The hosts of the popular business and technology podcast Acquired are raising a new fund to invest in growth-stage tech companies.
GeekWire spotted a new SEC filing today that revealed the fund.
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, the longtime techies and hosts of Acquired, already do personal investing in companies they know from their work on the podcast. Now they’re creating a more formal mechanism to do so.
“The fund is just a vehicle with a small set of LPs that lets us fully utilize those allocations when they’re offered to us,” Gilbert told GeekWire via email Wednesday.
Gilbert and Rosenthal are no strangers to the venture capital world. They worked together at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle before launching Acquired as a side hobby in 2015.
The show has grown into one of the world’s leading technology and business podcasts, doubling its listener base each year since inception. It now attracts more than 600,000 monthly listeners and is currently among the top five tech shows on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
“We’re being very intentional right now not to build a new venture capital ‘firm’ per-se, so we can stay focused on making the best Acquired episodes we can,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert and Rosenthal have invested in startups that they became familiar with through Acquired, including Vanta, Modern Treasury, and Go1.
“We’re fortunate that the podcast often gives us unique access to participate in investment rounds as these companies scale,” Gilbert said.
Acquired tells in-depth stories and strategies of companies, with episodes typically three to four hours in length. The latest episode, a deep dive on Microsoft, came out this week, with Gilbert calling it the “Super Bowl of Acquired.”
Other popular episodes analyze companies such as Nike, Costco, and LVMH. Guests on the show have included NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and the late Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway.
Acquired generates revenue from sponsors and subscribers.
Gilbert recently transitioned to a new role at Pioneer Square Labs, the Seattle startup studio he helped launch in 2015, to focus more time on Acquired. Rosenthal is still an investor at San Francisco-based Kindergarten Ventures.
