WhatsApp
Acquired29 Jan 2020

WhatsApp

We kick off Season 6 with a long-awaited Acquired Classic: Facebook’s $22B purchase of WhatsApp in 2014, which still ranks as the largest acquisition of a private VC-backed startup in history. Yet despite that enormous pricetag and all its associated fanfare, as we sit here 5+ years later WhatsApp actually generates LESS revenue than the meager ~$20m it was bringing in at the time of acquisition. Was this this worst acquisition of all-time, or a brilliant strategic chess move by Mark Zuckerberg & co? Tune in as we render Acquired’s judgement!

Note: Unfortunately David’s audio quality in this episode was impacted by a technical glitch which we didn’t discover until after recording. Our editors worked super hard to fix in post-production, but it’s still not totally perfect. We hope you’ll give it a listen regardless, and we’re working on getting a transcript made ASAP, which we’ll post to the website when it’s ready. Thanks for bearing with us,

-Ben & David

Sponsors:


More Acquired!


© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC


Carve Outs:

Sources:

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(217)

The Home Depot

The Home Depot

The Home Depot's founding story is like an Avengers movie… if the Avengers got fired, went broke, and stacked empty paint cans ten feet high to look legitimate. After being unceremoniously fired from ...

14 Sep 3h 35min

Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire

Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire

In 1984, the Walt Disney Company was worth more dead than alive. Disney Animation — the heart of Walt's famous flywheel — had stagnated for years, bleeding away talent while corporate raiders circled,...

10 Aug 4h 32min

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company is the most successful enterprise ever created for monetizing human nostalgia. Today it’s the king of global entertainment, holding the intellectual property rights to the chil...

22 Juni 4h 31min

Vanguard

Vanguard

Vanguard is the most effective vehicle ever created for participating in the fruits of American capitalism. Today it’s the single largest equity owner of the majority of corporations in the S&P 500, o...

18 Maj 3h 48min

Ferrari

Ferrari

Ferrari is the pinnacle of luxury scarcity — across its entire 79-year history, the company has sold just 330,000 cars at an average price today of $500,000. For context, Hermès sells that many Birkin...

13 Apr 3h 59min

Rolex

Rolex

Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital successors… and demand is stronger than ever in history!...

5 Mars 4h 51min

Costco

Costco

Costco is not only Charlie Munger’s favorite company of all time (plus he’s on the board, natch), it’s an absolutely fascinating study in how seemingly opposite characteristics can combine to create i...

4 Mars 2h 53min

Formula 1

Formula 1

Formula 1 is three competitions in one: a 200mph battle of the world's best race car drivers, the world cup of engineering where thousand-person teams spend hundreds of millions designing cars from sc...

2 Mars 4h 18min

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

framgangspodden
badfluence
varvet
rss-jossan-nina
24fragor
rss-borsens-finest
avanzapodden
uppgang-och-fall
svd-tech-brief
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
lastbilspodden
fill-or-kill
tabberaset
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
bathina-en-podcast
rss-dagen-med-di
rikatillsammans-om-privatekonomi-rikedom-i-livet
kapitalet-en-podd-om-ekonomi
rss-veckans-trade
borsmorgon