Season 3, Episode 6: Behance (with Scott Belsky)
Acquired
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
4.8 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2018
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben and David are joined by Adobe’s Chief Product Officer, Behance founder, Benchmark partner, author, and product luminary, Scott Belsky, to tell the story of Adobe Systems’ 2012 acquisition of Behance. We dive into the role it played in of one of the greatest (and least well-known) pivots of all time: Adobe’s transition from packaged software to services, which over the past 6 years has generated an astounding $100B+ in market cap and nearly 10x growth in Adobe’s share price!
Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury
Links:
- Scott’s great new book, The Messy Middle, out today!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3 episode 6 of acquired the show about technology acquisitions and |
| 0:16.2 | IPOs. I'm Ben Gilbert. I'm David Rosenthal and we are your hosts. Today we are |
| 0:21.6 | covering Adobe Systems 2012 acquisition of Behants. Since acquiring |
| 0:25.8 | Behants five years ago, Adobe's market cap has five-ex to $130 billion. They've successfully moved all of their creative software from a box software |
| 0:35.4 | model to a subscription service and they have bought several companies to expand both the creative |
| 0:40.8 | business and grow beyond it. |
| 0:42.7 | Now we're super excited that we have with us today, |
| 0:44.4 | Scott Belsky, the founder and CEO of BeHants, |
| 0:47.0 | and Adobe's chief product officer. |
| 0:49.5 | So welcome, Scott. |
| 0:50.8 | Thanks, guys. |
| 0:51.7 | Really appreciate you coming on. No, of course. All right, so |
| 0:54.5 | listeners, Scott is someone who has done many awesome things in the tech world. |
| 0:58.1 | He's currently obviously chief product officer at Adobe, which acquired BHants. |
| 1:01.8 | However, unlike what you might imagine, his path from founding Behants to the acquisition by Adobe was not a straight line, which we will get into, and especially to the position that he's in today. |
| 1:13.2 | In addition to all of the above, he's a prolific angel investor. |
| 1:15.9 | He is co-founded three companies, was a general partner at Benchmark, and is now a venture partner |
| 1:20.4 | at Benchmark, and has written two books, the latest of which was the messy middle which is a very apt title for the journey that we are about to discuss. |
| 1:28.0 | Indeed. |
| 1:30.0 | If you are new to the show you can check out the slack at acquired. |
| 1:35.0 | FM. It's the place where David myself and |
| 1:37.3 | 1600 of our favorite listeners discuss episodes right after we release them, |
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