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)

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Carve Outs:

• Ben: The Dissect podcast
• David: Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast

Acquired wraps up Season 2 with our first “elusive” private-private merger: Rover.com and its 2017 combination with rival pet care marketplace DogVacay. We’re joined by Rover CEO Aaron Easterly to dive into the full history of how the crazy idea of “Airbnb for dogs” not only became a billion-dollar company, but also brought our heroes together for the first time and led to the founding of Acquired!

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
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•  The original Rover pitch from Startup Weekend

We’re live on the scene the day following the biggest announcement in the open source software world since well, open source software: Microsoft acquiring GitHub for $7.5B in stock. How did we get here? What does it mean for software developers going forward? And most importantly, why is there a creepy half-cat / half-octopus plastered all over everything? As always, Acquired has the answers.

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Carve Outs:

• Ben: The Idea Maze by Chris Dixon
• David: Invisible Asymptotes by Eugene Wei

If you thought the telecom business was boring, think again! Acquired brings you an episode packed with more drama than an entire season of Game of Thrones. Starting with a death in the family, we follow a tale of fortunes lost and rebuilt, bitter battles between rivals who once worked for each other, and at the center of it all, a lesson in the power of stable cashflow businesses. This is one call you don’t want to drop!

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
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Vanta: http://vanta.com/acquired
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig25

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Links:

•  Seattle Times’ infographic on Bellevue’s wireless company history
• John Legere at CES 2013

Carve Outs:

• Ben: Andrew Chen on the Intercom podcast
• David: The 996 Podcast from Zara & Hans at GGV Capital

Acquired returns with a classic, delving into Microsoft’s first acquisition ever: Forethought Inc, the makers of PowerPoint. Hate it or love it, you can’t deny the combined companies’ impact: by the early 90’s PowerPoint had transformed the way businesses, educators and governments communicate, ensuring job security for pointy-haired Dilbert bosses everywhere.

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
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Vanta: http://vanta.com/acquired
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig25

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Links:

•  Robert Gaskins’ definitive history of building PowerPoint: Sweating Bullets
• Absolute Powerpoint by Ian Parker 

Carve Outs:

• Ben: Mindfulness in Plain English and discussion on Hacker News
• David:  The Birds have landed…

Acquired wraps up a big few weeks of coverage with not an IPO or an M&A or a fundraising round, but what’s still the largest tech exit in recent memory: Spotify’s $30B direct public listing. We dive into what it all means and how we got here: from Napster to iTunes to Facebook (and even some Justin Timberlake thrown in for good measure). Acquired FM is on the scene and spinning all the hits from this new wave music industry titan! 

Note: We incorrectly described Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s ownership stake in Spotify as 25%+; that is actually his voting control. His economic ownership is 9.3%, and cofounder Martin Lorentzon’s is 12.4%. We apologize for the error!

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
Vanta: http://vanta.com/acquired
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig25

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Links:

•  Internet History Podcast on the Napster Story with Jordan Ritter
•  Sean Parker’s email to Daniel Ek

Carve Outs:

• Ben: Black Panther (and  soundtrack on Spotify!)
• David: “Silicon Ballet” panel at San Francisco Ballet on Saturday, April 28

Acquired is live on the scene following Dropbox’s public market debut. From playing a central role in the early days of Y Combinator, to having Steve Jobs famously label the company a “feature not a product”, to pivoting from consumers to enterprise to developers and back again, the silicon valley history runs deep with this one. What twists and turns lie ahead for Dropbox as a public company? We speculate!

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
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Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig25

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Links:

•  Dropbox’s Y Combinator application
• Original Dropbox demo video

Carve Outs:

• Ben:  Raytracing comes to DirectX
• David: Lazy Game Reviews

Acquired dives into the topic on the minds and lips of just about every VC and founder these days: SoftBank’s $93B+ Vision Fund, and its seemingly-overnight rewriting of the rules of venture capital and startup fundraising. Where did this new 800lbs gorilla come from, what are its goals, and what does it mean for the future of silicon valley and the global tech ecosystem? The answer, it turns out, starts with an acquisition, and unfolds into a story no one has yet told and few yet understand. Luckily our heroes are on the case!

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
Vanta: http://vanta.com/acquired
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig25

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Links:

• Masayoshi Son on Charlie Rose

Carve Outs:

• Ben:  eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work
• David: Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy (starting with  The Three-Body Problem)
• Bonus: shout out to Brian McCullough’s new podcast the  Ride Home, in partnership with TechMeme!

Acquired brings it all back home—to the smart home that is—with Google’s 2014 acquisition of Nest for $3.2B. From Nest cofounder Tony Fadell’s first job at General Magic (alongside future Android founder Andy Rubin) to his days as “father of the iPod” under Steve Jobs at Apple, the Silicon Valley history runs deep with this one. But did that make the acquisition a good move for Google in the coming battle with Amazon’s “Lady A” for control over consumers’ homes? We dive in!

Sponsors:

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• Tony Fadell in the Academy of Achievement
• Steve Jobs deleting Tony Fadell from his Favorites

Carve Outs:

• Ben: Do by Friday podcast
• David: A Kingdom from Dust By Mark Arax in The California Sunday Magazine

We launch mini-series on Acquired with a subject near & dear to our heroes’ hearts: startup fundraising! This has been one of our most-requested new topics, and we’re excited to kick things off with makers of the popular Rec Room social VR app, Against Gravity, which raised one of Seattle’s hottest venture rounds in recent history: a $4m seed led by Sequoia Capital in 2016. CEO Nick Fajt joins to tell the story from company inception to building and shipping the initial product, fundraising as a first-time CEO, what they’ve been able to accomplish with the capital and their vision for the future. We had a blast touching on many classic Acquired themes for the first time “in-action” with a young, growing company, and hope you all enjoy the discussion as much as we did. Let us know what you think in the Slack!

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
Vanta: http://vanta.com/acquired
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig25

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Carve Outs:

• Ben:  Ready Player One
• David:  Seveneves 
• Nick: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild