20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dave Sobota is the Vice President of Corporate Development @ Instacart, the company that delivers your groceries in as little as 1 hour. To date the company has raised over $1.9Bn in funding from some of the very best investors and operators including Mike Moritz @ Sequoia, Jeff Jordan @ a16z, Aaron Levie @ Box, Sam Altman, Garry Tan and more incredible names. As for Dave, prior to Instacart, he was Director of Corporate Development @ Google for over 10 years and before that was with leading law firm, Wilson Sonsini.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Dave made his way from the world of law to Director of Corporate Development at Google to his position at Instacart today?
2.) In 2016, we had 513 BC backed exits, 499 were M&A, so how does Dave assess the M&A landscape today? Why id Dave bullish on the future M&A environment, at least for the next 12 months? Where are his concerns around M&A clustering? How does Dave view the entrance of large scale PE into the tech M&A arena?
3.) From leading Google's M&A practice, what have been Dave's core learnings on whether an entrepreneur should sell their company or remain independent? Paul Graham once said, "startups only talk to corp dev when they are doing really well or really badly". Does Dave agree? What are the reasons a startup would not speak to corp dev? What is the right way for them to communicate this while leaving the door open for future conversations?
4.) How does Dave operationalise the tracking of the startup market and determine what startups he wants to meet? How does Dave like to and think about working with the VC community here? What does that relationship building process look like? In those early meetings, what are the core questions that founders must ask? How much of a role does price play for Dave when considering an acquisition?
5.) How can founders ensure when they sell their company, that it will be properly integrated? What answers from the acquirer suggest it will or will not be? From countless M&A processes, what do the best integrations look like post-acquisition? Where are mistakes often made? Does Dave agree with Paul Graham in stating it is a "gruelling" process?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Dave’s Fave Book: Lonesome Dove
Dave’s Most Recent Acquisition: Tenor
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Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back for another week on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings. It would be great to see on Instagram at H. |
| 0:05.2 | Stebbings, 1996 with 2Bs. Now, for the show today, and as you know, we always interview VCs. But what about the other end of the stack? |
| 0:12.4 | Corporate Development? Well, today, I'm thrilled to, however, has since made the move to Instacart. And so with that, I'm so excited to welcome Dave Sabota, Vice President |
| 0:25.5 | of Corporate Development at Instacart, the company that delivers your groceries in as little |
| 0:29.6 | as one hour. To date, the company's raised over $1.9 billion in funding from some of the very |
| 0:34.5 | best investors and operators in the industry, including the |
| 0:37.7 | likes of Mike Moritz at Sequoia, Jeff Jordan at Andreessen, Aaron Levy at Box, Sam Altman, Gary Tan, |
| 0:43.8 | and more incredible names. As for Dave, prior to Instacart, as we mentioned, he was Director |
| 0:48.2 | of Corporate Development at Google for over 10 years, and before that was with leading law firm |
| 0:52.6 | Wilson Suncini. I'd also have to say a huge |
| 0:54.8 | thank you to Emily Troy at Coinbase for the intro to Dave today. Emily, I so appreciate that and |
| 0:59.1 | many me me to thank you for that. But before we jump into the show's date, I want to spend a minute |
| 1:03.9 | to talk about Brex, the first corporate card for startups. Brex founders Enrique and Pedro built a |
| 1:09.1 | payments business in Brazil, but found themselves |
| 1:11.1 | rejected for a corporate card when they were in Y Combinator. They decided to build Brex, |
| 1:15.6 | with instant online sign-up, no founder liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher |
| 1:20.8 | than standard cards. Pretty incredible, I know, and you can sign up for Brex and get fees |
| 1:24.8 | wavered by entering the code harry during sign up honestly it |
| 1:28.2 | really is such a special service and speaking of brek's an incredible high growth company well a lot of |
| 1:33.1 | what we do on the 20 minute VC is talk to experts pick the brains of founders and investors who tell us |
| 1:37.9 | which trends to watch out for offer tips on fundraising and teach us how to excel at any company stage |
| 1:43.1 | and although there's no playbook |
... |
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