Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi)

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
Hey, Acquired listeners, we have some fun news for you. Following hot on the news that we are doing a freaking arena show.

**David Rosenthal** (0:07)
Arena show.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:11)
At Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, we are here tonight to announce the very first guest that will be joining us for that show.

**David Rosenthal** (0:18)
Ben, who is it?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:20)
It is fresh off his full page profile in the New York Times this weekend, Jim Weber, the CEO of Brooks Running. We wanted to have a really fun local Seattle success story, but I think most people have no idea the magnitude of the success story here or Jim's personal story. It's fascinating.

**David Rosenthal** (0:40)
We want everything we do for this event to literally check all the acquired boxes. This checks all the acquired boxes.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:46)
Berkshire Hathaway.

**David Rosenthal** (0:48)
Berkshire Hathaway. People who don't know Brooks Running is a very successful now standalone division of Berkshire Hathaway. Local Seattle story. Amazing, amazing journey. What they went from under Jim, they went from de minimis, small number of millions of revenue to over a billion in revenue a year, competing with Nike and Adidas.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:09)
They were accidentally bought by Berkshire as part of a fruit of the loom roll up, and they were this bland nothing brand and by unbelievable maniacal focus on making fantastic running products. That is how they became the billion-dollar business that they are today.

**David Rosenthal** (1:24)
Not to mention Jim battled cancer along the way. So great.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:29)
And when you say billion, by the way, we should say billion in revenue. This is a profitable, over a billion-dollar revenue growing company.

**David Rosenthal** (1:36)
This isn't a billion-dollar valuation. That's a billion in cash every year. Not cash flow, but revenue. Yes.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:43)
So we're very excited to have a conversation with Jim at the event. You should totally come join us. It's May 4th, doors open at 5 with plenty of time for drinks and mingling throughout the event. You can go to acquired.fm slash arena show or click the link in the show notes to RSVP. We've got a few more details in the previous little mini episode that we released to announce the arena show. All proceeds will go to Climate Pledge Arena's Philanthropy, the One Roof Foundation, $20 to attend. And we hope to see you there. Acquired.fm slash arena show or click the link in the show notes.

**David Rosenthal** (2:19)
We're going to have some more announcements coming over the next couple of weeks. And it's amazing. People are DMing us saying they're flying in from all over. If you live in Seattle, definitely come. If you don't live in Seattle, Alaska Air has great flights to SeaTac. This is going to be a huge party. We're so excited.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:36)
Awesome. Listeners, Acquired.fm slash arena show, we'll see you there. Welcome to this special episode of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert and I'm the co-founder and managing director of Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs and our venture fund, PSL Ventures.

**David Rosenthal** (3:11)
And I'm David Rosenthal, and I'm an angel investor based in San Francisco.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:17)
And we are your hosts. Well, today, back by extremely popular demand, we have Hamilton Helmer. We e-mail Hamilton like once a quarter or so, David, and ask, hey, have you found an 8th power yet?
And he always says, no. But he did finally say, hey, my colleague Chenyi and I have been developing a new framework for how executives can apply 7 powers for platform businesses, which are way more complicated. So obviously, we jumped at the chance to get to dig into this with Hamilton since we later found out that by platform, he means this very broadly, like any business that serves as an intermediary to make transactions. So it probably applies to the technology business that you're working on right now.

**David Rosenthal** (4:02)
Or investing in.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:03)
I find it particularly interesting reflecting after the interview, because it's a framework still in progress, so you can start to see some of the really important principles crystallize for Hamilton and Chenyi as they talk through it. We get to read about these things in business books 20 years after they're finalized and gone through tremendous rigor, and it's just really cool to see it in the infant stage.

**David Rosenthal** (4:26)
So fun to have Chenyi on too. She is an incredible rising star. For sure.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:32)
This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Crusoe.