Acquired
00:00:00 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:00:00] S0: So, David, I bought a DVD player for research for this episode. [00:00:05] S1: No way. Did you [00:00:07] S0: buy the box set? Because there is some stuff, like facts about the pilot that are only available in the DVD commentary and don't exist anywhere online. So I had to go on eBay, buy a copy of the, Seinfeld DVDs, and buy a brand new DVD player here in 2026 to view it. [00:00:28] S1: Do they even sell those on Amazon anymore? [00:00:30] S0: They do. Sony makes them. They're like, I don't know, a $100 or something. Sony. [00:00:34] S1: There you go. Appropriately. Distributors of Seinfeld. That's right. [00:00:38] S0: Alright. Should we do it? [00:00:39] S1: Let's do it. Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down. Say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth? [00:00:57] S0: Welcome to the fall twenty twenty six season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies... Well, usually companies, anyway. Usually. [00:01:06] S1: The podcast about great business assets [00:01:09] S0: And the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert. [00:01:13] S1: I'm David Rosenthal.
00:01:13 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:01:13] S1: I'm David Rosenthal. [00:01:14] S0: And we are your hosts. Today, listeners, we are taking a giant left turn. David and I were staring at each other, poring over our usual topic list, and we decided that we only wanted one criteria for selecting this one. What episode would we have the absolute most fun making, and can we do something different and fresh for Acquired? And we found something we are very pumped about, the business of Seinfeld, the show Seinfeld. We both had just read this astonishing stat that Seinfeld in the first six months of this year, in in 2026, has been watched by 60,000,000 Americans, which is about 20% of the entire US population. [00:02:00] S1: This show went off the air almost thirty years ago. [00:02:02] S0: So I reached out to Nielsen to verify this. Not only is it true, they said that if you update it through the end of August, that number is up from 60,000,000 to 72,000,000 Wow. [00:02:16] S1: That's almost the same audience size as the Seinfeld finale when it aired. This is a
00:02:22 · Ben Gilbert
[00:02:22] S0: show that finished making new episodes nearly three decades ago, and yet we are all still watching it. So why? Netflix's 2019 deal for Seinfeld, which was reported at well more than $500,000,000 over five years, was the largest sum that a streamer has ever paid an outside studio to license a series that's no longer in production. A $100,000,000 plus per year, decades after they are done making new episodes, and everything. The way the economics break down, the way that it is owned and structured is essentially a complete accident of history. Seinfeld managed to be one of the last shows of the old world where everyone watched the same thing at the same time, while at the same time also having a foot in the new world just as the Internet was taking off. Yep. And the story is really an entrepreneurial one of obsession, of craft, of a team that created the number one show in America by doing everything completely different than the way it had ever been done before and defying all conventional wisdom. It is one of the best examples we have ever studied on acquired where the creators, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, were such big believers that their product was excellent that they didn't care what anyone else thought or what the numbers looked like at first, and how a small, passionate, early fan base with a slow burn went on to become their greatest asset. Today, listeners, we do an experiment here on Acquired, the business of Seinfeld. Let's do it. So listeners, as always, you can find the visuals, charts, and illustrations of key concepts from this episode in our companion PDF at library.acquired.fm. You can join the email list at acquired dot f m slash email. That's where we will send all the behind the scenes photos that we found in research, past episode corrections, and vote on future episode topics. Acquired.fm/email. Come talk about this with us and the whole community in Slack after you listen at acquired.fm/slack. And before we dive in, we wanna thank our brand new presenting partner, Sierra.
00:04:28 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:04:28] S1: Yes. Sierra helps the great companies of the world build better customer experiences and drive stronger business outcomes with AI. [00:04:36] S0: That's s I e r r a, Sierra. So with that, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies that we discuss, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. David, where do we begin? [00:04:51] S1: Well, naturally, even though this is an episode about Seinfeld the show, not Jerry Seinfeld the person, we have to start with Jerry himself. Yes. So Jerry is born in 1954 in Brooklyn to a Jewish family. And when he's young, the family moves out to a small town on Long Island named Massapequa. Actually, spent fair amount of time in my childhood in Massapequa. Is definitely suburban Long Island. Not a lot of interesting culture going on there. [00:05:23] S0: Great. [00:05:24] S1: But but Jerry's father, Cal Seinfeld, was known in the family and amongst his friends for just always being a funny guy, always telling great jokes as Jerry would talk about it later. He had the funny gene, and Jerry definitely did too. [00:05:44] S0: Yeah. Jerry insists that comedy is a gene. Right? [00:05:47] S1: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He thinks his kids have it. He knows his dad had it. And that it can't be taught. [00:05:51] S0: Yep. Obviously, you can work really hard and hone it and develop more material, but the, like, instinct is actually genetic.
00:05:51 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:05:51] S0: Yep. Obviously, you can work really hard and hone it and develop more material, but the, like, instinct is actually genetic. [00:05:57] S1: Yep. Yep. He's always making his friends and family laugh. And right around the same time when he's about 12 years old, he falls in love with an album, with a record. Not a music album, not one of the, you know, great bands there at the time, the sixties, seventies. But with Bill Cosby's stand up comedy album, why is there air? [00:06:23] S0: This is to be a big thing. These comedy breaks. A big [00:06:26] S1: thing, stand up albums on vinyl. [00:06:29] S0: It's funny. Today, we all tune in to Netflix to watch the big stand up special that just dropped. Albums were doing that same thing 50 ago. [00:06:38] S1: Yep. Totally. So after high school, Jerry goes to Queens College in New York, actual New York City, where he majors in communications and theater, and he sets up for himself. He's really into comedy. He sets up an independent study where he studies stand up comedy like his heroes. So he goes out to the comedy clubs in New York. He writes papers for college, analyzing various comedians' sets, and then ultimately, he himself goes on stage as part of his college studies to get experience, try out being a stand up comic. And it's just like what he's born to do. [00:07:14] S0: And it seems like from every interview he's given... And Jerry has given a lot of interviews. [00:07:19] S1: We'll get into why Jerry has given a lot of interviews later in the episode.
00:07:19 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:07:19] S1: We'll get into why Jerry has given a lot of interviews later in the episode. [00:07:23] S0: Yes. He basically said I had one goal. I mean, since middle school, high school, become a successful stand up comedian. That's it. I didn't have, like, specific goals around other things I wanted to do, some sort of, like, career progression, something I wanted to rise toward, family, hobbies. Like, I had no goals around anything other than become a successful stand up comedian. [00:07:46] S1: Yep. So at age 22, after Jerry graduates from Queens College, he goes into his career. He makes his stand up comedy debut at the famous Catch a Rising Star Comedy Club on the Upper East Side in Manhattan in 1976. And just like he did in college in his independent study, he, like, does the same thing. He tapes himself. He analyzes his own performances. He's performing night after night after night. I mean, this is a level of obsession that is necessary for Jerry to become who he is, but it's also not that uncommon in the stand up industry. Like, this is what you do. If you were gonna dedicate yourself to the craft, you are every night performing, analyzing, just meticulously refining every word, every syllable, every movement that comes out of your mouth and your body.