Episode 9: Writely (Google Docs)

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

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

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2016

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ben and David continue the cloud productivity saga with Google Docs. They examine the suite of acquisitions made by Google with a focus on Writely in 2006. They tackle:

The nuts and bolts of the Upstartle (company behind Writely) acquisition, founded by Sam Schillace, Steve Newman and Claudia Carpenter.
SaaS offerings in cloud productivity today.
Was this a good idea for Google?
Google's future bets.
A new section: The Carve Out!

Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta

Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who got the truth? Is it you, is it you, is it you, who got the truth now?
0:17.0	Is it you, is it you, is it you, is it you?
0:19.0	Sit me down, say it straight, another story on the way, who got the truth.
0:26.0	Welcome back to episode 9 of Acquired, the show where we talk about technology acquisitions that actually went well.
0:34.1	I'm Ben Gilbert.
0:35.3	I'm David Rosenthal.
0:36.9	And we are your hosts.
0:38.8	This week we're going to be covering an older acquisition but following a theme from our last episode in
0:45.2	productivity software. We're going to be covering the what became the eventual
0:49.8	suite known as Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Presentations, Google Slides.
0:57.0	I think it started as Presentations.
0:59.0	Yeah, and then it was Presentation Spreadsheets and Docs with it.
1:02.0	The product of many names yes
1:04.1	we'll go through there were a whole ton of companies that actually contributed to this
1:08.8	David will go through the acquisition history and facts but largely focused around
1:12.1	rightly which which eventually became
1:14.1	Google Docs yes a reminder that if you enjoy the show leave us a review on iTunes
1:21.0	we would love any feedback or you can hit us up on iTunes. We would love any feedback. Or you can hit us up on Twitter at
1:24.6	acquired FM. All right listeners our sponsor is one of our favorite companies
1:29.6	Vanta and we have something very new from them to share.
1:33.4	Of course, you know Vanta enables companies to generate more revenue
1:36.7	by getting their compliance certifications.
	...

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