Charlie Munger

**David Rosenthal** (0:00)
Ben, when we teased this episode in the email about the Jensen episode that we just released, the guesses that we were getting from folks were amazing.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:10)
I mean, people were like, it's Charlie, it's Warren, or it's Taylor Swift, and a lot of people were right.

**David Rosenthal** (0:14)
Hey, Taylor, you know where to find us, acquiredfm at gmail.com.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:18)
If you are looking to get more publicity, we're open.

**David Rosenthal** (0:21)
Have Travis get in touch.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:23)
All right, let's do it. Welcome to this episode of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:49)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:50)
We are your hosts.
This episode is a very unique one for David and I. Good friend of the show, Andrew Marks, organized a little dinner for us with Charlie Munger and a few other folks at Charlie's home in Los Angeles. You can hear Andrew a few times in the background asking Charlie questions. We are pretty sure that this is the only podcast that Charlie has ever done. Charlie, aside from being one of the most prolific investors of all time, alongside his partner, Warren Buffett, is 99 years old. He will turn 100 on January 1st. Of course, our conversation was interesting because he's freaking Charlie Munger, but also because it was interesting to get the perspective of someone who has seen the last 99 years of human history. We talked with Charlie, of course, about Costco, his history investing in retailers over the last 50 years. We also got to hear his views on what it takes to build a great partnership, what's gone wrong in the global securities markets these days, the concept of investing versus gambling, and where investment opportunities remain in the world today.

**David Rosenthal** (1:53)
Yeah. Ben, this was such a special life experience for you and me, and you and me together to do this. The fact that we got to record it and now share it with the world for posterity, just icing on the cake and the whole thing was unbelievable.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:06)
Yeah. Listeners, we knew we were going to have dinner. We were not sure whether we were going to be able to record it, and now we get to share it with all of you. With that, join the Slack. There is awesome discussion of every episode and the news of the day at acquired.fm slash Slack. If you sign up for acquired emails, you will get episode corrections and follow up from previous episodes plus hints at what the next episode will be. That's acquired.fm slash email, and we have only one sponsor for this interview.

**David Rosenthal** (2:34)
Yes. A special conversation deserves a special sponsorship, and longtime listeners will know there's only one company in the acquired universe that is truly appropriate because everything they do is modeled after Charlie and Warren, and that's Tiny.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:48)
Tiny is the Berkshire Hathaway of the Internet. Literally, they are such huge fans that they started a company that makes bronze busts of Buffett and Munger themselves, but more on that in a minute.

**David Rosenthal** (2:57)
Yeah. So Berkshire, as we know, started as a textile mill in Massachusetts nearly 200 years ago, and almost 20 years ago, Tiny founders Andrew Wilkinson and his partner Chris took their version of an Internet textile mill, the premier design agency Metalab, which designed the UIs for Slack, Uber, Tinder, Headspace, Coinbase, and others. They asked themselves, what would Charlie and Warren do if they were us? That led to the realization that just like Berkshire discovered in the physical world, the Internet also has wonderful niche businesses with great cash flows. In fact, they tend to be even better than the old days of seize candies and blue chip stamps because they require zero capital reinvestment, have software margins, and can build global brands much faster than the what, 50 some odd years it took seize to expand around the world.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:48)
So Andrew and Chris took the extra cash flow from MetaLab and their other businesses and created Tiny, the world's first and best permanent holding company for wonderful Internet businesses and boy did it work.

**David Rosenthal** (3:59)
Yeah. Fast forward to today and thanks to Tiny's success, this opportunity is no longer a secret. Many people have caught on to the idea that this can really work. But just like Berkshire itself, no one else has the combination of experience, temperament, access to capital and frankly, reputation that Andrew and Chris have built over the past two decades. We're investors in Tiny ourselves alongside Bill Ackman and Howard Marks. Just like the two of them, Tiny is really the long-term buyer of choice in their niche. Anyone who's looking for a permanent home for their profitable Internet business, or who needs a capital partner for a co-founder or VC cap table buyout, would be lucky to work with Tiny.