Acquired
03:05:35 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:05:35] S1: So movie executives really had good cause to be concerned about TV. [03:05:40] S0: Absolutely. Attention was shifting to television, and right as it was shifting in droves, boom. That is right where Disney showed up in this, like, multiplicative way. You know? Yeah. Man, incredible timing. And Walt as ever had a quote on this. This is from the special that he did back in 1950 as an experiment. He said, I regard television as one of our most important channels for the development of a new motion picture audience. Millions of televiewers never go to a picture theater and countless others infrequently. In these highly competitive days, we must use the television screen along with every other promotional medium to increase our potential audience. [03:06:20] S1: Man, was he right. [03:06:21] S0: Man, was he right. [03:06:23] S1: And it's just so incredible that because he started playing with trains, Disney became a major force in television and, of course, opened the park. [03:06:33] S0: Yes. Okay. So how does this all come together? We've got this, like, joint venture called Disneyland Inc. It's got $500,000 from Walt Disney Productions. It's got $500,000 from ABC. It's got $200,000 from Western Publishing who distributed their books. Yep. And then Walt himself put in $250,000. [03:06:53] S1: That's right. I did see that. Yes. And then they've got the 4 and a half million of debt guaranteed by ABC.
03:06:53 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:06:53] S1: That's right. I did see that. Yes. And then they've got the 4 and a half million of debt guaranteed by ABC. [03:07:01] S0: Exactly. So there's a total of million dollars that they have to spend to build the thing. Plus, there was actually another 2,000,000 of ten year bonds that ABC was committed to if they really, really needed an extra $2,000,000 to flex from a budget of six to a budget of eight. [03:07:16] S1: So, Ben, I've read a bunch of places this ended up costing $17,000,000. [03:07:22] S0: Yes. That is correct. So the cap table is, Walt Disney Productions and ABC each own 34%. Western Publishing owns 14%, and Walt himself personally owns 17%. And there's a contract between Disneyland Inc. And WED Enterprises, which Walt owns a 100% of to actually build it all. So all of this leads up to 07/17/1955, the opening of Disneyland that would change the company forever, that would change American vacations forever Yep. That would lay out a giant part of Disney's business model going forward, the opening of Disneyland. [03:08:02] S1: Yes. But before we do that, now is a great time to thank our friends at Statsig. [03:08:08] S0: Yes. So Walt Disney had this idea that he would often talk about, plussing. Most amusement parks would be effectively complete at opening, and then they'd call it finished, but not Disneyland. Walt treated the park as something that you have to keep improving forever, and he constantly looked at how guests move through it.
03:08:08 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:08:08] S0: Yes. So Walt Disney had this idea that he would often talk about, plussing. Most amusement parks would be effectively complete at opening, and then they'd call it finished, but not Disneyland. Walt treated the park as something that you have to keep improving forever, and he constantly looked at how guests move through it. [03:08:26] S1: Yep. This idea, though, only works if you can see what's happening. You can't improve an experience on a hunch. What mattered was how guests really behaved, not what anyone assumed in a meeting, which is largely the same problem that product teams have today, just at speed and scale. You can ship faster than ever now, but the hard part becomes knowing which changes actually improve the product. [03:08:47] S0: And now coding with AI only raises those stakes because LLMs are nondeterministic, meaning that the same input doesn't always produce the same output. So a small change to a prompt or model can have surprisingly large downstream effects. Offline evals will really only get you so far, and you need to be getting signals from real users and making decisions on that. [03:09:08] S1: And that's where Statsig comes in. They offer product teams experimentation, feature flags, and product analytics all in one place. You can ship quickly, roll out changes safely, and measure how those changes impact users making your product actually better instead of just guessing.
03:09:08 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:09:08] S1: And that's where Statsig comes in. They offer product teams experimentation, feature flags, and product analytics all in one place. You can ship quickly, roll out changes safely, and measure how those changes impact users making your product actually better instead of just guessing. [03:09:22] S0: Yes. So just like Walt continuously was plusing Disneyland still today, Statsig is how you improve your product after you've shipped it. You can learn more at statsig.com/acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. Alright. So the development of the park. The team at WED had been getting inspiration and sort of concepting and iterating while all the ABC stuff is happening, while the hype building around America is happening, and, of course, while the financial negotiations are are happening. So in September 1953, as legend goes, Roy is about to walk into meetings with television executives, and Walt famously locks himself in a room with Herb Ryman for an entire weekend and says, Herb, can you draw the first full drawing of Disneyland? And Herb looks at him and he's like, Disney what? This is the first time hearing of this. And he's like, the theme park. You're gonna come work on that with me. And he's like, don't even work here. I I used to work at Disney, but I I don't work here now. And Walt was like, yeah, but you're the guy to do this. And so Herb kinda looks at him. He says, can you tell me a little bit more about this theme park? Walt this is metaphorical. Kinda locks the
03:09:22 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[03:09:22] S0: Yes. So just like Walt continuously was plusing Disneyland still today, Statsig is how you improve your product after you've shipped it. You can learn more at statsig.com/acquired and just tell them that Ben and David sent you. Alright. So the development of the park. The team at WED had been getting inspiration and sort of concepting and iterating while all the ABC stuff is happening, while the hype building around America is happening, and, of course, while the financial negotiations are are happening. So in September 1953, as legend goes, Roy is about to walk into meetings with television executives, and Walt famously locks himself in a room with Herb Ryman for an entire weekend and says, Herb, can you draw the first full drawing of Disneyland? And Herb looks at him and he's like, Disney what? This is the first time hearing of this. And he's like, the theme park. You're gonna come work on that with me. And he's like, don't even work here. I I used to work at Disney, but I I don't work here now. And Walt was like, yeah, but you're the guy to do this. And so Herb kinda looks at him. He says, can you tell me a little bit more about this theme park? Walt this is metaphorical. Kinda locks the [03:10:36] S1: door. Yeah. He's like, great. I will stay here all weekend with you and tell you about the theme park.
03:10:36 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[03:10:36] S1: door. Yeah. He's like, great. I will stay here all weekend with you and tell you about the theme park. [03:10:42] S0: And out of the weekend emerges this beautiful drawing that we will send out in the email, Acquire dot f m slash email, that they can use as a sales tool for the first meeting with ABC. You've got a castle. You've got mountains. You've got the railroad. You've got the river. The bones are all there. [03:11:01] S1: The core vision of what Disneyland is.