Like it's going to be engineered and edited to absolute perfection. And then video is, is the live concert.
In some ways, it's almost like backwards. You're like, what do you mean that the video is not engineered to absolute perfection? But it would take so much more work to make the video of the polish that the audio is. And you might say, well, just do more work. But that work would be things like B-roll. To be able to do jump cuts on a video, you need something to mask the jump cut. So what are you showing a video of? And it can't just be like random images that you're George Carlin across the screen because that looks bad. So you want like proprietary motion graphics that like,
you're actually building to be on brand of the show. You need a visual brand in a way that we don't have a visual brand. We sort of do with the teal and black and we have the word acquired, but it's not like we have a visual mark. Yeah, and we don't have a ton of assets around it. Right. I see how teams go from two to 20 when they start
producing video rather than whatever the medium that they were in before. Like remember when everyone pivoted to video? I'm sure Vox hired a crap ton of people when they went from we write articles to we make videos. Yeah, totally. I think a couple episodes ago I made MKBHD's studio YouTube channel, My Carve Out. It's good. I don't know if you've watched it. It's so good. Oh,
I just have so much respect for... There are only like six or seven people, I think, there. And they are so good. Oh my God. Their graphics, the editing, their gear. It's just like, that is true professionalism in video. Like, it's amazing. It reminds me of kind of the way that Gurley talks about venture. Like...
If you really love the craft, come talk to me. I kind of feel like the MKBHD crew, they really love the craft. Oh, yeah. They're so good at it. It's just unbelievable. I'm staring at my computer, wondering if there's any other things I should tell you about. Just everything's instant. That's the last really insane thing that... I've just been used to Beach Ball City and...
lagging a little bit, but that's okay. I can get through it. We use Descript listeners to like go through an episode afterwards word by word and really figure out are there any things we should cut from main show episodes? So like...
to give you a sense, we recorded three hours and 20 minutes for Standard Oil Part 2, and we cut it down to two hours, 20 minutes. So there is a very real edit process afterwards, which we didn't used to have. That's been a way that we've made the show better. Every time I would hit the space bar to play into script, it would spin for about three seconds and then start playing. And now I just press play and it's just instant. And I'm like, oh my God, a thousand little three second things throughout the day just got eliminated. Yeah.
This is why we're adding video to this show. I wish listeners could like see your face as you're saying, you're just like, you're like a kid on Christmas morning. And I know you've been struggling with this. I mean, it's such a like ridiculous thing to say, like, it is the epitome of first world problems. But for people like us, you know, and that includes probably almost everybody listening to this podcast where like your, your job, what you are a professional at is banging your fingers on a keyboard, your livelihood, many of your hobbies. Yeah.
Yes. The way you're connecting with so many people in our lives now. Yep. Like if you're an NFL player, you wouldn't not have the latest helmet technology or a tennis player, right? Like you wouldn't go out on a tennis court with a wooden racket from the 1970s, right? Like having the latest is so important and like it should be the exact same for us. Yeah. It got to the point the other day, a few weeks ago where...
I was meeting with a founder that we were looking at investing in from PSL Ventures. And I'm like creating latency in this video by trying to take notes. So I stopped taking notes. And then a day later, I couldn't remember something that they said. And I was like, this is so stupid. Like, I should have a means to take notes while I'm having a call without feeling like I'm jeopardizing the call. This is why I was telling you for the past year plus to just buy a...
and then sell it as a stopgap or just as a stopgap. Yeah. Well, I should also say that like part of this is my fault for deciding that I need a 4K full frame camera cramming an incredible amount of high bandwidth video signal into my computer. Like I could have just used the webcam. But when I get on a call with someone that has invested in their video setup, I feel a closer relationship with them than I do to someone that's on like a very flat screen.
720 Apple webcam. It makes a big difference. I mean even just looking at our video now, I'm on my MacBook Air webcam because we're waiting I think literally today the camera that you ordered me is coming I'm looking at my own video and like yeah, it's flat like you can see me It's fine, but I look like a dude in a basement. I
You look like this, you know, like beautiful, rested, not parent of three week old. Part of it is lighting, too. We'll get it. We got to figure out what you're once you get all set up, then we'll work on lighting. But I have these two Elgato key light errors and one of them throws against the wall to get like diffuse lighting. But then this one on my left.
at me just really dim, but that creates the like slight shadows on the face to make it so you're not so sort of like flat, like you actually define the features a little bit. Well, and I mean, I think the biggest thing is the bokeh. That's what's called, right? Okay. B.
Ben is like in glorious focus and image quality. And then your very tasteful mountain photography mural that you have on your wall that you did. Yeah. You were hiking with your family, right? Yeah. Yeah. With my dad in Iceland. Yeah. Is tastefully blurred behind you. And it's not like the zoom, you know, processing. It's like actual like light and glass doing that. Like, whereas I look like a, like a dude in a basement. Well, yeah.
Tonight, you will receive your Sony camera and no more. Can't wait. Can't wait. It's been really fun building out the setup over the last year. I'm trying to figure out sort of what's the next step. All right. What's our dream? What do we think the ultimate acquired studio setup is? Well, I mean, part of it is like, do we want to not look like podcasters at some point? Because we could do like lav mics or we could do mics out of frame. We could dump these big
headphones that I really like having the Sony MDRs, like the studio monitor headphones, but like you look like a podcaster, right? You're not like a, we look like air traffic controllers, Daniel act giving a presentation to the street, you know, that's another route we could go.
In which case we'd get one of those little like clear little ear inserts that like run down the back, like a secret service agent. Jcal started doing that, right? Oh, did he? I think I've noticed on All In and Twist. I think he's got one of those now. It kind of feels like you become a YouTube. It feels to me like you're in a different camp when you do that. And I kind of like...
This feels like it keeps us squarely in we're podcasters who have video camp rather than we're YouTubers. Which I think is where we want to be, right? I'm curious what you all listening think. Yeah, hit us up in Slack or shoot us a note or on Twitter. It's where I want to be. I don't want to be a YouTuber. I think Acquired is a podcast. If we were starting Acquired to do what Acquired is...
There's no way anyone in their right mind would think like, yeah, I'm going to record three and a half hours of video of us like talking. Oh, that's such a good point. And like put it on YouTube. Like even still like when we upload our stuff to YouTube now, as we have for the last few episodes, and then I see it in my feed, it's ridiculous. I'm seeing like...
15 minute MKBHD videos, some Doug DeMuro, some sports highlights, and then a three hour standard oil. I wouldn't watch it. I mean, to be honest, like I would not watch a three hour video, whereas like three hour podcast. I'm like, this is great. I will listen to it while I do dishes, while I walk to work and like on a run, and then I'll have it done by the end of the day. Take breaks. That's another interesting point. This YouTube experiment, to the extent that we're just like doing the same content, but video, uh,
might fail. Like we may decide after a year, like nobody watches these and I wouldn't either. But I also don't want to like create different content for YouTube or TikTok or... Right. I mean, I think the other, you know, we've talked about this a bunch. I certainly believe, I think you do too, that one of the things that makes Acquired
great to the extent it is great is we do 26 episodes a year and that's it like and they're all freaking great in our humble opinion in our yes in our humble hey if we don't think it's great like who else is gonna think it's great we put a lot of work into each episode and we can't really do more than 26 a year but when you do youtube you can have props and no one would be able to see these props on the audio version
You got the Pit Viper glasses. All right, I'm going to join you here. What if we did our whole Solana episode wearing the Pit Viper shades? Oh my God, we totally need to. Yeah, thanks to our friends at Solana and Austin, Ben and I both have Pit Viper Solana shades now that we are both wearing, which are amazing. Can I just say that's one of the greatest marketing escapades of all time was just giving away free... Here's a free link to go have Pit Viper shades sent to your house.
Austin's very good at his job. Yep. He totally is. I should go try and change a diaper wearing these at some point in time and see. My daughter screams at me. Oh, yeah. So where are we in the window? So you and I hopped on to start talking an hour and 40 minutes ago. Oh, Jenny and I did a deal. It wasn't a deal. Jenny was just nice to me. The other thing, though, too, is Jenny's mom came by for about three hours this afternoon, which was...
So great. She's done that a couple times, doing it a couple times a week right now and just like to be able to like breathe a sigh of relaxation for a little bit. So Jenny is on 100% parenting duty right now. Nice. So let's just keep going. The grandparent helps, I'm sure. Grandparents are a great invention. All right. So what are we calling this LP episode? Parenting, MacBooks, and video production? Yeah. New arrivals. Yeah.
But yeah, let's jam a little more on video. If anybody who's still listening now hit us up with ideas on the video front. Like it is something we want to invest in. Lord knows we have the gear for it now. We have invested in it, literally. But do people really want to sit and watch three hours of a couple guys talking to one another?
I should look at our YouTube analytics and actually see what the drop-off curves look like relative to what we can see in Apple podcasts. Probably a lot more severe. Rogan, it's a podcast, but he has always done video as well. And those are three plus hour episodes.
My suspicion on the way people watch those is you open it, you put it on your computer, and you do other stuff on your computer, and you occasionally flip over to have it in the front of the view so you sort of get like a reminder of what the feel in the room is, and then you go back to doing whatever your other thing is. Or like if there's a particular prop or moment where you're like, ooh, this would be visually helpful, you flip back to it. Is that your... That's a good point. When we first started discussing...
ramping up video. For me, at least one of the drivers was all in, which is just so much to change the game for everything. But they do video and podcast. And it's a podcast. But I found that I enjoy consuming it on YouTube more than as a podcast. But I do exactly what you're saying, Ben, which is I put it on my iPad in the kitchen. And I'm doing other stuff. I'm doing the dishes and whatnot. I'm not like...
constantly watching the screen or I might tab it over. What is it? YouTube premium I have now. You need whatever the thing I don't have is because every time I go to change apps, it pauses. Yep. With YouTube premium and you can get picture in picture on iOS with YouTube premium, which is nice. So I'll do that a lot. It's enjoyable. It's definitely the best way for me, at least to consume podcast content, not on my phone. Like if I'm on
desktop or if I'm on my iPad, loading up the YouTube version is better than opening up Overcast.
Yeah, that's a good point. I think if I had like a TV in my kitchen or I guess an iPad in my kitchen, then I would feel the same way because that's where like where a lot of my podcast listening happens and to have something visual there. That's a yeah, that's right. You don't have a screen in your kitchen. No, I have like the projector, but that's a big you can't just like throw something up there quickly. It's like you got to bring the screen down and fight with the projector thing to turn it on. It's like a hassle. Yeah, this has been a big challenge.
started during the pandemic and I don't think I'd ever go back now is I used to use my iPad as
as much as possible as my primary machine pre-pandemic, like when I was out and about. You were like all in. Yeah. I was all in on it. And it was, you know, great. Super portable. The cellular connection. I still don't understand why. That's my one gripe about the new MacBooks. Yeah, why not on laptops? Like it doesn't make any sense. So it feels more of a philosophical thing than a cost thing. Because I think these radios, like they could put 5G radios in there for 30 bucks. I don't know. Maybe it's more than the 5G. You have to put the LTE in, but...
The only legitimate reason I can think of is that the cell phone company, the carriers don't want them to because it would create so much bandwidth. I don't know. I feel like they've decided that computers don't have touch and don't have a cellular connection, but phones and iPads do. There's like an iOS only delineation for cellular radios. And maybe it's because like,
Most of the time with laptops, you're in a worky environment, whether that's your house or an office or a coffee shop or an airport and like somewhere that already has Wi-Fi. But like rarely are you in a park using your laptop. And it happens, but it's like, you know, 1% of the population, 1% of the time type thing. Yeah. It feels like we're at the end of the rope of that being like tenable. Yeah.
Five years from now, are iPads and MacBooks still going to be different? Like, there's no reason for that. 100% yes. I do not think Apple will merge them.
I think it's pretty interesting now what we're seeing with like the, you can run iOS apps on your, on your computer. In fact, that's the only way that I have videos to watch on a long plane ride tomorrow because I installed the HBO max, which allows you to download offline on the iOS only version. So I have the iOS version of HBO max on my computer with downloaded videos. So already very valuable feature for me.
Oh, I never thought to do that. That's a great idea. Yep. But Netflix and Hulu and other companies, Disney Plus, have decided that that is a feature they don't want to support. So you can't run it on the Mac, unfortunately. Interesting. Well, anyway, back to the beginning. My iPad used to be my primary machine. Now...
Post pandemic, it's my kitchen machine and it's awesome. It's just so great having a screen with I've got the not the fancy keyboard for the iPad that has the trackpad on it, but like the old one that's just the fabric like the fabric keys. Is it the smart keyboard? I've got the one that's like 100 bucks versus the one that's like 300 bucks.
the like magic one that seems to defy gravity somehow. It's not magic. Oh wait, it literally is the magic keyboard. I think. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah. I was aptly named. But anyway, just having that in my kitchen has been super great for exactly what we're talking about. Like doing the dishes, eating lunch. I can fire off some emails. Ben's like, you never send emails. Cool. Fires it off to me.
Yeah, I can respond to texts and I can throw on YouTube or whatnot. And I just pick it up. I put it behind the sink when I'm doing dishes. I put it on the counter when I'm eating lunch. It's been really nice having that in the kitchen. We need to get you a proxy. We need a David who's not you, who can act on your behalf. Who's responsible. Yes. The person would have to have a very specialized skill set where they have...
taste and judgment and like, you know, it's a copy. You're saying that I have taste and judgment. It's not just like I could like train an AI or find someone on Fiverr or something to like, hey, answer all David's email. This has been my ultimate dream for
Really, my entire professional career. Actually, so I don't know if I've ever told this to anybody. When I started in investment banking right out of college, I got my ass kicked. Like, I mean, everybody does. But like, I was a freaking liberal arts major. And I was such a like...
Oh my God, I was so spoiled. I had never... I was a French lit major. I'd never worked hard in my life. I had everything handed to me. I was a joke of a human. And I showed up in investment banking. It became clear within probably two to three months that I was about to get fired. I had no work ethic. I mean, I prided myself on taking the minimum number of hours in class in college to graduate. Right.
Anyway, it was like the best thing that ever happened to me was go through investment banking. Gave me a work ethic. But the biggest thing that I had trouble with that everybody, like all the associates, everyone was like, God damn it, David. Like...
respond to your freaking emails. So it's always been the bane of my professional existence. I've always wanted somebody to just respond to my damn emails for me. Help David not get fired from his iBanking job. I was so close. It was a miracle that I didn't get fired. So what would have happened otherwise for your career? That is a pretty big what would have happened otherwise. I have no idea. Yeah.
I think that really would have been like truly terrible for like, how did you get a job at what was it? UBS UBS? Yeah, it was 2007. And it was just like, it was the go go days. And they were like, well, you're at an Ivy League school. And despite the fact that you're not in any sort of related major, you're Princeton. So sure. That's exactly what happened.
And I'm sure you're a great interviewer and like a good amount of like raw horsepower when they talk to you and all that. I would say it was two things. One, what you said, which is like, oh, you got into an Ivy League school, like, you know, you're sure. And then two, the more important thing was that this is the thing with the network. There was a woman who was two years ahead of me at Princeton. She was also a French lit major. We were friends. She was great. And she...
worked at UBS in the TMT group. And so when I interviewed, when almost always, at least back then, alumni of the schools that were at the banks go back to campus. And so I show, I walk into my first round interview and there's Tony. And she's like, David, Tony. And
I got a job that I totally did not deserve. You know, I have almost the exact same story. No, no way. Have I ever told you this? No. I got bonus points in a freshman survey class for going to the career fair because no one hires freshman interns. And I was like going around to all these booths talking to people. And at some point, the people at the Cisco booth were like, I'm going to stop spending time talking to you because I just found out you're a freshman and we can't hire a freshman or we don't hire freshmen.
And I was like, oh, that's totally fine. But I like learning about networking. And so I was talking to the guy for a while. And finally, he was like, we do have an extra spot. So like, come, come interview tomorrow. By networking, you mean like computer networking? Yes. Yes. Oh, exactly. Like, I was like, what do you mean this like test that people study for this CCNA test that people study forever for? And what is the OSI model? And
Anyway, so I show up to the interview and not only is the guy sitting across from me an Eagle Scout, like he grabs my resume, which has nothing on it. I was like this intern in high school for the, anyway, but like I'm an Eagle Scout. And so he was like, oh, I'm an Eagle Scout. Oh.
And I was like, oh, okay. And then on top of that, he was the college roommate of the professor who ran the honors engineering group. And I was in the honors engineering group. And he was like, oh, you're gonna have so much fun with, you know, Rick in a couple quarters when you have him. And, you know, from there. That's amazing. But yeah, I showed up in a suit to this interview. This like huge boxy suit is very entertaining. I would kill to get a photo of Ben on that day. Yeah.
I mean, you were a kid, right? Yeah. I mean, I'd written some websites in PHP in high school, but that was kind of the... I'd learned a little Python, but I hadn't had an actual engineering class yet. Wow. Oh, the other thing I just remembered about that interview that I had with Tony, I remember what she asked me as the case study.
Google had just bought YouTube. And she said, do you think that was a good acquisition? No, you got to be kidding me. I swear to God, unless my mind is playing tricks on me, I am 95% sure. Can we get her on the line? You should send her a note and publish whatever the response is and try not to lead the witness. I'm curious if she'll remember too. Because if that is true, Acquired was pure destiny. Oh my God. I am like...
95 plus percent sure that that actually happened. Now I'm really stretching, but I think I said it was a terrible idea, which if you go back to our YouTube episode, which we've been saying for years and years that we need to redo, I gave it a C, which was like,
Yeah, it's the worst grade we've... I was totally wrong. It's an A freaking plus. And yeah. In part, that C was like, we learned as we did the show that there were sort of these other reasons for acquisition. Like, I don't think we thought that hard about...
strategic reasons to own something or owning something so your competitors don't. There's a bunch of reasons why Google was a very good idea, even though it was net negative for them financially for a long time. Yeah. Well, I think also...
I mean, shoot, one of the things for me in this journey of acquired journey we've been on has just like vastly expanded the time horizon that I think about. Yes. And back then when we did that episode. Five year paybacks. Yeah. Yeah. 2015, 2016, whenever we did it and YouTube was still losing money. And I remember feeling like, God, it's almost a decade in. This thing is still losing money. Like these people are idiots. And like.
It was just about to turn the corner and now it's, I mean, God, like I don't know what YouTube's financials are, but like... I can't remember. Yeah, they started breaking them out. It makes a lot of money. It makes a lot of money. They do have to pay half of it to creators, which is interesting. It's no Instagram. The YouTube model is really interesting. It really is such a different beast.
Even just thinking about like MKBHD or like some of the really big YouTubers out there, they've got some like direct advertisers, but like way less than we do. Like you just don't have to build that muscle as much as a YouTuber because you get partner ad dollars for like YouTube does the ad sales.
I really wouldn't want that. Me neither. For acquired though. No, like I love that we have such deep relationships with our sponsors. Like it feels like true partners. Like hell, we invest in like half of them. Actually, I should look. I assume their YouTube is probably running ads on the stuff that we're putting up there.
but it feels, it always seems to cheapen the content, especially if you put in spots for mid-rolls. It's like, it's the difference between algorithm and taste. Like, it feels like YouTube is good at matching you with something either relevant for you or relevant to the content you're watching, but just because MKBHD talks about computers, it doesn't mean that, like, I also want to see a Dell ad. Like, even if it's in category. Definitely on the ads, and
Honestly, also on the content algorithm too. And I love YouTube. I consume a lot of YouTube, but I constantly feel like there is so much other good stuff on there that I just don't never see because the algorithm like.
Yeah, it's so latches on to like, I love Doug DeMuro. He's awesome. Like he's one of my favorite creators. I don't really care that much about cars. I just love Doug. And like they're constantly feeding me like car stuff. And I'm like, I don't care. I only watch this because I like Doug, you know, but like the algorithm doesn't figure that out. Yep. All right, dude. I think we should call it listeners. Thank you for going on the random journey with us. David, congratulations on your parenthood.
Congratulations on your M1, finally. Finally. Finally. So fun. Let us know too, folks, if you like this, you want more random episodes, maybe we'll do more random episodes in the future. Yep. Listeners, we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.
