Sometimes we build.

Sometimes we buy.

There are pros and cons to both. But with the news of RingCentral acquiring Hopin’s event assets, I wanted to dive deeper into competitor acquisitions.

Here are the stories behind four companies that acquired their direct competitors.

1. DiscoverOrg acquired ZoomInfo

There used to be two big players in the Sales Intelligence space: DiscoverOrg and ZoomInfo.

The simplest way to describe their dynamic:

• DiscoverOrg: High quality contact & company data, lower quantity

• ZoomInfo: High quantity of contact & company data, lower quality

I was working at DiscoverOrg at this time—it seemed like every deal was competitive against ZoomInfo. And we knew the same was true on the ZoomInfo side, as well.

Then in February of 2019, it was announced that DiscoverOrg had acquired ZoomInfo. It was wild—we had spent years at each other’s throats and now we had to work together??

It took tons of work, but we figured out a way to move forward. Six months after the acquisition, a combined platform was released so that customers could get high-quality and quantity data.

And funny enough, after an extensive market research project, it was determined that ZoomInfo had the more recognizable brand name. So even though DiscoverOrg acquired ZoomInfo, the ZoomInfo name won out and is what the company still goes by today.

2. Meta acquired Instagram and WhatsApp

In the early 2010s, Instagram was one of the first popular mobile social media apps. It reached 1 million users in only 2.5 months, making it the fastest app to reach that milestone (until ChatGPT’s release).

At the time, Facebook was looking to expand its reach to mobile devices. So in 2012, they acquired Instagram for $1B. Today, Instagram is estimated to be valued at $33B.

And we’re not even done yet. Two years later, WhatsApp was becoming more prominent in developing markets.

Facebook had established itself as the dominant social media platform in the developed market, and they saw WhatsApp as an opportunity to help them fill in their gaps.

So in 2014, they acquired WhatsApp for $19B. Today, it’s valued at $90B+.

Not too shabby, Zuck.

3. Adobe acquired Aldus

Aldus Corporation essentially created the desktop publishing category in 1985 with their product, PageMaker. Adobe followed suit with their own product, Illustrator, in 1987.

Both products competed heavily against each other. But Adobe made the smarter decision in investing more heavily into research and development.

This allowed them to release new products more quickly than Aldus.

Offering more products put Adobe in a better financial position than Aldus, despite actually having less market share in the desktop publishing space.

Finally in 1994, Adobe acquired Aldus for $446M—cementing themselves as the dominant player in the market.

4. Standard Oil acquired tons of small oil companies

What can be said about John D. Rockefeller that hasn’t been said already?

Unethical, ruthless, yet endlessly interesting.

His business was Standard Oil. At one point, they controlled 90% of the United States’ oil industry. A major strategy in getting there was acquiring competing oil companies.

In the late 1800s, Tidewater Oil was the only major oil refiner that was not part of Standard Oil.

Rockefeller tried to buy them, but they refused to sell.

So Rockefeller flexed his share in the railroad industry to prevent Tidewater from shipping its oil.

Essentially, he told the railroads that they couldn’t transport Tidewater unless they gave Standard Oil a rebate on their shipments. The railroads agreed, and it effectively shut down Tidewater Oil's business.

Tidewater was forced to sell to Standard Oil in 1884.

This is just one example of what led to Standard Oil having a monopoly over the oil industry.

Snippets

• ☁️ | Salesforce launched Starter to compete with SMB-segment rivals like Zoho and HubSpot.

• 📚 | Barnes & Noble’s strategy against Amazon includes catering to communities, improving the browsing experience, and acting indie—and it’s working.

• 🏆 | tona, a new competitive monitoring tool, won 2nd place on Product Hunt last week.

• 📱 | Move over Threads, now TikTok has a Twitter-esque feature too.

• 🦚 | Peacock gained a measly 2M subscribers in Q2. Only one third of Netflix’s growth.

• ✋ | A couple friends of mine, Stefanos and Dejan, put together a free Notion template to help sales teams overcome competitive objections. Check it out here.

Example

New Podcast: Lesson From Building a GTM Operating System

Derek Osgood is the Founder & CEO of Ignition, a collaborative hub to plan, execute, and measure go-to-market launches. He worked as a Product Marketer across multiple industries, such as gaming, banking, and SaaS, and now he's building the platform he wished he always had. In this interview, we talked about:

• what it was like being a PMM for Playstation

• his journey of going from PMM to founder

• opportunities and challenges of selling to Product Marketers

• Ignition's GTM strategy of niching down

• the ideal PMM tech stack

And lots more!

Healthy Competition Community

Here are the events happening this month exclusively for Healthy Competition Community members:

If you’re interested in joining any of these, we’d love to have you!

Memberships to the Healthy Competition Community are $10/month and come with a free 7-day trial, so you can see if it’s for you first without being charged.

Recommendation

Tamara is an incredible Product Marketer, and just went full-time on her business, PMM Camp. It’s one of my favorite newsletters to read. If you want to get in the head of a strategic Product Marketer, I highly recommend checking it out.

Stay Healthy, my friends.

💚Andy