BROADCASTS.com

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Acquired trains its lens on the \\u201csecond or third best acquisition of all-time\\u201d, Priceline\\u2019s 2005 purchase of Booking.com. Our heroes are joined by friend-of-the-show and former Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO Drew Patterson to help understand how this little-known startup from The Netherlands grew into the largest travel company in the world, with nearly $8B in annual revenue. Was this deal even better than Instagram??? We debate, hotly.\\xa0 \\xa0

Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
Crusoe: https://bit.ly/acquiredcrusoe
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury

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• The biggest startup you\\u2019ve never heard of (in the US), Booking.com, and its parent company Priceline (yes, the William Shatner Priceline)
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• Booking\\u2019s founding in Amsterdam in late 1996: by recent college graduate Geert-Jan Bruinsma
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• Skift.com\\u2019s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel\\xa0\\n
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• The travel industry\'s GDS\'s (\\u201cGlobal Distribution Systems\\u201d) and the development of Sabre\\xa0
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• How Bruinsma raised the initial money for Booking: by emailing anyone he know who had an email address\\xa0
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• OTAs ("Online Travel Agencies\\u201d) and how they operate; the "merchant model" versus the \\u201cagency model"
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• The role of search in online travel\\xa0
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• Bill Gurley on \\xa0Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All\\n
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• Expedia\\u2019s early flirtation with Booking, and decision not to acquire the company
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• Priceline head of M&A Glenn Fogel\\u2019s vision for how powerful the agency model for OTAs could become in Europe
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• Priceline and Glenn\'s 2004 acquisition of Active Hotels in the UK, followed by the 2005 acquisition of Booking for $133M and the combination of the two businesses into Booking.com\\xa0
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• Booking\\u2019s incredible growth in the decade since the acquisition, from less than 20M room-nights to over 500M, and $7.8B in revenue in 2016
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\\xa0 The Carve Out:\\xa0

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• Ben: Scott Forstall talking about the original iPhone at the Computer History Museum\\n
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• David: The Big Sick\\n
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• Drew: Bloomberg\\u2019s Money Stuff by Matt Levine\\n
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