The Mark Zuckerberg Interview

**David Rosenthal** (0:00)
So, how many interviews with Mark do you think you watched before tonight?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:04)
Oh, to prepare? Yeah. 30 to 40? The best ones are the 4 to 6 vintage, but they're all so different. It's almost like every three to four years is a new era that is markedly different from all the previous eras.

**David Rosenthal** (0:21)
Totally. And I think we might have witnessed the beginning of a new era right in front of us on stage.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:27)
No, oh yes, absolutely.

**David Rosenthal** (0:29)
All right, should we do this?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:31)
Let's do it. Welcome to the fall 2024 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:57)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:59)
And we are your hosts. Listeners, we have something very special for you today. Our interview with Mark Zuckerberg from Acquired live at Chase Center. Mark is the iconic founder CEO of our time, and this conversation was just too good to hold on to any longer. So we are getting it out quickly before we release the full video of the entire show.

**David Rosenthal** (1:20)
Which, speaking of the full show, was utterly amazing. We had surprise appearances from Jensen Huang, Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, and of course, we had the one and only Mike Taylor, the artist who sings Who Got the Truth, performing live. It was incredible. We've got basically a whole film production that's now happening behind the scenes, with another 90 minutes of content beyond just this Mark interview. We should have that out in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned for that.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:49)
First though, a huge thank you to our partners this season. You know our presenting partner, JP. Morgan Payments.

**David Rosenthal** (1:55)
And we are also pumped to have two more great returning sponsors this season. StatSig, the world's first product acceleration platform that thousands of companies from OpenAI to Series A startups rely on to ship fast, learn more and make smart decisions. You can find out more about them at statzig.com/acquired.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:13)
Sounds a lot like Meta. And Crusoe, which is the world's best climate-aligned AI cloud and data center operator that is leading the industrial buildout of AI. Find out more about them at crusoe.ai/acquired. As always, come discuss this afterwards with us in the Slack, acquired.fm slash slack. And if you want to be notified when every new episode drops, sign up at acquired.fm slash email.

**David Rosenthal** (2:40)
All right. One more thing before the interview. We need to say a huge, huge thank you to the entire JP. Morgan payments team for securing the Chase Center for this, for orchestrating the entire evening. Our partnership this year has been absolutely incredible and gone, I think, way beyond what either of us ever could have imagined.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:01)
Yeah. For those who don't know about JP. Morgan payments, they empower businesses to accept money, hold money, send money, protect money from fraud, and gain unique insights from money flows to help your company grow.

**David Rosenthal** (3:12)
Yep. And the payments business specifically, like most things at JP. Morgan, is the largest and most trusted payments provider in the entire world. They move $10 trillion a day. That's almost 25% of all US dollar payment flows in the global economy. Pretty much every single company that we cover on Acquired works with JP. Morgan payments in some way. You can never outgrow them. They partner with startups and small companies like us. Like you would be, Ben, all the way up to the largest enterprises in the Fortune 500 Yeah.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:42)
We've got more to share about their new payments products and technology this season, like the pay-by-face biometric payments that we saw live at Chase Center.

**David Rosenthal** (3:49)
Yeah. That was super cool.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:51)
Yep. So that you can learn which may be the right fit to solve your payments challenges and grow your business.

**David Rosenthal** (3:57)
The other thing we got to say is like, Ben and I really worked side-by-side all year with their incredible team to make this evening happen. And we really got to know them. Max, Umar, Dustin, Hannah, Vinny, Nick, Amy, Carly, and so many others. It's like we were one team. You guys rock.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:13)
Yeah, for the first time, we actually got to experience what it would be like if Acquired was a large world-class organization and not just, you know, our little team. And what happened at Chase Center is really the physical embodiment of that.

**David Rosenthal** (4:26)
Thank you guys for being the best partners we could ever imagine. And a very special shout out to Dustin Sedgwick, JP. Morgan Payments CMO, who's a long-time listener of the show and a good friend of ours. And he's just been the driving force behind all of this. Without him, Chase Center wouldn't have happened. And we're so grateful for our incredible relationship with you and all of JP. Morgan.