Epic Games

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
Yeah, I actually have, on some Zoom calls, been listening to Spotify in the background of my headphones, but it makes the video calls so much better.

**David Rosenthal** (0:08)
That's so good. Just like, low in the background, you've got Spotify going. That's amazing.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:12)
It's like, nice of you to join me in the club for our meeting.

**David Rosenthal** (0:17)
That's really smart.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:31)
welcome to Season 7, Episode 3 of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:40)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:42)
And we are your hosts. Now, for everyone new to the show, and for everyone who's been with us for a while, it's been a while since we introduced ourselves, so we wanted to tell you a little bit about who we are. I am the co-founder of Pioneer Square Labs in Seattle. We are a startup studio and early stage venture fund, and my background is primarily in founding companies and product management.

**David Rosenthal** (1:03)
And I have been a long-time venture capitalist. I'm currently an independent angel investor and advisor to startups based in San Francisco, so I come at things from the venture and investing side.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:16)
Most importantly, we are excited to be with you today as peers and practitioners in the industry, diving into stories that I think we all talk about at the water cooler when that was a thing.

**David Rosenthal** (1:26)
The Zoom cooler.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:27)
The Zoom cooler, exactly. Well, today we will explore what happens when an idealist has full control over a product with perfect global product market fit, unbelievable economics, and has the leverage to shape the world to his idealistic will, even potentially at the expense of his own business. Today we talk about Epic Games, makers of Fortnite and the Unreal game engine. You probably know of them since Fortnite is an absolute international phenomenon, the most played game in the world, and for parents out there, the way Gen Z hangs out with each other. Or because they are currently the most credible threat to the world's largest company, Apple. Not to mention, of course, the incredible amount of attention Fortnite consumes is a threat to Facebook's advertising business model, Netflix cites it to their investors as the number one threat, and Epic is really the primary US ally of the quiet Chinese giant Tencent. But, their ambitions expand far beyond any of this, and we can't wait to bring you the full story today. And for the bootstrappers out there, this may just be the most successful bootstrapping story of all time, going 22 years from founding before raising a dime of investment. So strap in.

**David Rosenthal** (2:43)
Incredible. Can't wait to dive into this one.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:46)
Well, as always, if you love Acquired and you want to hone your craft of company building, you should join the community of Acquired Limited Partners. You'll get access to the LP show, where we dive deeper into the fundamentals of company building and investing, in addition to our monthly LP calls where we talk with all of you directly, and of course our book club and the Zoom calls that we have with the authors. Our most recent episode on the LP show was on the fundamentals of venture capital, discussing how VC firms make their investment decisions. So tune in if that's of interest to you as a founder or active or aspiring investor. If you aren't already a Limited Partner, you can click the link in the show notes or go to acquired.fm slash LP and all new listeners get a 7-day free trial.

**David Rosenthal** (3:28)
We realized too while we're introducing and explaining ourselves here, it's been a while since we've talked about why we call this thing the Limited Partner Program. It's because Limited Partners are the folks that give capital to VCs and venture firms and make everything possible. And that's what you guys are for us too. You are super special. Everyone who is an LP, we thank you. And if you want to become one, can't wait to have you.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:53)
Yep. This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Crusoe.

**David Rosenthal** (3:59)
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.