On this extra-long episode of Acquired, Brian McCullough from the Internet History Podcast returns to discuss perhaps the most (in)famous merger of all time: AOL - Time Warner. Who doesn’t remember the soothing sounds of 56k modems and the timeless phrase, “You’ve Got Mail”? Join us all as we unpack how one of the biggest ISP’s of the 90’s tried to take over the world… and fell far short. 

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• AOL’s status in the 90’s / early 00’s
• Explaining just what it is that AOL did at the height of their popularity
• How AOL pioneered a number of internet paradigms
• AOL’s persistent money troubles and bailouts from other companies
• Steve Case foreseeing the coming era of broadband, inspiring AOL to pursue working with a cable company
• Ebay vs. Time Warner in a down-to-the-wire war for a merger with AOL
• Why the money dried up for AOL after their merger with Time Warner
• AOL and its value in the post-Time-Warner era
• Speculating about what would have happened had AOL and others stayed independent businesses
• And much discussion on how to grade this one…

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben: Give and Take by Adam Grant 
• David:  Season of the Witch by David Talbot 
• Brian: A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Rob Goodman

Unicorns and ratchets and lawsuits, oh my! Our heroes dive into the history of Jack Dorsey’s famous “other” company, Square. Was the Square IPO a canary in the coal mine signaling doom & gloom for the so-called unicorn companies of the early 2010’s, or a mispriced and misunderstood diamond in the rough? Acquired weighs in.

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Topics Covered Include:

• Square’s deep origins in the early 90’s in St. Louis, MO with the initial meeting of its co-founders, Jack Dorsey & Jim McKelvey
• McKelvey’s side glass blowing business and the “inspiration” for Square that came much later in the late 2000’s
• The complicated involvement of Washington University (in St. Louis) professor Robert Morley, who had worked for years developing payment card reading technology
• The company’s early meeting with Scott Forstall at Apple, and its “significant” impact on the its name and design
• The real disruptive innovation of Square and its business model (hint: not just building a mobile card reader)
• Square’s massive payments deal with Starbucks in 2012 and its impact on the company
• The evolution of Square’s business from a simple card reader to cloud-based Point of Sale (PoS) system and entire suite of merchant tools & business management services
• The drama leading up to Square’s IPO (including at Jack Dorsey’s “other” company, Twitter), dynamics and narratives affecting its pricing, the effect of IPO “ratchets”, and the company’s performance over the ~2 years since 

The Carve Out:

• David: Bob Iger on Nick Bilton’s  Inside the Hive podcast
• Ben:  The World After Capital on GitBooks

Acquired dives into the legendary acquisition of Ben Horowitz & Marc Andreessen’s “second act” software company Opsware, from a perspective never before heard—HP’s side of the story! Our heroes are joined by Michel Feaster, who led both the acquisition for HP and then the Opsware product as part of the integrated company afterward under Ben Horowitz. Today the tables have turned: Michel is the Co-Founder and CEO of Seattle-based startup Usermind, and Ben Horowitz sits on her board on behalf of A16Z. This episode is not one to miss!   

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• Opsware’s early history and origins as Loudcloud, the “second act” of internet wunderkind Marc Andreessen and Netscape product manager Ben Horowitz
• Ben’s first person telling of the Loudcloud/Opsware history in The Hard Thing about Hard Things, as well as the great Wired "period piece” covering Loudcloud’s launch in August 2000
• The importance of timing, and Loudcloud’s too-early vision of—essentially—AWS before AWS (including eerie parallels between the metaphor Andreessen used to describe Loudcloud during the company’s first press briefing, and Jeff Bezos’s description of AWS at YC nearly a decade later)
• Creation of the “Opsware” tool inside of Loudcloud to automate deploying and configuring servers within Loudcloud’s data centers
• Loudcloud's meteoric rise, crash following the burst of the internet bubble, and hard pivot as a public company into Opsware—now an enterprise software company selling datacenter tools 
• Michel’s role in HP’s evaluation of the company as an acquisition target, and process leading to its $1.6B acquisition in July 2007
• Integration of the company into HP’s culture and sales channel
• The creation of Ben & Marc’s “third act”, the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and what it’s like for Michel now having Ben as an investor on her board at Usermind 

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben: StarStaX star trail photography software
• David: Jimmy Iovine on the Bill Simmons Podcast

Acquired trains its lens on the “second or third best acquisition of all-time”, Priceline’s 2005 purchase of Booking.com. Our heroes are joined by friend-of-the-show and former Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO Drew Patterson to help understand how this little-known startup from The Netherlands grew into the largest travel company in the world, with nearly $8B in annual revenue. Was this deal even better than Instagram??? We debate, hotly.   

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• The biggest startup you’ve never heard of (in the US), Booking.com, and its parent company Priceline (yes, the William Shatner Priceline)
• Booking’s founding in Amsterdam in late 1996: by recent college graduate Geert-Jan Bruinsma
• Skift.com’s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel 
• The travel industry's GDS's (“Global Distribution Systems”) and the development of Sabre 
• How Bruinsma raised the initial money for Booking: by emailing anyone he know who had an email address 
• OTAs ("Online Travel Agencies”) and how they operate; the "merchant model" versus the “agency model"
• The role of search in online travel 
• Bill Gurley on  Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All
• Expedia’s early flirtation with Booking, and decision not to acquire the company
• Priceline head of M&A Glenn Fogel’s vision for how powerful the agency model for OTAs could become in Europe
• Priceline and Glenn's 2004 acquisition of Active Hotels in the UK, followed by the 2005 acquisition of Booking for $133M and the combination of the two businesses into Booking.com 
• Booking’s incredible growth in the decade since the acquisition, from less than 20M room-nights to over 500M, and $7.8B in revenue in 2016

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben: Scott Forstall talking about the original iPhone at the Computer History Museum
• David: The Big Sick
• Drew: Bloomberg’s Money Stuff by Matt Levine

Ben & David cover the creation of the gaming world’s equivalent of the 70’s rock supergroup: the 2008 merger of Blizzard and Activision. We tell the story from the Blizzard perspective, tracing the history of one of the most innovative companies in the business from humble beginnings at the hands of UCLA undergrads, to surviving multiple acquisition rollups (including at one point being owned by the French national water company), to joining ultimately with Activision to form the largest gaming company in the world, all while inventing multiple game genres that define the industry as we know it today. 

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• Blizzard’s founding in 1991 as "Silicon & Synapse” by recent UCLA grads Allen Adham, Frank Pearce, and Mike Morhaime
• The team’s first projects making ports for other games, including Battle Chess on the Commodore 64
• Early success on the Super Nintendo with Rock & Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings
• Origin of the Real-Time Strategy game genre (“RTS”) and Blizzard’s fist mega-hit, Warcraft 
• Blizzard’s crazy corporate ownership changes over the years
• Development of further legendary game franchises like Diablo and Starcraft, along with sequels to Warcraft and the rise of the rise of player modding
• Emergence of the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre (“MOBA”) from the Warcraft III modding community, and its growth into one of the biggest sectors in the games and esports industries today
• Blizzard’s role in developing the concept of online gaming, from early hacks to play against friends to World of Warcraft and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (“MMORPG’s”)
• The 2008 merger with storied gaming company Activision 
• Growth and success since the merger, including the launch of new game franchises Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben:  Dick Costolo on Vanity Fair’s  Inside the Hive  podcast
• David: Nellie and Joe's 100% Natural Key Lime Juice (tip:  buy in bulk from Walmart/Jet)

Ben and David are once again live on the scene, this time covering the biggest disruption in grocery since… well, sliced bread: Amazon’s $13.7B purchase of Whole Foods Market. We place this deal in context by diving deep into the long, intertwining history of grocery, tech and Amazon, from the infamous dotcom flameout Webvan (domain name now owned by Amazon) to its much more successful progeny Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon in 2012) to current Silicon Valley unicorn Instacart (founded by former Amazon logistics engineer Apoorva Mehta). One thing is clear: for Amazon and Jeff Bezos, realizing the longterm vision of the Everything Store truly means building the everything store.

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Topics covered include:

• The  origins of Whole Foods Market as “Saferway” in the late 70’s Austin, TX hippie scene, founded by CEO John Mackey (“the Steve Jobs of grocery stores”) and his then-girlfriend Renee Lawson Hardy
• Whole Foods’ expansion through acquisition throughout the 80’s and 90’s
• The company’s recent struggles with competition, leading to sales declines and  attracting activist shareholder interest from Jana Partners 
•  Amazon’s acquisition of the company on June 16, 2017 for $13.7 billion, a 27 percent premium to the stock's previous day closing price
• In depth history and analysis of the four keys to understanding this deal: Webvan, Kiva Systems, AmazonFresh and  Instacart

Followups:

•  Walmart/Jet buys Bonobos for $310M

The Carve Out:

• Ben: Mark Zuckerberg’s 2005 CS50 guest lecture
• David: Exponent on Podcasting and Centralization

Ben and David are guests on Anchor's Podcast of the Day, discussing Acquired's origin story, show structure, and how the show gets made. If you're new to the show and looking for a primer, this is a great place to jump in!

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Ben & David revisit the birth of the digital music revolution and Steve Jobs' "digital hub" strategy, with Apple's 2000 acquisition of the Mac music player SoundJam MP, which would go on to become iTunes. We relive the 90's with brushed metal interfaces, music visualizers and of course, software sold in (physical) boxes.

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Ben and David continue Acquired’s “tech and sports” mini-series with Disney’s 2016 acquisition of a minority stake (with the right to purchase a majority stake at a later date) in BAMTech, the internet streaming company originally founded as part of Major League Baseball in the early 2000’s. However the importance of this story goes deeper than just sports, with major ramifications for nearly every major technology company from Amazon to YouTube. Even if you’re not not sure if baseball’s played on a diamond or a gridiron, tune in as we swing for the fences in predicting the future of TV! 

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• What is BAMTech, and why is it, according to The Verge, "the future of television”?
• BAMTech’s origins as part of Major League Baseball's Advanced Media division ("MLBAM)”)
• MLBAM’s founding CEO Bob Bowman’s decidedly “non-tech” background, and growth into one of the most important tech leaders of the past 15 years
• Initial technology struggles and learnings from early streaming efforts (including a botched audio package of Ichiro Suzuki’s games with the Mariners for fans in Japan)
• Landing on a streaming model that works with the launch of MLB.tv in 2002/2003—three years before YouTube is founded! 
• Improvement of the MLB.tv service and MLBAM’s streaming expertise over the next ten years through the rise of mobile, and simultaneous  growth of MLBAM’s revenues to over $1B annually
• MLBAM’s initial deals to expand its streaming services beyond baseball, starting with ESPN in 2010, then WWE, the PGA,  HBO and  the NHL
• The importance of media rights, and MLBAM’s transition from a simple tech/infrastructure provider to  a full-fledged media company 
• The decision to initiate a spin-off process for BAMTech from MLB in August 2015, and Disney’s $1B investment into the newly created spin-out company in August 2016
• Disney’s subsequent announcement that they’ll be  working with BAMTech to create a direct-to-consumer ESPN streaming service
• BAMTech’s  $300M deal with Riot Games in December 2016 for the media rights to League of Legends eSports content 
• Bob Bowman’s announcement in February 2017 that he’ll be stepping back to from a day to day role, and  hiring of former Amazon VP of Video Michael Paull as BAMTech’s new CEO

  Followups & Hot Takes: 

•  Facebook’s struggles with Instant Articles
•  Microsoft killing Wunderlist (David is VERY sad)
•  Instagram continues its torrid growth, passes 700M MAU
•  Amazon’s new Look 
•  The Cloudera IPO
• Confirmation the ride sharing wars are far from over:  Didi raises $5.5B in the largest private funding round ever

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben: NYT’s 4th Down Bot
• David: Wait But Why on Elon Musk’s “Wizard Hat"

In honor of start of NBA playoffs, Ben & David venture off the beaten path to explore one of Steve Ballmer’s most famous acquisitions, his 2014 purchase of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA franchise. Was this landmark purchase a steal or a turnover for the former Microsoft CEO? We speculate wildly! 

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• The Clippers’ founding in 1970 as the NBA expansion team the Buffalo Braves
• Early ownership changes and the move west to San Diego in 1981
• Acquisition in 1981 by LA lawyer and real estate developer Donald Sterling for $12.5M
• Sterling's relocation of the Clippers to LA in 1984 against NBA rules
• Struggles over the next 25 years as the "worst franchise in professional sports” according to ESPN 
• Turnaround beginning in early 2010s led by Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, and Chris Paul
• The bombshell in April 2014, reported by TMZ, of a taped conversation between Sterling and his mistress where Sterling makes  hugely offensive and racist comments, directed in particular toward former Lakers point guard Magic Johnson
• Fallout from the comments, resulting in a lifetime ban from NBA for Sterling, and a forced sale of the team to former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer for $2B
• Impact of the landmark sale price on NBA and other sports franchise valuations 
• Clippers performance post-sale, and  prospects for the future 
• The opportunity for technology and business model innovation in the NBA, and professional sports in general

  Followups: 

•  Instagram Stories passes 200 million users per day (including correction on the definition of DAU)
•  The Last Jedi trailer!
• Clarifying Starbucks’ same store sales performance post-IPO 

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben: Bill Gurley on This Week in Startups
• David:  Pop, Race & the '60s podcast and Just Around Midnight by Jack Hamilton