Nike
also referred to as: nike inc.
includes Nike Vaporfly, Nike+ IPod, Nike FuelBand, Nike Futures Program, Nike ID, Nike Pegasus, Nike Town
90 statements across 8 episodes · 36 bullish · 9 bearish · 4 people on the record · first statement Apr 6, 2022 by David Rosenthal · said 627 times in 30 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
Mentions by year, the whole family
brought up most by Ben Gilbert (342), David Rosenthal (269), Jim Weber (6), Michael Lewis (3), Mark Zuckerberg (2), Charlie Munger (2), David Senra (1), Brendan Eich (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2025 17 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
- 10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) · Acquired
- Indian Premier League Cricket (Audio) · Acquired
- Trader Joe’s: Hawaiian shirts and counter positioning (Audio) · Acquired
- Coca-Cola: The Complete History & Strategy (Audio) · Acquired
- The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired
- Epic Systems (MyChart) · Acquired
- Rolex (Audio) · Acquired
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 13 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- Hermès (Audio) · Acquired
- Meta (Audio) · Acquired
- Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg) · Acquired
- The Mark Zuckerberg Interview · Acquired
- Chase Center + Summer Update (Audio) · Acquired
- Renaissance Technologies (Audio) · Acquired
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 573 mentions in 8 episodes 72 per episode
- Nike (Audio) · Acquired
- Costco (Audio) · Acquired
- Holiday Special 2023 (Audio) · Acquired
- Charlie Munger (Audio) · Acquired
- Visa (Audio) · Acquired
- Porsche (with Doug DeMuro) · Acquired
- Spotify CEO Daniel Ek · Acquired
- Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) · Acquired
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 20 mentions in 7 episodes 3 per episode
- Arena Show Part II: Brooks Running (with CEO Jim Weber) · Acquired
- Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories · Acquired
- Benchmark Part I · Acquired
- From NFL to Startup COO to Congressman Regulating Crypto (with Rep. Anthony Gonzalez) · Acquired
- Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi) · Acquired
- The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) · Acquired
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
Everything said about Nike, oldest first
Apr 6, 2022 positive
May 16, 2022 bullish
May 16, 2022 negative
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Nike Hit $3.2 Million in Revenue in 1972 After Splitting From Tiger
“That year, so this is 1972. Blue Ribbon's first full year doing sales as Nike, purely on their own. They do 3.2 million dollars in revenue. Remember, just a couple years before their last kind of full year with Tiger, they were doing half a million dollars in …”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Phil Knight and Insiders Retained 56% of Nike at IPO
“Phil Knight basically never took on any equity investors, and so he took no dilution. He and his management team and Bill Bowerman owned 56% at IPO, him owning 46% because he just kept betting the farm all on debt and basically had no buffer at all.”
Jul 25, 2023
Bill Bowerman Pitched Shoe Designs Directly to Adi Dassler in the 1950s
“Based on letters in the University of Oregon and Nike archives, Bill Bowerman corresponded directly with many footwear manufacturers in the 19 fifties, so like 15 plus years before this, including Adi Dassler, directly to Adi Dassler, trying to purchase shoes …”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Nissho Iwai Financed Nike's Predecessor for a 4% Shoe Royalty
“Phil signs a deal, finally, with Nisho EY, and the core part of the deal is Nisho will, A, finance all of Blue Ribbon's financing needs, henceforth, pretty much at a scale that goes all the way up to the moon. I mean, they're a hundred billion dollar revenue c…”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Nike's Social Issue Campaigns Stem From Gut Feel Over Demographic Calculation
“I actually don't think that's the way that it operates. I think it is like an executive and creative gut feel. This is a set of values we feel are right, and we're gonna continue to bet the company on the people that identify with that set of values are a grea…”
Jul 25, 2023 bullish
No Competitor Can Match Nike's Scale Economies in Custom Shoe Personalization
“Nike, I actually think, is really at the forefront of apparel personalization with what started as Nike ID and now is, I think, called Nike by me, but anybody can make their own Nike shoes in their own colors with their own designs on them. To be able to do th…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023
Nike Manufactures 100% of Its Nitrogen-Filled Air Bags in Oregon
“Nike manufactures zero shoes, but they manufacture 100% of the nitrogen-filled little airbags. They do it in Oregon because that's trade secret, and then they ship those over to their Asian manufacturing facilities to put them in the shoes.”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Jul 25, 2023 bullish
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Mass Brand Extension Risks Destroying Belief in Pinnacle Performance
“And the hardest thing is figuring out how to extend that audience and make products for them to buy without compromising that step one, that belief that you make Pinnacle products. And what Nike has been able to do and thread that needle and figure out how to …”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Nike Generates Over $50B in Revenue Without Directly Manufacturing Shoes
“What makes this company the single largest apparel business in the world today, outside of luxury, of course, and how is it possible to be a shoe company that does over fifty billion dollars in revenue when they technically don't make a single shoe?”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 bullish
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Direct-to-Consumer Sales Account for 40% of Nike's Revenue
“About 60% is still wholesale, is still sold through retailers, and impressively, 40% of this very large business, this fifty billion dollar revenue business, Is now done selling products directly to consumers, either in stores or on their website.”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Extreme Early Financing Constraints Were Critical to Nike's Success
“Two, though, ironically, I actually, as crazy as this sounds, think it was a critical element of Nike Succeeding and becoming Nike. Because if it were too easy, there would have been a flood of other competitors. Or Onitsuka and others would have just done thi…”
Jul 25, 2023 negative
Nike Mistakenly Treated Cyclical Running as a Secular Fitness Boom
“Early Nike did so many things right, but they made one critical mistake. They mistook the running and the jogging boom for the broader fitness boom. The broader fitness boom was a massive secular trend that continues through to this day. The running boom was a…”
Jul 25, 2023
Nike Gave Michael Jordan a 5% Gross Sales Royalty in 1984
“So the deal is a two and a half million dollar minimum guaranteed payout over five years. But that's not actually how the economics work. The revolutionary aspect of the deal was the payouts were calculated as a five percent royalty on gross revenue from the s…”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 negative
Jul 25, 2023
Rob Strasser and Peter Moore Left Nike to Lead Adidas America
“An item among many that is not discussed in the movie is that Rob, shortly after signing Jordan, had an enormous fight with Phil Knight, left the company with Peter Moore, who was the designer behind Jordan's, and ended up joining Adidas as CEO of Adidas Ameri…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Nike Customer Acquisition Operates Like Netflix Acquiring Content
“The primary way that you get someone to be a twenty-year customer of Nike is to go and spend money on the biggest athletes in the world. And the whole game, just like Netflix, is Nike's acquiring content. Nike is acquiring the LeBrons of the world to be Nike a…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023
Inspiring Brands Cannot Deflect Supply Chain Blame to Third-Party Suppliers
“Yeah, they sort of discovered they couldn't have their cake and eat it, too, of saying, we are the brand that inspires you. Oh, but by the way, anytime there's an issue, oh, that's one of our suppliers' problems, we simply don't make shoes. Even though it is t…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 bullish
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023 bearish
Nike Reopened Macy's and Expanded Foot Locker Inventory to Clear Stock
“Like, they, like, Reopened Macy's, and they put more inventory in Foot Locker in the last couple quarters, and that's sort of concerning because the whole narrative has been, we're going direct, but also oh, we have too much inventory, so we gotta blow it out …”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Nike's Futures Program Offered Retailers 7% Discounts for Advance Payment
“If you commit and pay for your orders six months in advance, Blue Ribbon will give you a seven percent discount, and we're gonna call this the Nike Futures Program. So he's essentially moving his financing from banks and niche UI over to his retail partners, t…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
The NFL Captures More Value, but the NBA Creates More Value
“The NFL is a better business as a league than the NBA. No question in my mind. But the amount of value created out of the leagues, I think more value is created out of the NBA. The NFL just captures way more value, and thus is the more valuable league.”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Jul 25, 2023 bearish
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Nike Inc. Was Founded in 1971 as a Subsidiary of Blue Ribbon
“So in 1971, they do create Nike Inc. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Ribbon Sports, and it is responsible for manufacturing, well, or contracting with manufacturers to make this line of shoes, this Nike-designed line of shoes owned by Blue Ribbon Sport…”
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 bullish
Jul 25, 2023 negative
Nike Over-Supplied Retailers to Reach $126M in Air Jordan Sales
“Nike needed that first year of the Jordan deal to be a huge hit. So they stuffed the channel. They pushed so much product on retailers and through the futures program and whatnot that that's how they hit the hundred and twenty six million dollars in sales. The…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Phil Knight Essentially Invented Modern Sports Marketing With Steve Prefontaine
“It's Phil, like, basically inventing sports marketing. I mean, there was a sort of nascent idea of athlete sponsorship at the time, but it really, this is the invention of it as we know it today. And all athletic brands are defined by athletes, and this is rea…”
Jul 25, 2023 negative
Nike Improperly Used Nissho Inventory Financing to Secretly Purchase a Factory
“They use Nisho's money Which was supposed to be to buy inventory, instead to plow it into capex of buying and rehabbing a factory, and then they were secretly operating their own factory with money that was not supposed to be used for that purpose.”
Jul 25, 2023 bullish
Nike and Jordan Command Over 85% of the Basketball Shoe Market
“Nike and the Air Jordan brand's share of performance basketball was 86%, and the stats a few years old, it was right before the pandemic, but the dominance was even more prevalent in the lifestyle basketball category where they have 96% share.”
Jul 25, 2023 negative
Nike Intentionally Ignored 1990s Factory Conditions to Maximize Margins
“And in the nineties, Nike chose to sit too far on maximizing the margin side of things, and they intentionally turned a blind eye to what was going on in the factories, and they were in the wrong, because it led to exploiting people.”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Nike Scrapped Pre-Planned 2018 Campaigns to Run Colin Kaepernick Ads
“And in fact, I know that when they launched this, they actually scrapped their plans for the whole rest of the year for a whole bunch of ad campaigns that were already ready for a different way that they were gonna do the 30th anniversary relaunch of Just Do I…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Endorsements Build Brand Perception Rather Than Driving Direct Shoe Sales
“These endorsement deals are not about the sneakers that that basketball player is going to sell or, oh, I want to buy the cleats that my favorite college football team is wearing on the field. No one else plays football other than college football students and…”
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Carolyn Davidson's 500 Pre-IPO Nike Shares Are Worth $7 Million Today
“When Nike went public, they did give her 500 shares. The stock price today is around 110, and it has split seven times. So two to the seventh, times 110 dollars a share, times her 500 shares, is worth seven million dollars today.”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023
Running, Basketball, and Tennis Are the Only Footwear Sports That Matter
“There are actually only three sports that matter. So Nike, Adidas, you know, Reebok, they sponsor lots of sports, but running, basketball, and tennis are the only sports that matter, because those are the only shoes that normal people can wear. Normal people d…”
Jul 25, 2023 bullish
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Nike Extended Michael Jordan's Endorsement by 7 Years With $18M Guarantee
“They extend the deal for seven more years, I believe at the same five percent royalty on gross sales, but there's the new massive further commitment to making the Jordan sub-brand much more of its own brand. And they up the total guarantee to at least eighteen…”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Jul 25, 2023
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Nike Intentionally Leaves Secondary Resale Profits on the Table
“Nike sells these incredibly limited edition retro and otherwise sneakers, but they sell them for a 150 bucks, 200 bucks, maybe 300 bucks, like not a lot of money. The instant that they get purchased, you can turn around and sell them on the secondary market fo…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023
Jordan Earned Royalties on All Incremental Nike Basketball Shoe Sales
“Also in the deal, the previous year, Nike had sold 400,000 pairs of Nike basketball shoes. They include a clause that Jordan gets a royalty on incremental sales in future years beyond the baseline of Everything in the Nike basketball line.”
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Only Extreme-Scale Brands Can Profitably Bypass Traditional Distribution Channels
“There is this tipping point where a brand becomes the scale player. Like, think about Disney in media. They've become the scale player. They can run a different playbook and go directly to customers in a way where other places that make content need to integra…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Regional Distribution Businesses Were Far More Defensible Before the Internet
“The idea that your core competency is just distributing someone else's product among a geographic area where you have a relationship with customers, that might have actually been a pretty good plan and much more defensible in a way that it's much harder to bui…”
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023 positive
Jul 25, 2023 neutral
Jul 25, 2023
The Viral 'Nike 10 Principles' Memo Was Written by Rob Strasser
“Here are the things that are wrong with that statement. One, Phil Knight did not write it. Rob Strasser did. Two, Nike's principles. Also incorrect. When this was written, it was actually still Blue Ribbon Sports, so that it was not yet the Nike corporation. T…”
Jul 25, 2023
Aug 21, 2023 positive
Dec 18, 2023 positive
Feb 24, 2025 positive
Mar 24, 2025 positive