Acquired21 Juni 2017

Acquired Episode 39: Whole Foods Market

Ben and David are once again live on the scene, this time covering the biggest disruption in grocery since… well, sliced bread: Amazon’s $13.7B purchase of Whole Foods Market. We place this deal in context by diving deep into the long, intertwining history of grocery, tech and Amazon, from the infamous dotcom flameout Webvan (domain name now owned by Amazon) to its much more successful progeny Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon in 2012) to current Silicon Valley unicorn Instacart (founded by former Amazon logistics engineer Apoorva Mehta). One thing is clear: for Amazon and Jeff Bezos, realizing the longterm vision of the Everything Store truly means building the everything store.

Sponsors:

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
Join the Slack
Subscribe to ACQ2
Merch Store!

Topics covered include:

The origins of Whole Foods Market as “Saferway” in the late 70’s Austin, TX hippie scene, founded by CEO John Mackey (“the Steve Jobs of grocery stores”) and his then-girlfriend Renee Lawson Hardy
Whole Foods’ expansion through acquisition throughout the 80’s and 90’s
The company’s recent struggles with competition, leading to sales declines and attracting activist shareholder interest from Jana Partners
Amazon’s acquisition of the company on June 16, 2017 for $13.7 billion, a 27 percent premium to the stock's previous day closing price
In depth history and analysis of the four keys to understanding this deal: Webvan, Kiva Systems, AmazonFresh and Instacart

Followups:

Walmart/Jet buys Bonobos for $310M

The Carve Out:

Ben: Mark Zuckerberg’s 2005 CS50 guest lecture
David: Exponent on Podcasting and Centralization

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

Avsnitt(214)

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 des...

29 Jan 20201h 52min

The Lean Startup and the Long-Term Stock Exchange (with Eric Ries)

Season 5, Episode 10: The Lean Startup and the Long-Term Stock Exchange (with Eric Ries) Acquired closes out Season 5 and 2019 with a radical look into both the past and future decades of startup comp...

30 Dec 20191h 25min

Convoy (with CEO Dan Lewis)

Coming to you live from the University of Washington, Ben and David are joined by hundreds of awesome Seattle listeners (and a few non-Seattle listeners!) to cover the meteoric rise of trucking indust...

19 Dec 20191h 41min

TikTok

We take Acquired to the Old Town Road to cover the amazing story behind the biggest global sensation of 2019 — and the highest valued private startup in the world — TikTok. How did a mid-30 year old U...

9 Dec 20191h 42min

Disney, Plus

The Flywheel is strong with this one. We dive deep into the origins of one of the boldest business strategy decisions of our time: Disney CEO Bob Iger’s attempt to buck the Innovator’s Dilemma - and f...

25 Nov 20192h 18min

The WeWork “Acquisition” (with Dan Primack)

It’s an IPO, it’s a bailout, it’s an... acquisition? We’re joined by the one and only Dan Primack from Axios to recount the epic saga of the We Company in all its tragic glory. How did this business s...

25 Okt 20191h 40min

Season 5, Episode 5: Atari (with Nolan Bushnell)

We’re joined by the legendary Nolan Bushnell, founder not only of Atari, but also the only person ever to hire Steve Jobs, the recipient of Sequoia Capital’s first-ever investment, and the creator of ...

15 Okt 20191h 42min

Sequoia Capital (Part 1)

Acquired dives into the history behind storied venture firm Sequoia Capital and its legendary founder, Don Valentine. Part 1 tells Don’s story, starting from humble beginnings born to uneducated paren...

26 Sep 20191h 53min