Ben Gilbert

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…

@alexrkonrad Nicely done.

@gilbert You have friends everywhere

Thought I was just a tourist, but it turns out I was part of it

@zeeg ❤️

One of my absolute favorite podcasts, and absolute favorite partners

@dadiomov @AcquiredFM Also unbelievable it almost happened with "Mineral King" as the name. It's even visible on some later versions of the flywheel diagram!

Listened to the Walt Disney Company @AcquiredFM episode and, not surprisingly, it's so so good. It did miss my favorite Walt Disney fun fact though. As a skier, my favorite contribution from Walt is the rating system for ski trails that we all know - green circle, blue square, black diamond. He invented it after being on the board of the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics, and when he died he was working on a Disney ski resort where Sequoia National Park is now, called Mineral King (imagine if...) The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) adopted Disney's system in 1968 because, guess what, Disney had a lot of practice with crowd control. More here: insidethemagic.net/2020/02/walt-d…

@nikillinit Yep

no one wants to admit this but...Epic has been doing forward deployed implementations and engineering for longer than most tech companies

The multiplane camera is a truly incredible piece of machinery. Walt Disney Productions created this one (the most sophisticated at the world) for the creation of Snow White.

@pitdesi Love them. But should definitely be smaller ratio than almonds or cashews in the mix. But get macadamia nuts out of here.

Does ANYONE actually like Brazil nuts? We should ban them from nut mixes

In the early days, Disney was not a great business. A single bad movie could tank the whole company. (They actually *lost* money for 5 years of this chart!) But...

Walt Disney's timing to embrace TV was impeccable. Right as adoption skyrocketed in 1954. Very contrarian too since most Hollywood studios were scared of TV stealing audience. He also maximized the impact since his TV show was essentially a giant commercial for Disneyland.

@Austin_Federa @AcquiredFM @OpenAI Didn't realize you were there -- thanks for coming!

The internet is great because in 2016 you can DM some guys doing a cool little podcast, and 10 years later they’re doing a show at Lincoln Center with Bret Taylor

@btaylor Awesome night. Thanks for the great conversation!

Thank you to the 1000+ folks who joined Ben, David, and me to discuss AI and Sierra in NYC. Amazing venue and amazing discussion

Disney started as an animation company. At its healthiest, it's a diversified entertainment company. But by 1983 — 17 years after Walt's death — it was unmistakably just a parks company.

@APNavaratnam @djrosent @AcquiredFM Or even better... if you could have invested earlier in the 6% cumulative preferred stock in 1940 :) Great work as always and thanks for your help on this one!

Hard to believe that one company controls all these franchises @gilbert, @djrosent No wonder Disney stock has been a 17,490x since IPO... Had a ton of fun helping create the new @AcquiredFM episode! PS: For our fellow nerds, our Disney multi-decade study can be found here: worldlypartners.com/businesshistor…

How did Disney become the best business of all the classic Hollywood studios? Animation (which is uniquely well-suited to compounding), the flywheel, and... a lesson learned the hard way.

Outside the original animation building. Hallowed ground.

Our ink and paint lesson. The process is absolutely nuts. Every frame of Snow White, Dumbo, Bambi, etc. was hand-created. Sketched on paper, then traced with ink on transparent celluloid, then painted on the back of celluloid. Onto the next frame. 100,00 times per film.

Sharing some of the photos from our research trip to Disney to prep for this @AcquiredFM episode. Here's @djrosent in his most natural habitat, pouring over 70-year-old annual reports :) (Note the original Haunted Mansion figures in the background)

In your podcast players now!

Tomorrow.

@jheitzeb Yes! Pretty sure it was a working film camera.

@gilbert that is that camera around your neck? that looks awesome

Toy Story was my favorite movie as a kid. Posters, action figures, the whole deal. My mom texted me this photo tonight. I forgot how much I had been dying to meet Woody and Buzz when our family went to Disney World in '95. All I cared about the whole trip. Tomorrow, my wife and I are taking our son (2.5) to see Toy Story 5. It'll be his first movie in theaters. It feels so surreal. Full circle. The kid loves Toy Story more than I ever did. It's all he ever wants to watch, and he cackles his way through the first four films. It's the best sound in the world to hear. Almost makes me cry thinking about that chuckle as I type this. Happy Father's Day everyone. Parenthood is hard, but it's also the best thing ever. To infinity and beyond.