The Savannah Bananas have created a whole new sport. It’s baseball, but it’s not. It’s fast-paced, exciting, and incredibly entertaining. For example, if you're batting, and you step out of the batter’s box... it’s a strike. If you bunt, you’re out. If a fan catches a foul ball… you’re also out. Games are capped at two hours with no exceptions. It’s sacrilegious to traditional baseball fans everywhere. But it’s hard to argue with their numbers: they have 3.2 million fans on a waiting list to see them and have been selling out 80,000-seat football stadiums over the past few months! Today, we sit down with Jesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas and creator of Banana Ball. We unpack the whole story, staring with a failing college summer league team, an air mattress, and a $30 weekly grocery budget. But these days... it's safe to say that Jesse and his wife don’t have to sleep on an air mattress anymore! And they have built the business in their own way, fully under their control, and uniquely “fans first”. They have a unique all-in ticketing model, where your game ticket gets you full access to food along with your seat. There are no ads or sponsorships. There are no ticket fees or middlemen. And in fact, Jesse and crew will even pay the sales tax on your ticket for you! Jesse is just totally obsessed with delighting fans, controlling the end-to-end experience, and thinking long term… even if it means leaving (a lot) of money on the table today. This may be our most fun ACQ2 (or Acquired!) episode ever. Enjoy!Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

The Savannah Bananas have created a whole new sport. It’s baseball, but it’s not. It’s fast-paced, exciting, and incredibly entertaining. For example, if you're batting, and you step out of the batter’s box... it’s a strike. If you bunt, you’re out. If a fan catches a foul ball… you’re also out. Games are capped at two hours with no exceptions. It’s sacrilegious to traditional baseball fans everywhere. But it’s hard to argue with their numbers: they have 3.2 million fans on a waiting list to see them and have been selling out 80,000-seat football stadiums over the past few months! Today, we sit down with Jesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas and creator of Banana Ball. We unpack the whole story, staring with a failing college summer league team, an air mattress, and a $30 weekly grocery budget. But these days... it's safe to say that Jesse and his wife don’t have to sleep on an air mattress anymore! And they have built the business in their own way, fully under their control, and uniquely “fans first”. They have a unique all-in ticketing model, where your game ticket gets you full access to food along with your seat. There are no ads or sponsorships. There are no ticket fees or middlemen. And in fact, Jesse and crew will even pay the sales tax on your ticket for you! Jesse is just totally obsessed with delighting fans, controlling the end-to-end experience, and thinking long term… even if it means leaving (a lot) of money on the table today. This may be our most fun ACQ2 (or Acquired!) episode ever. Enjoy! Sponsors:Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

The Savannah Bananas have created a whole new sport. It’s baseball, but it’s not. It’s fast-paced, exciting, and incredibly entertaining. For example, if you're batting, and you step out of the batter’s box... it’s a strike. If you bunt, you’re out. If a fan catches a foul ball… you’re also out. Games are capped at two hours with no exceptions. It’s sacrilegious to traditional baseball fans everywhere. But it’s hard to argue with their numbers: they have 3.2 million fans on a waiting list to see them and have been selling out 80,000-seat football stadiums over the past few months! Today, we sit down with Jesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas and creator of Banana Ball. We unpack the whole story, staring with a failing college summer league team, an air mattress, and a $30 weekly grocery budget. But these days... it's safe to say that Jesse and his wife don’t have to sleep on an air mattress anymore! And they have built the business in their own way, fully under their control, and uniquely “fans first”. They have a unique all-in ticketing model, where your game ticket gets you full access to food along with your seat. There are no ads or sponsorships. There are no ticket fees or middlemen. And in fact, Jesse and crew will even pay the sales tax on your ticket for you! Jesse is just totally obsessed with delighting fans, controlling the end-to-end experience, and thinking long term… even if it means leaving (a lot) of money on the table today. This may be our most fun ACQ2 (or Acquired!) episode ever. Enjoy!Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

Building the Savannah Bananas (with Jesse Cole, Founder and Owner)

Is AI just better software? Or something completely different that requires a new paradigm to understand? Today we sit down with Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, two of the best product builders in the world to tackle that question. Bret and Clay are the co-founders of the AI company Sierra.Brett's resume reads like a greatest hits of Silicon Valley: co-creator of Google Maps, founder of FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook where he became CTO), founder of Quip (acquired by Salesforce where he became co-CEO), former Chairman of the Board at Twitter, and current Chairman of the Board at OpenAI. Clay spent 18+ years at Google, starting as an APM alongside Brett and eventually running product for Gmail, Drive, Docs (all of Google Workspace), Google Labs, and the company's AR/VR efforts.In addition to AI, today’s conversation has some great tech industry history discussion and old Google stories, perfect to tide us all over between Google Part I and Part II!Additional Topics:<ul><li>The accelerating adoption curves of technology waves, and if we’ll ever see an app that gets a billion users in one day</li><li>Second- and third-order effects of agents on the internet economy and customer experience</li><li>Making predictions on which AI terminology will stick and what won’t</li><li>New pricing models in the era of AI, like “outcome-based pricing”</li><li>What it’s like to build teams in this new AI era</li></ul>Links:<ul><li><a href="https://sierra.ai/">Sierra</a></li></ul>

Is AI just better software? Or something completely different that requires a new paradigm to understand? Today we sit down with Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, two of the best product builders in the world to tackle that question. Bret and Clay are the co-founders of the AI company Sierra. Brett's resume reads like a greatest hits of Silicon Valley: co-creator of Google Maps, founder of FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook where he became CTO), founder of Quip (acquired by Salesforce where he became co-CEO), former Chairman of the Board at Twitter, and current Chairman of the Board at OpenAI. Clay spent 18+ years at Google, starting as an APM alongside Brett and eventually running product for Gmail, Drive, Docs (all of Google Workspace), Google Labs, and the company's AR/VR efforts. In addition to AI, today’s conversation has some great tech industry history discussion and old Google stories, perfect to tide us all over between Google Part I and Part II! Additional Topics:The accelerating adoption curves of technology waves, and if we’ll ever see an app that gets a billion users in one daySecond- and third-order effects of agents on the internet economy and customer experienceMaking predictions on which AI terminology will stick and what won’tNew pricing models in the era of AI, like “outcome-based pricing”What it’s like to build teams in this new AI eraLinks:Sierra

Is AI just better software? Or something completely different that requires a new paradigm to understand? Today we sit down with Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, two of the best product builders in the world to tackle that question. Bret and Clay are the co-founders of the AI company Sierra.Brett's resume reads like a greatest hits of Silicon Valley: co-creator of Google Maps, founder of FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook where he became CTO), founder of Quip (acquired by Salesforce where he became co-CEO), former Chairman of the Board at Twitter, and current Chairman of the Board at OpenAI. Clay spent 18+ years at Google, starting as an APM alongside Brett and eventually running product for Gmail, Drive, Docs (all of Google Workspace), Google Labs, and the company's AR/VR efforts.In addition to AI, today’s conversation has some great tech industry history discussion and old Google stories, perfect to tide us all over between Google Part I and Part II!Additional Topics:<ul><li>The accelerating adoption curves of technology waves, and if we’ll ever see an app that gets a billion users in one day</li><li>Second- and third-order effects of agents on the internet economy and customer experience</li><li>Making predictions on which AI terminology will stick and what won’t</li><li>New pricing models in the era of AI, like “outcome-based pricing”</li><li>What it’s like to build teams in this new AI era</li></ul>Links:<ul><li><a href="https://sierra.ai/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sierra</a></li></ul>

How is AI Different Than Other Technology Waves? (With Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor)

Vercel has become the infrastructure platform powering modern web development over the past several years, with companies from Stripe to Adobe to Runway all building their front ends on them. Today we’re joined by founder and CEO Guillermo Rauch, who shares why Vercel has been uniquely successful in the fragmented (to say the least!) world of web development platforms. There are now more than 6 million Vercel users, 80,000 active teams, and users have grown 200% year-over-year. The company also crossed $100m in annualized revenue last May, and Guillermo shared with us that they’ve been growing at 80% since, and were recently valued at $3.25 billion.This is also a particularly interesting moment for Vercel. Last year they launched a new product, “v0”, which lets anyone create and deploy a working website simply by describing it in English and letting AI take care of the rest. Guillermo shares its origin story within the company (and insanely that it reached $2m ARR in the first 14 days!), and how it’s changed their entire thinking about what’s possible now with AI products.We also cover:<ul><li>How to build a business around an open source project (Next.js)</li><li>How they balance both being a fast and nimble platform for startups with being a reliable platform for enterprises</li><li>Guillermo's unconventional approach to staying deeply technical as CEO at scale</li></ul>Links:<ul><li><a href="https://vercel.com/">Vercel</a></li><li><a href="https://v0.dev/">V0.dev</a></li><li><a href="https://nextjs.org/">Next.js</a></li></ul>Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

Vercel has become the infrastructure platform powering modern web development over the past several years, with companies from Stripe to Adobe to Runway all building their front ends on them. Today we’re joined by founder and CEO Guillermo Rauch, who shares why Vercel has been uniquely successful in the fragmented (to say the least!) world of web development platforms. There are now more than 6 million Vercel users, 80,000 active teams, and users have grown 200% year-over-year. The company also crossed $100m in annualized revenue last May, and Guillermo shared with us that they’ve been growing at 80% since, and were recently valued at $3.25 billion. This is also a particularly interesting moment for Vercel. Last year they launched a new product, “v0”, which lets anyone create and deploy a working website simply by describing it in English and letting AI take care of the rest. Guillermo shares its origin story within the company (and insanely that it reached $2m ARR in the first 14 days!), and how it’s changed their entire thinking about what’s possible now with AI products. We also cover:How to build a business around an open source project (Next.js)How they balance both being a fast and nimble platform for startups with being a reliable platform for enterprisesGuillermo's unconventional approach to staying deeply technical as CEO at scaleLinks:VercelV0.devNext.js Sponsors:Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Vercel has become the infrastructure platform powering modern web development over the past several years, with companies from Stripe to Adobe to Runway all building their front ends on them. Today we’re joined by founder and CEO Guillermo Rauch, who shares why Vercel has been uniquely successful in the fragmented (to say the least!) world of web development platforms. There are now more than 6 million Vercel users, 80,000 active teams, and users have grown 200% year-over-year. The company also crossed $100m in annualized revenue last May, and Guillermo shared with us that they’ve been growing at 80% since, and were recently valued at $3.25 billion.This is also a particularly interesting moment for Vercel. Last year they launched a new product, “v0”, which lets anyone create and deploy a working website simply by describing it in English and letting AI take care of the rest. Guillermo shares its origin story within the company (and insanely that it reached $2m ARR in the first 14 days!), and how it’s changed their entire thinking about what’s possible now with AI products.We also cover:<ul><li>How to build a business around an open source project (Next.js)</li><li>How they balance both being a fast and nimble platform for startups with being a reliable platform for enterprises</li><li>Guillermo's unconventional approach to staying deeply technical as CEO at scale</li></ul>Links:<ul><li><a href="https://vercel.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Vercel</a></li><li><a href="https://v0.dev/" rel="noopener noreferrer">V0.dev</a></li><li><a href="https://nextjs.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Next.js</a></li></ul>Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

Building Web Apps with Just English and AI (with Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch)

We sit down with Crusoe Energy CEO Chase Lochmiller to talk about the two “hard to imagine” tasks they’ve undertaken: 1) building a new AI cloud infrastructure provider from scratch, and 2) colocating and powering it with stranded energy from some of the harshest and most remote locations on earth.Crusoe’s cloud of course has to compete with (and in many cases exceed) the price/performance curves of cloud incumbents like AWS, Azure and Google in processing AI workloads. And the way it does so is by building data centers literally on top of oil flares (and other wasted energy sources) that otherwise comprise multiple percentage points of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. In other words — methane that previously just got lit on fire is now powering your favorite AI startup’s training workloads!We cover what it actually takes to build and operate a public cloud, the latest Nvidia networking and server innovations and what they mean for GPU data centers, and how to set up a company to pursue something “hard” like this across the team, operations and capital raising fronts. Tune in! Links:<ul><li><a href="https://www.crusoeenergy.com/">Crusoe Energy</a> and <a href="https://crusoecloud.com/">Crusoe Cloud</a></li><li>Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/CrusoeEnergy">Crusoe</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ChaseLochmiller">Chase</a> on Twitter</li></ul>Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

We sit down with Crusoe Energy CEO Chase Lochmiller to talk about the two “hard to imagine” tasks they’ve undertaken: 1) building a new AI cloud infrastructure provider from scratch, and 2) colocating and powering it with stranded energy from some of the harshest and most remote locations on earth. Crusoe’s cloud of course has to compete with (and in many cases exceed) the price/performance curves of cloud incumbents like AWS, Azure and Google in processing AI workloads. And the way it does so is by building data centers literally on top of oil flares (and other wasted energy sources) that otherwise comprise multiple percentage points of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. In other words — methane that previously just got lit on fire is now powering your favorite AI startup’s training workloads! We cover what it actually takes to build and operate a public cloud, the latest Nvidia networking and server innovations and what they mean for GPU data centers, and how to set up a company to pursue something “hard” like this across the team, operations and capital raising fronts. Tune in! Links:Crusoe Energy and Crusoe CloudFollow Crusoe and Chase on Twitter Sponsors:Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

We sit down with Crusoe Energy CEO Chase Lochmiller to talk about the two “hard to imagine” tasks they’ve undertaken: 1) building a new AI cloud infrastructure provider from scratch, and 2) colocating and powering it with stranded energy from some of the harshest and most remote locations on earth.Crusoe’s cloud of course has to compete with (and in many cases exceed) the price/performance curves of cloud incumbents like AWS, Azure and Google in processing AI workloads. And the way it does so is by building data centers literally on top of oil flares (and other wasted energy sources) that otherwise comprise multiple percentage points of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. In other words — methane that previously just got lit on fire is now powering your favorite AI startup’s training workloads!We cover what it actually takes to build and operate a public cloud, the latest Nvidia networking and server innovations and what they mean for GPU data centers, and how to set up a company to pursue something “hard” like this across the team, operations and capital raising fronts. Tune in! Links:<ul><li><a href="https://www.crusoeenergy.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Crusoe Energy</a> and <a href="https://crusoecloud.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Crusoe Cloud</a></li><li>Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/CrusoeEnergy" rel="noopener noreferrer">Crusoe</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ChaseLochmiller" rel="noopener noreferrer">Chase</a> on Twitter</li></ul>Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

Saving the Planet with Better AI Data Centers (with Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller)

Ben and David are back for episode #2, diving into the most elusive early-stage investing and company-building topics: product-market fit.  Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

Ben and David are back for episode #2, diving into the most elusive early-stage investing and company-building topics: product-market fit. Sponsors:Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Ben and David are back for episode #2, diving into the most elusive early-stage investing and company-building topics: product-market fit.&nbsp;&nbsp;Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

Product-market fit

Kicking off ACQ2 (formerly known as the LP Show) and diving into some jargon-y VC vocab. Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

Kicking off ACQ2 (formerly known as the LP Show) and diving into some jargon-y VC vocab. Sponsors:Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Kicking off ACQ2 (formerly known as the LP Show) and diving into some jargon-y VC vocab.&nbsp;Sponsors:<ul><li>Sierra: <a href="https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra</a></li></ul>

VC Vocab

ACQ2 is Ben and David's conversations with experts on topics related to Acquired. Acquired the stories of great companies — and ACQ2 dives deeper into the lessons we can learn from them, often with the protagonists themselves.

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