YOUR BOSS'S FAVORITE PODCASTERS

The cofounders of Acquired treat business stories like epics. Their listeners (and sponsors) can't get enough.

- ADAM LASHINSKY

SUCCESS HAS COME SLOWLY AND YET RECENTLY ENOUGH TO DAVID Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert that you get the sense neither can quite believe their good fortune. In fact, the hosts of Acquired, one of the most popular-and unusual-podcasts about business, are at a point in their journey that closely resembles the early days of the business titans whose stories they obsessively and meticulously tell: They are breakout stars but still more or less operating by the seat of their pants.

In 2015, the pair were coworkers and new friends at the venture-capital firm Madrona Venture Group in Seattle when they decided, just for the fun of it, to make a podcast about tech-industry mergers and acquisitions. "That was it," recalls Rosenthal, who is 39. "We were buddies. Podcasting wasn't a thing. It was barely an industry. We didn't think any more of it."

Nearly a decade later, everything has changed for the duo. They have quit their VC jobs and are each earning seven figures creating a podcast whose episodes are downloaded more than 900,000 times within six months, with a listener base that has been doubling yearly. They have moved on from solely focusing on technology or M&A to include creation-to-present-day coverage of companies like Hermès, Visa, and Novo Nordisk, as well as moneymaking institutions like the NFL and Taylor Swift.