Episode 46: Blue Bottle Coffee

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Ma, Business, Technology, Acquisitions, Startups, Venturecapital, Vc, Investing, Investment

4.7 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2017

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today our heroes cover a deal that might have more impact on life in Silicon Valley than AI, wearables and AR/VR combined… Nestle’s acquisition of Blue Bottle Coffee. Will hipster entrepreneurs and the VCs who love/need them continue to line up around the block for their minimalist coffee experience of choice, now that it’s owned by the Nesquik Bunny? Is this the beginning of Blue Bottle pod machines filling the empty counter space left by Juicero’s demise in VC offices throughout South Park? We investigate.

Sponsors:

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
WorkOS: https://acquired.fm/unplugged
- Playing Cards: https://bit.ly/workOSshop (Code: ACQDECK)
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 rise of “Third Wave” coffee
Blue Bottle founder James Freeman’s “classical” (music) influences
Venture capital and the coffee business
Achieving liquidity when companies and founders’ don’t want to go public, and don’t want to sell their stakes
Nestle’s position in single-serve coffee market and potential brand impact of Blue Bottle

The Carve Out:

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It can't be turtles all the way down.
0:04.0	There has to be a pool at the bottom.
0:05.6	Oh man, I'm using that as the teaser quote for this episode. Welcome back to episode 46 of Acquired, the podcast about technology acquisitions and
0:29.2	IPOs.
0:30.2	I'm Ben Gilbert.
0:31.8	I'm David Rosenthal.
0:33.4	And we are your hosts.
0:35.0	Today we are covering an acquisition that the tech audience cares a lot about, even though
0:39.4	it's not really a tech company.
0:42.0	Nestle's acquisition of Blue Bottle.
0:45.0	So...
0:47.0	Shock waves have gone through Silicon Valley.
0:50.0	Yes, yes.
0:51.0	There have been lines around the block that are forming their own lines around the block just to hear the news.
0:57.0	So great. Where will the VCs and entrepreneurs congregate now?
1:05.0	Yeah I mean what's the what's the sort of like islandish one?
1:09.0	P. Fills.
1:11.0	Fills.
1:12.0	Yeah.
1:13.0	Fourth wave of coffee.
1:15.0	Fourth wave.
1:16.0	We'll get into it.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.