Today our heroes cover a deal that might have more impact on life in Silicon Valley than AI, wearables and AR/VR combined… Nestle’s acquisition of Blue Bottle Coffee. Will hipster entrepreneurs and the VCs who love/need them continue to line up around the block for their minimalist coffee experience of choice, now that it’s owned by the Nesquik Bunny? Is this the beginning of Blue Bottle pod machines filling the empty counter space left by Juicero’s demise in VC offices throughout South Park? We investigate.

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

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Topics Covered Include:

• The rise of “Third Wave” coffee
• Blue Bottle founder James Freeman’s “classical” (music) influences 
• Venture capital and the coffee business 
• Achieving liquidity when companies and founders’ don’t want to go public, and don’t want to sell their stakes 
• Nestle’s position in single-serve coffee market and potential brand impact of Blue Bottle 

The Carve Out:

•  Ben: There Never Was a Real Tulip Fever
• David: iPhone SE

Acquired is back and live on the scene! After months of speculation, Google announces today their acquisition (err, "Cooperation Agreement”) of a large portion of HTC’s hardware division. What does this mean for the future of mobile? Can Google transform itself into a vertically integrated device company and compete directly with Apple? Most importantly, when will we see more  Beats Android handsets??? (We hope never) 

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

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• The origins of HTC as a Taiwanese OEM, dating back to the Compaq iPAQ and Palm Treo 650!
• HTC’s long history with Google, starting as the manufacturer of the first Android phone, the HTC Dream / T-Mobile G1
• HTC’s ownership of Beats, for a hot minute
• Google’s own winding history in hardware, with its Motorola acquisition in 2011 and divestiture in 2014
• Google & HTC’s joint work on the Pixel smartphones in 2016
• And much analysis and speculation on what this means for Google, Apple, Samsung, vertical vs horizontal business models and more!

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben: Odesza’s new album A Moment Apart
• David:  Bruce Springsteen on Fresh Air

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. 

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

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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.

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

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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!   

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

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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.   

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

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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. 

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

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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.

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

More Acquired!

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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!

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
Huntress: https://bit.ly/acqhuntress

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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.

Sponsors:

• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25

More Acquired!

• Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
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© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC