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Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

ACQ2 is Ben and David's conversations with expert founders and investors. Acquired the stories of great companies — and ACQ2 dives deeper into the lessons we can learn from them, often with the protagonists themselves.

ACQ2 by Acquired

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 enterprises
 • Guillermo's unconventional approach to staying deeply technical as CEO at scale

Links:

VercelV0.devNext.js

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com

Building Web Apps with Just English and AI (with Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch)

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 Stratechery

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com

The Art of Selling Enterprise Software (with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott)

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 • !

Undoing a $5 Billion Acquisition and Building a Durable Standalone Plaid (with Plaid CEO Zach Perret)

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

Building the Savannah Bananas (with Jesse Cole, Founder and Owner)

Kicking off ACQ2 (formerly known as the LP Show) and diving into some jargon-y VC vocab. 

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com

VC Vocab

Ben and David are back for episode #2, diving into the most elusive early-stage investing and company-building topics: product-market fit. 

 

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com

Product-market fit

Ben and David are back for episode #3, with special guest Dan Hill. Dan discusses:

- How his startup, Crashpadder, got acquired by Airbnb

- Why Airbnb succeeded, and why marketplace businesses in the US have an advantage in early growth

- How they decided on growth metrics at Airbnb

- How his new company, Alma, is making charitable giving simple

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com

Growing Airbnb (with Dan Hill, CEO of Alma and former Head of Growth at Airbnb)

Ben and David discuss “the art of the pitch” through the lens of fundraising for seed-stage companies, but the takeaways are also (hopefully) applicable far beyond!

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com
 

Links:

 • Sequoia pitch deck template: 
 https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/writing-a-business-plan/# • Don Valentine talk at GSB: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKN-abRJMEw • Jim Goetz talk at GSB: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnmYSze9M2g

The Art of Pitching

Ben and David continue the Acquired holiday tradition. Happy holidays to everyone!

 

Note: we apologize for David’s sound quality... we’re still working out the kinks on our mobile recording setup.

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com

 

Extended carve-out links:

 • Books: 
 • David: Broken Earth trilogy 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B01947LZ8A • Ben: eBoys 
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1HTG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 • Article: 
 • David: “My Dad's Friendship With Charles Barkley” 
 http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/12/14/lin-wang-charles-barkley • Ben: Birth of a New American Aristocracy 
 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ • Podcast: 
 • David: 996 Podcast 
https://996.ggvc.com/category/podcast/ • Ben: Dissect Season 2 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dissect/id1143845868?mt=2 • Music: 
 • David: Tiny Desk concerts 
https://www.npr.org/series/tiny-desk-concerts/ • Ben: Odesza’s A Moment Apart & 
 https://open.spotify.com/album/3VzsvmhnUb9OZ59bq2aoNZ?si=dHUDPR4tSW2u6yey0MWTFw • TV / Movie: 
 • Both: Black Panther 
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825683/ • App: 
 • David: Steady Health 
https://steady.health • Ben:
 • Moment 
https://www.shopmoment.com • Weather Line: 
http://weatherlineapp.com • Auto Sleep 
http://autosleep.tantsissa.com

2018 Holiday Special

Ever wondered what's really going on during the Monday Meetings of your friendly neighborhood VC firm? Ben and David take you behind the scenes to discuss structure (especially how the management company works), staffing, LPs, and most importantly decision-making and motivations for VC firms and their partners. Whichever side of the table you're on, we hope you find this episode useful!

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com

How VC Firms Really Work

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. 

Sponsors:

 • Plaid: 
https://plaid.com

Italic & a New Era of Online Retail

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