Acquired Live at Radio City Music Hall (Presented by J.P. Morgan)
It’s finally here! Today we are releasing Acquired’s first “concert film” — the full video recording of our Radio City live show from this summer with Jamie Dimon, Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien, Barry Diller, and cameos from around the Acquired Cinematic Universe including Christina Cacioppo, Ben Clymer, and Howard Schultz.
To watch the full production on any device, please head over to Spotify where you’ll find it available for free in the Acquired feed right alongside all our other episodes: https://open.spotify.com/episode/77Kl3BsiEQLpli2Q2ozZuf?si=4f4609e343504fd0
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Live Show Presented By: J.P. Morgan
Shopify
ServiceNow
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Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
How Starbucks’ CEO is revamping the brand
Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol made waves this week by announcing a new Return-to-Office mandate for corporate workers. It’s the latest in a string of changes the coffee company is making to restore its position in the US and global marketplace. Hear Niccol explain his revamped brand strategy in this conversation from February of 2025. He shares insights about evolving Starbucks’ business model, tackling the Chinese market, and how AI and tariffs are poised to shape the brand’s future.
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Starbucks (with Howard Schultz)
Starbucks. You’d be hard pressed to name any brand that’s more ubiquitous in the world today. With nearly half a billion global customer purchases per week across its stores and 3rd party retail channels, a significant portion of the human population gets their daily fix in the green and white paper cup. (Including our own Ben Gilbert who famously enjoys his daily spinach feta wrap. :)
But it wasn’t always this way. Long before the frappuccinos and the PSLs and the cake pops, Starbucks was just a small-time Seattle roaster that only sold beans — and was started not by Howard Schultz but rather the guys who later ran Peet’s (!). Starting from six tiny stores when Howard took over in 1987, this quirky coffee company named after a character from Moby Dick has scaled to nearly 40,000 locations worldwide.
Today, in a first for Acquired, the protagonist himself joins us as a third cohost to tell the whole story of Starbucks. And Howard is in the perfect moment to do this — after three separate stints as CEO he’s now retired, off the board of directors, and in his own words “not coming back.” So place a mobile order (or not! as you’ll hear Howard speak about), sit back with your own favorite Starbucks items, and enjoy.
Sponsors:
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://acquired.fm/unpluggedPlaying Cards: https://bit.ly/workOSshop (Code: ACQDECK)
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26
The Biggest Thing We’ve Ever Done:
San Francisco. September 10, 2024. Mark your calendars.
Links:
Howard’s letter “The Soul of a Brand”
Worldly Partners’ multi-decade Starbucks analysis
Starbucks S-1
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Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
Transforming a Technology Organization for the Future: Starbucks’s Gerri Martin-Flickinger
Why does how you describe your team — down to its name — matter? Gerri Martin-Flickinger, former executive vice president and CTO at Starbucks, joins Me, Myself, and AI to describe some of the technology initiatives the coffeehouse chain has been able to pursue since rebranding its technology team and articulating its mission.
In her conversation with Sam and Shervin, Gerri recaps a decades-spanning career working in technology leadership roles at Chevron, McAfee, and Adobe, then explains some recent employee- and customer-facing projects Starbucks has undertaken using AI and machine learning. Read the episode transcript here.
Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.
Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders.
Read more about our show and follow along with the series at https://sloanreview.mit.edu/ai.
Guest bio:
As executive vice president and CTO at Starbucks, Gerri Martin-Flickinger led the Starbucks Technology team through a transformation into a best-in-class retail technology organization. She was the passionate leader behind the technology strategy that plays a critical role in propelling the Starbucks mission — “empowering partners and delighting customers, globally.”
Before joining Starbucks in 2015, Martin-Flickinger was senior vice president and CIO at Adobe, where she led portions of its technology transformation to a cloud-based subscription services business. Previously, she served as CIO at Verisign, McAfee, and Network Associates and held numerous senior leadership roles at Chevron, where she began her career.
Martin-Flickinger currently sits on Charles Schwab’s board of directors and serves as a member of Arizona State University’s Fulton School of Engineering Advisory Board, Sierra Ventures’ CIO Advisory Board, and The Wall Street Journal CIO Network.
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How to do good and do good business, w/Starbucks' Howard Schultz
You can make your social impact and your bottom line work hand-in-hand. But you'll have to be as creative and innovative about your company's values as you are about the business itself. Howard Schultz, chair and former CEO of Starbucks, not only changed how America wakes up, but set new standards for employee benefits. From offering college tuition to American employees to providing health care for employees' parents in China, Howard has always been one step ahead of the social impact curve.
Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/howard-schultz-how-to-do-good-and-do-good-business/
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Live Episode! Starbucks: Howard Schultz
During his first visit to Seattle in 1981, Howard Schultz walked into a little coffee bean shop called Starbucks and fell in love with it. A few years later, he bought the six-store chain for almost 4 million dollars, and began to transform it into a ubiquitous landmark, a "third place" between home and work. Today Starbucks is the third largest restaurant chain in the world, serving about 100 million people a week. Recorded live in Seattle.
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