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Totally surreal to wake up and see your 9-year passion project on the front of the @WSJ.
Thanks @bzcohen, for really capturing the essence of @AcquiredFM.
wsj.com/business/media/acqui…
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
.@gilbert and @djrosent recently shared the story of Home Depot on @AcquiredFM, which is another masterclass on building a customer obsessed culture. Home Depot has had the highest total stock return since IPO in modern U.S. market history, even more than others like Apple or Microsoft.
Some examples of their customer obsessed culture:
- They called their central office in Atlanta the “Store Support Center” instead of “headquarters,” because the central office exists to support the front-line associates who serve customers
- They hired trained tradespeople who could actually help customers with the nuances of home projects, instead of retail associates who did not have that expertise
- They gave all front-line associates equity so that everyone’s incentives were aligned
Future leadership changed these policies to pump revenue and margins (hiring non-tradespeople to lower costs, not aligning executive compensation with stock value, etc), and it led to Home Depot almost dying. Their next leader got them back to their basics.
It’s neither a surprise nor coincidence that the legendary retail stores of today (Home Depot, Amazon, Walmart, etc) are all legendary for their customer obsession.
The episode is worth a listen, as always.
In a world where it’s easier than ever to start and scale a new business, customer service may end up being the ultimate differentiator.
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
Amazing night with all of you and our friends at @sentry. Thanks to everyone who came out for our 2026 community meetup!
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
Live in the @WSJ now: Our piece on how Home Depot became larger than anyone ever could have imagined.
wsj.com/business/retail/home…
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
In 1978, Home Depot's founders hired a marketing consultant to come up with the store name.
Insanely, the consultant came up with "Bad Bernie's Buildall". Thankfully, the wife of one of their investors thought of "The Home Depot" instead.
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"Home Depot is the greatest total returning U.S. public stock since the day it went public."
Acquired co-hosts @djrosent and @gilbert joined the show today to break down their latest episode on The Home Depot.
"You could have bought any other stock like Apple, NVIDIA, or Microsoft on any day since 1981 and still not made as much money as you would have buying Home Depot on the day of its IPO."
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
Home Depot is a much bigger business than you think it is.
And unbelievably, it has generated the highest total return of any company in the S&P 500 since it's IPO in 1981.
Episode live in your podcast players now!
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
Our PDF companion for Disney Part II is now complete.
We... went a little overboard this time :)
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A few other amazing tidbits if you watch the full scene (piped.video/OElUWCKsPgM?t=56):
1) The background is slightly out of focus to simulate depth of field on the "lens"! And -- an astonishing attention to detail -- the blur is actually variable. As the characters move away from the camera, the background gets sharper to sell the effect. Closer to the camera, blurrier. It's insane they simulated this (4 years before Toy Story), especially given the actual characters in the foreground were HAND DRAWN and then composited in layer.
2) Hilariously, I think the frame rates are slightly different. If I had to guess, I think the background is rendered at 24fps, but the characters are animated "on twos", or only 12fps. The background looks smoother than Belle and Beast to me.
3) The characters reflect off the polished marble floor!! Which, I *think* was done in 2D just like the characters (since it seems to match the choppier frame rate of the characters). This makes the whole thing even more believable to the viewer, so you aren't jarred by tossing 2D characters on a 3D background.
The way this scene happened in 1991 is fascinating.
The characters are of course drawn in 2D by hand, like the rest of the film.
But the background is rendered in 3D with computers (using Pixar’s RenderMan software… long before they made their own feature films!).
Then, the 2D layer is composited over the 3D layer using CAPS, the software Pixar developed for Disney to replace the decades-old multiplane camera.
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As you'd expect, @benthompson on @InvestLikeBest is excellent.
Ben's Google-search-as-See's-Candy reference out of the gate: Bravo. open.spotify.com/episode/0VP…
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RT @AcquiredFM: On Disney Part II, we referenced a particularly large number of videos and other visuals. Which... is tough on an audio pod…
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Looks like a scene from Interstellar.
After approx. 24 days at sea, the SpaceX Recovery team successfully guided Starship to a location just off the coast of Christmas Island. A team of SpaceX engineers is on their way to conduct additional analysis on the vehicle in calmer waters before attempting to return it to Starbase
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
When the Toy Story team was making the army men in 1994, it would have been very difficult to put the 'chutes inside their backpacks. So instead...
They just made two different variants! And used some clever "camera" work to switch between the two models, and hide when the swap occurred.
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
How Pixar's animation process works:
Story reels → Layout → Animation → Shading (texture/color) → Lighting → Render
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
For Toy Story's green army men, the animators physically nailed shoes to a piece of plywood and hopped around the office to understand how the characters should move.
So cool.
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
Amazing video of a young Pete Docter animating Woody during the making of Toy Story.
Because of computational limits in 1994, if you viewed a character in full-res, you couldn't get real-time feedback while animating. So they used these basic polygon approximations instead. Which are... a little terrifying.
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Truly insane that the highest-grossing piece of entertainment ever (single story, not episodic) is a Broadway musical.
Never would have guessed.
Fascinating that The Lion King musical is the highest-grossing piece of entertainment ever.
(As mentioned by @djrosent, @gilbert in @AcquiredFM.)
$11 bill in revenue since its 1997 Broadway debut - more than any film, video game, etc.
Here's how it stacks up vs. top 5 films:
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Ben Gilbert retweeted
We're about to tick into waitlist-only territory for our big 500-person Acquired meetup in SF.
We've got a great night planned for all of you with our friends at @sentry! acquired.fm/meetup
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