Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…You didn't tell me you're going to say that. That’s good. I'm ad-libbing. I got up here and I was overcome with emotion. And none of this is scripted. Thank you so much for coming tonight. I prepared things and I should read them off my iPad here, but the only thought that could occur to me right now is how different this is than what you and I normally do. David and I are very used to being on Zoom, talking to each other through the internet. There are zero people watching live and if we say something wrong, we delete it. That's not happening tonight. More important than that is we get evidence that people listen in the form of analytics, tweets, or anecdotes here and there of someone saying oh, I listen to the show, but there's no human visceral way to feel that. We literally just refresh an analytics dashboard and a number goes up. This is so cool to see you real. As fun as it is going to be to watch the show—we've got some great stuff planned—I think it will be much cooler to meet each other. Many call it parasocial relationships where you hear us talk, but we don't get to meet you. We're going to try and meet as many of you as possible. We want a lot of you to meet as many other people as possible because you have an easy opener like what's your favorite episode? Or how did you hear about Acquired? My buddy dragged me here tonight and I never heard of it before this. Everyone's got some answer to that question so meet each other. Take selfies and enjoy the time together. We have a freaking Climate Pledge Arena and enjoy the time in it. Thank you to PitchBook. Holy crap, John's not kidding. PitchBook is Seattle's monster amazing business hiding in plain sight, and it's been really cool to get to know their team more and more, understand the business, and just learn how on $4 million they've been able to build this multi-hundred million dollar business. It's inspiring to us. Thank you to John. Thank you to Kai. Thank you to Lauren and Val. Thank you to Nas. Everyone we work with at PitchBook is just awesome. So thank you to them. Happy Star Wars day, Ben.…

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