The Random Episode: Twitter Commentary and 2019 Survey Feedback

David Rosenthal (0:00)

You know what, I feel like, screw it.

Let's just try to read our Twitter feeds and give commentary on it. I mean, it could be terrible. We'll listen to it. If it's really terrible, we won't release it, but I don't know, it could be fun.

Ben Gilbert (0:13)

Totally, totally.

David Rosenthal (0:15)

Like it, let's do it.

Ben Gilbert (0:16)

And listeners, if you are hearing this, then it means we decided to ship it.

Yeah, LPs, we had a really, really good idea for an episode today. And that really, really good idea is what David just said. We are going to not read our tweets exactly, but scroll through Twitter and discuss things that jump out at us, whether they are tech startup related or not.

Maybe it's just some memes that we really like. And then toward the end of this episode, we are going to do a little bit of a to dive into listener feedback from the survey. We had a good number of folks say that they wanted to know what some of the results were, not only of sort of who listens to the show, but if people feel the same way that you do about subjects such as is it better to have guests? Is it better for us to be alone? Do we like our long episodes? Do we like short episodes? I wouldn't say any of the results were surprising because we keep a pretty good finger on the pulse from having Slack, but I think there's some interesting data in there that it's probably, if you like Acquired as much as we do, if you're interested in Acquired, you might like hearing some of that. So we'll dive into that at the end of the episode.

David Rosenthal (1:29)

Let's do it.

Ben Gilbert (1:31)

All right, David, what's the first tweet in your feed right now?

David Rosenthal (1:34)

So the first tweet in my feed is that Dan Lee liked Acquired Podcasts tweet about the Google Maps episode.

Ben Gilbert (1:44)

Oh, that is sterile.

David Rosenthal (1:45)

I know.

Ben Gilbert (1:46)

That is boring. I love Dan Lee.

David Rosenthal (1:49)

I know, Dan is great.

Ben Gilbert (1:50)

Dan's a good friend, works at Medrano.

David Rosenthal (1:52)

Our former colleague at Medrano.

Ben Gilbert (1:54)

I have Marques Brownlee, MKBHD, says uploading, dot dot dot. So he must be uploading a new YouTube video 13 minutes ago. He's got close to a thousand likes.

David Rosenthal (2:05)

I'm pumped. I love MKBHD, and as Ben and I have been chatting about, we need to do a revisit of YouTube.

We were kicking around for fun, the idea of like, maybe we should reach out to MKBHD and see if he wants to join us as a guest on the, give the creator perspective when we redo YouTube on Acquired.

Ben Gilbert (2:26)

It'd be Acquired's first influencer.

David Rosenthal (2:28)

Yeah, seriously.

He is great. And I'm sure he would be actually really smart.

Ben Gilbert (2:34)

Gadget reviewer, amazing Frisbee player, he'd be great. All right, here's Brian Boshay. Why do people say, let's talk offline during an in-person meeting?

Oh, tech-isms, there's like a whole laundry list of like just horrific, cringeworthy things that people say in meetings that you're like, look, I know that it was cool to say, let's double click on this in Microsoft in the late 90s, but the fact that we're still talking about it today and still using that lingo is just awful.

David Rosenthal (3:04)

Oh, man, oh, man. Yeah, that's funny. As I was scrolling through, looking for my next tweet to talk about, I saw the same tweet that you had liked.

Clearly, I haven't logged in to Twitter in a while.

Ben Gilbert (3:14)

I was gonna say, yeah, your Twitter is really catching you up on...

David Rosenthal (3:17)

The algorithmic feed is...

Ben Gilbert (3:18)

Do you just follow me in the Acquired account?

David Rosenthal (3:21)

I think I may only follow you in the Acquired account in our portfolio companies, but no, here we go.

This is from, I think, a like from my friend Connor Miravold at Uber. Sahil Lavindia says, first time founders care most about product, second time founders care most about distribution.

Ben Gilbert (3:41)

I think that's a Justin Cahn quote.

Ah, maybe, maybe. And Sahil, is that SHL, is that his Twitter handle?

David Rosenthal (3:48)

Yes, that is him.

Ben Gilbert (3:50)

I could be wrong, and that could actually be a Sahil quote, but yeah, Sahil founded Gumroad. And he wrote that insane blog post about-

David Rosenthal (3:58)

His next tweet in the thread is, Justin Cahn beat me to it.