Ben and David cover the 3-day-old acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft for $26.2 billion. They cover LinkedIn’s founding story by Reid Hoffman, break down their core businesses, analyze recent stock behavior, and speculate on the future of the company inside Microsoft. The big question - were they worth the price tag?

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
• Join the Slack
• Subscribe to ACQ2
• Merch Store!

© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC

Items Mentioned On The Show:

•  Adweek: Snapchat Launches a Colossal Expansion of Its Advertising, Ushering in a New Era for the App
• The Facebook Effect - David Kirkpatrick
• LinkedIn’s Series B pitch deck 
•  LinkedIn’s S-1
• Microsoft and Apple Double Down - Stratechery
•  NYT Dealbook on stock based compensation at LinkedIn
•  Josh Elman - When people get confused about “BS metrics”
• Fred Wilson: The Dentist Office Software Story

The Carve Out:

•  Jeff Bezos at Code 2016
•  Elon Musk at Code 2016