Recently, I’ve become an avid listener of a podcast called Acquired. Operating under the motto “Every company has a story,” this program introduces the hidden growth stories and strategies of great global companies and shares insights that listeners can apply to their own business management. It currently ranks No. 1 in the technology category on Apple Podcasts and Spotify (U.S. market) and has been recommended by various media outlets as a “must-listen for startup founders.”
The companies featured on Acquired are all household names—Microsoft, Nike, Costco, Disney, Tesla—enterprises that have secured undeniable positions across diverse industries worldwide. Although these brands are so familiar that their stories might seem almost cliché, the podcast’s continued popularity can be attributed to its distinctive approach: it explores business history in depth, tracing the entire growth trajectory through a management-historical lens.
Unlike most programs that focus primarily on recent developments or current strategies, Acquired traces each company from its founding—or even earlier—through extensive research and documentation. For example, its episode on Nike, the global sportswear giant, goes back to the 1960s, when founder Phil Knight established Blue Ribbon Sports, the predecessor of Nike. The podcast reconstructs six decades of corporate evolution using archival research and interviews with employees from different eras, vividly illustrating how the company identified opportunities, confronted crises, and sustained growth over time.
What struck me most while listening to these success stories was how many similarities exist between the past and the present, despite the vastly different business environments. Issues such as market competition, financial structure, organizational culture, and technological change—topics that entrepreneurs grappled with decades ago—remain just as relevant today. Only the external context has changed with time; the same types of challenges and opportunities seem to reappear, continuously testing and shaping innovative companies.
History is not a concept confined to nations; every company, too, has its own history of change and growth. The renowned historian E. H. Carr once wrote in What Is History? that “history is an unending dialogue between the present and the past.” By studying and benchmarking the footsteps of successful companies, today’s entrepreneurs can reflect on the very questions they face now. They can avoid repeating the mistakes of their predecessors while boldly adapting their winning strategies to present challenges.
This humanistic approach can make a tangible contribution to key decision-making for startup growth. At ANTOK, where I work, we developed a “Victory Road” algorithm that models the common growth patterns and core success factors of thriving companies to discover promising startups. Through validation projects with several financial and public institutions, we found quantitative evidence that startups sharing similar attributes and activity patterns with past successful companies are significantly more likely to achieve strong performance.
We live in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where technology evolves at lightning speed. Everyone strives to anticipate trends and predict the direction of change to gain a competitive edge. In our desperate pursuit to foresee an uncertain future, we often forget that history repeats itself—and paradoxically, the answers we seek may lie in the past. By carefully examining the histories and struggles of iconic companies within one’s own industry and field of technology, one may gain profound insights into the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
