Archives

Episode 35: Oculus

Ben & David transcend the barriers of “real” reality, and dive into Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s geek-eutpoia vision of the future of gaming, social, and maybe even the entire internet: strapping goofy-looking goggles to your face. Is VR for real this time or are we living through another Virtual Boy moment? Tune in to find out! 

Sponsors:

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Topics covered include: 

  • Oculus’s origins in 2010 as a twinkle in the eye of the then-17 year old VR wunderkind, Palmer Luckey, who started by prototyping VR headsets in his parents’ garage in Southern California 
  • Palmer’s time interning at  USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, and chronicling of his own VR efforts in the Meant to be Seen 3D internet forums
  • Legendary game developer John Carmack’s own interest in virtual reality, his intersection with Palmer on the MTBS3D forums, and how he acquired and popularized one of Palmer’s first early prototypes of the Oculus Rift (which was  literally held together with duct tape!) by demonstrating it onstage at E3 2012 
  • How former Scaleform cofounders Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov teamed up with Palmer after E3 to create the company Oculus VR
  • The newly-formed Oculus’s wildly successful August 2012 Kickstarter campaign, including video endorsements from both Carmack and Valve founder Gabe Newell
  • Oculus’s subsequent venture capital fundraisings, and catching the attention of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg 
  • Facebook’s acquisition of the company in March 2014 for $2.3B
  • The Zenimax lawsuit filed against Oculus and Facebook following the acquisition 
  • Valve (home of the most incredible company handbook of all-time) and Gabe Newell’s subsequent pivot from supporting Oculus to launching their own competing VR efforts with the Vive 
  • Team changes at Oculus post-acquisition 

  Followups: 

  Hot Takes: 

  The Carve Out: 

Episode 34: The Starbucks IPO with Dan Levitan

Ben & David “pour over” the 1992 IPO of the legendary Seattle coffee company with the help of Dan Levitan, who served as lead investment banker on the IPO and who would later co-found the venture capital firm Maveron with Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz.

Sponsors:

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Topics covered include:

  • The original Starbucks’ founding as a coffee bean roaster, started by three disciples of the legendary coffee roaster Alfred Peet
  • Howard Schultz’s introduction to Starbucks, his joining the team as director of marketing, and inspiration behind his “third place” coffee shop vision
  • Howard’s departure from the original Starbucks, founding of Il Giornale, and subsequent of acquisition the Seattle Starbucks stores
  • Starbucks’ incredible growth following the acquisition and expansion beyond Seattle
  • The state of raising private capital in the 1980’s/90’s, and the decision to go public (link to the S-1)
  • Howard’s ambitious goals for the roadshow and investor participation, and subsequent stock performance after the IPO
  • The narrative and evolution of Starbucks as a technology company, or a consumer company that leverages technology very effectively 

The Carve Out:

Episode 33: Overture (with the Internet History Podcast!)

Episode 33: Overture (with the Internet History Podcast!)    Ben & David dive deep into the early days of internet search, with the help of the best in the internet history business: Brian McCullough from the Internet History Podcast! We are huge fans of IHP at Acquired, so this was a real treat to collaborate with Brian and the great work he does over there. In this episode we cover the story of how a small incubator in Southern California spawned perhaps the greatest tech business model of all-time, Yahoo!’s fumbling of that golden opportunity, and Google’s recovery of that fumble to cross into the end zone of tech history behind the biggest moat ever constructed on the internet.  

Sponsors:

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Topics covered include: 

  • Overture’s origins as part of the Idealab incubator run by famed early internet entrepreneur Bill Gross
  • Invention of the paid search business model… initially by returning ADS ONLY in response to search queries
  • The eventual marrying of Overture’s paid search (ads) with organic search results via syndication on other properties like Yahoo!
  • Revenue from Overture’s ad partnership saving Yahoo!’s business after the internet bubble burst 
  • Yahoo!’s eventual acquisition of Overture for $1.4B in 2003 
  • But… the really interesting story here: Overture’s ‘inspiration’ of Google’s business model and the creation of “the greatest advertising machine in the history of the world”
  • The original (pre-Overture) Google business model: selling a box! 
  • Google’s differentiation vs Overture: focusing on the long tail, ad quality scores, and an advertiser-friendly auction structure
  • Google’s first major search syndication victory over Overture: AOL
  • Yahoo!’s failed attempt to buy Google for $3B in 2002, leading it to settle for acquiring Overture instead the following year
  • “Project Panama” at Yahoo!, and its impact on the tech and internet history
  • Overture’s (and later Yahoo!’s) lawsuit against Google for stealing the paid search business model— “the O.G. version of Snapchat and Instagram”
  • Paul Graham’s take on “What Happened to Yahoo?”
  • Perhaps the most important technology to come out of this whole episode: Hadoop
  • The power of incentive alignment in marketplaces— and creating the widest and deepest moats on the internet

  The Carve Out: 

Episode 32: The Snap Inc. IPO

Snap! Acquired is live on the scene reporting from the “Super Bowl” of 2017 tech events: Snap Inc’s hugely anticipated (and just plain huge) IPO. What does the future hold for this plucky “camera company”? Will Snap’s IPO endure as tech’s most important picture-frame since the  2012 debut of Facebook, or is it destined to fade as just another snapshot? We debate! 

Sponsors:

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Topics covered include: 

  The Carve Out: 

Episode 31: The Uber – Didi Chuxing Merger with Brad Stone, author of The Upstarts & The Everything Store

Topics covered include:

  • The global surge in 2012 of entrepreneurs starting ridesharing companies, nowhere moreso than China 
  • Didi CEO Cheng Wei and investor Wang Gang’s backgrounds at Alibaba, first entrepreneurial effort in Momo, and Momo’s pivot to Didi Dache
  • The culling of the ridesharing herd in China down to Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache through brutal competition and involvement of the “big three” Chinese internet companies 
  • Rise of the Chinese messaging apps and associated mobile payments, and their impact on ridesharing
  • The 2015 merger between Didi and Kuaidi, brokered in part by Russian VC Yuri Milner
  • Uber’s decision to enter the Chinese market, and early success with investment and support from Baidu
  • The first meeting between Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Cheng Wei in 2015—which does not go well
  • Subsequent “scorched earth” competition between Didi and Uber throughout 2015-16
  • Negotiating an armistice: Uber’s agreement to sell its Chinese operations to Didi in late 2016
  • End of the war, or just the beginning? January 2017: Didi invests $100M in Brazilian Uber competitor 99
  • Sustainable growth, and building moats versus scorching earth

Sponsors:

 

Followups: 

  • Stay tuned for real-time coverage of the Snap IPO coming here on Acquired! 

  The Carve Out: 

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Episode 30: P.A. Semi + AuthenTec

Topics covered include: 

Sponsors:

 

Followups: 

  The Carve Out: 

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Episode 29: Special—2016 Review and 2017 Predictions

Ben & David wrap up 2016 with a review of the top tech themes we discussed on the show this year, and look forward to which themes we think will be relevant in the coming year. Can our hosts predict the future? Tune-in in 2018 to find out!   Note: we apologize for the less-than-amazing audio quality on this one. We’re still working on tuning our remote recording setup!
 

Sponsors:

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Topics covered include: 

  • Our top tech themes of 2016, including the first annual Acquired “Theme of the Year”: Aggregation Theory (surprise, surprise)
  • Themes we think will be most relevant as we head into 2017
  • Extended Carve Outs!

  The Carve Out(s): 

Episode 28: The Amazon IPO with original Amazon Board Member Tom Alberg

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”. From longterm thinking to flywheels to riding big waves, this episode is chock full of lessons and stories from the journey of building one of tech’s most iconic franchises. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we did recording it! 

Sponsors:

 

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Topics covered include: 

  • Tom’s “prolific” bio from the Amazon S-1
  • Jeff Bezos’s journey from a Vice President at the New York hedge fund D. E. Shaw to founding Amazon in a Bellevue, WA garage in the summer of 1994
  • Jeff’s longterm thinking as evident in the early days of Amazon, and his approach that “failure is ok, but not trying things is not ok” 
  • Raising the seed money for Amazon before product launch, how Tom met Jeff and decided to invest despite the “high” valuation
  • Tom’s (and Jeff’s) focus on the power of targeting large and growing markets 
  • Amazon’s actual overnight success after launching the website: according to Tom at the time, “By the second or third week… It was clear there was a trend here.”
  • How Amazon’s venture round, led by John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, came together in the spring of 1996 
  • Amazon’s torrid growth through 1996, Jeff’s mantra of “get big fast” to win the land grab of online book selling, and the board’s decision to prepare for a public offering in the spring of 1997 
  • How Frank Quattrone and Bill Gurley, then of Deutsche Bank, won the lead position for the Amazon IPO, beating out more storied firms such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley 
  • Development of the flywheel concept within Amazon, as an outgrowth of maniacal focus on creating superior customer experience
  • Amazon’s public offering on May 15, 1997 at $18 per share (effectively $1.50 relative to today’s stock price after splits), raising $54M at a market capitalization of $438M — and subsequently trading down during the first few months following the IPO  
  • Amazon and Jeff’s management of investor perceptions of the company, and ability to sell the longterm vision over short term profits — “you get the investors you ask for” 
  • The creation of the first annual letter to Amazon shareholders included in the company’s 1997 annual report (and republished every year since), and then-CFO Joy Covey’s role and contributions to it 
  • Raising convertible debt just before the peak of the dotcom bubble and subsequent ability to survive the burst, and the impact of the downturn on Amazon culture

  The Carve Out: 

Episode 27: Special—A Conversation with Microsoft’s Head of Strategic Investments Brian Schultz

Topics covered include: 

  • Brian’s history working across “both sides of the aisle” as both a startup founder and corporate development leader at a big company, how perspective from each informs the other, and the importance of learning “customer empathy” 
  • How Microsoft approaches M&A from an organizational perspective, and the importance of fit with the company’s product roadmap 
  • How Brian approaches strategic investments at Microsoft, and the evolution over time of the Microsoft (and large technology companies as a whole) perspective on investing in other companies
  • Balancing the tension between partnering and investing, and what criteria Brian thinks about when evaluating companies 
  • Microsoft’s investment in Facebook in 2007 (at a then-crazy-seeming $15B valuation), and more recently Foursquare,  Mesosphere,  CloudFlare and others
  • The current state of the tech M&A landscape, and the emergence of private equity as tech company acquirers 
  • Potentially changing corporate and foreign tax structures and how they impact acquirers’ thinking around deals (or not!) 
  • How Microsoft tracks and evaluates success of acquisitions over time, and lessons learned from successes and failures 
  • The increasing number of operating companies (technology and otherwise) looking to invest in startups, and how that landscape has evolved over time 

Sponsors:

 

Followups: 

  •  Snap Inc.’s rumored IPO filing — and bonus discussion of how VC’s and other investors think about “exiting” their investments in companies that have gone public

Hot Takes: 

  The Carve Out: 

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Episode 26: Marvel

Topics covered include: 

  • Marvel’s corporate origins as “Timely Publications”, created in 1939 by pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman in NYC, with the publication of Marvel Comics #1
  • Creation of enduring characters such as Captain America, the Fantastic 4, Spider Man, The X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk and more
  • Adoption in 1961 of the “Marvel Comics” brand, and writer-editor Stan Lee’s transition of the company towards focusing on edgier characters and stories targeted at older audiences 
  • Marvel’s first sale in 1968 to the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation (later Cadence Industries)
  • The company’s “turbulent” corporate history through the 1980’s and associated mergers, acquisitions and lawsuits
  • Marvel’s reinvention as a film-focused media company in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s with the launch of Marvel Studios
  • Disney’s ultimate acquisition of the company for $4.2 billion in August 2009, during the depth of the great recession 
  • Marvel’s—and in particular Marvel Studios’—performance since the acquisition 

Sponsors:

Followups: 

  Hot Takes: 

  The Carve Out: 

More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC