ACQ2 by Acquired

On our Novo Nordisk episode, we covered the business of Ozempic, the GLP-1 taking the world by storm. On this episode, we dive into the science of the molecule semaglutide (and its predecessor liraglutide) with the world expert on the topic, Lotte Bjerre Knudsen. Lotte is Novo Nordisk?s Chief Scientific Advisor, and led the research group back in the early 1990s that first invented the molecule. A few topics from our conversation:

The science behind what is happening in the body that causes weight loss while on OzempicWhat it was like in the 1990s and 2000s believing in a drug for a problem that the rest of the industry (including her own company) had written offHow weight loss was actually a goal from the very start ? not just a side effect of diabetes medication like you often read today!

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Quartr

We?re joined by Imprint cofounder and Thrive General Partner Gaurav Ahuja to dive deeper into the modern payments ecosystem and Visa?s current place within it. Gaurav was one of our research sources for the Visa episode, and we wanted to bring his insights to you all too. We discuss whether Visa really should be worried about eroding interchange fees, the impact of realtime payments systems, opportunities for startups and whether the Visa / Mastercard duopoly could really be overthrown. Tune in and enjoy!

Links:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/files/Avg_IF_by_PCN.pdf

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Quartr

We sit down with Morgan Housel, who is one of our very favorite authors and has also become a good friend of the show over the past few years. Morgan?s last book The Psychology of Money had a huge impact on both of our personal financial philosophies (and by extension Acquired?s!), and Morgan was kind enough to give us an advance copy of his new book launching tomorrow, Same as Ever. It?s equally as good, and maybe even more relevant in the current environment for thinking about what?s not going to change as we cycle through vastly different macro financial environments. Tune in and enjoy!

Links:

Morgan?s new book Same as EverThe Psychology of MoneyMorgan?s blog on Collaborative Fund and on TwitterMorgan?s new podcast!

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While preparing for our Porsche episode with Doug DeMuro, we had a lot more than Porsche to discuss? but the episode was already over 3 hours! We decided to save the rest for its own episode, released here on ACQ2. Doug helped us understand what?s going on with the car industry supply chain in 2023, the transition to electric vehicles, the car dealership business model, and how most consumer car purchase decisions really get made.

We also got to talk with Doug about his business empire. In addition to his YouTube channel with ~5 million subscribers, Doug started a car marketplace called ?Cars and Bids?. Earlier this year, Doug took a $37 million investment from The Chernin Group, and Doug walked us through that transaction and what it?s been like going from ?indie creator? to a large and more professionalized organization. And of course, there?s some discussion on our Porsche episode together.

Links:

Cars and Bids!Doug on YouTube and Twitter

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We sit down with RunwayML?s CEO Cristobal Valenzuela to discuss the incredible tools they?re bringing to film and video creators (including last year?s Best Picture ?Everything Everywhere All at Once? from A24), and the history + current state of the ?visual? branch of generative AI. We cover how they?ve gone to market with both creators and enterprises, the potential for much more radical future use cases, and the company?s recent $141m strategic raise from Google, Nvidia + Salesforce and the context of the current AI fundraising landscape. Tune in!

Links:

RunwayFollow Cris on Twitter

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We sit down with Crusoe Energy CEO Chase Lochmiller to talk about the two ?hard to imagine? tasks they?ve undertaken: 1) building a new AI cloud infrastructure provider from scratch, and 2) colocating and powering it with stranded energy from some of the harshest and most remote locations on earth.

Crusoe?s cloud of course has to compete with (and in many cases exceed) the price/performance curves of cloud incumbents like AWS, Azure and Google in processing AI workloads. And the way it does so is by building data centers literally on top of oil flares (and other wasted energy sources) that otherwise comprise multiple percentage points of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. In other words ? methane that previously just got lit on fire is now powering your favorite AI startup?s training workloads!

We cover what it actually takes to build and operate a public cloud, the latest Nvidia networking and server innovations and what they mean for GPU data centers, and how to set up a company to pursue something ?hard? like this across the team, operations and capital raising fronts. Tune in!

Links:

Crusoe Energy and Crusoe CloudFollow Crusoe and Chase on Twitter

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Quartr

Every now and then, we come across super interesting and under-the-radar (at least to us!) public markets folks like NZS Capital who make us think differently about the art of investing. TDM is another one of those groups ? founded 18 years ago in Australia, they?ve compounded a single, private pool of capital at 26% per annum over nearly two decades. That?s Warren & Charlie territory!

TDM recently published a memo comparing the current ?post ZIRP bubble? market with what happened in the years following both the dot-com crash and the GFC in 2008. As always, past performance isn?t necessarily predictive of the future, but what happened back then surprised us and might surprise you too. More importantly, it gave us the perfect excuse to sit down with TDM cofounder Tom Cowan and share the conversation with you all. Tune in and learn alongside us!

Links:

TDM?s 2023 Market MemoThe current BVP Cloud IndexFollow TDM on Twitter or LinkedIn

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How do you build defensible business value in an era when, as AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli said on our last ACQ2 episode, the ?cost of intelligence is going to zero?? Longtime friend of the show Jake Saper and his partners at Emergence Capital have been refining their thesis for this brave new world of Generative AI in B2B, and we sit down with him to discuss. We cover topics including:

When do exactly correct answers matter, and when do they not?When are human-in-the-loop systems necessary?When do startups have an advantage vs. incumbents, and vice-versa?Where can companies capture value on a durable basis?When do you need proprietary data in order to be defensible?

Whether you?re building or investing in existing businesses from the ?pre-AI? era or brand new startups that are native to GPT, this episode has plenty of takeaways you should consider. Tune in!

Links:

Jake?s recent blog post on Generative AI and B2BFollow Jake on Twitter

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Since joining AngelList as CEO in 2019, Avlok Kohli has presided over perhaps the most unexpected and astounding transformation in the venture ecosystem: taking AngelList from an SPV provider to a company that is quickly becoming the software platform for the entire industry.

Today, AngelList provides investors and founders with the infrastructure they need to launch and scale a startup or fund, and supports over $15B of assets (including David?s own Kindergarten Ventures!). We sit down with Avlok to discuss how it all happened (and happened so fast), and - also unexpectedly and astoundingly - how generative AI is about to transform their entire business and the venture ecosystem again. Tune in!

Links:

Visit AngelList to get startedFollow Avlok on Twitter

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David Hsu has one of the most interesting founders journeys in tech today. After growing up in Silicon Valley, he left to study both philosophy and computer science at Oxford in the UK, then returned immediately afterward to found an internal enterprise tools company. Fast forward to today, and Retool is a multi-billion dollar valuation juggernaut that ? almost uniquely for this era ? operates at roughly cashflow breakeven while still growing rapidly. On this episode David shares his thoughts on finding product-market fit through sales, the dangers of product-led growth, how to get $1-5 million in ARR with just 5-10 people on the team. Tune in!

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Quartr

Links:

Retool!Follow David H. on Twitter

Ben and David joined Sam and Shaan of "My First Million" to talk about scaling to a large podcast, the company they would like to own, the CEO's you don't want to compete against, and the 100+ year history of Nintendo. 

If you liked this and want more of Sam and Shawn, subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here.

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Links:

* Hampton

* Wait But Why

* Marques Brownlee

* Nintendo

* NVIDIA

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Show Notes:

(01:45) - Intro to Acquired

(10:00) - How to scale to a big podcast

(14:05) - How big do you have to be to be at the top of the business category?

(23:55) - What commonalities are there between weird companies?

(27:40) - How to tell a real from a fake contrarian

(34:45) - Nintendo

(37:45) - Which company would you most want to own?

(40:45) - Who would you least want to compete against?

(52:30) - Business ideas

(56:40) - Will you ever sell Acquired?

(58:20) - Best ways to make money as a podcast

On our AWS episode, we talked briefly about the next chapter of cloud: data warehouses. But what makes them so powerful? Why do enterprises rely on them? And how will cloud customers collaborate on data stored in multiple clouds?

We sit down with Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, the co-founder and CEO of Samooha, a new company backed by Altimeter and Snowflake Ventures to tackle the problem of secure data sharing and collaboration in the cloud. Kamakshi has an impressive background to speak to this problem, having been a part of AdMob (sold to Google), and the founder/CEO of Drawbridge, which sold to LinkedIn. She then went on to work in Microsoft's Office of the CTO, where she obviously had a lot of experience understanding the needs of cloud customers.

If you want a better understanding of how enterprises use the cloud, multi-cloud architecture, and how security and privacy works with customer data at scale, this episode is for you!

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Quartr

Links:

Kamakshi on TwitterSamooha Samooha Product Demo Video

Statsig CEO and former Facebook VP Vijaye Raji joins us to discuss democratizing the tools of big tech. Before starting Statsig, Vijaye spent 10 years at Facebook where he led the development of their mobile ad product (yes ? THAT mobile ad product that?s the core of FB today).

We talk all about about Facebook?s early days in mobile, and the internal building and shipping process that let them continuously experiment and roll out features out to billions of users, which Statsig is now bringing to engineering and product teams everywhere. This episode is a must-listen for product builders at all stages!

Listen in any podcast player.

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Links:

 Statsig?s generous free feature flags offeringStatsig experimentation community on Slack, LinkedIn and Twitter

We sit down with Altimeter Capital?s head of Capital Formation Meghan Reynolds (who previously was TPG?s global co-head of Capital Formation for 10 years) to talk about everything that goes into the LP - GP relationship at venture funds. We cover how (and why) to think strategically about Capital Formation, why it should be about so much more the just investor relations/fundraising, and also why and how it?s going to change dramatically over the next decade. This was a GREAT conversation, and very relevant for GPs, LPs, and also company founders and employees heading into 2023 and post zero-interest-rate capital markets.

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Quartr

Links:

Follow Meghan on Twitter!

 Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.  

The Acquired community's own Austin Federa joins us for a 101 primer on how to self-custody your crypto assets, and why it?s the only truly safe way to hold them. Given all the current turmoil (and fraud) in crypto-land, we were thinking ?how could we do something to help the Acquired community right now?, and Austin gave us the perfect idea. In addition to running the #digital-assets channel on the Acquired Slack, Austin is the head of communications at the Solana Foundation and has plenty of hard-won experience through previous crypto cycles and implosions. This episode covers both the nuts and bolts of a ?how-to? guide, as well as a more philosophical discussion of self-custody across asset classes, and the practicalities and convenience tradeoffs involved.

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Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.  

We had the rare opportunity to interview Jay Hoag, cofounder of the first tech crossover investing firm, TCV, at TCV?s Engage Summit in Half Moon Bay earlier this fall. Jay and Rick Kimball started TCV back in 1995 and have been part of the private-to-public journeys of storied companies like Netflix (which Jay shares some great war stories about on this episode), Spotify, Zillow, Expedia, Facebook, Airbnb, Peloton and many others. Jay and TCV were kind enough to let us release the conversation as an Acquired LP episode, and we?re excited to share it with all of you. We cover the firm?s history, how companies should calibrate the magnitude of their future-looking product investments (a topic we didn?t realize would end up being so timely) and perhaps most importantly, pivotal moments where now seemingly unstoppable companies almost died amidst big macroeconomic changes. We hope you enjoy!

Links:

The Acquired Merch StoreThe Acquired Slack

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Quartr

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with Brian O?Malley of Forerunner Ventures to talk about where in the cycle we are right now for consumer investing. We touch on the macro environment (obviously!), but also how to navigate between and around the current generation of platform incumbents, and where the next breakthrough consumer technology companies might come from. And in true Acquired Playbook fashion we talk about the benefits of focusing on niches ? and how on the internet they can expand ever bigger than you might initially imagine!

Links:

Acquired Qualcomm Live Show at Breakpoint 2022!The 2022 Acquired Survey!The Acquired Merch StoreThe Acquired Slack

Sponsors:

Quartr

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

The CEO of Mutiny, Jaleh Rezaei, joins us to talk about the playbook to profitably grow a B2B company ? something particularly useful for founders in 2022! Jaleh was Gusto?s first head of marketing (and before that worked at VMware and Sequoia), and has since gone on to build Mutiny, which helps B2B companies dynamically optimize their websites for conversion and has raised over $70m from Sequoia, Insight, Tiger and other great investors.

Sponsors:

Quartr

Links:

Acquired Qualcomm Live Show at Breakpoint 2022!Follow Jaleh on TwitterThe 2022 Acquired Survey!The Acquired Merch StoreThe Acquired Slack

Kindergarten Ventures LP (and fellow podcast host over at Unlimited Partners) Thomas McGannon interviews David about Kindergarten?s investment thesis for their recent large investment in Vanta. Along the way they discuss KV?s overall strategy, how it fits into Acquired, and why it?s ?accidentally? become the best answer David has ever had to ?why should a great founder take my capital??

Links:

The 2022 Acquired SurveyVanta!Kindergarten Ventures on AngelList

Sponsors:

Quartr

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with Kettle cofounder ? and David?s Kindergarten Ventures partner ? Nat Manning to discuss the fascinating world of reinsurance, risk and climate. We couldn?t think of a better and more appropriate conversation to have on the LP Show, and this was an absolute blast. Tune in and enjoy!

Links:

KettleKindergarten Ventures on AngelList

Sponsors:

Quartr

 

 Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

 We sit down with long (long!) time-acquired community member Austin Federa to discuss the current state of crypto and Web3. By day Austin is the head of marketing & communications at the Solana Foundation, where he was one of the earliest employees. But many of you also know Austin from his "night job" as the founder and lead of the #digital-assets channel in the Acquired Slack, where he does an incredible job curating some of the best and most accessible digital asset discussion on the internet. No matter whether you're already deep in Web3, curious but sitting on the sidelines, or a diehard crypto skeptic, this episode is well worth listening to and learning from.

 

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Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

What does a $200 million+ acquisition look like up close? How much time, focus, and communication happens between the first conversation and closing the deal? And when do the CEOs of each company just need to use the "red phone" and have a direct conversation without the 86(!) lawyers in the room? 

We sit down with ProfitWell founder and CEO Patrick Campbell to answer it all, centering on ProfitWell's recent acquisition by Paddle. And incredibly, Patrick built and scaled the SaaS company without taking a single dollar of investment! If you're running a company that may one day need to navigate an acquisition (or just curious), tune in! 

Links: 

-  Our Previous Episode with Patrick, a Masterclass on Pricing - The Documentary: "We Sign Tomorrow?"

Sponsors:

Quartr

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

David is the first guest on a new podcast, Unlimited Partners! This is a wide-ranging interview where upon listening, even Ben learned some new things about David :)

Unlimited Partners is hosted by long-time friend of the Acquired community, Thomas McGannon. UP is his journey to learn - what makes great partnerships? They explore stories of people working together throughout business building, investing, community and family.

While much of this is brought to you through Thomas? work as a limited partner investor, their hope is that this podcast project finds a way to share themes and lessons for anyone looking to learn from the best partnership has to offer.

Follow the Unlimited Partners Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unlimited-partners/id1625166477 

Sponsors:

Quartr

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with TrovaTrip co-founders Nick Poggi and Lauren Schneider to talk about travel for the creator economy. This one is very close to home since Ben is on their board!

TrovaTrip is a marketplace that enables creators to easily plan trips to places around the world with their audiences. It's a whole new way for people to travel, with other like-minded people who share the same passions and communities. We talk with them about growing from a bootstrapped business to over 10,000 travelers booked, growing a travel business during the pandemic, and dive deep on the power of choosing a business model with favorable cashflow dynamics. Tune in!

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Quartr

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We dropped by Vanta's all-hands in SF a few weeks ago for Christina to interview us for a change! We decided to turn the mics on and record it as an ACQ2 episode.

We discussed lessons learned from building Acquired, the shape of the show's growth trajectory, how we think about the business, and dive into our own origin story.

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We sit down with Composer CEO Benjamin Rollert to talk about bringing serious financial firepower to the people, wallstreetbets-style. Composer opens up to anyone the same level (or better) of tools that top quantitative hedge funds hire armies of PhDs and computer scientists to build internally. We have a blast discussing how he came at this space as a total outsider, and why Gamestop may prove to be the "iPhone moment" for Composer and all high-powered consumer financial tools. And oh yeah, he also worked with Packy and Composer was the first Not Boring portfolio company. :) Tune in! 

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Quartr

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with Bain Capital Ventures' newest fintech Partner Christina Melas-Kyriazi to talk about everything happening right now in fintech, and the experience of helping build Affirm and the BNPL space from crazy idea to massive consumer finance category. Anyone interested in the history and future of fintech will love this one. Tune in! 

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Quartr

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

In late 2021, Ben and David were guests on Ted Seides' podcast, "Capital Allocators". The episode kicked off Ted's "Venture is Eating the Investment World" mini-series. From Ted:

David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert are venture capitalists and hosts of the Acquired podcast. Acquired is one of my favorite shows. In it, David and Ben tell stories of great companies in technology with thorough research and a fun, engaging style.

Our conversation kicks off the mini-series with their respective backgrounds in venture, the creation of Acquired, and their research process for show. We then dive into the origins of the cottage venture capital industry, inflection point after the tech bubble, rise of an abundance of capital, firms investing across stages, the competitive response of others, the mass introduction of angel investors, businesses staying private for longer, and the potential for crypto to change the game once more.

You can see more about the show here: https://capitalallocators.com/podcast/acquiring-an-industry/

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Quartr

 

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Get a cup of coffee. We sit down with the voice of one of our favorite Twitter accounts, 10-K Diver, to talk about his journey building one of the most widely followed (and respected!) fintwit accounts out there. We had a blast and ? of course ? learned a ton from one of the greats!!

You can get this episode in your favorite podcast player here!

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Back by popular ?Acquired demand? (plus we really wanted to have this conversation for our own edification!!), friends of the pod NZS Capital return to talk about what?s going with the current market gyrations, and for a much-needed refresher on how to invest when ? surprise ? knowing the future is still an impossible task. As always we left this conversation with renewed appreciation for the NZS approach and the utility of their resiliency + optionality mental model. This is not one to miss! 

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It has been dubbed "one of the best venture investments of all time" by Packy McCormick, generating over a 4000X return in 3-and-a-half years. Today, we are talking with Chris McCann and Edith Yeung, the earliest investors in Solana, and partners at Race Capital. They also unbelievably were the earliest investors in FTX and started Race Capital in the midst of crypto winter!

On this episode, we talk with Edith and Chris about the stories behind both of those investments and their views on what's next in crypto from their vantage point in the center of the ecosystem.

Links:

- The Generalist's FTX piece with Race Capital's Public Investment Memo

-  Picture: Chris and Edith with Jihan Wu, Founder of Bitmain

-  Picture: Edith with Anatoly (Solana founder) and Min Kim (ICON co-founder)

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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. 

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Originally broadcast live on New Years Eve: we raise a glass (of coffee haha) and recap 2021 with our besties Mario Gabriele from the Generalist and Packy McCormick from Not Boring. Thank you for making 2021 an incredible year for all of us at ACQ, NB + TG, and may 2022 be filled with great things and grand adventures for us all!

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Last month, Ben sat down with Wesley Chan at Web Summit for a quick, 18-minute interview. The conversation was supposed to be about global investing in 2021 as an early-stage VC, but the conversation turned mostly into the origin story of Wesley's (unbelievably good) seed investment in Canva.

Wesley's firm Felicis Ventures invested pre-revenue, leading the seed round, and Canva is valued at $40 billion today. Wesley dives into the details (and why he invested in the first place!) in this interview.

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Today we're excited to have a longtime friend of the Acquired family on ACQ2, Rob Meyerson. Rob was the President of Blue Origin for 15 years, and today is an investor and advisor to space industry startups. Ben recorded this interview live at the fantastic aerospace industry conference, ASCEND, where Rob is the Executive Producer. In this interview, we cover:

How Blue Origin started, and what it was like in the early days (spoiler: they weren't yet building rockets!)Rob?s experience working directly for Jeff BezosWhat?s changed about SpaceX since May of 2020, when we did our Acquired episode on the companyRob?s theses about what sectors of commercial space are poised for growth in the next few years

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Ben and David go on "This Week in Startups" with Jason Calacanis for a holiday special! 

Discussion includes:

- Talking TWIST and All-In this year with everything from politics to weight loss to private jets

- Acquired's year and some of Ben and David's biggest insights from episodes

- VC, valuations, and crypto investing mechanics

- Use cases for crypto, and trying to get Jason (a skeptic) excited

- Carveouts: our favorite books, podcasts, and TV shows from this year

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We are very excited to bring you a special ACQ2 interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Aside from Joe's well-known work as a Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy-award-winning actor in films like 500 Days of Summer, Inception, and Looper, Joe is also the founder of  HITRECORD, a startup which brings creative collaborators together across film, music, books, and more.

Ben sat down with Joe to discuss:

The creator economy?s focus on the finished product vs. the creative process, and how he thinks about this at HITRECORDThe state of the film and TV industry today, amidst the shift to streaming platforms and tech companies as primary distribution channelsWhat it has been like on set playing Travis Kalanick in Showtime?s upcoming ?Super Pumped?

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Thanks to our good friends at Fika Ventures for setting this conversation up!

The title says it all. This feels weird to release by Acquired standards -- an hour of audio with zero research! -- but we wanted to check in with y'all and say hi from parental leave.

Topics covered:

- Update on Dad Life

- Ben's new MacBook Pro

- Discussion of Acquired's approach to doing video / YouTube

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Quartr

We sit down with Adam Jackson, the cofounder and CEO of Freelance Labs, which builds the incredible Web3 project Braintrust. (Disclosure David is an investor via Kindergarten Ventures.) We talk all about what a marketplace looks like in Web3, and why it's a completely different animal than traditional Web2 marketplaces like Uber, eBay, DoorDash, etc. Prior to starting Braintrust, Adam was the CEO of Doctor on Demand, so has literally lived both sides of the table. Tune in for a FASCINATING discussion of everything that crypto/tokenization enables, and why it's such an exciting shift that unlocks massive, $000B+ opportunities like Braintrust.

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We sit down with Roneil Rumberg, the co-founder and CEO of Audius ? the decentralized music platform which currently is likely the widest-adopted Web3 project in existence with over 6m active users. This conversation was AWESOME and covers everything from Silicon Valley history, to how the music industry works, to the technical aspects and challenges of building a Web3 project today. Huge thank you to Roneil for joining us, and we're looking forward to hearing more from Audius on Acquired in the years to come!

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Earlier this week David went on Levels' podcast, A Whole New Level, hosted by Acquired "Super LP" and Levels' head of growth, Ben Grynol. We had such a blast that we wanted to share here with the community as well! Full show notes from Levels below:

When most companies start, they are single-threaded companies. More specifically, companies start with one product or revenue stream and evolve. Amazon is a great example of a company that has built an ecosystem. The company started as an e-commerce site for selling books, and now has a number of inter-related businesses that make up the entire Amazon ecosystem.

Netflix is an example of a company that started as a single-threaded company ? (a platform for viewing video content) ? and has, for the most part, remained that way since its inception.

As we build Levels, we often think about the way that our company will evolve ? will it be an ecosystem for health, or will we remain focused on monitoring glucose? In this episode, David Rosenthal, (VC and Host of Acquired Podcast), dives deep into what it takes to build an ecosystem around a company.

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Confused about everything going on with The Fed, inflation and how it affects tech and startup valuations? Or why it seems like every Jerome Powell comment brings out an army of finance's equivalent of fortune tellers and tarot card readers? So were we, so we called up the best person we know to explain everything -- Matt McBrady. Matt may be the only person who's been an academic economist, worked at the US Treasury, run a massive hedge fund AND helped start and sit on the board of two very successful startups, aQuantive and Axon/TASER. Tune in for a crash course in everything you need to know!

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Links

J.P.'s Never Gonna Give you UpFollow Matt on LinkedIn to see his posts or connect with him for consulting, board opportunities, etcFor more on Matt?s academic work, check out his UVA faculty webpage

We sit down with Initialized Capital's Kim-Mai Cutler to talk about her opposite journey from us at Acquired, going from journalist to VC. We riff on how the landscape has evolved from Kim-Mai's parents' "Hewlett Packard generation" in the Valley through the TechCrunch era that se was a big part of, to today and how the nature of reporting, investing and influence -- the intersection of the two -- has changed.

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How on earth do you professionally manage a crypto investment firm? That was the question we wanted to find out, so we dialed up one of the best in the business: Multicoin Capital co-founder and managing partner Kyle Samani. Appropriately fresh on the heels of our Solana special episode (Multicoin was one of Solana's earliest investors), we dive into how in a few short years Kyle, Tushar and the team have built one of the largest and most well-known dedicated crypto funds on the market. We cover Multicoin's three crypto "mega-theses", how they've structured the firm across both a venture and hedge fund, and the dynamics of managing capital and running a firm in the new and fast-moving world of crypto investing.

Sponsors:

Quartr

Links:

Multicoin's crypto mega-theses: https://multicoin.capital/thesis/The Block: https://www.theblockcrypto.comKyle on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KyleSamani

Ben interviewed Initialized Capital founder and friend of the show, Garry Tan at Collision Conf last month. Garry is of course also a YouTuber, Clubhouse'r, and master of content creation. The good people at Collision Conf gave us the thumbs up to share this interview on the value of owning your own media stream with all of you.

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We're joined by Oliver Sharp of Highspot, Seattle's most recent unicorn company (at least at the time of recording!), to talk about how and why to architect everything a software company does around its customers ? what today is often called "customer-led growth" ? but really represents a company building philosophy that runs much deeper. Oliver has serious software cred: he first joined Microsoft in 1984, and then later became part of Bill Gates' famous "TA" staff after Microsoft acquired his first startup. The conversation was *fantastic* and we owe a huge thank you to Oliver for sharing his decades of learning by doing with us. Make sure you don't miss this one!

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We got *awesome* feedback on the recent special episode we did with Levels founder Josh Clemente -- so we asked Josh if he'd join for a follow-up Q+A session on our next LP Call, and he graciously agreed! 

The conversation was so good we decided to release the audio recording in the ACQ2 feed. 

Thanks again to Josh and the Levels crew, and we hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did live!

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When the internet?s top China tech analyst Lillian Li posted a great Twitter take (linked below) on our Meituan episode, we knew we had to try to get her on ACQ2 to tell us all more. What?s really going on with these platforms on the ground in China, what is the government?s role in all this, and why is Meituan?s outlook ?rosy, but maybe not quite as rosy as we painted on the episode?? Thanks to the magic of the internet, a few Twitter DMs later and voila ? not only do we have this awesome episode with her, but a new friend and collaborator on hopefully much more Western-China tech crossover content to come!

Sponsors:

Quartr

Links:

Lillian?s Chinese Characteristics substack: https://lillianli.substack.comLillian?s original Twitter thread after the Meituan episode: https://twitter.com/lillianmli/status/1370327344704016384?s=21Our original Meituan episode: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/meituan

The very cool (and also very hot! You can read about their recent funding rounds from Benchmark and Altimeter) fintech startup Modern Treasury recently asked if they could interview us for their internal "Coffee Break" series of fireside chats. We agreed, on one condition... that we also get to interview them! The result was a match made in Acquired Interview Heaven.  

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Links:

Modern Treasury: https://www.moderntreasury.com MT's Journal: https://www.moderntreasury.com/journal 

Emergence Capital's Jake Saper returns to the LP Show to talk 2021 "state-of-SaaS" and Emergence's Deep Collaboration thesis. We cover how Figma changed the game for embedded collaboration within work tools, and why this theme represents a deep vein that Emergence is investing behind with companies like Ironclad and Jake's latest investment in Maze. Plus we cover the impact of the Zoom investment (undeniably one of the greatest venture investments of all time) on Emergence as a firm, and why investing in your partnership through coaching, peer groups and simply prioritizing dedicated time together is just as important after big successes as before. 

Sponsors:

Quartr

Peer group resources Jake recommends for entrepreneurs:

 Enrich Pace 10X CEO Leaders in Tech