We dive into the history behind Meituan, the juggernaut Chinese "super-app" which dominates China's services economy, offering consumers everything from food delivery, restaurant reviews, travel booking, bike-sharing, movie ticketing, and countless other entertainment and lifestyle services all at the touch of a button. Already China's 3rd largest tech company by market cap (behind just Tencent and Alibaba), Meituan did $15 billion in net revenue in FY2019 and continues to grow rapidly. What makes it so special, and how were they able to become the market leader in such a competitive space? This story is packed with lessons that apply equally beyond China tech to high-growth company building and investing everywhere.  If you love Acquired and want more, join our LP Community for access to over 50 LP-only episodes, monthly Zoom calls, and live access for big events like emergency pods and book club discussions with authors. We can't wait to see you there.&nbsp;Join here at:&nbsp;  Sponsors:  Thanks to Tiny for being our presenting sponsor for all of Acquired Season 8. Tiny is building the "Berkshire Hathaway of the internet" — if you own a wonderful internet business that you want to sell, or know someone who does, you should get in touch with them. Unlike traditional buyers, they commit to quick, simple diligence, a 30-day or less process, and will leave your business to do its thing for the long term. You can learn more about Tiny here:&nbsp; Thank you as well to Vouch and to Capchase. You can learn more about them at:        The Meituan Playbook: (also available on our website at &nbsp;) 1. Adding product offerings (post initial product-market fit) isn't losing focus. It's smart business.  A huge part of Meituan's success and longterm defensibility versus its literally thousands of past competitors is its ability to cross-sell customers across many different product lines. Meituan can afford to spend much more on acquiring and retaining a new user who'll end up purchasing food delivery, groceries, hotels, travel and more through the platform vs. standalone competitors in each vertical. Most western companies woefully misunderstand this dynamic. (Amazon being a notable exception) Meituan enjoys an average of 26 transactions per user per year (vs e.g. Airbnb users which book an average of 0.5 transactions/year). With each additional offering, Meituan increases the number of revenue streams it can amortize its CAC over, while also offering superior experiences to customers. Key to making this strategy work is having the discipline to follow the same playbook as any startup: launch new initiatives quickly, test and improve based on real customer feedback, don't let perfect be the enemy of shipped, and kill what's not working and move on. Meituan and Amazon's new initiatives often lack polish — but they either quickly bring in $billions of revenue, or they die and the company goes on to the next one. Again with few exceptions, western tech companies completely misunderstand how to execute this playbook effectively.  2. When you spot a market that's both large and growing fast — ride that wave!!  Chinese e-commerce was a 20% saturation industry in 2017 and still growing nicely. However real world services was only 5% online, and poised to grow even faster. Staying nimble to capitalize on this online to offline (or "O2O") trend allowed Meituan to accelerate while Alibaba was caught flat-footed. Today Meituan (along with its fellow Tencent portfolio company Pinduoduo) represents probably the biggest threat Alibaba has faced in its entire history.  3. Many still don't realize what a powerful moat (trusted) reviews provide in online platforms.  Once it merged with Dianping, review data became Meituan's biggest competitive advantage vs other food delivery (and other product line) competitors. A deep database of reviews creates an incredible barrier to entry: any competitor can standup a set of listings, but without trusted...

Meituan

It's time. After 150+ episodes on great companies, we tackle the granddaddy of them all — Berkshire Hathaway. One episode alone isn't nearly enough to do Warren and Poor Charlie justice, so today we present Part I: Warren's story. How did a folksy, middle-class kid from Omaha become the single greatest capitalist of all-time? Why, like Jordan, did he retire (twice!) at the top of his game, only to reinvent himself and come back stronger than ever? As always, we dive in. Let's dance. If you love Acquired and want more, join our LP Community for access to over 50 LP-only episodes, monthly Zoom calls, and live access for big events like emergency pods and book club discussions with authors. We can't wait to see you there.&nbsp;Join here at:&nbsp;  Sponsors:&nbsp;  Thanks to Tiny for being our presenting sponsor for all of Acquired Season 8. Tiny is building the "Berkshire Hathaway of the internet" — something they're so dedicated to, they even make and sell bronze busts of Warren &amp; Charlie online! if you own a wonderful internet business that you want to sell, or know someone who does, you should get in touch with them. Just like Berkshire, they commit to quick, simple diligence, a 30-day or less process, and will leave your business to do its thing for the long term. You can learn more about Tiny here:&nbsp; and find their Berkshire Nerds store here:  Thank you as well to Vouch and to Capchase. You can learn more about them at:        The Warren Buffett Playbook: (also available on our website at  ) 1. Money can create more money. (aka "Compounding")  Very early in life, Warren figured out something most people never truly grasp: money can be used to generate more money. It's sounds simple, but once you fully internalize this concept, you'll never see the world the same again. A given sum no longer represents what you could buy with it — a coffee, a phone, a car, a house, etc — but rather what it could grow to become over time. At the extreme, people like Warren are "cursed", seeing prices for goods not as whatever the sticker says, but 5x, 10x, 20x higher — because that's what the opportunity cost of parting with the capital represents. If you own an asset that's compounding at a high rate with no obvious reason it will stop... dear lord do not interrupt it!! Most people are tempted to meddle: lock in gains, cover other losses, actively trade, or otherwise "manage" their investments. In the long run these actions are almost assuredly all value-destructive behaviors if you own truly great businesses.  2. Align incentives: be a doctor, not a prescriptionist.  Warren likened stockbrokers — who got paid based on volume of trades placed, not investment performance — to "prescriptionist" doctors who were paid by their number and type of pills prescribed, versus actual patient outcomes. Once Warren created his investment partnerships (and then later transformed Berkshire Hathaway into something similar), he not only unlocked hugely better outcomes for his"patients", but allowed created a path to pursue his own dream and become fabulously wealthy in the process.  3. You can't expect to control other people's emotions around money (or anything else).  However with the right "ground rules", you can mitigate the impact of others on your business and decision making — and even use them to your advantage. Warren's early partnerships had a few ground rules and norms: partners will not know what securities are held, trading in/out is allowed only 1 day / year, and Warren will consistently set low expectations (leaving himself ample room to over-deliver). These set the stage for nearly complete freedom for Warren to operate as he saw fit — to the immense gain of his limited partners.  4. Sins of omission (selling or passing) nearly always cost more than sins of commission (buying).  Warren is almost without doubt the greatest investor of all time. However even he made three incredibly stupid "unforced errors" early in...

Berkshire Hathaway Part I

In Part II of our Berkshire Hathaway Trilogy (!), we pick up the story with Warren wandering in the woods of Omaha, searching for his life's next chapter after retiring from the professional investing business at the top of his game at age 39. How does he emerge from those woods anew, transforming from Ben Graham's cigar-butt cocoon into the butterfly collector of Berkshire's wonderful businesses? (Spoiler: Charlie Munger.) And how did one rotten-to-the-core business nearly bring it all down — everything he'd ever worked for — in the span of one terrible week? Tune in! If you love Acquired and want more, join our LP Community for access to over 50 LP-only episodes, monthly Zoom calls, and live access for big events like our upcoming Book Club event with Brad Stone. We can't wait to see you there.&nbsp;Join here at:&nbsp;  Sponsors:  Thanks to Tiny for being our presenting sponsor for all of Acquired Season 8. Tiny is building the "Berkshire Hathaway of the internet" — something they're so dedicated to, they even make and sell bronze busts of Warren &amp; Charlie online! if you own a wonderful internet business that you want to sell, or know someone who does, you should get in touch with them. Just like Berkshire, they commit to quick, simple diligence, a 30-day or less process, and will leave your business to do its thing for the long term. You can learn more about Tiny here:&nbsp; and find their Berkshire Nerds store here:  Thank you as well to Vouch and to Capchase. You can learn more about them at:        The Charlie Munger Playbook:&nbsp;(also available on our website at &nbsp;)  1. Change your mind. Evolve. Reinvent.  Without Charlie's influence, Warren may have stuck to chasing cigar butts his entire career, and missed out on wonderful businesses like See's Candy, The Washington Post, Capital Cities, Geico (for the longterm) and Coca-Cola. Charlie's life experience taught him that the world can change on a dime, and what worked in the past won't necessarily work in the future. To succeed over the longterm you have to be a constant learning machine — which sounds obvious, but the difficult part is being willing to question your own deeply held assumptions and beliefs, and then discard them when they no longer fit reality.  2. Focus on getting a few simple things right — and the rest takes care of itself.  Adapting his beloved grandfather's motto ("Concentrate on the task immediately in front of you, and control your spending."), Charlie learned early on that there are only a few bedrock sort of things in life that never change — and that if you just focus on getting those right, you'll do well. Find a great spouse who makes you better in life; buy wonderful businesses at fair prices; never get into a position where you're over-extended; be philanthropic when you can; have fun along the way. It's hard to argue much else matters. Reflecting back on his and Warren's success, Charlie says, "It isn't that we were so good at doing things that were difficult. We were good at avoiding things that were difficult — finding things that are easy."  3. Risk ≠ volatility. Risk = chance of going out of business.  The Efficient Market Hypothesists of the 1970s-80s proposed that all investing risk could be reduced to "beta", or volatility relative to the market. This led to the 1980s' explosion of debt, derivatives and other "weapons of mass financial destruction" which people believed "riskless" because their volatility was hedged. Charlie and Warren recognized before anyone else that to the contrary, these instruments greatly ratcheted risk in the system! Operating with so much leverage, a single small but unexpected event could topple the whole house of cards. Unfortunately Warren and Charlie didn't listen to their own advice when entering the Salomon Brothers saga...  4. Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.  Some people (and companies or even whole industries) are addicted to "getting...

Berkshire Hathaway Part II

We close out Season 8 with the most ambitious organization we've ever covered on Acquired: Ethereum, and it's celebrity wunderkind founder Vitalik Buterin. If you thought Mark Zuckerberg IPO-ing Facebook at $100B by age 27 was something, just wait until you hear the story of this high school junior creating $500B (!!) of market cap by the same age — and oh yeah, maybe seeding the future dethroning of Facebook, Google, Amazon and all of big tech in the process. Regardless whether you're a crypto neophyte, a die-hard bull, or a skeptical bear, this is a story you need to hear, and Ethereum is an innovation you need to understand. Buckle in for a wild ride... and some special surprises from a few Acquired friends. :) If you love Acquired and want more, join our LP Community for access to over 50 LP-only episodes, monthly Zoom calls, and live access for big events like emergency pods and book club discussions with authors. We can't wait to see you there.&nbsp;Join here at:&nbsp;  Sponsors:&nbsp;  Thanks to Tiny for being our presenting sponsor for all of Acquired Season 8. Tiny is building the "Berkshire Hathaway of the internet" — if you own a wonderful internet business that you want to sell, or know someone who does, you should get in touch with them. Unlike traditional buyers, they commit to quick, simple diligence, a 30-day or less process, and will leave your business to do its thing for the long term. You can learn more about Tiny here:&nbsp; Thank you as well to Vouch and to Capchase. You can learn more about them at:        Links:  The Ethereum Whitepaper:  Yung Spielburg  and Mike Taylor  on Spotify   Carve Outs:   Arthur C. Clarke: ? (especially Rendezvous with Rama and The City &amp; The Stars)   Disney-Marvel's Loki:    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson:    Nier Automata:    Magic the Gathering IRL:     Episode Sources:

Ethereum

It's time. We dive into the unbelievable history behind the quietest technology giant of them all — and as of recording the world's 9th (!) most valuable company — the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. This story checks every box in the Acquired pantheon of greatness: China, America, MIT, Don Valentine, Silicon Valley, "real men" looking silly, and... moats literally built by lasers. We're not kidding. Pull up a seat and settle in for a great one!  If you love Acquired and want more, join our LP Community for access to over 50 LP-only episodes, monthly Zoom calls, and live access for big events like emergency pods and book club discussions with authors. We can't wait to see you there.&nbsp;Join here at:&nbsp;  Sponsors:  Thank you to Pilot for being our presenting sponsor for all of Acquired Season 9! Pilot takes care of startups' bookkeeping, tax and CFO services so busy founders can focus on what matters. To paraphrase Jeff Bezos's AWS analogy: bookkeeping and tax don't make your product any better — so you should let Pilot handle them for you. Pilot is in fact backed by Bezos himself, along with other all-star investors including Sequoia, Index, and Stripe. They are truly the gold standard for startup bookkeeping, and many of the companies we work with run on them. You can get in touch with Pilot here:  , and Acquired listeners get 20% off their first 6 months! (use the link above) Thank you as well to PitchBook and to Nord Security. You can learn more about them at:        Links:  Episode Sources:    Carve Outs:  Ted Lasso (Season 1):  Greek:  Who is Michael Ovitz?:

TSMC

Welcome to a new experiment here at Acquired: Replays! We realized many of you have joined us recently and haven’t heard older episodes — so we’re re-releasing some of our “greatest hits”. Today we’re starting with one of our very favorite Acquired series: the legendary Sequoia Capital. This is a 2-part series that we’ve edited into one episode: the first part is the story of the firm and its founder, Don Valentine, and the second is our interview with Doug Leone. Let us know what you think about this experiment, and tell us in Slack what episodes we should revisit in the future!  If you want more Acquired, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).  Sponsor:  Thank you to Tegus for sponsoring this episode! Tegus is the world’s leading company intelligence platform, containing thousands of fully transcribed, searchable interviews with experts on companies of every stage and sector – all accessible online and on-demand. They’re trusted by great firms like Benchmark, Spark, Thrive, First Round, Redpoint, MITIMCo, IGSB and more. You can learn more and&nbsp;. Just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch!   Links:       ‍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.

Replay: Sequoia Capital

Benchmark Capital. We tell the tale of the legendary equal partnership that accomplished something no other venture firm can claim: twice it has produced the highest returning fund of its cycle, each time with a 100% different GP lineup. If ever there were a playbook for successful generational transfer of a generational-defining venture firm, this is it. We spend 3.5+ hours digging into how the dotcom “eBay eBoys” transformed into the rockstar Fab Four of the Uber, Instagram and Snap mobile gold rush (spoiler: not by a straight line!), and what the future holds for Benchmark’s next GP generation. If you’re a student of the venture game from any angle — founder, GP, LP, etc — this is a story you need to tune in for!  If you want more Acquired, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).  Sponsors:  Thank you to our presenting sponsor for all of Season 11, Fundrise! If you’re considering raising a growth round of capital in the next year, you should definitely explore raising some of it with the Fundrise Innovation Fund. Just email , and tell them Ben &amp; David sent you. And if you’re an individual looking for exposure to private growth-stage technology companies, you can . Thank you as well to  and ! You can register for the .   Links:        Carve Outs:        ‍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.

Benchmark Capital

We kick off ACQ Sessions with the-behind-the-scenes story of All-in, from the world’s greatest moderator himself Jason Calacanis. ACQ Sessions is our new, occasional “MTV Unplugged” version of Acquired: a great IRL guest, a bottle (or two) of wine, and no script. We talk about everything you’d imagine we would over wine with JCal — All-In, bestie relationships, money &amp; politics in Silicon Valley, who his influences and mentors have been (one surprise — the great Fred Wilson of USV!), what motivates him to keep grinding and why, at age 50+ when he could easily be winding down he’s instead speeding up into the most productive phase of his entire career. Pour a beverage yourself, pull up a comfy seat and join us!  If you want more Acquired, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).  Sponsors:  Thanks to Vanta for being our presenting sponsor for this special episode. Vanta is the leader in automated security compliance – making SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and more a breeze for startups and organizations of all sizes. You might say they’re like the “AWS of security and compliance”!&nbsp;Everyone in the Acquired community can . Thank you as well to  and to .   ‍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.

ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis

We sit down with all five current Benchmark GPs for one of their legendary weekly dinners, during which we ask all of the unresolved burning questions from Part 1. How do THEY think about Benchmark v3? What are their day-to-day emotions trying to keep the equal partnership “bending toward greatness? Why is there no growth fund? What does it take to become the next Benchmark GP? Why is there a secret Principal program? We cover all these and much, much more. We also recorded the whole thing on video — which we highly recommend watching even if you normally only listen to the audio feed!  If you want more Acquired, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).  Sponsors:  Thank you to our presenting sponsor for all of Season 11, Fundrise! If you’re considering raising a growth round of capital in the next year, you should definitely explore raising some of it with the Fundrise Innovation Fund. Just email , and tell them Ben &amp; David sent you. And if you’re an individual looking for exposure to private growth-stage technology companies, you can . Thank you as well to .   ‍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.

Benchmark Part II: The Dinner

Qualcomm, or “Quality Communications” — despite being one of the largest technology companies in the world, few people know the absolutely amazing technological and business history behind it. Seriously, this story is on par with Nvidia, TSMC and all the great semiconductor giants. Without this single fabless company based in San Diego, there’s almost no chance you’d be consuming this episode on whatever device you’re currently listening on — a fact that enables them to earn an incredible estimated $20 for every new phone sold in the world. We dive into this story live at the perfect venue: our first-ever European live show at Solana’s Breakpoint conference in beautiful Lisbon, Portugal!  If you want more Acquired, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).  Links:       Sponsors:  Thank you to our presenting sponsor for all of Season 11, Fundrise! If you’re considering raising a growth round of capital in the next year, you should definitely explore raising some of it with the Fundrise Innovation Fund. Just email , and tell them Ben &amp; David sent you. And if you’re an individual looking for exposure to private growth-stage technology companies, you can . Thank you as well to  and to . If you sign up for Brex using this link, Brex and we will send you a free Acquired t-shirt! :)  Note: New and existing Brex customers are eligible for this promotion. Promotion runs through December 31, 2022, at 11:59pm PT. To receive an Acquired t-shirt, you must create a free Brex account via . Brex terms and conditions apply. If you’re an existing customer, send your t-shirt request to  from your work email. T-shirts will be mailed within 30 days to the address on the Brex account.     ‍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.

Qualcomm

The FTX fraud has dominated headlines now for weeks, during which we’ve debated if and how Acquired could uniquely add to the conversation. Then we realized there was an angle so perfect that we had to drop everything and enter Acquired research overdrive: Enron. Travel back with us to the granddaddy fraud of them all, 2001’s then-largest bankruptcy in US history and the impetus for the famous Sarbanes-Oxley Act. So much of Enron’s history parallels FTX that the uncanniness is almost unbelievable — right down to the same CEO running the two bankruptcies. Sit back and enjoy this crazy tale of villainy, greed, and the nature of humans and money. Maybe just don’t take notes on this one…  If you want more Acquired, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).  Sponsors:  Thank you to our presenting sponsor for all of Season 11, Fundrise. If you’re considering raising a growth round of capital in the next year, you should definitely explore raising some of it with the Fundrise Innovation Fund. Just email , and tell them Ben &amp; David sent you. And if you’re an individual looking for exposure to private growth-stage technology companies, you can . Thank as well to Vanta. Vanta is the leader in automated security compliance – making SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and more a breeze for startups and organizations of all sizes. Everyone in the Acquired community can . And finally thank you also to !   Links:   🤔    Carveouts!:          ‍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.

Enron

Ben Thompson joins Acquired to discuss the business of Stratechery itself and celebrate 10 years (!) of the internet’s best strategy analysis destination. Even beyond Stratechery’s enormous impact itself on business and tech over the years, Ben’s work inspired a whole generation of business content creators — this show very much included — and it was super special for us to give the Acquired treatment to one of our own heroes. We cover the full history of Ben pioneering the subscription internet media business model (indeed SubStack’s seed round pitch was “Stratechery-in-a-box”), and how + why he’s evolved the business since and is now doubling down both on podcasting and a broader vision of the Stratechery Plus bundle… including for the first time content not made by Ben himself! Tune in and enjoy.  If you want more Acquired, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).  Sponsors:  Thank you to our presenting sponsor for all of Season 11, Fundrise. If you’re considering raising a growth round of capital in the next year, you should definitely explore raising some of it with the Fundrise Innovation Fund. Just email , and tell them Ben &amp; David sent you. And if you’re an individual looking for exposure to private growth-stage technology companies, you can . Thank you as well to  and !   Links:  John Gruber’s   Subscribe to    ‍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.

Stratechery (with Ben Thompson)

Cozy up to the fire and join Acquired as we do our annual strategic review of the show and our business “in public”. We recap our perspectives on Acquired’s big moments from the past year, a bit of commentary on the current state of the tech ecosystem, and what lies ahead for us in 2023. Plus as always at the holidays, we do an extended carve out session on our favorite things from the past year. Huge thank you to all of you for making 2022 an amazing year here in Acquired-land, and here’s to even bigger and better things to come in 2023!  If you want more Acquired, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).  Sponsors:  Thanks to Vanta for being our presenting sponsor for this special episode. Vanta is the leader in automated security compliance – making SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and more a breeze for startups and organizations of all sizes. You might say they’re like the “AWS of security and compliance”!&nbsp;Everyone in the Acquired community can . Thank you as well to to  and to . If you sign up for Brex using this link, Brex and we will send you a free Acquired t-shirt! :)  Note: New and existing Brex customers are eligible for this promotion. Promotion runs through December 31, 2022, at 11:59pm PT. To receive an Acquired t-shirt, you must create a free Brex account via . Brex terms and conditions apply. If you’re an existing customer, send your t-shirt request to  from your work email. T-shirts will be mailed within 30 days to the address on the Brex account.     Carveouts!:                              , especially  and the  Capri   ‍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.

Holiday Special 2022

The NFL — it’s almost synonymous with America today. And its history is a fascinating lens to explore the nation’s development over the last 100 years, from WWII to TV and suburbs to the Internet and social media. What began as a quasi-illicit league in small midwestern towns is now the single largest media property in the world today by revenue. And whether you watch football or not, this is one incredible business story. Acquired is ready for some football — let’s kick this Season off right!  Sponsors: Thanks to our fantastic partners, any member of the Acquired community can now get:       Links:     Carve Outs:      ‍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.

The NFL

We tell the full history of LVMH, and how Bernard Arnault turned a $15m investment in a bankrupt French textile company into the world’s largest individual fortune. It’s a story that’s equal parts Berkshire Hathaway, Steve Jobs and Barbarians at the Gate… and wholly under-appreciated for the genius business model innovations that enabled it. Whatever industry you operate or invest in, there’s so much to be learned from Bernard and LVMH’s complete reshaping of the luxury sector over the past three and a half decades. And oh yeah, it also involves Nazi spies, Italian family murders, Rupert Murdoch, Rihanna becoming a billionaire, Jay-Z’s champagne feuds and Beyoncé wearing a 128 carat diamond. Tune in. :)  Sponsors: Thanks to our fantastic partners, any member of the Acquired community can now get:       Links:      Carve Outs:

LVMH

You may think you know the Nintendo story: a plumber named Mario, a princess named Zelda… and didn’t they buy the Seattle Mariners at some point? We thought we knew it too. And then we started researching and were blown away. The lovable Disney-like Nintendo that we know today is a 130 year-old a playing card company (i.e. gambling), forged in the shadowy world of the Yakuza and shaped by a four-generation cycle of bitter family betrayal. And its unlikely transformation into a global multi-billion dollar media monopoly was led by an iron-fisted patriarch who — amazingly — never played a video game in his life! Get ready for one of our favorite stories Acquired has ever told — we couldn’t make this one up if we tried.  ACQ2 Show + LP Program:    and support the show. Help us pick episodes, Zoom calls and more.   Sponsors: Thanks to our fantastic partners, any member of the Acquired community can now get:     (just tell them Ben &amp; David sent you)   Links:       Carve Outs:   Michael Lewis  and

Nintendo

Topics covered include:  Community Showcase: the&nbsp;Nexcast&nbsp;podcasting platform from listener Brian Sanders, along with their podcast chronicling the team’s journey building the company&nbsp; Waze’s origin in cofounder &amp; CTO Ehud Shabtai’s desire to hack his portable GPS navigation unit Waze CEO Noam Bardin’s  retrospective blog post on the Waze journey&nbsp;  Waze’s Palo Alto office and the bizarre Silicon Valley phenomenon of tech companies being located in retail storefronts&nbsp; Apple’s  ill-fated launch of Apple Maps as part of iOS 6 at WWDC 2012, Apple’s subsequent apology letter, and  Scott Forstall’s ultimate ouster from the company&nbsp; The climax of the mobile platform wars… which it turns out Apple and Google  both won  Apple, Facebook, and Google all vying to acquire Waze throughout 2013  Google’s renewed design ethos under Larry Page Ben and David spontaneously agree (surprise) to create on a new category of acquisition for the show&nbsp; The increasing strategic value of data and data assets as technology enters the age of machine learning&nbsp; The coming mega trend of autonomous vehicles, and  the role Israeli startups are playing in it (including the globalization of startups &amp; innovation) The disruptive power of network and data-based business models Emergence of native as *the* definitive advertising medium on mobile, including ability to close the advertising loop via location-based products and services&nbsp;   &nbsp;  The Carve Out  Ben: Weezer’s “Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori” on&nbsp;Song Exploder&nbsp; David:  Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” TED Talk   &nbsp;  Followups:  None this week… coverage of Instagram Stories to come next time!

Acquired Episode 17: Waze

Season 3 Trailer

Acquired kicks off Season 3 with a gangbuster two-hour extravaganza on America’s most successful automotive startup since The Ford Motor Company: Tesla. We cover everything, from founding to its 2010 IPO to all that’s happened since, including the question on the minds of superhero fans everywhere: who came first, Elon Musk or Tony Stark? (Spoiler: Elon) &nbsp; Carve Outs:  Ben: The Dissect podcast David: Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast  &nbsp; Sponsor:  Thanks to Silicon Valley Bank for sponsoring Acquired Season 3. You can get in touch with Jordan Kanis, who you heard at the beginning of this podcast, here.

Season 3, Episode 1: Tesla

In this special episode Ben &amp; David head to Recode’s SF office and sit down in the red chair with the one &amp; only Kara Swisher! Kara tells the story of Recode, from the beginnings of her partnership with Walt Mossberg in the late 90’s at WSJ to the launch of the D Conference and the All Things D blog, to starting Recode and ultimately being acquired by Vox Media in 2015. Kara is someone we’ve long looked up to at Acquired, and it was really special to have her join us on the show. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did! &nbsp; Links:   Kara interviewing Stewart Butterfield, CEO of… Glitch?  &nbsp; Sponsor:  Thanks to Silicon Valley Bank for sponsoring all of Acquired Season 3. You can get in touch with Jeremy Shure, who you heard at the beginning of this podcast, here.

Season 3, Episode 4: Recode (with Kara Swisher)

Join the Acquired Limited Partner program! https://glow.fm/acquired/ (works best on mobile) &nbsp; Welcome to the big one. On the day of its IPO, we tell the story of Uber. It’s a story whose roots stretch back 130 years, but whose impact reverberates perhaps more powerfully on our current world than any other. A story that, in all of its greatness and in all of its ugliness, may just be the story of our time. &nbsp; Links  Austin Geidt’s incredible journey: https://youtu.be/-NjaqDMYNVs Travis’s self-introduction as “the Wolf from Pulp Fiction”: https://youtu.be/VMvdvP02f-Y Travis interview on TWiST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=550X5OZVk7Y&nbsp;  &nbsp; Sponsor  Thanks to Perkins Coie, Counsel to Great Companies, for sponsoring Acquired Season 4. You can get in touch with Allison Handy, who you heard at the beginning of this podcast, at https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/professionals/allison-c-handy.html

The Uber IPO

Please take the 2019 Acquired Survey. It takes 5-10 minutes, helps us immensely, and you may win a pair of new AirPods or a free 1-year subscription to the LP show! http://acquired.fm/survey &nbsp; It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an... enterprise software company? We give the full Acquired treatment to newly-public Slack, one of the most extreme and successful pivots of all-time. From a log cabin in Canada to a never-ending game and back again, Slack’s journey has more twists and turns than a Hobbit’s tale. Tune in for one APLUSS story you don’t want to miss! &nbsp; Links  Kara Swisher’s Flipcam interview with Glitch:  https://www.wsj.com/video/tiny-speck-stewart-butterfield-speaks/C51EAD27-FE8E-46AE-B785-6ECF1A9798B0.html Marc Andreessen on “all will still end well...” https://twitter.com/patphelan/status/1142733251691405312 The Glitch public domain archive: https://www.glitchthegame.com Naming Slack: https://twitter.com/stewart/status/780906639301812225?s=21  &nbsp; Carve Outs  Ben: The Expanse on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/The-Expanse-Season-1/dp/B018BZ3SCM David: Give to any non-profit on Alma: https://alma.app/blog/1-4-million-reasons-to-love-alma-search&nbsp;  &nbsp; Sponsor  Thanks to Perkins Coie, Counsel to Great Companies, for sponsoring Acquired Season 4. You can get in touch with Ned Prusse, who you heard at the beginning of this podcast, at https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/professionals/ned-a-prusse.html  &nbsp; Join the Acquired Limited Partner program! https://glow.fm/acquired/ (works best on mobile)

Season 4, Episode 9: The Slack DPO

Please take the 2019 Acquired Survey. It takes 5-10 minutes, helps us immensely, and you may win a pair of new AirPods or a free 1-year subscription to the LP show! http://acquired.fm/survey &nbsp; We wrap up Season 4 with a very special (and accidental!) episode, a conversation with the CEO of Superhuman, the red hot email productivity app which just announced their $33m Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz. While originally intended as an LP episode, we felt Superhuman would provide the perfect bookend to our “modern enterprise productivity trilogy” following our Zoom and Slack episodes. We hope you enjoy the conversation with Rahul as much as we did, and we’ll see you later this summer for Season 5! &nbsp; Links  New York Times article announcing the fundraise:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/superhuman-email.html&nbsp; Rahul’s Medium post on acquisitions:  https://medium.com/swlh/rip-mailbox-or-founders-how-to-stop-worrying-and-love-being-acquired-261da4f6d566 Rahul on finding product-market fit on First Round Review:  https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/  &nbsp; Sponsor  Thanks to Perkins Coie, Counsel to Great Companies, for sponsoring Acquired Season 4. You can get in touch with Ned Prusse, who you heard at the beginning of this podcast, at https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/professionals/ned-a-prusse.html  &nbsp; Join the Acquired Limited Partner program! https://glow.fm/acquired/ (works best on mobile)

Superhuman (with CEO Rahul Vohra)

Join the Acquired Limited Partner program!  (works best on mobile) The wait is over. Acquired returns with a very special Part II of the Sequoia Capital story, joined by the very best person in the world to help us tell it - Doug Leone. Since 1996, Doug has served as Sequoia’s Global Managing Partner, in charge of overseeing the firm’s incredible expansion from a single, $150m early-stage fund focused on Northern California to the multi-billion dollar global powerhouse it is today. Doug is incredibly candid and insightful about all that has gone into building the modern Sequoia: from winning Google and missing Facebook, to the enormous (and enormously successful) bet on decentralized expansion in China and India, to the firm’s “proudest moment” at the depth of the dot com bust. This episode is an absolute must-listen for anyone in the tech, startup and venture ecosystems today. Thank you to Doug and all of the Sequoia team for joining us to make it happen! &nbsp; Note:  You can listen to Part I of our Sequoia story, which dives deep into the history and background of the firm, here:   &nbsp; Sponsor:  Thanks to Silicon Valley Bank for being our banner sponsor for Acquired Season 6. You can learn more about SVB here:  Thank you as well to Wilson Sonsini - You can learn more about WSGR at:   &nbsp; Sources:

Sequoia Capital Part II (with Doug Leone)

Join the Acquired Limited Partner program!  (works best on mobile) We're joined by Wade Foster, cofounder &amp; CEO of Zapier, a company that basically hasn’t raised capital, doesn’t have an office, doesn’t have salespeople, and whose product consists solely of connecting other people’s products. And yet today they are doing well over $50M in profitable ARR, have hundreds of employees and thousands of hyper-passionate customers, and are one of the most interesting private SaaS companies in the world. We’re super excited for Wade to join us and dive into the full story of this came to be! This episode is a preview of the hour-long LP-only show.

LP Show Preview: Remote Work, No-Code, and Products that Sell Themselves (w/ Zapier CEO Wade Foster)

On this special episode of Acquired, we're joined by a master interviewer himself, Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like the Best. We turn the tables and cover the most fascinating story he's never told on ILTB... his own! What is O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, and how are they bringing "AWS-level" innovation to the sleepy wealth management industry? How did he go from Notre Dame philosophy major to quant researcher to (arguably) technology CEO and now also an early-stage venture investor... all while simultaneously building one of the world's top new business media empires? Acquired is here to explore it all. If you want more more Acquired and the tools + resources to become the best founder, operator or investor you can be, join our LP Program for access to our LP Show, the LP community on Slack and Zoom, and our new live Book Club discussions with top authors.&nbsp;Join here at:&nbsp; &nbsp; Sponsor:  This episode is supported by Teamistry, a great podcast from Atlassian that tells the stories of teams who work together in new and unexpected ways to achieve remarkable things. It's one of our best new podcast&nbsp;discoveries in 2020 and we honestly think Acquired listeners are going to love it. (business + history + space!) Click the link below to listen, and our thanks to Teamistry for their support.   &nbsp; Playbook Special! Patrick’s Favorite Themes from 5 Years of ILTB:  Chetan Puttagunta (#1): Go slow to go fast —  Chetan Puttagunta (#2): Open source isn’t about saving on R&amp;D, it’s about building differentiated distribution among developers —  Bill Gurley: Healthy marketplace opportunities have increasing marginal value to demand from incremental supply penetration —  Matthew Ball: The key to unlocking the Metaverse isn’t about building Ready Player One, it’s about creating interoperable systems that will move value and information between experiences —  Charlie Songhurst: The best place to look for talent is in less-competitive markets —  Katrina Lake: The past of e-commerce was about price, convenience and selection; the future is about personalization and curation —  Daniel Ek: Company scaling as “seeing around corners” —  Kat Cole: Inversion as a tool to deal with difficult people —  Sarah Tavel: Hierarchy as a framework —  Josh Wolfe: The “directional arrow of progress” and the simple power of extrapolating trend lines —   &nbsp; Links:  Invest Like the Best:  Founder's Field Guide:  OSAM and Canvas:

Special: Invest Like the Best on Acquired

Live from the 2020 ASCEND Space Conference, Acquired covers the full story behind the most "out there" technology story of the past few years: Virgin Galactic. How did this space tourism company grow out of the winning X Prize team, and catch the eyes and fancy of billionaires like Paul Allen, Sir Richard Branson, and, most recently, company chairman Chamath Palihapitiya who took it public via the first "modern" technology SPAC transaction in history? Tune in to find out!! If you want more more Acquired and the tools + resources to become the best founder, operator or investor you can be, join our LP Program for access to our LP Show, the LP community on Slack and Zoom, and our live Book Club discussions with top authors.&nbsp;Join here at:&nbsp; &nbsp; Sponsors:&nbsp;  Thanks to Tiny for being our presenting sponsor for all of Acquired Season 7. Tiny is building the "Berkshire Hathaway of the internet" — if you own a wonderful internet business that you want to sell, or know someone who does, you should get in touch with them. Unlike traditional buyers, they commit to quick, simple diligence, a 30-day or less process, and will leave your business to do its thing for the long term. You can learn more about Tiny here:&nbsp; Thank you as well to Bamboo Growth and to Perkins Coie. You can learn more about them at:       &nbsp; Playbook Themes from this Episode: (also available on our website at  ) 1. Prizes can be a great way to generate leverage on innovation.&nbsp;If done right, the X Prize and other industry prizes like it (e.g., Netflix Prize, DARPA Challenge, etc) can bring an order of magnitude more talent to bear on a challenge than what the same dollars alone could hire.  The challenge is to create a prize that inspires and draws in a large enough pool of contributors. The aerospace industry’s “cool” factor may be what allowed the X Prize to succeed and explain why prizes aren't employed as often in other sectors.  2. When trying new things, most people want to go second — but those willing to go first get the best returns.Being first into new markets carries high risk (including/especially reputational), but often also offers asymmetric upside. Investing in a new frontier when others think it’s crazy is a recipe for success — if you’re both contrarian and right.  Chamath took a huge turn from the traditional VC playbook when he created his first SPAC in 2017, years before they went mainstream. He and his investors have generated over $1B in profits from that vehicle (which is now merged with Virgin Galactic), and have since used those proceeds to launch five more.  3. The best time to invest was yesterday, the next best time is today.&nbsp;Great investors don’t miss the chance to invest in big markets because they’ve passed on it before. Sir Richard Branson passed on investing in the X Prize twice before partnering with Burt Rutan's winning team to build Virgin Galactic. 4. Whenever a market's prices aren't being set by supply and demand, there's probably an opportunity to disrupt that market.&nbsp;The traditional IPO pricing process is managed by third parties (investment banks) that represent both sides of the transaction, and also have their own economic interests at play. It's the equivalent of a real estate agent representing both the buyer and seller. As a result, many technology IPOs have left hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on the table. SPACs and direct listings are now solving that problem. Any other market with this dynamic should represent fertile ground for entrepreneurs. &nbsp; Links:  Virgin Galactic's "One Small Step" reservation program:  The November 2020 launch delay:   &nbsp; Sources:  Black Sky Documentary:&nbsp; How to Make a Spaceship:

Virgin Galactic

As regular listeners know, we typically cover some of the biggest companies who often receive the most media attention (see Airbnb and DoorDash). But today's episode is a little different. In our conversation with Courtland Allen of Indie Hackers, the largest community of startup founders, we dive into the stories of underdogs. What happens when there are millions of people doing small business entrepreneurship? How does anyone having access to the globally addressable market of 3 billion internet users open the door for the niche-est of products? We tell the story of Courtland’s own “Indie Hacker” journey, how he came to found Indie Hackers itself, and the lessons learned along the way. &nbsp; If you want more more Acquired and the tools + resources to become the best founder, operator or investor you can be, join our LP Program for access to our LP Show, the LP community on Slack and Zoom, and our live Book Club discussions with top authors.&nbsp;Join here at:&nbsp; &nbsp; Sponsors:&nbsp;  This episode is supported by Teamistry, a great new podcast from Atlassian that tells the stories of teams who work together in new and unexpected ways to achieve remarkable things. It's one of our best new podcast&nbsp;discoveries in 2020 and we think Acquired listeners are going to love it. Our thanks to Teamistry for their support, and you can listen here:  Thank you as well to Kevel and to Capchase. You can learn more about them at:       &nbsp; Playbook Themes from this Episode: (also available on our website at &nbsp;) 1. As long as you don't quit your journey, you're still in the act of succeeding.  Indie Hackers was Courtland's seventh company. Before it, Courtland had started six other companies, each with a few thousand dollars in revenue but never as big as he wanted it to be. Looking back, Courtland has realized that everyone has a certain number of companies they need to start before they succeed: for some, that number may be one, for others, 36. For him, that number was 7. So his advice? All you have to do is not quit before you get to that number.  2. The journey is as important as the destination.  While Courtland was working on some of his earlier companies, he was miserable. A few of those working years felt like a complete blur. But sometime before he started Indie Hackers, he realized that in order to keep going until you succeed (see playbook #1), you must structure your life so that it's easy for you to not quit. In other words, you have to make the journey fun — almost like the emotional counterpart to Paul Graham’s famous “default alive” concept. With this reframe, Courtland began to enjoy the journey — enjoying the new people he met and the new things he learned. This mindset helped him level up as a person. Instead of worrying and asking "am I there yet?" he was able to enjoy the building journey.  3. Stories are always paramount.  As we discuss so often on Acquired, stories can be an incredibly powerful force, and their value is one of the core theses/value propositions of Indie Hackers. One insight Courtland came to from Hacker News was that people didn't want to just read comments about people who didn't succeed. They wanted high quality, verified stories that were trustable in some way. Indie Hackers sends a survey out to users 6 months after they join the community. One of the questions the survey asks is, "would you have started your company if not for Indie Hackers?" 15-20% say they would not have started without some story or interaction on Indie Hackers!  4. Don't try to create budgets — sell to people that already have them.  Courtland originally tried to monetize Indie Hackers via advertising, and shared advertisement opportunities with the Indie Hacker community. But he soon realized that these smaller businesses weren't exactly the best customers to sell to. Eventually, he transitioned to selling to enterprises, and was pleasantly surprised by how much easier it was to sell. The...

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