Acquired

Ben & David welcome very special guest Tom Alberg, board member and first lead investor in Amazon.com, to cover the IPO of "earth’s most customer-centric company".

Ben & David chat with Brian Schultz, the Managing Director of Strategic Investments & Corporate Development at Microsoft.

Ben and David complete the Disney acquisition trilogy, covering the "house that Mickey built"'s 2009 acquisition of Marvel Entertainment.

Ben and David tackle their first IPO episode, starting with the largest tech IPO of all time, Facebook.

An acquisition so wild and crazy, they had to do it again. And again. Ben & David cover tech’s perhaps most-traded asset, Skype (which also happens to be a fantastic business). How do we even know which deal to grade? Tune in to find out… Topics covered include: * Community spotlight: Slack community member Swyx’s financial data research startup Sentieo! * Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis’s meeting in the 1990’s at Swedish telecom company Tele2 * Zennström & Friis’s introduction to talented Estonian developers Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla, and Priit Kasesalu as part of Tele2’s efforts to jump into the dot com “portal mania” * Skype’s origins in the technology powering Zennström, Friis and the Estonians’ first startup endeavor together: the peer-to-peer file sharing platform Kazaa * The “complicated” legal, technological and ownership situation for Kazaa and Skype * Skype’s “unique” corporate culture, including a swimming pool in the board room and shots for initiating new employees * The first Skype acquisition: eBay’s 2005 deal to acquire the company for $2.6B, just two years after launch * Culture clash between eBay and Skype management, and further legal drama regarding Skype technology ownership post-acquisition * The second Skype acquisition: eBay’s 2009 decision to spin the company out to a private investor consortium including Silver Lake and the newly-formed Andreessen Horowitz * The third (and final?) Skype acquisition: Microsoft’s $8.5B purchase of the company in 2011 * Skype as a “crossover” product with viable market opportunities both in consumer and enterprise * Bill Gurley’s “Keys to the 10X Revenue Club” and the power of Skype’s organic customer acquisition model Followups: * The Google iPhone… err, Pixel! Hot Takes: * AT&T’s $85B mega-acquisition of Time Warner… making America great again, or rebuilding the T-1000? * The New York Times acquiring The Wirecutter The Carve Out: * Ben: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny * David: SOMA the Musical starring our very own Acquired listener, the brilliant and talented Jake Saper!

Ben & David broadcast live from the 2016 GeekWire Summit covering one of the all-time greats, Apple’s 1996 acquisition of NeXT. This episode has it all: the Steve Jobs hero story, Apple, I.M. Pei, Ross Perot, Aaron Sorkin, Nobel Laureates and… Gil Amelio?

CFO of Zillow Group Kathleen Philips joins Ben and David to cover the show’s first true “merger” versus “acquisition" (only took 22 episodes!), Zillow’s 2015 combination with Trulia to form Zillow Group. Note: our audio glitches unfortunately continued on this episode, and quality is rough. We recommend listening on speakers vs headphones if you’re able. We apologize and will be back to normal quality next time! Topics covered include: - Zillow and Trulia’s beginnings during the “Web 2.0” era in the mid-2000’s - Zillow, Trulia and other online players’ place within the massive US real estate market - The lengthy “dance" between Zillow and Trulia and earlier aborted merger talks between the two - The difficulty of "true mergers” among private companies and why the path is easier for public companies - Public company shareholders’ influence and role in M&A transactions - Details of the blazingly fast negotiations (27 days start to finish!) per disclosures in the SEC filings (scroll down to "Background of the Mergers”) - Structuring the deal and incentivizing Trulia and Zillow mangers to stay and continue growing as separate brands - Trulia cofounder Sami Inkinen’s whereabouts during the merger negotiations - The experience going through a lengthy FTC review of the merger, and defining what the relevant “market” is the FTC should be considering - Introducing our new acquisition category: a “timeline acquisition” ;) (h/t Kathleen) - Zillow Group’s overall approach to acquisitions, folding into its broader HR strategy - Zillow founder Rich Barton’s startup thesis of searching for "What piece of marketplace information do people crave and don’t have?" Followups: - Snap Inc. Spectacles! Hot Takes: - Twitter-Disney rumors, according to “people familiar with matter”! - AppLovin’s journey from bootstrapped startup to $1.4B exit The Carve Out: - Ben: The Marvel Symphonic Universe - David: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Kathleen: The Struts

Ben and David go inside the M&A press with Bloomberg’s technology M&A reporter and host of the Deal of the Week Podcast, Alex Sherman. We explore how stories about big deals get broken or what “according to people familiar with the matter” really means.

Topics covered include: - Welcome new listeners! We quickly review the show format for newbies. - Community spotlight: Patagonia on a Budget from community member Matt Morgante (@mattm on Slack) - Andy Rubin’s career trajectory and what made him “born to start Android" - The undeniable “cool factor” of the Danger Sidekick in the early/mid-2000’s, including fans such as Larry Page, Sergey Brin and… Turtle from Entourage - Android’s original ambition to build an operating system for… digital cameras - WebTV founder Steve Perlman is pretty much the best friend ever - Google’s own perspective on Android as their “best deal ever" - The Android team’s reaction to Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone in January 2007, and redesigning the initial launch hardware - Announcing Android and—equally importantly—the Open Handset Alliance (“OHA”) - The much-talked-about "mobile holy wars", between Android’s “open” platform and Apple’s “closed” platform - The less-talked-about US carrier wars with the iPhone + AT&T in one camp, and everyone else in the Google / OHA camp (including “Droid Does”) - A quirk of history: HTC at one point acquires a majority share in Beats, resulting a short-lived period of Beats-branded Android phones (still available on Amazon!) - The real battleground for Google in the mobile platform wars: the economics of “default search” (briefly known thanks to the Oracle/Java lawsuit against Google) - Google’s detour into smartphone hardware with the acquisition (and subsequent divestiture) of Motorola - The “fork-ability” of Android via the Android Open Source Project (versus “Google Android”), and the rise of Xiaomi, Cyanogen, Kindle Fire and other platforms - The ecosystem economics of the Android business for Google - “Defensive” versus “offensive” acquisitions, and protecting Google’s core search business - Could (or would) Google have built an Android-like platform without acquiring Android the company (or having Andy Rubin)? - Framing the technology world’s shift to mobile within (surprise) Ben Thompson’s Aggregation Theory - The current “moving up the stack” of the competitive playing field as the mobile landscape matures - Grading: Android versus Instagram? Followups: - Waze launches Carpool in the Bay Area. Much consternation ensues on the Uber board. Hot Takes: - The iPhone 7 (and AirPods) announcement The Carve Out: - Ben: Business Adventures by John Brooks, Bill Gates’ favorite business book - David: Ezra Edelman's fantastic 5-part ESPN documentary on O.J. Simpson, O.J.: Made in America

Ben & David break down Jet.com’s meteoric rise, culminating in Walmart’s blockbuster $3B+ acquisition of the company just two years after its founding. Will we look back on this deal as an ‘Instagram-like’ bargain or a ‘Pets.com'-sized blunder? And most importantly, can *anyone* compete with Amazon going forward? We speculate wildly. Topics covered include: - Community spotlight: Nowdue, a super fast invoicing platform for teams on Slack. Invoice like it’s the future! This looks very cool. - Jet’s deep origins in Founder & CEO Marc Lore’s first two companies, The Pit and Quidsi (aka, diapers.com) - Lore’s chance run-in with Jeff Bezos at a school picnic in Seattle in the early 2000’s - Amazon's dramatic acquisition of Quidsi in 2010, including Bezos’ admonition to Amazon corp dev to keep Quidsi from being bought by Walmart under any circumstances (covered well in The Everything Store) - Lore’s less-than-favorable opinion of Amazon's culture - Lore's vision of Jet as an ‘online Costco’ that can directly with Amazon on price by selling goods to a “huge middle-class of people" at effectively zero margin, and make profit on membership fees - Jet’s huge, pre-launch fundraising rounds, and subsequent massively promoted public launch in July 2015 - Jet’s pivot in October 2015 to drop the membership model (their only profit engine), and subsequent massive growth (but also accompanying massive losses) - 'Admitting defeat” to Amazon in July 2016? Immediately followed by the blockbuster $3B+ Walmart acquisition announcement - Is e-commerce really a winner-take-all business and will Amazon just take over the world? Featuring liberal citations (again) of Ben Thompson's Aggregation Theory and the importance of customer experience. - Is there any path for Walmart & Jet to compete effectively with Amazon? Is Marc Lore Walmart’s only hope? - Fantastic interview with Tim Cook discussing (among other things) the massive amount of growth still left in the internet Followups: - Lucasfilm: Star Wars Rouge One trailer drops! Featuring a strong female protagonist! New section: Hot Takes! (thank you @cteitzel on Slack for the idea) - Verizon/AOL acquires Yahoo! - Lyft reportedly turns down acquisition offer from GM - Microsoft acquires Beam - Randstad acquires Monster.com The Carve Out - Ben: Michael Mauboussin’s Talk at Google and Reflections on the Ten Attributes of Great Investors after thirty years of honing his craft - David: Strava, the fantastic social fitness-tracking app

Ben & David are joined by special guest Taylor Barada, VP and Head of Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships at Adobe, to discuss how large tech acquirers approach buying companies.

Ben and David navigate the mobile platform wars of 2012-13, avoiding speed traps en route to Waze’s destination as a $1B+ acquisition by Google.

The meta show: Ben and David turn their gaze inward and examine the podcasting industry through E. W. Scripps’ recent acquisitions of the Midroll podcast advertising network and Stitcher podcast client.

Ben and David return to make their first foray into enterprise software, covering Salesforce’s $2.5B acquisition of ExactTarget in 2013 with the help of special guest and ExactTarget cofounder & CEO, Scott Dorsey.

Ben and David cover the 3-day-old acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft for $26.2 billion. They cover LinkedIn’s founding story by Reid Hoffman, analyze recent stock behavior, and speculate on the future.