Acquired Episode 39: Whole Foods Market

Ben and David are once again live on the scene, this time
covering the biggest disruption in grocery since… well, sliced
bread: Amazon’s $13.7B purchase of Whole Foods Market. We place
this deal in context by diving deep into the long, intertwining
history of grocery, tech and Amazon, from the infamous dotcom
flameout Webvan (domain name now owned by Amazon) to its much
more successful progeny Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon in 2012)
to current Silicon Valley unicorn Instacart (founded by former
Amazon logistics engineer Apoorva Mehta). One thing is clear: for
Amazon and Jeff Bezos, realizing the longterm vision of the
Everything Store truly means building the everything store.


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Topics covered include:


The  origins of Whole Foods Market as “Saferway” in the
late 70’s Austin, TX hippie scene, founded by CEO John Mackey
(“the Steve Jobs of grocery stores”) and his then-girlfriend
Renee Lawson Hardy

Whole Foods’ expansion through acquisition throughout the
80’s and 90’s

The company’s recent struggles with competition, leading to
sales declines and  attracting activist shareholder interest
from Jana Partners 

 Amazon’s acquisition of the company on June 16, 2017
for $13.7 billion, a 27 percent premium to the stock's previous
day closing price

In depth history and analysis of the four keys to
understanding this deal: Webvan, Kiva Systems, AmazonFresh and
 Instacart



Followups:


 Walmart/Jet buys Bonobos for $310M



The Carve Out:


Ben: Mark Zuckerberg’s 2005 CS50 guest lecture

David: Exponent on Podcasting and Centralization