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PUBLIC VIEWPOINTS

Ben Gilbert

Interview participant ·

3 interviews · 6 viewpoints · 1 topics

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Attributed viewpoints, ordered by interview date. A snapshot of these conversations, not a definitive statement of someone’s beliefs.

Building companies

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Building companies

Home Depot’s founders brought retail experience

Ben Gilbert notes that Home Depot’s founders came from retail—not contracting or hammer manufacturing.

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Original excerpt

of the people who would go on to found Home Depot, none of them are like general contractors or grew up in the hammer manufacturing business. It's people who just knew retail.

Ben Gilbert·

The Home Depot

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Open original · 9:20 (opens in a new tab)Transcript source (opens in a new tab)

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Ben Gilbert
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Building companies

Lower margins were part of Home Depot’s early pitch

Ben Gilbert describes Home Depot’s early pitch as offering low prices with a 30% gross margin—compared to the 45% gross margin typical of hardware retailers at the time.

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Original excerpt

The pitch is customers are going to love it because we're going to have the lowest prices. We're only going to make a 30% gross margin instead of what's industry standard in hardware retail at that time, 45%.

Ben Gilbert·

The Home Depot

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Open original · 41:57 (opens in a new tab)Transcript source (opens in a new tab)

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Building companies

Supplier payment terms helped finance inventory

Ben Gilbert says supplier payment terms and fast inventory turnover meant roughly half of Home Depot’s inventory was financed by suppliers.

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Original excerpt

So this resulted in about half of The Home Depot's inventory at any given time actually being financed by the suppliers

Ben Gilbert·

The Home Depot

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Open original · 56:11 (opens in a new tab)Transcript source (opens in a new tab)

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Building companies

Disney’s creative business had weakened

Ben Gilbert describes a period when nearly all Disney profit came from parks and licensed consumer products, rather than its creative businesses.

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Original excerpt

And David, things have gotten so bad in the creative core engine that nearly every dollar of profit is coming from the parks and licensing consumer products at this point.

Ben Gilbert·

Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire
Context

Yes, and that is, by far, the best option to fend off these corporate raiders. Dark times. Films and TV, you know, the Disney that you know of, the content business, is basically break-even. In 1984, Disney generated a quarter billion dollars of profit from its parks and consumer products and a mere $2 million from film and TV. The core of the famous Disney flywheel is completely broken.

Open original · 8:02 (opens in a new tab)Transcript source (opens in a new tab)

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Building companies

Disney stands apart in the hosts’ view of film studios

Ben Gilbert describes feature-film production as a mediocre business by Acquired’s standards and treats Disney as an exception.

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Original excerpt

studios. The business of feature film production is a mediocre one, especially by the standards of what we study on this show here with Acquired, except for

Ben Gilbert·

The Walt Disney Company
Context

Listeners, since there are tons of biographies and documentaries and places analyzing Walt's psyche, we're gonna focus today on Acquired's sweet spot, which is the business. What is it that Walt's merry band did from the 1920s onward that made them succeed uniquely well in Hollywood? And when you look at Disney's profits today, it is in a whole different league than Paramount or Universal or Warner Brothers or any of the other sorta classic Hollywood Disney.

Open original · 2:37 (opens in a new tab)Transcript source (opens in a new tab)

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Building companies

Disney made an unusual commitment to a theme park

Ben Gilbert highlights Disney’s decision to build a large theme park in Anaheim when nothing comparable existed.

Supporting evidence

Original excerpt

And of course, building a giant theme park in Anaheim when nothing else like it existed.

Ben Gilbert·

The Walt Disney Company
Context

And importantly for Acquired's roots, this really is a technology story. Giant innovations that often bet the whole company on things like synchronized sound, or the crazy idea of a feature-length animated movie at all, or the multiplane camera to photograph the whole thing and turn it into a movie. And they really did invent the entire concept of the flywheel business model that so many entrepreneurs are trying to copy.

Open original · 3:58 (opens in a new tab)Transcript source (opens in a new tab)

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Ben Gilbert
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Statements by interview date3

Statements are ordered by the original interview publication date; differences in wording do not establish a change of position.