Season 3, Episode 6: Behance (with Scott Belsky)

Mm-hmm. Welcome to Season 3, Episode 6 of Acquired, the show about technology, acquisitions, and IPOs. I'm Ben Gilbert, and we are your hosts. Today we are covering Adobe Systems 2012 acquisition of Behance. Since acquiring Behance five years ago, Adobe's market cap has 5X. to$130 billion. They've successfully moved all of their creative software from a box software model to a subscription service, and they have bought several companies to expand both their creative business and grow beyond it. Now we're super excited that we have with us today Scott Belski, the founder and CEO of Behance and Adobe's chief product officer. So welcome, Scott.

Thanks, guys. Really appreciate you coming on. No, of course. All right, so listeners, Scott is someone who has done many awesome things in the tech world. He's currently obviously chief product officer at Adobe, which acquired Behants. However, unlike what you might imagine, his path from founding Behance to the acquisition by Adobe uh was not a straight line, which we will get into, and especially to the position that he's in today. In addition to all of the above, he's a prolific angel investor, he has co-founded three companies, was a general partner at Benchmark, and is now a venture partner 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.

Indeed. Mm. If you are new to the show, you can check out the Slack at acquire dot Fm. Uh, it's the place where David, myself, and sixteen hundred of our favorite listeners discuss episodes right after we release them, along with uh hot takes and the biggest tech news of the day and and really just get to know the you, the listener and the community better. All right listeners. Now is a great time to talk about a new partner of ours here on Acquired, Lagora.

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