I am hooked on a podcast called Acquired, in which two smart guys do a deep analytical dive, typically lasting three or four hours, on a single successful company such as Coca-Cola (KO) or Trader Joe's. Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, a pair of venture capitalists, are especially adept at explaining what's behind the success of such tech giants as Alphabet (GOOGL), the former Google, which recently merited 11 hours and 42 minutes of dialogue all by itself.
What have I learned? The big winners have a clear mission, they're adaptable, and they're willing to spend money on talent and take risks. They make astounding profits. Apple (AAPL), essentially a phone manufacturer, earned $112 billion in fiscal 2025 on $416 billion in revenues. Alphabet and Microsoft (MSFT) have even better profit ratios, and Nvidia (NVDA) is in a universe all its own, earning 75 cents for every dollar of sales for the nine months ending in October.
