Season 2, Episode 10: The Rover-DogVacay Merger (with Rover CEO Aaron Easterly)
Acquired
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
4.8 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2018
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Acquired wraps up Season 2 with our first “elusive” private-private merger: Rover.com and its 2017 combination with rival pet care marketplace DogVacay. We’re joined by Rover CEO Aaron Easterly to dive into the full history of how the crazy idea of “Airbnb for dogs” not only became a billion-dollar company, but also brought our heroes together for the first time and led to the founding of Acquired!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | you know and I've experienced dogs seeing stuff that they shouldn't eat dogs jumping over fences you didn't think it would be possible for them to jump over. Welcome to Season 2 episode 9 of Acquired, the podcast about technology acquisitions and IPOs. |
| 0:25.0 | I'm Ben Gilbert. |
| 0:25.9 | I'm David Rosenthal. |
| 0:27.3 | And we are your hosts. |
| 0:28.8 | Today we are talking about a very important company. |
| 0:31.5 | Without this company existing existing there would be no |
| 0:33.3 | acquired and it's likely that David and I never would have met. Today's episode |
| 0:38.0 | is about Rover.com and their merger with DogVacay to consolidate the grand |
| 0:41.9 | rivals of the dog sitting wars. |
| 0:44.0 | And we're super fortunate to have with us today the founder and CEO of Rover.com, |
| 0:49.0 | Aaron Easterly. |
| 0:50.0 | Well, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. |
| 0:52.0 | Yeah, we're super pumped. |
| 0:54.2 | So Aaron, this is the part where we introduced the guest, and I was going to do it from memory, |
| 0:58.7 | but I wanted to make sure that I nailed the details. |
| 1:01.3 | So I tried to find a bio for you online, which is harder than most folks. |
| 1:05.4 | You're not exactly a bio person. |
| 1:07.1 | I spend exactly zero minutes managing my reputation. |
| 1:11.1 | As will become clear throughout the show. |
| 1:15.0 | The one I did manage to find is from Crunchbase and list you as Rober's top dog. |
| 1:19.0 | So, uh, Rover's big on puns and we'll revisit that many times throughout the episode. |
| 1:23.6 | But listeners to give you a sense of Aaron's background, he was an entrepreneur and residence |
... |
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