David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…Because if the patient is dead, they’re dead. Well, it’s sort of like, I think what we're coming to here and we have been for the whole episode is like exactly what you said, Brian. Like they were drowning and they grabbed a life vest and that kept them from drowning. On the other hand, it didn’t get them to shore. They didn’t catch a boat. They grabbed like a piece of driftwood. I think I’m ready to put forth a grade. I think I give the acquisition a C for AOL shareholders because of that. Like yeah, you did keep the business alive You preserved shareholder value relative to the alternative. But relative to what our two best acquisitions of all time on this show that we’ve rated thus far, NeXT and Instagram, like those are businesses that, to use Bob Pittman’s drug pusher-like analogy, accelerated their company, their acquirers at internet speed. Like there was no acceleration happening here. There was just buoyancy. I’m going to do F because if there has never been an F on this show, you're never going to get a better chance. No one is going to begrudge you giving this the F.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.