Acquired LP Show

The Savannah Bananas have created a whole new sport. It's baseball, but it's not. It's fast-paced, exciting, and incredibly entertaining. For example, if you're batting, and you step out of the batter's box... it's a strike. If you bunt, you're out. If a fan catches a foul ball… you're also out. Games are capped at two hours with no exceptions. It's sacrilegious to traditional baseball fans everywhere. But it's hard to argue with their numbers: they have 3.2 million fans on a waiting list to see them and have been selling out 80,000-seat football stadiums over the past few months!Today, we sit down with Jesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas and creator of Banana Ball. We unpack the whole story, staring with a failing college summer league team, an air mattress, and a $30 weekly grocery budget. But these days... it's safe to say that Jesse and his wife don't have to sleep on an air mattress anymore! And they have built the business in their own way, fully under their control, and uniquely “fans first”. They have a unique all-in ticketing model, where your game ticket gets you full access to food along with your seat. There are no ads or sponsorships. There are no ticket fees or middlemen. And in fact, Jesse and crew will even pay the sales tax on your ticket for you! Jesse is just totally obsessed with delighting fans, controlling the end-to-end experience, and thinking long term… even if it means leaving (a lot) of money on the table today.This may be our most fun ACQ2 (or Acquired!) episode ever. Enjoy!Sponsors:Plaid: https://plaid.com

We sit down with Zach Perret, CEO of Plaid, to discuss the remarkable journey of Plaid and the broader fintech landscape over the past several years. Zach takes us blow-by-blow through journey of almost getting acquired by Visa, the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic… which quickly reversed with ZIRP tailwinds, and how Plaid navigated the volatile market conditions to build a diversified business. We explore the company's strategic pivots, including their expansion into analytics for fraud detection, alternative credit systems, and bank payments. If you've ever wondered “how do you turn from one simple product into a more durable business?” this episode is for you.Links:Come see Acquired LIVE at Radio City Music Hall!Sponsors:Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24

We sit down with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott for a masterclass in the art of enterprise sales — a topic where Bill ranks as one of the all-time greats by any measure. Bill started his career as a bag-carrying salesman at Xerox in New York City (alongside Howard Schultz!) back in 1983, and rose to become the company's youngest corporate officer at age 36 before going on to become CEO of global software giant SAP. Since joining ServiceNow in 2020 Bill has grown the company from $3.5 billion in revenue over $10 billion today, and a nearly $200B market cap — which makes it one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world. Whether your job directly involves selling or not (and if you're a founder, make no mistake — selling is the MOST important part of your job) there's something here to be learned for everyone. Break out your notebooks and enjoy!Links:ServiceNowThe SPIN selling methodBill's fantastic interview with Ben Thompson on StratecherySponsors:Vanta

Vercel has become the infrastructure platform powering modern web development over the past several years, with companies from Stripe to Adobe to Runway all building their front ends on them. Today we're joined by founder and CEO Guillermo Rauch, who shares why Vercel has been uniquely successful in the fragmented (to say the least!) world of web development platforms. There are now more than 6 million Vercel users, 80,000 active teams, and users have grown 200% year-over-year. The company also crossed $100m in annualized revenue last May, and Guillermo shared with us that they've been growing at 80% since, and were recently valued at $3.25 billion.This is also a particularly interesting moment for Vercel. Last year they launched a new product, “v0”, which lets anyone create and deploy a working website simply by describing it in English and letting AI take care of the rest. Guillermo shares its origin story within the company (and insanely that it reached $2m ARR in the first 14 days!), and how it's changed their entire thinking about what's possible now with AI products.We also cover:How to build a business around an open source project (Next.js)How they balance both being a fast and nimble platform for startups with being a reliable platform for enterprisesGuillermo's unconventional approach to staying deeply technical as CEO at scaleLinks:VercelV0.devNext.jsSponsors:Vanta

ARM is an incredibly unlikely story. They were founded in Cambridge, England in 1990 to design a new chip architecture just for low-power devices (like the Apple Newton!), leaving the “serious computing” on desktop and servers to Intel's x86. Now, nearly three decades later, ARM is the dominant architecture in all of computing today.ARM is in your phone, your car, data centers, the most advanced AI chips… there are hundreds (or thousands!) of ARM chips you encounter in your everyday life. In this episode, ARM Holdings CEO Rene Haas joins us to tell the story of how ARM become so dominant, weaving through the through the iPod, smartphone, and AI eras. Plus, their wild corporate story of going public, getting bought by SoftBank, going public again, and nearly being acquired by NVIDIA!Sponsors:Vanta

Duolingo has fundamentally changed the landscape of self-guided education, starting with language learning. It is now a $9B publicly traded company in a space where everyone thought you could never build a large and exciting company. We're joined by Duolingo founder and CEO, Luis von Ahn. Luis dives into how learning English was transformative in his personal trajectory and opportunities in his life, inspiring him to create the most successful EdTech product of all time. A few topics in this episode:How Duolingo became a leader in the gamification and mobile-first movements in the early 2010sHow the company balances rigorous experimentation with gut instinct to build an app with customer experience at its coreThe backstory of Duolingo's “unhinged, yet wholesome” green owl mascot trending on your TikTok feedSponsors:Vanta

We sit down with Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue to understand the current state of the open source AI ecosystem. Hugging Face is the leading platform to host and collaborate on AI models, datasets, and applications. They also have a compute offering for AI builders to train their models directly on the platform. Clem has a contrarian take on the future: there will not be just a few major foundation model companies with everyone using their APIs. But rather, that thousands of companies will have their own specialized AI models built in-house for their particular use case. It's obviously a very dynamic landscape and we'll have to see how it shakes out, but Clem has a pretty great viewpoint to see it all, working with their 5 million registered Hugging Face users!Links:Hugging FaceHugging Face's Series D valuing the company at $4.5 billionSponsors:Vanta

We sit down with legendary quarterback Joe Montana to discuss his transition from one of the greatest athletes of all time to… one of the great venture investors today. Joe shares some of the lessons that he learned winning Super Bowls with the 49ers that he applies to his investing career at Liquid 2 Ventures. Joe also goes into their firm's strategy and performance, finding and investing in dozens of unicorn startups at the seed and pre-seed stage.This interview was recorded live at Modern Treasury's Transfer conference in May 2024.Acquired's arena show at Chase Center in San Francisco is just a few weeks away! We hope you can join us. acquired.fm/sfSponsors:Vanta

The tenacity required to build Klarna over the last 19 years is astonishing. Despite several headwinds and changes in the payments landscape since founding, Klarna is used today by 150 million consumers globally, processing two million payments a day. Founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski joins us for one of the most honest and thoughtful discussions we've ever had on the show. If you're a business strategy nerd, it's a great case study in how to leverage the strengths you have as a startup vs. incumbents, and how to compete against other startups in your space. In Klarna's case: the rapid rise of buy-now-pay-later. Sebastian also takes us into the logic of his aggressive AI strategy for cost reduction, product experience, and payments innovation.Sponsors:Vanta

The space industry is one of the most fascinating areas of technology in 2024. The reduction in launch costs and proliferation of satellites make all kinds of new businesses possible. Today we are joined by Austin Link, the co-founder and CEO of Starfish Space (where Ben and PSL Ventures are investors!). Austin lays out the state of the space industry today, particularly as it pertains to startups. He and Ben explore what it takes to build a space company, then gets into the specifics of what Starfish Space is building.Starfish Space has created a spacecraft to dock with and reposition satellites. This "space servicing" technology enables their customers to extend the usable lifetime of satellites (unlocking tens of millions of dollars in revenue), or safely dispose of aging satellites to avoid space debris. Starfish's product, the "Otter", uses autonomous navigation software and electric propulsion to move through space and dock with customers' satellites.If you're into physics, outer space, or any sort of "hard tech", tune in! Links:Starfish SpaceSponsors:Quartr

If you've been waiting for us to venture back to the land of semiconductors, you're in luck! On our NVIDIA and TSMC episodes, we explored two components of the silicon value chain: the fabless chip companies that design chips and the foundries that manufacture them. Today, we dive into the software that powers it all, the field electronic design automation (EDA). This is essentially the software that enables chip designers to do their jobs, which has changed dramatically with the rise of AI.This interview is with two people who understand that world better than anyone: Aart de Geus, the co-founder and Executive Chair of Synopsys, and Sassine Ghazi, Synopsys's CEO and President. Aart founded the company in 1986, and was CEO until January 2024 when he handed the reins to Sassine. Synopsys is now worth $80 billion, with virtually every chip company as a customer or partner for everything from AI to 5G to automotive. Aart and Sassine talked with us about the future Moore's Law, where chip makers are finding efficiencies today, how we got here, plus a bonus section on simulation and their $35 billion acquisition of Ansys. Enjoy!Sponsors:Quartr

On our Novo Nordisk episode, we covered the business of Ozempic, the GLP-1 taking the world by storm. On this episode, we dive into the science of the molecule semaglutide (and its predecessor liraglutide) with the world expert on the topic, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen. Lotte is Novo Nordisk's Chief Scientific Advisor, and led the research group back in the early 1990s that first invented the molecule. A few topics from our conversation:The science behind what is happening in the body that causes weight loss while on OzempicWhat it was like in the 1990s and 2000s believing in a drug for a problem that the rest of the industry (including her own company) had written offHow weight loss was actually a goal from the very start — not just a side effect of diabetes medication like you often read today!Sponsors:Quartr

We're joined by Imprint cofounder and Thrive General Partner Gaurav Ahuja to dive deeper into the modern payments ecosystem and Visa's current place within it. Gaurav was one of our research sources for the Visa episode, and we wanted to bring his insights to you all too. We discuss whether Visa really should be worried about eroding interchange fees, the impact of realtime payments systems, opportunities for startups and whether the Visa / Mastercard duopoly could really be overthrown. Tune in and enjoy!Links:https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/files/Avg_IF_by_PCN.pdf

We sit down with Morgan Housel, who is one of our very favorite authors and has also become a good friend of the show over the past few years. Morgan's last book The Psychology of Money had a huge impact on both of our personal financial philosophies (and by extension Acquired's!), and Morgan was kind enough to give us an advance copy of his new book launching tomorrow, Same as Ever. It's equally as good, and maybe even more relevant in the current environment for thinking about what's not going to change as we cycle through vastly different macro financial environments. Tune in and enjoy!Links: Morgan's new book Same as Ever The Psychology of Money Morgan's blog on Collaborative Fund and on Twitter Morgan's new podcast!

While preparing for our Porsche episode with Doug DeMuro, we had a lot more than Porsche to discuss… but the episode was already over 3 hours! We decided to save the rest for its own episode, released here on ACQ2. Doug helped us understand what's going on with the car industry supply chain in 2023, the transition to electric vehicles, the car dealership business model, and how most consumer car purchase decisions really get made.We also got to talk with Doug about his business empire. In addition to his YouTube channel with ~5 million subscribers, Doug started a car marketplace called “Cars and Bids”. Earlier this year, Doug took a $37 million investment from The Chernin Group, and Doug walked us through that transaction and what it's been like going from “indie creator” to a large and more professionalized organization. And of course, there's some discussion on our Porsche episode together.Links: Cars and Bids! Doug on YouTube and Twitter Sponsors:1Password: https://bit.ly/acquired1passwordRevelo: https://bit.ly/acquiredrevelo 

We sit down with RunwayML's CEO Cristobal Valenzuela to discuss the incredible tools they're bringing to film and video creators (including last year's Best Picture “Everything Everywhere All at Once” from A24), and the history + current state of the “visual” branch of generative AI. We cover how they've gone to market with both creators and enterprises, the potential for much more radical future use cases, and the company's recent $141m strategic raise from Google, Nvidia + Salesforce and the context of the current AI fundraising landscape. Tune in!Links: Runway Follow Cris on Twitter Sponsors:1Password: https://bit.ly/acquired1passwordRevelo: https://bit.ly/acquiredrevelo 

We sit down with Crusoe Energy CEO Chase Lochmiller to talk about the two “hard to imagine” tasks they've undertaken: 1) building a new AI cloud infrastructure provider from scratch, and 2) colocating and powering it with stranded energy from some of the harshest and most remote locations on earth.Crusoe's cloud of course has to compete with (and in many cases exceed) the price/performance curves of cloud incumbents like AWS, Azure and Google in processing AI workloads. And the way it does so is by building data centers literally on top of oil flares (and other wasted energy sources) that otherwise comprise multiple percentage points of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. In other words — methane that previously just got lit on fire is now powering your favorite AI startup's training workloads!We cover what it actually takes to build and operate a public cloud, the latest Nvidia networking and server innovations and what they mean for GPU data centers, and how to set up a company to pursue something “hard” like this across the team, operations and capital raising fronts. Tune in!Links: Crusoe Energy and Crusoe Cloud Follow Crusoe and Chase on Twitter

Every now and then, we come across super interesting and under-the-radar (at least to us!) public markets folks like NZS Capital who make us think differently about the art of investing. TDM is another one of those groups — founded 18 years ago in Australia, they've compounded a single, private pool of capital at 26% per annum over nearly two decades. That's Warren & Charlie territory!TDM recently published a memo comparing the current “post ZIRP bubble” market with what happened in the years following both the dot-com crash and the GFC in 2008. As always, past performance isn't necessarily predictive of the future, but what happened back then surprised us and might surprise you too. More importantly, it gave us the perfect excuse to sit down with TDM cofounder Tom Cowan and share the conversation with you all. Tune in and learn alongside us!Links: TDM's 2023 Market Memo The current BVP Cloud Index Follow TDM on Twitter or LinkedIn My First Million: https://www.mfmpod.com/

How do you build defensible business value in an era when, as AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli said on our last ACQ2 episode, the “cost of intelligence is going to zero”? Longtime friend of the show Jake Saper and his partners at Emergence Capital have been refining their thesis for this brave new world of Generative AI in B2B, and we sit down with him to discuss. We cover topics including: When do exactly correct answers matter, and when do they not? When are human-in-the-loop systems necessary? When do startups have an advantage vs. incumbents, and vice-versa? Where can companies capture value on a durable basis? When do you need proprietary data in order to be defensible? Whether you're building or investing in existing businesses from the “pre-AI” era or brand new startups that are native to GPT, this episode has plenty of takeaways you should consider. Tune in!Links: Jake's recent blog post on Generative AI and B2B Follow Jake on Twitter My First Million: https://www.mfmpod.com/

Since joining AngelList as CEO in 2019, Avlok Kohli has presided over perhaps the most unexpected and astounding transformation in the venture ecosystem: taking AngelList from an SPV provider to a company that is quickly becoming the software platform for the entire industry.Today, AngelList provides investors and founders with the infrastructure they need to launch and scale a startup or fund, and supports over $15B of assets (including David's own Kindergarten Ventures!). We sit down with Avlok to discuss how it all happened (and happened so fast), and - also unexpectedly and astoundingly - how generative AI is about to transform their entire business and the venture ecosystem again. Tune in!Links: Visit AngelList to get started Follow Avlok on Twitter My First Million: https://www.mfmpod.com/

David Hsu has one of the most interesting founders journeys in tech today. After growing up in Silicon Valley, he left to study both philosophy and computer science at Oxford in the UK, then returned immediately afterward to found an internal enterprise tools company. Fast forward to today, and Retool is a multi-billion dollar valuation juggernaut that — almost uniquely for this era — operates at roughly cashflow breakeven while still growing rapidly. On this episode David shares his thoughts on finding product-market fit through sales, the dangers of product-led growth, how to get $1-5 million in ARR with just 5-10 people on the team. Tune in!Links: Retool! Follow David H. on Twitter

Ben and David joined Sam and Shaan of "My First Million" to talk about scaling to a large podcast, the company they would like to own, the CEO's you don't want to compete against, and the 100+ year history of Nintendo.  If you liked this and want more of Sam and Shawn, subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Links: * Hampton * Wait But Why * Marques Brownlee * Nintendo * NVIDIA ------ Show Notes: (01:45) - Intro to Acquired (10:00) - How to scale to a big podcast (14:05) - How big do you have to be to be at the top of the business category? (23:55) - What commonalities are there between weird companies? (27:40) - How to tell a real from a fake contrarian (34:45) - Nintendo (37:45) - Which company would you most want to own? (40:45) - Who would you least want to compete against? (52:30) - Business ideas (56:40) - Will you ever sell Acquired? (58:20) - Best ways to make money as a podcast

On our AWS episode, we talked briefly about the next chapter of cloud: data warehouses. But what makes them so powerful? Why do enterprises rely on them? And how will cloud customers collaborate on data stored in multiple clouds? We sit down with Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, the co-founder and CEO of Samooha, a new company backed by Altimeter and Snowflake Ventures to tackle the problem of secure data sharing and collaboration in the cloud. Kamakshi has an impressive background to speak to this problem, having been a part of AdMob (sold to Google), and the founder/CEO of Drawbridge, which sold to LinkedIn. She then went on to work in Microsoft's Office of the CTO, where she obviously had a lot of experience understanding the needs of cloud customers. If you want a better understanding of how enterprises use the cloud, multi-cloud architecture, and how security and privacy works with customer data at scale, this episode is for you! Links: Kamakshi on Twitter Samooha Samooha Product Demo Video

Statsig CEO and former Facebook VP Vijaye Raji joins us to discuss democratizing the tools of big tech. Before starting Statsig, Vijaye spent 10 years at Facebook where he led the development of their mobile ad product (yes — THAT mobile ad product that's the core of FB today). We talk all about about Facebook's early days in mobile, and the internal building and shipping process that let them continuously experiment and roll out features out to billions of users, which Statsig is now bringing to engineering and product teams everywhere. This episode is a must-listen for product builders at all stages! Listen in any podcast player. Links: Statsig's generous free feature flags offering Statsig experimentation community on Slack, LinkedIn and Twitter

We sit down with Altimeter Capital's head of Capital Formation Meghan Reynolds (who previously was TPG's global co-head of Capital Formation for 10 years) to talk about everything that goes into the LP - GP relationship at venture funds. We cover how (and why) to think strategically about Capital Formation, why it should be about so much more the just investor relations / fundraising, and also why and how it's going to change dramatically over the next decade. This was a GREAT conversation, and very relevant for GPs, LPs, and also company founders and employees heading into 2023 and post zero-interest-rate capital markets. Links: Follow Meghan on Twitter! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.  

The Acquired community's own Austin Federa joins us for a 101 primer on how to self-custody your crypto assets, and why it's the only truly safe way to hold them. Given all the current turmoil (and fraud) in crypto-land, we were thinking “how could we do something to help the Acquired community right now”, and Austin gave us the perfect idea. In addition to running the #digital-assets channel on the Acquired Slack, Austin is the head of communications at the Solana Foundation and has plenty of hard-won experience through previous crypto cycles and implosions. This episode covers both the nuts and bolts of a “how-to” guide, as well as a more philosophical discussion of self-custody across asset classes, and the practicalities and convenience tradeoffs involved. ‍Sponsor: Thank you to the Solana Foundation for being our presenting sponsor for the LP Show this season. Solana is the world's most performant blockchain and the best place for developers to build Web3 applications. You get in touch with them here (just tell them them at Ben and David sent you), and you can find and listen to Solana's own podcast here, hosted by Austin himself! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.  

We had the rare opportunity to interview Jay Hoag, cofounder of the first tech crossover investing firm, TCV, at TCV's Engage Summit in Half Moon Bay earlier this fall. Jay and Rick Kimball started TCV back in 1995 and have been part of the private-to-public journeys of storied companies like Netflix (which Jay shares some great war stories about on this episode), Spotify, Zillow, Expedia, Facebook, Airbnb, Peloton and many others. Jay and TCV were kind enough to let us release the conversation as an Acquired LP episode, and we're excited to share it with all of you. We cover the firm's history, how companies should calibrate the magnitude of their future-looking product investments (a topic we didn't realize would end up being so timely) and perhaps most importantly, pivotal moments where now seemingly unstoppable companies almost died amidst big macroeconomic changes. We hope you enjoy! Links: The Acquired Merch Store The Acquired Slack ‍Sponsor: Thank you to the Solana Foundation for being our presenting sponsor for the LP Show this season. Solana is the world's most performant blockchain, the BEST place for developers to build Web3 applications, and of course very near & dear to the Acquired community's heart. You get in touch with them here (just tell them them at Ben and David sent you), and you can find and listen to Solana's own podcast here, hosted by the Acquired community's very own Austin Federa! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with Brian O'Malley of Forerunner Ventures to talk about where in the cycle we are right now for consumer investing. We touch on the macro environment (obviously!), but also how to navigate between and around the current generation of platform incumbents, and where the next breakthrough consumer technology companies might come from. And in true Acquired Playbook fashion we talk about the benefits of focusing on niches — and how on the internet they can expand ever bigger than you might initially imagine! Links: Acquired Qualcomm Live Show at Breakpoint 2022! The 2022 Acquired Survey! The Acquired Merch Store The Acquired Slack ‍Sponsor: Thank you to the Solana Foundation for being our presenting sponsor for the LP Show this season. Solana is the world's most performant blockchain, the BEST place for developers to build Web3 applications, and of course very near & dear to the Acquired community's heart. You get in touch with them here (just tell them them at Ben and David sent you), and you can find and listen to Solana's own podcast here, hosted by the Acquired community's very own Austin Federa! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

The CEO of Mutiny, Jaleh Rezaei, joins us to talk about the playbook to profitably grow a B2B company — something particularly useful for founders in 2022! Jaleh was Gusto's first head of marketing (and before that worked at VMware and Sequoia), and has since gone on to build Mutiny, which helps B2B companies dynamically optimize their websites for conversion and has raised over $70m from Sequoia, Insight, Tiger and other great investors. Links: Acquired Qualcomm Live Show at Breakpoint 2022! Follow Jaleh on Twitter The 2022 Acquired Survey! The Acquired Merch Store The Acquired Slack

Kindergarten Ventures LP (and fellow podcast host over at Unlimited Partners) Thomas McGannon interviews David about Kindergarten's investment thesis for their recent large investment in Vanta. Along the way they discuss KV's overall strategy, how it fits into Acquired, and why it's “accidentally” become the best answer David has ever had to “why should a great founder take my capital?” Links: The 2022 Acquired Survey Vanta! Kindergarten Ventures on AngelList ‍Sponsor: Thank you to the Solana Foundation for being our presenting sponsor for the LP Show this season. Solana is the world's most performant blockchain, the BEST place for developers to build Web3 applications, and of course very near & dear to the Acquired community's heart. You get in touch with them here (just tell them them at Ben and David sent you), and you can find and listen to Solana's own podcast here, hosted by the Acquired community's very own Austin Federa! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with Kettle cofounder — and David's Kindergarten Ventures partner — Nat Manning to discuss the fascinating world of reinsurance, risk and climate. We couldn't think of a better and more appropriate conversation to have on the LP Show, and this was an absolute blast. Tune in and enjoy! ‍ ‍Links: Kettle Kindergarten Ventures on AngelList ‍ ‍Sponsor: Thank you to the Solana Foundation for being our presenting sponsor for the LP Show this season. Solana is the world's most performant blockchain, the BEST place for developers to build Web3 applications, and of course very near & dear to the Acquired community's heart. You get in touch with them here (just tell them them at Ben and David sent you!), register for Breakpoint here, and you can find and listen to Solana's own podcast here, hosted by the Acquired community's very own Austin Federa!   Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with long (long!) time Acquired community member Austin Federa to discuss the current state of crypto and Web3. By day Austin is the head of marketing & communications at the Solana Foundation, where he was one of the earliest employees. But many of you also know Austin from his "night job" as the founder and lead of the #digital-assets channel in the Acquired Slack, where he does an incredible job curating some of the best and most accessible digital asset discussion on the internet. No matter whether you're already deep in Web3, curious but sitting on the sidelines, or a diehard crypto skeptic, this episode is well worth listening to and learning from.   Sponsor: Thank you to the Solana Foundation for being our presenting sponsor for the LP Show this season. Solana is the world's most performant blockchain, the BEST place for developers to build Web3 applications, and of course very near & dear to the Acquired community's heart. You get in touch with them here (just tell them them at Ben and David sent you), and you can find and listen to Solana's own podcast here, hosted by the Acquired community's very own Austin Federa! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

What does a $200 million+ acquisition look like up close? How much time, focus, and communication happens between the first conversation and closing the deal? And when do the CEOs of each company just need to use the "red phone" and have a direct conversation without the 86(!) lawyers in the room?  We sit down with ProfitWell founder and CEO Patrick Campbell to answer it all, centering on ProfitWell's recent acquisition by Paddle. And incredibly, Patrick built and scaled the SaaS company without taking a single dollar of investment! If you're running a company that may one day need to navigate an acquisition (or just curious), tune in!  Links:  - Our Previous Episode with Patrick, a Masterclass on Pricing - The Documentary: "We Sign Tomorrow?" ‍Sponsor: Thank you to the Solana Foundation for being our presenting sponsor for the LP Show this season. Solana is the world's most performant blockchain, the BEST place for developers to build Web3 applications, and of course very near & dear to the Acquired community's heart. You get in touch with them here (just tell them them at Ben and David sent you), and you can find and listen to Solana's own podcast here, hosted by the Acquired community's very own Austin Federa! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

David is the first guest on a new podcast, Unlimited Partners! This is a wide-ranging interview where upon listening, even Ben learned some new things about David :) Unlimited Partners is hosted by long-time friend of the Acquired community, Thomas McGannon. UP is his journey to learn - what makes great partnerships? They explore stories of people working together throughout business building, investing, community and family. While much of this is brought to you through Thomas' work as a limited partner investor, their hope is that this podcast project finds a way to share themes and lessons for anyone looking to learn from the best partnership has to offer. Follow the Unlimited Partners Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unlimited-partners/id1625166477  ‍Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! We're super excited to have them as our first LP Show partner. Tegus empowers investors and Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO. They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial by clicking here. Just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch! ‍ Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with TrovaTrip co-founders Nick Poggi and Lauren Schneider to talk about travel for the creator economy. This one is very close to home since Ben is on their board! TrovaTrip is a marketplace that enables creators to easily plan trips to places around the world with their audiences. It's a whole new way for people to travel, with other like-minded people who share the same passions and communities. We talk with them about growing from a bootstrapped business to over 10,000 travelers booked, growing a travel business during the pandemic, and dive deep on the power of choosing a business model with favorable cashflow dynamics. Tune in! Join us at the Acquired Arena Show on May 4 at 5 PM! https://acquired.fm/arenashow ‍Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! We're super excited to have them as our first LP Show partner. Tegus empowers investors and Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO. They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial by clicking here. Just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch! ‍ Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We dropped by Vanta's all-hands in SF a few weeks ago for Christina to interview us for a change! We decided to turn the mics on and record it as an LP episode. We discussed lessons learned from building Acquired, the shape of the show's growth trajectory, how we think about the business, and dive into our own origin story. Also -- JOIN US FOR THE ACQUIRED ARENA SHOW!!  May 4th, at 5 PM in Seattle! You can RSVP at https://acquired.fm/arenashow. Hope to see you there!

We sit down with Composer CEO Benjamin Rollert to talk about bringing serious financial firepower to the people, wallstreetbets-style. Composer opens up to anyone the same level (or better) of tools that top quantitative hedge funds hire armies of PhDs and computer scientists to build internally. We have a blast discussing how he came at this space as a total outsider, and why Gamestop may prove to be the "iPhone moment" for Composer and all high-powered  consumer financial tools. And oh yeah, he also worked with Packy and Composer was the first Not Boring portfolio company. :) Tune in!  ‍Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! We're super excited to have them as our first LP Show partner. Tegus empowers investors and Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO. They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial by clicking here. Just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch! ‍ Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with Bain Capital Ventures' newest fintech Partner Christina Melas-Kyriazi to talk about everything happening right now in fintech, and the experience of helping build Affirm and the BNPL space from crazy idea to massive consumer finance category. Anyone interested in the history and future of fintech will love this one. Tune in!  ‍Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! We're super excited to have them as our first LP Show partner. Tegus empowers investors and Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO. They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial by clicking here. Just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch! ‍ Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

In late 2021, Ben and David were guests on Ted Seides' podcast, "Capital Allocators". The episode kicked off Ted's "Venture is Eating the Investment World" mini-series. From Ted: David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert are venture capitalists and hosts of the Acquired podcast. Acquired is one of my favorite shows. In it, David and Ben tell stories of great companies in technology with thorough research and a fun, engaging style. Our conversation kicks off the mini-series with their respective backgrounds in venture, the creation of Acquired, and their research process for show. We then dive into the origins of the cottage venture capital industry, inflection point after the tech bubble, rise of an abundance of capital, firms investing across stages, the competitive response of others, the mass introduction of angel investors, businesses staying private for longer, and the potential for crypto to change the game once more. You can see more about the show here: https://capitalallocators.com/podcast/acquiring-an-industry/   ‍Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! We're super excited to have them as our first LP Show partner. Tegus empowers investors and Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO. They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial by clicking here. Just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch! ‍ Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Get a cup of coffee. We sit down with the voice of one of our favorite Twitter accounts, 10-K Diver, to talk about his journey building one of the most widely followed (and respected!) fintwit accounts out there. We had a blast and — of course — learned a ton from one of the greats!! You can get this episode in your favorite podcast player here! ‍Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! We're super excited to have them as our first LP Show partner. Tegus empowers investors and Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO. They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial by clicking here. Just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Back by popular “Acquired demand” (plus we really wanted to have this conversation for our own edification!!), friends of the pod NZS Capital return to talk about what's going with the current market gyrations, and for a much-needed refresher on how to invest when — surprise — knowing the future is still an impossible task. As always we left this conversation with renewed appreciation for the NZS approach and the utility of their resiliency + optionality mental model. This is not one to miss! ‍Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! We're super excited to have them as our first LP Show partner. Tegus empowers investors and Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO. They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial by clicking here. Just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch! Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

It has been dubbed "one of the best venture investments of all time" by Packy McCormick, generating over a 4000X return in 3-and-a-half years. Today, we are talking with Chris McCann and Edith Yeung, the earliest investors in Solana, and partners at Race Capital. They also unbelievably were the earliest investors in FTX and started Race Capital in the midst of crypto winter! On this episode, we talk with Edith and Chris about the stories behind both of those investments and their views on what's next in crypto from their vantage point in the center of the ecosystem. Links: - The Generalist's FTX piece with Race Capital's Public Investment Memo - Picture: Chris and Edith with Jihan Wu, Founder of Bitmain - Picture: Edith with Anatoly (Solana founder) and Min Kim (ICON co-founder)   Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! This is a new experiment for us and we're super excited to have them as our first partner. Tegus empowers Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial at https://bit.ly/acquiredtegus and just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch!

We sit down with Jeremy Cai, the CEO of new retail pioneer Italic, for a fascinating discussion of how they're upending the traditional manufacturer-brand-retailer model by taking the opposite approach of earlier DTC startups. Rather than elevating brand and cutting out retail, Italic cuts out the brand and lets the actual manufacturers (who you've never heard of but who make most of the actual products that J. Crew, Everlane, etc sell) market and sell direct to customers. Sponsor: Thank you to Tegus for being our first presenting sponsor for the Acquired LP Show! This is a new experiment for us and we're super excited to have them as our first partner. Tegus empowers Corporate Development teams to make decisions smarter and faster by pairing the highest quality user-generated content and data with best-in-class technology. Tegus expert calls are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to the shared platform for all their customers to read or listen to. They are the only company in the world that aggregates qualitative information on private companies from seed-stage to pre-IPO. They're trusted by many amazing investors and companies around the world like JFrog, Spark, Thrive, Redpoint and more. You can learn more and get a free trial at https://www.tegus.co/acquired and just tell them that David and Ben sent you when you get in touch!

Originally broadcast live on New Years Eve: we raise a glass (of coffee haha) and recap 2021 with our besties Mario Gabriele from the Generalist and Packy McCormick from Not Boring. Thank you for making 2021 an incredible year for all of us at ACQ, NB + TG, and may 2022 be filled with great things and grand adventures for us all!

Last month, Ben sat down with Wesley Chan at Web Summit for a quick, 18-minute interview. The conversation was supposed to be about global investing in 2021 as an early-stage VC, but the conversation turned mostly into the origin story of Wesley's (unbelievably good) seed investment in Canva. Wesley's firm Felicis Ventures invested pre-revenue, leading the seed round, and Canva is valued at $40 billion today. Wesley dives into the details (and why he invested in the first place!) in this interview.

Today we're excited to have a longtime friend of the Acquired family on the LP Show, Rob Meyerson. Rob was the President of Blue Origin for 15 years, and today is an investor and advisor to space industry startups. Ben recorded this interview live at the fantastic aerospace industry conference, ASCEND, where Rob is the Executive Producer. In this interview we cover: How Blue Origin started, and what it was like in the early days (spoiler: they weren't yet building rockets!) Rob's experience working directly for Jeff Bezos What's changed about SpaceX since May of 2020, when we did our Acquired episode on the company Rob's theses about what sectors of commercial space are poised for growth in the next few years

Ben and David go on "This Week in Startups" with Jason Calacanis for a holiday special!  Discussion includes: - Talking TWIST and All-In this year with everything from politics to weight loss to private jets - Acquired's year and some of Ben and David's biggest insights from episodes - VC, valuations, and crypto investing mechanics - Use cases for crypto, and trying to get Jason (a skeptic) excited - Carveouts: our favorite books, podcasts, and TV shows from this year Note: we are publishing this simultaneously in the paid LP feed and the public feed since it is already available in the public TWIST feed.

We are very excited to bring you a special LP interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Aside from Joe's well-known work as a Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy-award-winning actor in films like 500 Days of Summer, Inception, and Looper, Joe is also the founder of  HITRECORD, a startup which brings creative collaborators together across film, music, books, and more. Ben sat down with Joe to discuss: The creator economy's focus on the finished product vs. the creative process, and how he thinks about this at HITRECORD The state of the film and TV industry today, amidst the shift to streaming platforms and tech companies as primary distribution channels What it has been like on set playing Travis Kalanick in Showtime's upcoming “Super Pumped” Thanks to our good friends at Fika Ventures for setting this conversation up!

The title says it all. This feels weird to release by Acquired standards -- an hour of audio with zero research! -- but we wanted to check in with y'all and say hi from parental leave. Topics covered: - Update on Dad Life - Ben's new MacBook Pro - Discussion of Acquired's approach to doing video / YouTube

We sit down with Adam Jackson, the cofounder and CEO of Freelance Labs, which builds the incredible Web3 project Braintrust. (Disclosure David is an investor via Kindergarten Ventures.) We talk all about what a marketplace looks like in Web3, and why it's a completely different animal than traditional Web2 marketplaces like Uber, eBay, DoorDash, etc. Prior to starting Braintrust, Adam was the CEO of Doctor on Demand, so has literally lived both sides of the table. Tune in for a FASCINATING discussion of everything that crypto / tokenization enables, and why it's such an exciting shift that unlocks massive, $000B+ opportunities like Braintrust.

We sit down with Roneil Rumberg, the cofounder and CEO of Audius — the decentralized music platform which currently is likely the widest-adopted Web3 project in existence with over 6m active users. This conversation was AWESOME, and covers everything from Silicon Valley history, to how the music industry works, to the technical aspects and challenges of building a Web3 project today. Huge thank you to Roneil to joining us, and we're looking forward to hearing more from Audius on Acquired in the years to come!