Acquired
About this creator
Acquired is a long-form business podcast that breaks down the companies, acquisitions, and strategic decisions behind iconic businesses.
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Included for clear, credible perspective as long-form business podcast that breaks down the companies, acquisitions, and strategic decisions behind iconic businesses.
Showing 168 digests for Acquired.
How Dropbox went public at a $10 billion valuation
Acquired
March 26, 2018
Origin stories
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Growth hacking
6
Drew Houston founded Dropbox after forgetting his USB drive on a bus
Founder owned 25% at IPO by raising just three rounds with minimal dilution
A costly 2013–2016 expansion into email and dev tools nearly sank the company
SoftBank's Vision Fund: how a $93bn fund reshaped technology investing
Acquired
March 23, 2018
Case studies
9
Fundraising & VC
8
Business models
7
SoftBank structured the Vision Fund to generate $18bn in guaranteed management fees.
Masa's $20m Alibaba bet returned $60bn — possibly the best investment ever made.
Buying Fortress gave SoftBank the operational infrastructure to manage $140bn in assets.
How Against Gravity raised a seed round for Rec Room
Acquired
February 7, 2018
Fundraising & VC
9
Pitching investors
8
MVP & prototyping
6
Replaced the pitch deck with the live app — investors had to play it first
Set their own valuation and terms, then told every investor: in or out
Raised to buy time for platform bets, not to change how they operated
How Zappos built a billion-dollar company on $10M and customer obsession
Acquired
January 23, 2018
Case studies
9
Bootstrapping
7
Customer experience
6
Lack of money forced Zappos to achieve unit economics from order one
Amazon launched a clone — Zappos countered with free overnight shipping
Irrational competitors kill startups; a culled market let Zappos survive
Apple's $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics and Beats Music
Acquired
December 11, 2017
Case studies
9
Vision & mission
7
Branding
6
Beats succeeded by marketing headphones like artists, not consumer electronics
Apple paid $3B primarily for Jimmy Iovine's music industry relationships
Beats Music became Apple Music; 30M paid subscribers within three years
Stitch Fix IPO: data-driven fashion startup goes public amid Amazon era
Acquired
December 4, 2017
Case studies
9
Bootstrapping
7
Business models
6
Reached $1B revenue on just $42M raised — extreme capital efficiency.
Profitable on the very first customer order, before any repeat purchases.
IPO priced below range as cohort data revealed rapid post-year-one spending decay.
How Atlassian built an $11B company without raising venture capital
Acquired
November 7, 2017
Origin stories
9
Bootstrapping
8
Business models
7
Atlassian scaled to $320M revenue spending only 20% on sales and marketing.
No VC, no sales team — product quality alone drove all enterprise growth.
The IPO was a liquidity event, not a capital raise; founders kept 78% combined.
How Blue Bottle Coffee went from garage kiosk to Nestle acquisition
Acquired
October 8, 2017
Case studies
9
Exit strategy
8
Fundraising & VC
6
A freelance clarinetist built a $625M coffee brand from his kitchen
VC fund lifecycles, not founder ambition, forced the Nestle exit
Why premium physical retail can never be winner-take-all like the internet
AOL–Time Warner: How the internet's biggest winner executed the worst merger in history
Acquired
September 18, 2017
Case studies
9
Business models
7
Fundraising & VC
5
AOL used inflated bubble-era stock to escape a sinking business.
Dot-com ad revenue collapse — not dial-up decline — killed the merger.
AIM had 100M users; AOL squandered the social graph Facebook later built.
Square's 2015 IPO: a down-round story with a strong comeback
Acquired
August 16, 2017
Case studies
9
Fundraising & VC
8
Business models
6
IPO priced at half the last private valuation — yet stock tripled in 18 months
Goldman Sachs had a financial incentive to price the IPO lower
Unlocking 24 million unbanked small merchants was the real innovation
HP's $1.6 billion acquisition of Opsware: the view from the buyer
Acquired
August 5, 2017
Case studies
9
Competitive analysis
8
Pivoting
6
In a consolidating market, HP had no choice but to buy the winner.
Virtualisation created the scale problem Opsware was already built to solve.
Losing the acquired talent — not the price — is why the deal underdelivered.
How Booking.com became the world's largest travel company
Acquired
July 26, 2017
Origin stories
9
Business models
8
Niche selection
6
Priceline paid $133M for Booking.com; it became worth $60B+.
Agency model beat merchant model by aligning hotels and travelers.
Long-tail supply of 500K hotels was the moat no one else could build.
How Blizzard became a gaming empire through corporate chaos and creative focus
Acquired
July 13, 2017
Case studies
9
Business models
8
Exit strategy
5
Blizzard's map editor accidentally created the MOBA genre — and gave away billions.
World of Warcraft: $1 billion a year from one game, no new releases for six years.
Vivendi's French water company owned Blizzard before Activision rescued it.
Apple's Acquisition of SoundJam: The Birth of iTunes
Acquired
May 31, 2017
Origin stories
9
Business models
7
Apple acquired SoundJam, an MP3 player by former engineers, to accelerate iTunes development and execute Steve Jobs' digital hub strategy.
SoundJam's brushed metal UI and polished design became the template for iTunes, which launched free and bundled with macOS.
The $2–5M acquisition (estimated) became the foundation for the iPod, iPhone ecosystem, and $7B+ annual services revenue.
How MLB built the future of streaming inside a sports league
Acquired
May 10, 2017
Origin stories
9
Business models
8
Pivoting
6
MLB secretly built a $3.5B streaming giant before Netflix existed
Live sports rights turned a tech vendor into a cable-killer
Disney paid $1B to own the future of direct-to-consumer TV