Episode 27: Special—A Conversation with Microsoft's Head of Strategic Investments Brian Schultz

Topics covered include: 


Brian’s history working across “both sides of the aisle” as
both a startup founder and corporate development leader at a big
company, how perspective from each informs the other, and the
importance of learning “customer empathy” 

How Microsoft approaches M&A from an organizational
perspective, and the importance of fit with the company’s product
roadmap 

How Brian approaches strategic investments at Microsoft, and
the evolution over time of the Microsoft (and large technology
companies as a whole) perspective on investing in other companies

Balancing the tension between partnering and investing, and
what criteria Brian thinks about when evaluating companies 

Microsoft’s investment in Facebook in 2007 (at a
then-crazy-seeming $15B valuation), and more recently Foursquare,
 Mesosphere,  CloudFlare and others

The current state of the tech M&A landscape, and the
emergence of private equity as tech company acquirers 

Potentially changing corporate and foreign tax structures and
how they impact acquirers’ thinking around deals (or not!) 

How Microsoft tracks and evaluates success of acquisitions
over time, and lessons learned from successes and failures 

The increasing number of operating companies (technology and
otherwise) looking to invest in startups, and how that landscape
has evolved over time 



Sponsors:


WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25

Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25


 

Followups: 


 Snap Inc.’s rumored IPO filing — and bonus discussion
of how VC’s and other investors think about “exiting” their
investments in companies that have gone public



Hot Takes: 


Amazon Go!



  The Carve Out: 


Ben: OK Go - The One Moment 

David: UC Berkeley Oral History with Sequoia Capital founder
Don Valentine

Brian: Om Malik’s recent piece in the New Yorker: Silicon
Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum






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