It's a kids game, it's a social network, it's... potentially the hottest IPO of 2021? We team up with Mario Gabriele from The Generalist + S-1 Club to break down Roblox's business and its prospects as a public company. Sponsors: Vanta Links Mario & friends' definitive S-1 Club analysis of Roblox's prospectus: https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/roblox-ipo Mario on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariodgabriele Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm...
Feb 12, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Transcript available on Metacast With 2020 and (hopefully soon) the global pandemic coming to a close, both existing and new companies everywhere will soon face a choice of how to operate going forward. Embrace the "future" that was pulled forward by the pandemic and remain remote? Or return fully/partially to a physical office environment? For those who choose the future (and investors who are considering betting on them), Doist and its CEO Amir Salihefendić provide a 10-year case study of both the challenges that arise and th...
Dec 21, 2020•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast We continue our VC Fundamentals series with Portfolio Construction & Management — how do you build and manage a fund's portfolio as a whole, beyond each individual portfolio company and investment decision? We brought in two of the very best people in the world to help us dissect this topic: Jaclyn Hester & Lindel Eakman of Foundry Group. Jaclyn and Lindel have been early and longtime LPs in some of the best venture funds in the world: USV, True, Spark — and of course Foundry — and now a...
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra joins us for an absolute masterclass on startup fundraising that shatters much outdated traditional wisdom in the space. We cover why it's possible to build momentum and raise even as a solo founder, how you should think about syndicates vs. "brand name" VCs, and why you always want to be preempted and how to make that happen. This episode is a 100% must-listen for anyone raising money now, or planning to in the future. Sponsors: Vanta Topics Covered: How to run a succ...
Nov 12, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello ACQ2! Posting the audio recording of our Book Club Zoom session with Emily Chang in digestible podcast form. For those who weren't able to attend, we hope you get as much out of the recording as we did being there live! Sponsors: Vanta Book notes public post: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/book-club-discussion-brotopia-with-emily-chang GDoc version of book notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1939VQja1rIK9yP1Ahe4w2frPy4-nUYEH7pxwRk-WjBk/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=110434699798216361...
Oct 23, 2020•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're joined by Posterous co-founder, former YC partner and current Managing Partner of Initialized Capital Garry Tan to go deep on how YC changed the game for company creation and seed investing, how they thought about building the "cult" of startups, and what lies ahead as the early-stage world continues to globalize and evolve more quickly than ever. Sponsors: Vanta Topics Covered (among others): How the recruiting challenge for early-stage startups led to outside-the-box thinking Peter Thiel...
Sep 29, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast We continue our VC Fundamentals series with Company Building — everything that happens after you write the check. We catalog the different categories, strategies and tactics for VCs to "add value" to their portfolio companies, from direct involvement to portfolio services to simply doing nothing (often better than many alternatives!). For both of us, this is the best and most fun part of being an investor, and we hope that shines through in this episode. Here's to building great companies! Spons...
Sep 15, 2020•2 hr 34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello ACQ2! Posting the audio recording of our Book Club Zoom session with Will Thorndike from The Outsiders in digestible podcast form. Big thank you to Will and to all of you who made this a really special experience. For those of you who weren't able to attend, we hope you get as much out of the recording as we did live! Sponsors: Vanta Book notes public post: https://medium.com/@AcquiredFM/book-club-notes-the-outsiders-569175957ab4 GDoc version of book notes: https://docs.google.com/document...
Sep 03, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast We dive into everything you need to know about SPACs — what they are, why they're a compelling alternative to IPO/DPOs, and how they might play an even more important role in startup financing going forward — with two of the very best people to teach us: Kevin Hartz and Troy "SPAC Professor" Steckenrider of the newly-minted $200m SPAC, AONE. Sponsors: Vanta TLDR: SPACs are an alternative path for companies to go public, however until recently they were mostly obscure and little-known/used. Meanw...
Aug 25, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello ACQ2! We heard from several of you that Book Club recordings were hard to digest as Zoom recordings. So we stripped out the audio and are posting it here in podcast form. Thanks to all of you who made this a really special experience with Hamilton, and for those of you who weren't able to attend we hope you're able to get as much out of the recording as we did live! Sponsors: Vanta -Ben & David...
Aug 19, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Despite many advances in industry transparency over the past ~10 years, much about the actual "jobs of a VC" remains locked inside firm/institutional knowledge and venture's apprenticeship model. With this series, we aim to change that. Our goal is to draw back the curtain on what the actual tasks are that VCs do day-to-day, how you can learn them, and ultimately what's required to succeed. We hope this series will be helpful both to anyone looking to break into the industry and to those who are...
Aug 06, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re joined by Tock CEO Nick Kokonas to discuss how they’re “arming the restaurateur rebels” versus DoorDash / Uber Eats, in much the same way Shopify has done so for e-commerce merchants versus Amazon. This episode is full of lessons on how to execute a counter-positioning playbook to disrupt entrenched incumbents, including the influence of Nick’s friend / Tock investor and Nobel prize-winning economist Richard Thaler. Whether you’re an entrepreneur who’s also building a “picks & shovels”...
Jul 27, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Benchmark General Partner Sarah Tavel joins us for a master class on consumer investing. We start with why invest in consumer at all (given the inherent risks of its "hit-driven nature"), then deep dive on marketplace investing and wrap up with social, gaming and consumer transactional businesses. Big thank you to Sarah for sharing her immense knowledge on this topic, and to her partner (and fellow Acquired "master class lecturer" on enterprise investing) Chetan Puttagunta for introducing us and...
Jul 07, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Despite many advances in industry transparency over the past ~10 years, much about the actual "jobs of a VC" remains locked inside firm/institutional knowledge and venture's apprenticeship model. With this new series, we aim to change that. Our goal is to draw back the curtain on what the actual tasks are that VCs do day-to-day, how you can learn them, and ultimately what's required to succeed. We hope this series will be helpful both to anyone looking to break into the industry and to those who...
Jun 10, 2020•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're joined by Patrick Campbell, founder & CEO of the world's leading SaaS profit-optimization service ProfitWell, to dive deep on all things pricing and monetization. Patrick began bootstrapping ProfitWell 8 years ago, and has since grown the business into a massive success with customers like Notion, Lyft, Masterclass, Atlassian, Help Scout, HubSpot, Cisco, Autodesk and many more. Patrick gives us a masterclass in how to think with a profit-maximization lens about pricing, feature develop...
May 21, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're joined by former Amazon, Microsoft and Bulletproof executive Anna Collins to discuss how high-performance organizations structure their hiring and interview processes. Whether you're a small startup or a big public company, as Anna puts it, there is no more important question than who you put "on your bus". Anna distills what she's learned across 20+ years and making thousands of hires into actionable, must-listen advice for anyone aiming to grow their organization in a high-performance ma...
May 05, 2020•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Part 2 of our conversation, Jason reveals his "secret master plan" behind the Calacanis empire, as well as how he and his team manage all their various activities and their own productivity. And of course, we couldn’t resist diving into some behind-the-scenes stories and hot takes, including a long bet on a future TWiSt - Acquired live show crossover collab. You can find Part 1 of our conversation in the main show feed at: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/acquired-special-episode-jason-calaca...
Apr 29, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're joined for an Adapeting episode by the cofounders of Mystery, a Seattle seed-stage startup that we've mentioned before on Acquired and was started by early Convoy employees. In ordinary times, Mystery sends customers on magical date nights and group outings throughout the city with no planning or decision-making required -- an "easy button" for date night. Of course, we no longer live in ordinary times, and Mystery has undergone an incredible transformation. Within the span of a month, the...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures joins us to illuminate everything Pre-Seed -- not just what it is and how founders/companies should navigate it, but also and more deeply: How he came into this corner of the venture world How he started Precursor as a solo GP and raised his first/subsequent funds, and what that journey was like How he manages the firm, its overall strategy, and especially portfolio construction within this relatively new asset class (spoiler: it's different!) Sponsors: Vanta...
Mar 24, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're joined by Wade Foster, co-founder & CEO of Zapier, a company that basically hasn’t raised capital, doesn’t have an office, doesn’t have salespeople, and whose product consists of connecting other people’s products. And yet today they are doing well over $50M in profitable ARR, have hundreds of employees and thousands of hyper-passionate customers, and are one of the most interesting private SaaS companies in the world. We’re super excited for Wade to join us and dive into the full stor...
Feb 24, 2020•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast “There’s no real secret to making the stuff we make. It’s not something where you have to be crazy talented. The thing is, you just spend a little bit longer on it than is reasonable. Most people would give up, and then you just keep going on it for three more hours making it better, doing more research, whatever the thing is that makes it better. Wherever most people would say, yea, that’s good enough, you just keep going for a little while longer. Not an eternity longer, just a bit longer.” -N...
Jan 21, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Let's face it, Acquired borders on Star Wars fan podcast anyway. So we dipped our toe in the water of making it official, with our review of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. We are joined by fellow Star Wars nerd and repeat special guest, Chetan Puttagunta, General Partner at Benchmark. In this episode, we *nearly* avoid any business analysis or speculation on the technology, media, or enterprise ecosystems, with only a brief revisit to the question: "Was it worth it for Disney to buy Lucasfilm...
Jan 10, 2020•2 hr 38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Steven Galanis, cofounder and CEO of the red-hot Chicago startup Cameo, joins us to discuss how they've turned selling personalized celebrity shoutouts online into both a massive business and the most interesting new social media phenomenon to hit the West since TikTok. We hope you have as much fun listening as we did recording this one! Sponsors: Vanta Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast: Acquired.fm @AcquiredFM Show Links: Broke – ESPN Documentary Mark McGrath’s Breakup Cameo...
Jan 06, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're joined by Webflow's Co-Founder and CEO, Vlad Magdalin, talking about how he started the company (over a decade, trying three times), how to nail the timing of your startup, and the future of the "no-code movement." Vlad took his company through YCombinator in 2013, and raised only $3m in the following six years, before closing a $72m Series A from Accel earlier this year. He gives his perspective on why now is the only time Webflow could have worked (not in 2009, the last time he tried to ...
Dec 12, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast We are joined by Chetan Puttagunta, General Partner on Benchmark, talking his investment philosophies, enterprise technology trends, and the uniqueness of Benchmark. How is this firm with only five partners and no associates so repeatably successful? Chetan shares the story of his very first investment, MongoDB, and lessons learned from his other investments and board positions in Elastic, Sketch, Duffel, Mulesoft, and many others. Chetan also helps us understand how he balances staying open-min...
Nov 11, 2019•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast "You can call it paranoia, or you can call it innovation. The language doesn’t matter if the feeling is the same. This is all an experiment I’m running eight years in: How do I update my mindset to want to approach things by activating the pleasure center more than the pain center? I’m more likely to move away from pain and towards pleasure. So why don’t I make innovation a game and bring play to, literally playfulness, into it? I see too many founders burn out because they have lost playfulness...
Oct 21, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast We're joined by Stanford professor and senior advisor to Airbnb, Uber, Stitch Fix, and Wave Capital, Ramesh Johari, who is one of the world's leading experts in marketplaces. Ramesh has been advising David and his partners at Wave since day one, and we're super excited to bring his incredible experience and insights to all of our ACQ2 listeners. In this conversation we dive deep into nearly every aspect of starting, building and then operating a marketplace at scale. Whether you are a marketplac...
Oct 03, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ben and David discuss the newest development in the venture ecosystem, startup studios, through the lens of Pioneer Square Labs (which Ben cofounded in 2015). David manages to trick Ben into sitting on the other side of the table and being interviewed about how PSL works, how he and his partners started it, and what lies ahead! For more information, check out http://psl.com . Sponsors: Vanta...
Sep 15, 2019•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ben and David couldn’t agree on a topic for this LP episode with the clock winding down to our recording going live... so we decided to “do it live” and commentate on our Twitter feeds haha (and discuss your survey feedback). We hope you enjoy this fun slice of randomness, and we’ll be back with more actionable interviews and company-building topics very soon! Sponsors: Vanta
Sep 03, 2019•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast We dive into one of the most critical components of company building, recruiting product leaders (and executives in general), with Andrew Abramson of Riviera Partners -- one of the most elite search firms in Silicon Valley. We cover first how companies and founders should think about recruiting senior leaders, from knowing when you're ready to work with search firms. Then we dive into the other side, how product managers should think about managing and progressing in their own careers toward sen...
Aug 17, 2019•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
