The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches and jewelry you love.
We’ve teamed up with Chubb, the premier insurer of valuable collections.
No matter where your adventures take you across the globe, rest assured, your watches and jewelry remain safeguarded.
If you suffer a covered loss, there’s no deductible.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches and jewelry you love.
We’ve teamed up with Chubb, the premier insurer of valuable collections.
No matter where your adventures take you across the globe, rest assured, your watches and jewelry remain safeguarded.
If you suffer a covered loss, there’s no deductible.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
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The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches and jewelry you love.
We’ve teamed up with Chubb, the premier insurer of valuable collections.
No matter where your adventures take you across the globe, rest assured, your watches and jewelry remain safeguarded.
If you suffer a covered loss, there’s no deductible.
Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).
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Behind the scenes with one of the top business podcasts in the world.
I’ve listened to Acquired for years—on runs, on planes, while doing dishes—and so the voices of hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal have become as familiar as old friends. I know their cadences and laughs so well that it felt surreal to find myself actually speaking with them a few weeks ago following the launch of their latest episode, a five-hour deep dive on Rolex.
Hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
I first asked them how they landed on Rolex to do an episode about. “There’s a spreadsheet that, at this point, has about 300 company names,” Gilbert explains. Potential episodes come from everywhere. Over the years, listeners have requested Rolex “at least a hundred” times. The timing aligned with their accidental tradition: “Two years ago in February, we did LVMH. Last year in February, we did Hermès. And so we’ve sort of accidentally fallen into February being luxury month here at Acquired,” says Gilbert.
Both hosts admit their tech backgrounds initially left them with blind spots. “I don’t think either of us knew anything about the business of luxury or luxury strategy,” Rosenthal reflects. Their key insight about luxury products centers on evolution: “Initially, when created, there is a true functional purpose, and 100% of the value comes from the function,” Gilbert explains. “Over time, something can remain valuable, even when it outlives its function, by transcending its function.”
Gilbert and Rosenthal invest approximately 100 hours in research for most episodes, and their dedication to this process is truly commendable. The Rolex episode demanded even more, with work beginning three months ahead of their typical one-month window. For Rolex, they combined five books, numerous Hodinkee articles, consulting from both Ben Clymer and Joe Thompson, and conversations with watch enthusiasts in their wider networks.
Despite exhaustive research, they encountered significant information gaps—a byproduct of Rolex’s famously private nature. “There’s actually not much that is authoritatively known about Rolex that they have confirmed because they’re just so tight-lipped,” Gilbert observes. They found almost no definitive information about how the company navigated critical business inflection points like the quartz crisis. “Zero people had a definitive answer for me on, ‘What were the meetings like at Rolex headquarters, where they were making decisions about their strategy?'” Gilbert says. Another revelation was Rolex’s market position. As Rosenthal puts it, “Rolex just dominates the industry… They’re just playing a different game than everybody else.”
Their initial recording was 8-10 hours long. Their audio engineer delivered a first cut of approximately 5 hours and 44 minutes. Gilbert and Rosenthal then spent about 12 hours listening at normal speed, making 600 cuts to reduce it to 5 hours and 9 minutes.”We force ourselves to listen at 1x and walk around while we’re listening, to basically become bored, and then figure out which parts are bothering us the most on the second or third listen,” Gilbert explains.
The hosts are conscious of their audience and make a concerted effort to bridge the gap between experts and the general public. “We are making the episode for people who don’t know what a movement is, but we want the watch nerds to respect our work,” Gilbert explains. “We want the watch nerds to listen and be like, ‘Yep, they got it right,’ but we want it at the level understandable by the smart general public.”
I was curious about how they achieved this balance, and their response was ingenious. They ask each expert they consult: “If you listen to this episode and think, ‘These guys suck, they totally missed it,’ what would cause that reaction?” Then, they ensure those critical elements are included. This thoughtful approach clearly works.
For Gilbert and Rosenthal, each episode represents not just a business’ history but an opportunity to uncover insights that transcend industries—examining Standard Oil’s monopoly or the enduring allure of a Hermès saddle. Those 100+ hours of research and 12+ hours of editing result in something that feels effortless to the listener. I finished the podcast, the longest I’ve ever completed, and I felt empty. Was that it? I don’t want it to be over. Maybe I can ask David and Ben for the unabridged version to help fill the void.
You can find out more about Acquired here, and listen to the Rolex episode here.
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