Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Gilbert: Starbucks' 1991 Employee Stock Option Grants Have Appreciated 800x

Ben Gilbert · Starbucks (with Howard Schultz) · Acquired · Jun 4, 2024 · at 1:07:05

Acquired co-host Ben Gilbert calculates the long-term investment return of Starbucks' 1991 'Bean Stock' program grants awarded to baristas and part-time employees.

0:00 / 0:22exact quote · 22.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“So those initial grants, the strike price was six dollars per share. Today, as we speak, the share price is 77 dollars, but there have been six splits since then, which comes out to a 64 X. So that initial grant has 800 X'd since even the part-time employees and baristas were offered the opportunity to buy Starbucks stock.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Ben Gilbert

Opinion
Taylor Swift's Original Masters Are the Music Industry's Most Overvalued Asset
“There has never been a more overvalued asset in the music industry than the masters for Taylor Swift's original albums at three hundred million today. Not only is she actively devaluing them, but the whole industry is at complete peak for what people are willi…”
Ben Gilbert Jan 24, 2022 ▶ 2:33:48 Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version) · Acquired
Opinion
Netflix functions as a utility button, not a brand with emotional equity
“The Netflix brand doesn't mean anything to anyone. The Netflix brand is the button that I push on my TV when I want to watch stuff. And sometimes it's great stuff, but if it's not great stuff, whatever. It whizzes by. I don't think one way or another about Net…”
Ben Gilbert Aug 10, 2026 ▶ 3:28:43 Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
Insight
Gilbert: Monopolies benefit society by generating cash flow for basic research
“There is a positive benefit to monopolies because they create the cash flows that fund these sorts of boondoggle basic research. A lot of the most important technologies that move society forward come out of these.”
Ben Gilbert Dec 15, 2025 ▶ 58:49 10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) · Acquired
Opinion
Meta AI's User Numbers Are Inflated by Accidental Instagram Searches
“That was complete garbage. That was people searching Instagram who accidentally hit a llama model that made some things happen, and they were like, oh, go away. I actually am just looking for a user.”
Ben Gilbert Oct 6, 2025 ▶ 3:13:54 Google Part III: The AI Company. Google is amazingly well-positioned... will they win in AI? (Audio) · Acquired
Opinion
Gilbert: Cambridge Analytica impacting the 2016 election is wildly oversold
“They had an incredible treasure trove of data that apps could slurp up in the early 20 tens, but the actual narrative of Facebook data that Cambridge Analytica had impacted election results is, like, wildly oversold.”
Ben Gilbert Oct 28, 2024 ▶ 4:49:28 Meta (Audio) · Acquired
Opinion
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…”
Ben Gilbert Jul 25, 2023 ▶ 1:39:07 Nike (Audio) · Acquired
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, nearly 80 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.