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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

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:

Vanta

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

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

Sponsors:

Vanta

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:

Vanta

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:

Vanta

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:

Vanta
 

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:

Vanta

 

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:

Vanta

How VC Firms Really Work

Ben and David talk about some of their current investment theses at PSL and Wave, as well as how VCs think about themes and theses in general. 

Sponsors:

Vanta
Links:

 • Greg McAdoo “Wave” talk at Startup School 2008 
https://youtu.be/fZ5F2KhMLiE • The Myth of the Job Hopping Millenial 
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/7/11/17559484/gig-economy-jobs-rooted-rootless-moving-job-hopping-millennials

Investment Theses

As promised in our holiday special, we dive into the past, present and future of clean energy funding, with the absolutely perfect guest: the former Obama administration Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Doug Rand. This episode was totally eye-opening for us, and we hope inspires many of you to think about energy and climate through an entrepreneurial lens. 

 

Sponsors:

Vanta
 

Links:

 • ARPA-E: 
https://arpa-e.energy.gov • Steve Blank’s Secret History of Silicon Valley: 
https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ • NSF Innovation Corps: 
https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/

Why aren't energy startups funded like software? (with Doug Rand)

We continue the conversation with Emily White, covering topics including her career path, what it was like working with Sheryl Sandberg for so many years, her time at Snap, her experience serving on public company boards, and how she operates as an investor now at Anthos Capital.

Sponsors:

Vanta

The Art of Pitching

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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