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

Ben & David transcend the barriers of “real” reality, and dive into Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s geek-eutpoia vision of the future of gaming, social, and maybe even the entire internet: strapping goofy-looking goggles to your face. Is VR for real this time or are we living through another Virtual Boy moment? Tune in to find out! 

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• Oculus’s origins in 2010 as a twinkle in the eye of the then-17 year old VR wunderkind, Palmer Luckey, who started by prototyping VR headsets in his parents’ garage in Southern California 
• Palmer’s time interning at  USC's Institute for Creative Technologies, and chronicling of his own VR efforts in the Meant to be Seen 3D internet forums
• Legendary game developer John Carmack’s own interest in virtual reality, his intersection with Palmer on the MTBS3D forums, and how he acquired and popularized one of Palmer's first early prototypes of the Oculus Rift (which was  literally held together with duct tape!) by demonstrating it onstage at E3 2012 
• How former Scaleform cofounders Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov teamed up with Palmer after E3 to create the company Oculus VR
• The newly-formed Oculus’s wildly successful August 2012 Kickstarter campaign, including video endorsements from both Carmack and Valve founder Gabe Newell
• Oculus’s subsequent venture capital fundraisings, and catching the attention of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg 
• Facebook’s acquisition of the company in March 2014 for $2.3B
• The Zenimax lawsuit filed against Oculus and Facebook following the acquisition 
• Valve (home of the most incredible company handbook of all-time) and Gabe Newell’s subsequent pivot from supporting Oculus to launching their own competing VR efforts with the Vive 
• Team changes at Oculus post-acquisition 

  Followups: 

• SNAP:  still a public company

  Hot Takes: 

• Intel’s $15B acquisition of Mobileye (with reference to  Ben Thompson’s analysis of the deal and Smiling Curves)

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben:  Kara Swisher interviews the Pod Save America team at SXSW
• David: Adam Gopnik asks Are Liberals on the Wrong Side of History?

Ben & David "pour over" the 1992 IPO of the legendary Seattle coffee company with the help of Dan Levitan, who served as lead investment banker on the IPO and who would later co-found the venture capital firm Maveron with Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz.

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Topics covered include:

• The original Starbucks’ founding as a coffee bean roaster, started by three disciples of the legendary coffee roaster Alfred Peet
• Howard Schultz’s introduction to Starbucks, his joining the team as director of marketing, and inspiration behind his “third place” coffee shop vision
• Howard’s departure from the original Starbucks, founding of Il Giornale, and subsequent of acquisition the Seattle Starbucks stores
• Starbucks’ incredible growth following the acquisition and expansion beyond Seattle
• The state of raising private capital in the 1980’s/90’s, and the decision to go public (link to the S-1)
• Howard’s ambitious goals for the roadshow and investor participation, and subsequent stock performance after the IPO
• The narrative and evolution of Starbucks as a technology company, or a consumer company that leverages technology very effectively 

The Carve Out:

• Ben: Dan Primack’s new daily newsletter, Pro Rata
• David: The  Wizard and the Bruiser podcast 
• Dan: The Man in the Glass

Episode 33: Overture (with the Internet History Podcast!)    Ben & David dive deep into the early days of internet search, with the help of the best in the internet history business: Brian McCullough from the Internet History Podcast! We are huge fans of IHP at Acquired, so this was a real treat to collaborate with Brian and the great work he does over there. In this episode we cover the story of how a small incubator in Southern California spawned perhaps the greatest tech business model of all-time, Yahoo!’s fumbling of that golden opportunity, and Google’s recovery of that fumble to cross into the end zone of tech history behind the biggest moat ever constructed on the internet.  

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• Overture’s origins as part of the Idealab incubator run by famed early internet entrepreneur Bill Gross
• Invention of the paid search business model… initially by returning ADS ONLY in response to search queries
• The eventual marrying of Overture’s paid search (ads) with organic search results via syndication on other properties like Yahoo!
• Revenue from Overture’s ad partnership saving Yahoo!’s business after the internet bubble burst 
• Yahoo!’s eventual acquisition of Overture for $1.4B in 2003 
• But… the really interesting story here: Overture’s 'inspiration' of Google’s business model and the creation of "the greatest advertising machine in the history of the world"
• The original (pre-Overture) Google business model: selling a box! 
• Google’s differentiation vs Overture: focusing on the long tail, ad quality scores, and an advertiser-friendly auction structure
• Google’s first major search syndication victory over Overture: AOL
• Yahoo!’s failed attempt to buy Google for $3B in 2002, leading it to settle for acquiring Overture instead the following year
• “Project Panama” at Yahoo!, and its impact on the tech and internet history
• Overture's (and later Yahoo!’s) lawsuit against Google for stealing the paid search business model— "the O.G. version of Snapchat and Instagram”
• Paul Graham’s take on "What Happened to Yahoo?”
• Perhaps the most important technology to come out of this whole episode: Hadoop
• The power of incentive alignment in marketplaces— and creating the widest and deepest moats on the internet

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben: The famous University of Washington's “Love Lab” Dr. John Gottman: “The Secret to Love is Just Kindness”
• David: Berlin
• Brian: The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s

Snap! Acquired is live on the scene reporting from the "Super Bowl" of 2017 tech events: Snap Inc's hugely anticipated (and just plain huge) IPO. What does the future hold for this plucky “camera company”? Will Snap's IPO endure as tech's most important picture-frame since the  2012 debut of Facebook, or is it destined to fade as just another snapshot? We debate! 

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• Reference to our previous Acquired episode on Snap covering Facebook’s failed attempt to acquire the company in 2013, which goes deep on Snap’s origins and early history
• Snap’s busy years since: launching Discover,  Lenses,  Geofilters,  new Chat,  Memories, an  ads API, acquiring Bitmoji, and, of course,  debuting Spectacles
• The incredible document that is  Snap's S-1 filing (read starting from the  “BUSINESS” section on p.93)
• Snap Inc’s “unique” voting structure
• Evan Spiegel’s “CEO Award” bonus for successfully completing an IPO: an extra 3.0% of the company worth more than $600M
• Snap’s IPO pricing, first day of trading “pop”, and momentum carried into day two 
• Introducing a new show section (for IPOs): Narratives!  
  • Snap  is a “camera company"
  • Snap's opportunity is  winning television ad dollars
  • Snap is a cult of the “product genius”
  • Snap has a growth problem… and its name is Instagram (Stories)
  • Snap has a cost problem: the (first?)  gross margin negative IPO
  • Wall Street to Evan: “we trust you… for now"
• Chris Sacca’s biggest email fail of 2012
• …And of course all the classics from the Acquired canon: waves, moats, flywheels, network effects, starting small and more! 

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben:  The Bill Simmons Podcast with Ben Thompson
• David: The Art of War, also Evan Spiegel’s Carve Out for 2013 :)

Topics covered include:

• The global surge in 2012 of entrepreneurs starting ridesharing companies, nowhere moreso than China 
• Didi CEO Cheng Wei and investor Wang Gang’s backgrounds at Alibaba, first entrepreneurial effort in Momo, and Momo’s pivot to Didi Dache
• The culling of the ridesharing herd in China down to Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache through brutal competition and involvement of the “big three” Chinese internet companies 
• Rise of the Chinese messaging apps and associated mobile payments, and their impact on ridesharing
• The 2015 merger between Didi and Kuaidi, brokered in part by Russian VC Yuri Milner
• Uber’s decision to enter the Chinese market, and early success with investment and support from Baidu
• The first meeting between Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Cheng Wei in 2015—which does not go well
• Subsequent “scorched earth” competition between Didi and Uber throughout 2015-16
• Negotiating an armistice: Uber’s agreement to sell its Chinese operations to Didi in late 2016
• End of the war, or just the beginning? January 2017: Didi invests $100M in Brazilian Uber competitor 99
• Sustainable growth, and building moats versus scorching earth

Sponsors:

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• Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

Followups: 

• Stay tuned for real-time coverage of the Snap IPO coming here on Acquired! 

  The Carve Out: 

• Ben:  Taming the Mammoth on Wait But Why
• David: Conversations with Tyler Podcast by Tyler Cowen, co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog
• Brad: Yuval Noah Harari (author of  Sapiens)’s new book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

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