Acquired
About this creator
Acquired is a long-form business podcast that breaks down the companies, acquisitions, and strategic decisions behind iconic businesses.
Why they're in the library
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.
Facebook's acquisition of Oculus: a billion-dollar bet on VR's future
Acquired
April 11, 2017
Case studies
9
Business models
7
Fundraising & VC
6
A duct-taped prototype became a $2.3B acquisition in under two years
Valve shipped a superior VR product within a year of the Facebook deal
Facebook bought Oculus to avoid repeating its near-miss on mobile
How Howard Schultz took Starbucks public and built a consumer empire
Acquired
April 3, 2017
Origin stories
10
Fundraising & VC
7
Culture building
6
Starbucks' moat is employee investment, not the coffee itself.
Howard priced the IPO at $17 against his bankers' advice — and won.
The IPO was a visibility event, not just a capital raise.
How Amazon's 1997 IPO funded a world-changing long-term bet
Acquired
December 31, 2016
Origin stories
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Long-term planning
6
Amazon IPO'd in under 3 years — before Barnes & Noble reacted.
Bezos selected investors who'd tolerate decades of no profit.
Creditor pressure in 2001 forced cost cuts that saved the company.
How Microsoft does M&A and strategic investing, with Brian Schultz
Acquired
December 16, 2016
Fundraising & VC
9
Exit strategy
7
Valuation
5
Corporate VCs are incentivised by salary, not returns — founders should know this
Microsoft acquires teams and roadmap gaps, not standalone businesses
Build product partnerships first; investment and acquisition follow relationships
Disney's 2009 acquisition of Marvel: IP flywheel and franchise strategy
Acquired
December 5, 2016
Case studies
9
Business models
8
Valuation
6
Marvel went bankrupt in 1996 before Perlmutter saved it via Toy Biz
Disney paid $4.2B — half the Pixar price — for 500+ character assets
Serialised superhero films trade higher box office for lower replay value
Facebook IPO: how a bungled debut forced a mobile transformation
Acquired
November 11, 2016
Case studies
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Pivoting
6
Facebook's catastrophic IPO was also its most valuable forcing function
Mobile revenue was zero at IPO; 84% of revenue within four years
Institutional investors got secret guidance retail shareholders never received
Skype: from Kazaa to Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition
Acquired
November 2, 2016
Origin stories
10
Exit strategy
7
Business models
6
Founders sold Skype twice but kept the IP — sabotaging every buyer
Skype acquired users at $0.001 each while Vonage spent $400
Microsoft paid 32x operating profit; private equity tripled value in two years
How Apple's acquisition of NeXT saved the company and created a trillion-dollar empire
Acquired
October 23, 2016
Origin stories
10
Business models
5
Jobs built NextStep while exiled — Apple's entire OS lineage stems from it.
NeXT's hardware flopped at $10,000; the software changed computing forever.
A $429M acquisition of a failing company created roughly $1 trillion in revenue.
How Zillow acquired Trulia: deal structure, FTC scrutiny, and integration
Acquired
October 14, 2016
Case studies
9
Long-term planning
6
Valuation
6
Valuation agreed in two days using a decade of public 2:1 traffic data
Four months of FTC review nearly killed the deal — Zillow fought it from DC
Keeping both brands separate unlocked talent, not just audience scale
Google's Android acquisition: the ultimate defensive play
Acquired
September 16, 2016
Case studies
9
Competitive analysis
7
Exit strategy
5
Android exists to stop Google paying a 34% tax on its own search revenue.
A $50M buy in 2005 saves Google an estimated $4B+ per year today.
Open-sourcing Android forced Apple to open iOS to third-party developers.
How Adobe's head of corp dev thinks about M&A: process, culture, and integration
Acquired
August 22, 2016
Exit strategy
9
Business models
6
Culture building
5
Adobe walked away from $1B+ deals over culture fit alone
80% of acquisitions start as low-key relationship introductions, not sale processes
Post-close integration sits inside the deal team — by design
How Salesforce Acquired ExactTarget for a Marketing Cloud Win
Acquired
July 5, 2016
Case studies
9
Business models
7
Fundraising & VC
6
Three first-time founders built email marketing from scratch in a dead market, moving from restaurants to Fortune 500 without losing SMB customers.
Salesforce paid $2.5 billion to plug a gap in marketing and gain a multi-tenant platform that scales from small business to enterprise.
Single codebase architecture with toggleable features unlocked both crowded markets and upmarket expansion simultaneously.
Facebook's rejected $3B Snapchat acquisition
Acquired
May 23, 2016
Case studies
9
Business models
8
Product-market fit
6
Evan Spiegel deliberately designed Snapchat as the anti-Facebook with privacy-first brand advertising.
High school network effects on locked-down iPads created organic viral growth that startups couldn't buy.
Snapchat's vertical-first mobile product and cultural independence made it incompatible with Facebook's structure.
How eBay's acquisition of PayPal shaped the startup ecosystem
Acquired
May 9, 2016
Case studies
9
Business models
6
eBay's $1.5B acquisition in 2002 spawned the PayPal Mafia, founding Uber, Airbnb, SpaceX, Tesla, LinkedIn and more
PayPal pioneered viral growth loops, embeddable payments and fraud detection—templates all modern startups use
Culture clash drove exodus that created ecosystem; integration succeeded financially but cost eBay generational talent
How Microsoft acquired its mobile productivity future: Acompli, Sunrise, and Wunderlist
Acquired
February 29, 2016
Case studies
9
Business models
7
Outsourcing & delegation
5
Mobile user pull beats enterprise push — own the best client or lose.
Three acquisitions in 18 months rebuilt Microsoft's entire mobile productivity stack.
Acquired teams stayed in their cities and shipped Outlook for iPhone in two months.