Disney, Plus

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
Disney makes it very approachable, but I've just read all their IR stuff, and it's not hard. It's really cogent. I mean, it's quite refreshing moving from analyzing loss-making, fast-growing tech companies to a company like Disney that just makes it plain, makes it clear. It makes a lot of sense.

**David Rosenthal** (0:20)
Yeah, isn't trying to hide the ball.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:22)
Yeah. All right, let's do it.

**David Rosenthal** (0:25)
Let's do it.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:37)
Welcome to season five, episode seven of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert, and I'm the co-founder of Pioneer Square Labs, a startup studio and early stage venture fund in Seattle.

**David Rosenthal** (0:51)
And I'm David Rosenthal, and I am a general partner at Wave Capital, an early stage venture firm focused on marketplaces based in San Francisco.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:59)
And we are your hosts. This time, it's different. these are four very dangerous words that should set off an alarm every time you hear them. Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, is trying to achieve the pipe dream of what has failed so many times before in the media industry, combining content and distribution under one roof. It has been tragic before, famously with AOL Time Warner and recently being tried with Comcast, NBC Universal and AT&T Time Warner. But Disney has to compete against digital disruptors like Netflix, who have successfully built their own distribution and content in house. So here we are, one week after the ambitious launch of Disney Plus, where Disney will try to attempt the multi-year mission to do just that, transform their business, not just to make great content and capitalize on the intellectual property through parks, licensing and merchandise, but to be the distribution of that content as well, directly to consumers. Or another way to frame it, Bob Iger just kicked off one of the most ambitious attempts to buck the innovator's dilemma of all time, compromising hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed revenue from keeping their content on Netflix and others in hopes of capturing the long-term asset of a direct connection with their fans. It is no understatement to tell you that David and I are absolutely giddy to dive into this episode and are hot off of reading Iger's fantastic book, The Ride of a Lifetime.

**David Rosenthal** (2:27)
Are we ever. I have one question for you though, Ben. Have you watched The Mandalorian yet?

**Ben Gilbert** (2:32)
I have.

**David Rosenthal** (2:33)
What are your thoughts?

**Ben Gilbert** (2:35)
No spoilers. And I do think.

**David Rosenthal** (2:36)
No, no, no, no spoilers.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:39)
I'm a huge fan. I think Jon Favreau is so far proven to be an amazing steward of that franchise.

**David Rosenthal** (2:47)
Yeah. Yeah. I haven't, I haven't watched episode two yet. I've only watched episode one, but I was a big fan. I've been doing so much research for this episode.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:54)
Well, that's research.

**David Rosenthal** (2:55)
That is, that's true. That is research. I'll have to tell Jenny that.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:00)
This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Crusoe.

**David Rosenthal** (3:05)
So Crusoe, as listeners know by now, is a clean compute cloud provider specifically built for AI workloads. NVIDIA is one of their major partners and literally Crusoe's data centers are nothing but racks and racks of A100s and H100s. And because Crusoe's cloud is purpose built for AI and run on wasted, stranded or clean energy, they can provide significantly better performance per dollar than traditional cloud providers.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:31)
yes, we talked about that on our ACQ2 episode with Crusoe's CEO, Chase Lockmiller.

**David Rosenthal** (3:36)
The other element that makes Crusoe special is the environmental angle. Crusoe, of course, locates their data centers at stranded energy sites. So think oil flares, wind farms that can't use all the energy they generate, et cetera, and uses that power that would otherwise be wasted to run your AI workloads instead.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:55)
Obviously, it's a huge benefit for the environment and for customers on costs since Crusoe doesn't rely on the energy grid. Energy is the second largest cost of running AI after, of course, the price you pay NVIDIA for the chips. And these lower energy costs get passed on to customers.

**David Rosenthal** (4:11)
It's super cool that they can put their data centers out there in these remote locations where quote-unquote energy happens, as opposed to the other hyperscalers such as AWS and Google and Azure, who need to build their data centers close to major traffic hubs where the internet happens because they are doing everything in their clouds.