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All right listeners, to start the show today, we are going to play a little game of two truths and a lie. Today's episode will be covering the Marvel acquisition by Disney and we are going to throw out the two truths and a lie right now and we will tell you which one is a lie at the end of acquisition history and facts. So get ready to predict. Number one, for a brief stretch ending in an internal time-warner investigation, the president of DC Comics acquired a large position in Marvel stock. Number two, famed corporate raider and comic book villain Carl Icon once made a play to gain control of Marvel from bankruptcy. Number three, Marvel owned Flair, the baseball card company and was affected in a huge way by the 1994 major league baseball strike, which is the lie you be the judge. Welcome back to episode 26 of acquired the podcast about technology acquisitions. I'm Ben Gilbert. David Rezenthal and we are your hosts. Today's episode is Disney's 2009 acquisition of Marvel. It really completes the saga for us here at acquired where our first episode was the Disney acquisition of Pixar. Then our sixth episode was Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm and all three of these I believe will have pretty similar tech themes and and David I think will really be able to kind of understand Disney's strategy and what their portfolio looks like these days. Yeah, this is a, I feel like I always say this, but this will be a fun one. Yeah, and kind of a fun one here, here going into the holidays. It's a nice one to tie up the year. Totally. And speaking of Disney's triumvirate of IP acquisitions, I am pretty excited about Rogue One. Yeah, I thought you'd bring that up. So I re-watched the trailer right before we started recording. Awesome. Awesome. I can't wait. No, I mean either. For listeners who if you're wondering, I'm not sure if it actually will sound any different, but this is the first time David and I are recording remotely. David's in California right now in the heart of Silicon Valley. Indeed. Our presenting sponsor for this episode is not a sponsor, but another podcast that we love and want to recommend called the founders podcast. We have seen dozens of tweets that say something like my favorite podcast is acquired and founders. So we knew there's a natural fit. We know the host of founders. Well, David, Senra, hi, David. Hey, Ben. Hey, David. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I like how they group us together. And then they say it's like the best curriculum for founders and executives. And really, as we use your show for research a lot, I listened to your episode of the story of Akio Maria before we did our Sony episodes is incredible primer. You know, he's actually a good example of why people listen to founders until acquired because all of history's greatest entrepreneurs and investors. They had deep historical knowledge about the work that came before them. So like the founder of Sony, who did he influence? Steve Jobs talked about him over and over again if you do the research to him. But I think this is one of the reasons why people love both of our shows and there's such good compliments is on acquired. We focus on company histories. You tell the histories of the individual people. You're the people version of acquired and where the company version of founders listeners. The other fun thing to note is David will hit a topic from a bunch of different angles. So I just listened to an episode on Edwin Land from a biography that David did. David, it was the third fourth time you've done Polaroid. I've read five biographies of Edwin Land and I think I've made eight episodes of them because in my opinion, the greatest such a puner to ever do it, my favorite entrepreneur personally is Steve Jobs. And if you go back and listen to like a 20 year old Steve Jobs, he's talking about Edwin Land's my hero. So the reason I did that is because I want to find out like I have my heroes who were their heroes and the beauty of this is the people may die, but the ideas never do. And so Edwin Land had passed away way before the apex of Apple, but Steve was still able to use those ideas and now he's gone and we can use those ideas. And so I think what requires doing what a founder trying to do as well is find the best ideas in history and push them down the generations. Make sure they're not lost history. I love that. Well listeners, go check out the founders podcast after this episode. You can search for it in any podcast player. Lots of companies that David covers that we have yet to dive into here on acquired. So for more indulgence on companies and founders, go check it out. All right, well, we don't really have too much before the show. Do you want to just dive right in? Yeah, let's jump in. So this I can't remember we've done so many of these episodes now, but this might be the earliest back in time that we're starting our acquisition history and facts. Oh, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think it is. We are going back to 1939 almost what is that almost 80 years ago when a fellow named Martin Goodman founded a company that he called Timely Publications in New York City. Very timely. Goodman was a pulp magazine publisher and he wanted to get on the gravy train of the fast burgeoning comic book industry that was starting to take off. And so he started Timely Publications as part of his publishing empire and the first comic book that Timely published was called Marvel Comics number one. Which came out in October 1939 and it included the human torch and the sub-mariner, which would be Marvel comic book heroes for a long time to come. And yeah, the sub-mariner is a little a little bit more of a deep one. Yeah, that's that's that's guys see what you're doing there. It's it's pretty cool that it's that the very first issue was called Marvel Comics. Yeah, I think that you know through a you know the crazy history that we're about to hear of all sorts of different ownership structures and consolidations and unbundling and rebundling keeps the same name. Yeah, well interesting though they didn't actually change the name of the company to Marvel Comics until 1961 so 22 years later. But the very first comic book that they published was called Marvel Comics and apparently it was a big success. It sold almost a million copies which I think is a lot for a comic book probably especially a lot for a comic book in 1939. But but the company timely would go on to do quite well create you know many of the iconic comic book super heroes and villains that we all know and think of today. Captain America was the first really big one that they created in 1941 which was I guess World War Two was going on at that point in time. But the US either hand entered yet or was just about to enter World War Two. The fantastic four spider man the X-Men Iron Man Thor the whole many many others lots of basically as a I love superheroes but not a I'm not a huge comic book fan of Fishingado so as a like casual comic book fan like everybody I know kind of accept Superman and Batman came from Marvel and who I like Wonder Woman. Yeah, Wonder Woman too. Yeah, that was also DC comics. It's pretty much the whole crew. Yeah, it's like DC had you know the big Superman Batman Wonder Woman and then everything else is Marvel. And so they they go on they create many of these many of these characters and then in 1961 like we said they actually changed the name of the company to Marvel comics. Also in 1961 the editor of Marvel who was a man named Stan Lee who actually started at the company as an office assistant. He was apparently he was apparently Martin Goodman's wife's cousin and started at the company in the early days of an office assistant and became sort of the spiritual head of the direction of of Marvel in the comics. And very briefly actually the the president of the studio right. Yep, yep, like one or two years in there. Yeah, a towering figure in Marvel history. He decides to kind of push the company in a new direction in 1961 and that was to make comics that were aimed at slightly older audiences. So not just young children and that was the first of those was the Fantastic Four which they launched in November 1961. And was the first time that like comic book heroes were sort of you know they'd always been like the Superman sort of like perfect image of you know masculinity often and you know heroism and the Fantastic Four were sort of like they squabble with each other and they were kind of you know anti heroes in a way. Right more human more much more you know even though they had superhuman powers much more human than the Superman of the DC franchise. And that really kind of set the tone and and Marvel became much more really sort of expanded the market for what they were doing and what comic books as a whole as an industry was and that was that was their namesake. And so you know Spider-Man was sort of like the quintessential like teenaged angsty you know teenage angsty superhero. We ever see that in Spider-Man too. Oh man yeah. The Sam Raimi one with Toby McGuire and that was like I should remember that one scene where he's like emo. He's got his hair dyed black and it's like over one eye and he's yeah just just like almost felt like jumping the shark already. Even though I didn't really think it jumped the shark till Spider-Man 3 but yeah totally was ahead of his time. So that's a big success for Marvel and then and then later in the 60s in 1968 the first Marvel acquisition change of control happens when Goodman decides to sell out and he sells the company to the perfect film and chemical corporation which was later renamed cadence industries. And Marvel then became one of their subsidiaries or underneath one of their subsidiaries called the magazine management company. Very very generic. Very generic. Honestly when I was reading through some of this it felt like a laundry list of encouraging generic comment names. Well I guess that's the thing when you you're looking at a company that goes back like almost 80 years. Right. And in a fun twist of foreshadowing in the 1970s when Marvel's owned by cadence they actually strike a licensing deal with Lucasfilm and they published the Star Wars comic books in the 70s and 80s. Wow that's why because to me like we've got a trilogy going on here and and Pixar was actually owned by Lucasfilm in the early days and. Lucasfilm and Marvel had a licensing agreement in the early days it's like it's kind of amazing they all ended up under one roof and had this joint history along the way yeah if only if only Steve jobs were somehow involved. That's what have been our lie that's right that would have been fun so listeners you know that Steve jobs was not involved in Marvel. And so in 1986 Marvel changes hands again and cadence sells the company to new world entertainment media company and then new world undergo some struggles and ends up selling it again shortly later to the billionaire Ronald Pearlman in 1989 for 82 and a half million. And in another fun bit of foreshadowing of what's to come Pearlman gives a quote at the time he says it being Marvel is a quote mini Disney in terms of intellectual property. Disney's got much more highly recognized characters and softer characters whereas our characters are termed action heroes but at Marvel we are now in the business of the creation and marketing of characters. What is that sound familiar sounds super familiar so. Pearlman's pretty ambitious and he shortly thereafter were to actually ends up taking Marvel public and it becomes a public company and then he starts expanding and so he took a public in 1991 and then in 1992. They actually buy the sports trading card company Flair in 1992 and then in 1993 Marvel acquires slightly less than half of a company called Toy Biz which was a toy company that they also at a licensing deal with to create action figures for for all the Marvel superhero. And that comes. It's really interesting they keep like vertically integrating and then unbundling and vertically integrating and then unbundling and it's interesting how like they kind of fluidly move throughout partnerships and ownership of. You know there are core asset being the characters and then moving in at out of publishing and distribution and merchandising and all those different different. Jason or in the case of baseball cards not so adjacent. Yeah I would love to see the perspectives on that on that pickup yeah what the rationale well now is in the middle of the baseball card bubble which we will come back to again in one second but but toy biz also will be important in the future. So they don't buy all of toy biz they just buy a slightly less than than half a share of the company. And so things go along in a couple years later in kind of 95 96 tam time frame things aren't looking so good for Marvel so they've expanded a lot. The core comic book business actually there was a big bubble in comic books in the mid 90s which doing the research for the show I kind of like vaguely remembered. But even more so in 1994 majorly baseball went on strike and this was like a huge thing and people thought this was the death of baseball but it and it wasn't happily for baseball but it was definitely the beginning of the death of the baseball card industry. And absolutely clear. So I remember that was the first year of jaco's field was open and they didn't get a full season in there. Oh wow I didn't realize that man yeah I remember the strike so vivid line wasn't I remember you know and obviously being you know a Seattle podcast that was huge even though I didn't live in Seattle at the time huge kangaroo junior fan. I think I remember he was on pace to like shatter the home run record that year and then the strike was. That's right. And I'm pretty sure you're right because I think I remember that the Indians were really good to and we were in the world series the next year and sort of growing up I was thought like lots weird that like the Indians had this new ballpark in 94. And I think we actually played 95 in the ALCS so the division series when we played the Mariners and Griffey was obviously instrumental in that but I remember thinking like how did we have a new ballpark in 94 but getting the world series in 95 and it didn't really occur to me 12 later you know like later in the 90 like oh duh there was no playoffs in 94. Yeah can you can you imagine like that if that happened with the NFL now like oh yeah there's no super bowl yeah it was it was terrible and like I was such a huge baseball fan growing up and it was it was really a black mark on the on the sport. Yeah so Marvel's not doing so good people are speculating you know the companies in trouble maybe they'll end up filing for bankruptcy. Do you know why there was a comic book bubble like what were the other than the whole like fleer thing what were the externalities creating the struggle for Marvel. I don't know I didn't do enough research on this I wonder if it was related to just the whole you know the baseball card bubble which is probably even bigger of a bubble I mean I was a huge baseball card collector as we're so many of my friends at that point in time and still in my parents' basement and boxes and boxes full of baseball cards that are now worthless. Yeah that the market just got flooded and I wonder if a similar dynamic was playing out in the comic book industry. I can see that. Yeah so there's all this speculation about the future of Marvel and and comic book villain as Ben referred to him in the in the intro Carl Ikin takes notice and he in his firm start buying up some of the debt that that Marvel had with public company even with private companies if you have debt that often trades other people not the people who loaned you the money can then sell the debt to other people and folks like Carl Ikin this was this is a big part of their playbook is they buy debt in companies that they think are troubled and with the hopes that they're hoping that the company ends up filing for bankruptcy and then it's not going to be a big deal. And then in court as debtors they can end up taking control of the company the not so charitable term for this in the industry is loan to own or comic book villain. Yeah or or being a comic book villain. So this on and this all starts playing out in the press and and then at the end of 1986 in December Marvel does end up filing for bankruptcy. And so this all goes to court and in early 1997 the court rules that Carl Ikin can indeed take control of the company and he does so Carl Ikin comic book villain is now head of Marvel. It honestly sounds like a Lex Luthor move it totally does. The only thing that would make this better is if Carl Ikin were also CEO of DC comics. But alas that this is probably a good time to our listeners are are I'm sure they figured out by now Carl Ikin is true the fleer thing is true. The CEO of DC owning a large number of shares in Marvel is false that is false. So Carl Ikin now has control of Marvel but there's just one problem Carl Ikin didn't own all the debt there are actually big Wall Street banks that had also loaned Marvel a lot of money and they still wanted their money back so the court the court case wasn't over and the company still needed to officially reorganize and exit bankruptcy. So this is where toy biz ends up coming back into the picture this this toy action figure company and turns out it was owned by this guy named Isaac Pearlmother who was an Israeli American and he ends up proposing a new plan to the creditors of Marvel that involves toy biz putting up money and paying back the creditors and then taking control of the company away from Carl Ikin. And the creditors and the courts actually decide go along with this plan so control of Marvel gets rested away from from the villain it's like it's like the comic book you know happy ending and the superhero Isaac Pearlmother comes in to save the day and Isaac actually still to this day is CEO of Marvel. Even post acquisition. All right so what happens to toy biz then how does that so toy biz gets folded into Marvel I believe and and becomes part of the combined company. So then at this point Marvel owns the IP to the characters and has a merchandising division to actually sell sell the toys themselves. Yep I believe that's I believe that's right but it's still not like a you know it's not a Disney scale right consumer products division. So in the meantime something even more important for the future of Marvel happens and that's that I believe for a long time they've been making. Different various types of films and movies about the franchises but films based on Marvel franchise is actually start to kind of catch on with the public and become pretty big movies and it actually starts I did not realize this in 1997 that year when men in black comes out men in black apparently was a Marvel franchise I had no idea. Oh no way because I knew there were comic books but I always assumed it was one of those like after the movie comics no it was a Marvel franchise and well and then the get I watch the movie so many times when I was a kid yeah will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones absolutely heroes. So men in black comes out the first men in black comes out 1997 and this was before Marvel Studios right this was more so this was exactly Marvel was licensing their IP to big movie studios you know to Fox to Sony to it's a time Warner. And who were making these movies big budget movies blade 1998 and then the first really big one X man to in the year 2000. Spider-Man in 2002 so again Marvel's not making them these movies themselves but obviously is noticing that you know collectively these movies are making billions of dollars really starting to take off yeah and it was it's interesting to think about like there had been superhero movies for decades right I mean like we had. We had a whole franchise of Batman movies it's not like man movies that's right yeah yeah Chris for if you can forget it's it's not like we were new to this but you know like in the world today of like you know the even 2009 iron man gross $580 million dollars it was in Marvel Studios like with it wasn't that scale yet it wasn't like every single blockbuster at the box office is going to be a superhero film so it's interesting to think about like what what changed that like all of a sudden cause these superhero movies to become more more of a sure thing for the studios to make yeah I don't know and it also kind of coincided well I think the Superman and the Batman movies were always at least I remember kind of growing up thinking about like oh yeah like I remember the Batman movies. Right. I think it was just those two were like the big franchises the DC franchises and DC I believe not always but for certainly through all of these decades was owned by Time Warner and still is so they were part of a big major media company and had the resources to make these you know big budget movies whereas Marvel I don't think ever did until until until this era and so you see these superhero franchises that have been made by the Marvel Studios. So I think the other thing that was happening is this is sort of the dawn and I don't know how much one led to the other sort of the dawn of like the sequelitis in Hollywood and yeah and superhero movies of course franchises lend themselves so well to some of the scenes that are in the movie. I mean as ever since you know 1939 every single one of these these comic book franchises has issue after issue after issue after issue they're cereals. Yep. So it's perfect for you know in a world where Hollywood needs dependable franchises to make sequels you know what better place to look through the comic books. Yep. So in 2005 after you know few of these huge successful movies based on Marvel IP have come out from other studios Marvel actually takes a really ambitious step to start Marvel studios to make movies themselves and so they raise 525 million in in debt in a credit facility from the original Lynch ironically like the right before Merrill Lynch went bankrupt in the in the recession. But they they get a film financing vehicle from from Merrill and create the really the first kind of major independent Hollywood studio since kind of the dream works era. This was a this was a pretty big deal. Yeah and it's interesting to think that you know that this was something they just sort of started and ultimately became like very quickly the largest part of their business. Absolutely yeah so the and also interesting you know they sort of when they announced this this was in 2005 2006 when they were getting this set up. And now it's that the plan was that they were going to release individual films of going to individual franchises Iron Man and the whole which were the first 2 movies that they end up releasing. Creep these franchises and then they were going to tie them all together into a crossover film so which obviously they did. So for sure. Yes exactly but but that was the plan all along and interesting that Disney really you know has been hands off and let them let them operate that plan. Yeah yeah and thinking about so in making this move in starting the studio they'd already licensed out so many of their characters to other studios for to make films and distribute. And so when you think about their really their top tier characters right right so let I'll list the characters that were no longer eligible for marvel to make their own films around spider man. The fantastic for silver surfer Wolverine the rest of the X men yeah Deadpool. Yeah there's others but when you think about like wow okay so all those are off limits and what they've got is sort of like the second tier at the time like we don't think of them now because they're huge you know gigantic blockbuster wins but like Thor Hulk Iron Man. Yeah like that's who they're left to work with and then that's what they create the studio around. Totally and Iron Man was really that was really the best that they had available and that was the first film that they made and it came out in early 2008 and it ended up being. I mean Robert toward a force from Robert Downey Jr. I remember seeing it in theaters such a great movie the original Iron Man. Absolutely and actually the year before I think that was oh nine and in 2008 they had the Hulk which which was about half of what that film grows that was a. They actually both came out in 2008 and they came out like they made them concurrently Iron Man actually came out a couple months before Hulk. I believe at least according to Wikipedia and which is always right and yeah Iron Man made 585 million at the box. Office all the 600 million which is compared to films like the Avengers and while Iron Man 3 and it's frozen and other Disney movies and certainly the force awakens that make a billion or even close to 2 billion. That doesn't sound like a lot but at the time that was a huge amount even though it was only a few years ago. It's the beginning of an era beginning really beginning of the superhero blockbuster era. That's right and it's sort of signals to like any potential buyer of Marvel stock like there's a new way to value this company and it's based on these numbers and does nothing to do with any of the other lines of business they're in. So as you mentioned the Hulk comes out shortly thereafter and isn't the huge success that Iron Man is but it's a pretty successful movie makes just under 300 million and is very successful and kind of proves that audiences are interested in this kind of content and will come out even for non top tier characters if you can make good movies. So the next year in 2009 before I believe there were I believe they were intended to be five films on the slate that that Marvel did with Merrill Lynch but before any of the following once can come out August 31st 2009. Blockbuster deal Bob Eiger and Walt Disney company announced that they're going to acquire Marvel for 4.2 billion dollars which is kind of a lot when you think back to when Pearlman bought Disney granted it was in the late 80s but it was a think of seecorp. No problem about it from in the late 80s from New World entertainment it was less than 100 million so you know here we are sort of 20 years later and we're talking 4.2 billion. Yep yep and it's interesting that like it's there's there was not a single new piece of intellectual property that mattered between those years yeah like all those characters had already been created and it was really all about a new way leverage that same intellectual property that made it what 40 times 40 plus times more valuable over that span of time yeah. Super interesting and it really was it really was the films yeah yeah and to put to place a. I'm to kind of like for listeners out there a 29% premium was what was paid for for Marvel above what it was currently trading at so while there was some scrutiny like oh my god that's a huge you know 4.24 billion that's a huge ridiculous acquisition it's it's not that much more than what the public markets were valid. It's actually is pretty much in line with other public company acquisitions that we've covered on this show and another thing that's important to think about about this deal that I think other folks who've written about it now talked about it kind of least context of a little bit this was in the middle of the recession. And so this was like perfect timing by by Iger and Disney to buy Marvel because people were worried at this point like you know our and we were talking about box office numbers a minute ago they were certainly depressed by the fact that we're in the middle of the recession and like people didn't have nearly as much disposable income as they were used to having earlier in the decade. That's right and for even more perspective it was just over half the price that they paid three years before for Pixar so if you kind of look at this trend they hadn't yet acquired Lucasfilm but let's let's simplify Disney to a. A content and distribution company and they're basically out buying content you know that part part two of their the second big pickup that they made here you know that they signaled that they were going to do this before this was Iger's strategy and it clearly had been working with Pixar. Yeah and I mean the the Pixar famously Bob Iger's first board meeting a CEO which was like his like second day on the job he proposed to the board that he wanted to want to buy Pixar and this was clearly how he kind of set the tone for his his ten years CEO and he's. You know certainly hard to argue with his execution across the three of these companies right right and it's it's if you're Disney and you're looking around and it's you know 2005 like all the valuable content that you don't own that's like some of its in universal and some of its like there's little pieces and pockets elsewhere but the three other big power houses are Lucasfilm Pixar and and Marvel and yeah you know when I went in and over what how many years. 2012 so over six years rolled them up well and you know also you know in keeping with the theme of the show or half of the theme of the show now in in acquisitions you know Iger took over as CEO of Disney right after there had been this. This hostile takeover attempt of Disney that actually calm cast right before Iger became CEO launch the hostile takeover attempt to try and buy Disney and of course later you know five or six years later they would end up acquiring NBC. But this was like I have to imagine that living through that the Disney board and Bob Iger and kind of entering his tenure thinking about seeing consolidation in the media industry coming. And decided very actively deciding to be a consolidate or as opposed to a consolidate and looking around to see what they could buy. Yeah and you look at the what that aggressive strategy help them do I mean who was competing with Disney and in 2005 and who's even close to competing with them now. I think that that that just totally worked yeah and interestingly you know Iger actually said in kind of the press. The press quote at the time of the Marvel deal you said Marvel's brand and it's treasure trove of content will now benefit from our extraordinary reach. We paid a price that reflects the value they've created and the value we can create as one company it's a full price but a fair price and absolutely you know we talked about this in the Pixar episode and especially in the Lucasfilm episode but you know Disney's core competency and what they have. The other media companies don't have is that flywheel that you know that Walt Disney drew you know back in the early days of the company which is the ability to take great IP franchises like Star Wars like Pixar like like Marvel and and pump them through the flywheel and realize much more value out of it than they could on their own. That's right and old school Disney was creating it but new school Disney has has pretty efficiently figured out how to bring in content they don't create into that flywheel to yeah and I think the the fourth piece of this tool that we haven't talked about yet because it wasn't an acquisition is the tremendous growth of the ESPN business inside of Disney and I think the the four of those businesses together really really account for a lot of the. The growth and the dramatic change in share price between them and today yeah and it's interesting to I mean I hadn't thought about ESPN in this context but you bringing it up and in the context of the flywheel I guess actually Disney was an acquisition it was just a long time ago or yes yeah ESPN yeah it was through a pretty complicated history that might be a fun show to do sometime yeah ESPN is a super interesting corporate history. But the core ESPN business I think in a lot of way I mean it was totally the golden egg for many many years for Disney but I think is much more challenged today than it was a few years ago with cord cutting and you know linear television watching being much less of a thing and obviously sports center still popular among many people but I used to watch sports center every day probably multiple times a day and I think it was a lot of the same thing. I haven't watched it in years now even though I still watch clips on snapchat but but you see this this strategy and especially around film with ESPN 2 now with 30 for 30 and some of the investments they're making there. I think about the OJ documentary and how great and ambitious that was. Yeah you're totally getting to my tech themes all right well we'll stop well it's probably a good time you want to move on to acquisition category. Yeah let's do but first just to wrap up quickly on on the aftermath of the acquisition so as we mentioned Pearlmutter remains the CEO of the company the company stays in New York so it's a fully autonomous subsidiary within Disney. And like we said basically they've just continued to execute on the plan that they drew up in 2005 when they launched Marvel Studios. And producing dramatically more like their scale now I mean they had like five or six in the pipeline when they were acquired when I think you look at the pace of new Marvel movies coming out a new Marvel movies plan through the next few years like they're not letting up. Yep and and even you know so there's much more value to be realized from the company in the future but even since the acquisition in 2009. The Marvel movies have generated almost nine billion dollars in revenue and it box office revenue which is crazy now that doesn't necessarily equal certainly doesn't equal profits and profits for movies are harder to get to. Then then pure revenue we can we can get that data. Yeah I think I think Marvel estimated profit margins at least in the first eight films released actually pulled the stat under Disney were about a 23% profit margin. Okay so you know you call roughly sort of two billion ish slightly more than two billion in profit so far from the movies so that's half the purchase price right there and that's just the box office. You know not the not the home video not the merchandising not the theme parks you know all that stuff so totally and I even I grabbed another stat I think this is. Yeah I think this is from yeah fortune article in 2015 one analyst said that by the time it was finished with the Avengers Iron Man 3 and Captain America and Thor Sequel's Disney probably paid for the acquisition of the entire company. So I think it's it's a pretty quick payback period there and I think looking at that that 22% profit margin and you look at the price tag of production now on these films pretty expensive to make these huge blockbusters. Yeah well you need the 200 million 150 million yeah you need well we said we should delay some of this discussion till we till we render our final grade but all right all right let's let's jump into category so as a reminder we pick star which was our very first episode on this show we actually we said it was a business line and then Lucasfilm we said it was a product so what is what is Marvel. So I am going to foreshadow my my tech themes and my conclusion a little bit here but I think it was two things one is a business line they they bought the business line of making the films they were able to scale that. You know we talked about kind of paying back the acquisition and a shortish amount of time you know the studio itself but ultimately they have this asset in perpetuity of the characters and unlike in my opinion the reason why we didn't call well we didn't have asset yet in this this categorization for for Pixar but Pixar sequels don't hold up as well as the serialization that comic book characters lend themselves to so unlike a lot of sequels which fatigue very often there's there's these like few in the world the James bonds of the world that that don't get tired because they're able to kind of keep reinventing it or they're the stories are okay being formulaic so you kind of can keep experiencing the same. The same type plot line over and over again superheroes let themselves do that and the intellectual property that I'm calling separate from the business line the intellectual property that is these characters are you know they're a true asset in perpetuity. Yeah interesting. I'm for sure I'm one of my tech teams a little bit to but I was going to be lazy on this one and say oh yeah totally a product just like Lucasfilm and being you know I think we called Lucasfilm the sort of juicet it's pumps through the pipeline of the flywheel and and I thought that this is to and I still think it is but it's an interesting insight on the serial serial is serial is serial is ability of superheroes and the assets of superheroes versus a Pixar which as great as Pixar is and I'm not excited for another toy story. Yeah exactly like there's it's kind of a harder business in a lot of ways because you're you're betting on the capability of the team to keep producing new original great stuff. Right secure assets depreciate faster yeah well there is no I mean they do do sequels a Pixar but that's not the core what it is it's like you have to keep generating do keep pushing the rock up the hill each time right and actually it's funny if you look at the I was about to make the point that. It is more expensive to create a Pixar film because you don't have the same reusability that you do from the end you know superhero film. It actually is the profit margin on on Pixar films are higher so to kind of combat the the point I just made 23% profit margins for marble 27% profit margins for Pixar and you know render farms and illustrators are expensive but not as expensive. But not as expensive as flying helicopters into buildings. Yeah and well not that Pixar pays actors a lot too for their voice but yeah I would imagine probably in aggregate in terms of money paid to actors Pixar movies I would have to imagine less than a marble movie. Yeah yeah I would think. Yeah I like the asset categorization I mean I think it is definitely also used to pump through Disney's flywheel. But it is a different kind of asset than certainly Pixar and I think in a lot of ways Star Wars to star wars is kind of like star telling me I call it Star Wars Lucas film. Yeah but it is Star Wars right whereas Marvel is many of these franchises. Right right right oh yeah I mean that's a great point is like if you look at the 4 billion dollar price tag for Lucasfilm with a 4.2 billion dollar price tag for Marvel. Like I think how many more characters it's like 800 plus characters or I think 500 plus at the time of acquisition in the Marvel universe and maybe 50 of which are recognizable by the American public. Yeah and you look at look at Star Wars and I don't think Lucasfilm was sort of looking valuing themselves based on all those deep characters and what we're seeing with the Disney powerhouses. They're sort of trying to make the Star Wars universe more serializable and more kind of disparate with all these different stories that they're trying to tell that aren't with our favorite characters. And I'll be really interested to see not how Rogue One does because I think that that's going to be there's so much pent up demand for Star Wars that like I want to see how the third or fourth non core Star Wars story does. And if Disney will be successful in kind of creating this sort of serial blockbuster out of Lucasfilm characters the same way they've been able to with with Marvel characters. Yeah it's interesting to think about to think about these three acquisitions which are obviously all fall within the same broad theme for Disney. But on a kind of spectrum from Pixar where there it's so much about the people and the creative process and creating individual new creative works to then kind of Lucasfilm sort of in the middle where it's about the franchise of Star Wars. And the cadence around that is well before the acquisition was very long cycles between any sort of new Star Wars content that would come out and it's much faster. Right right. It's about decades. And Lucasfilm is sort of about the people you know obviously is George Lucas and some great leadership at Lucasfilm. But also about the franchise and then you've got Marvel at the other end of the spectrum which has had great business leadership especially under Isaac, Isaac pro mother but you know all of the talent that comes into the making the movies and even the artists of the comic books like it's all it's all third parties you know. Right. It's not like it's kind of it's very different from Pixar. Yeah great point. All right. Marvel was getting acquired like we were in an era of consolidation where distribution was buying content. And I don't know who else it would have been 20th century Fox Sony. The Pixar pickup in 2006 that someone else didn't see this coming and try to make a play for it sooner. Maybe other people other studios or I guess other. Well I wonder if the other studios maybe. Just a little bit lazy and they're thinking because they were kind of having their cake and eating it too right in that they were getting Marvel movies and in Spider-Man and in. X-Men without having to actually buy the company. And it was only when Marvel started making movies on their own that it became a really valuable company as itself. Yeah that's true. And it really hadn't been long since since Marvel Studios was around the shocking thing is like. How did no one else I mean actually here's a here's kind of an interesting question if you're 20th century Fox or if you are Sony pictures and you see. Let's say you can see the future and know that Disney was going to do this do try to do it sooner like did people a not think Disney was going to do it or be not care that Disney was going to do it. Yeah well here's an interesting thing that we we haven't talked about yet so far but on the surface this actually wasn't the most natural fit with Disney. Which actually I think is one of the reasons why Bob Iger and Disney really wanted to do this acquisition. But Disney was always kind of like princesses and animated movies and and Pixar which definitely fit into that mold and in terms of their strategy with children you know super gender stereotypes here but I think this is the way a lot of. At least historically a lot of people at Disney have thought about this and in the immediate industry that Disney like owned a little girl see no but they didn't you know and little boys too but like they didn't have as much lesser extent much to a much lesser extent and that this was Disney's play for for little boys too. I mean what's what's more attractive to little boys than superheroes in total you know old school gender stereotype ways. Speaking as a massive frozen fan myself right right you know I still haven't seen it yeah all you got to change that it's so good I know I know as I as admitted Pixar fan boy I really should. Not not that it's Pixar but like you know to see how that's entered the rest of the Disney umbrella yeah and it's interesting to think to I can't imagine this had that much impact on Pearl Mudder and Marvel because it was. There were much more business executives than sort of founder creative types but I go in Disney have developed this reputation now with these three acquisitions as like excellent stores of franchises they're kind of like the Warren Buffets of of creative creative content and businesses right right when I think yeah in the in the Pixar animation we are the. I think it was the Pixar on a no in the Lucasfilm acquisition we compared it to Facebook that that that was really good at leaving their their sort of disparate leaving creative direction on the run which again a little bit was why it didn't on the surface it was a lot of Disney buying you know Marvel like Marvel's much edgier than Disney but yeah they've let it be totally separate but this was you know in the Lucasfilm acquisition you know George Lucas said to Bob I grew up before he saw like. If I'm going to sell it I would only sell this to you into Disney and and Steve jobs to right like it's hard to imagine Pixar and jobs selling to anybody except Disney. Right right yeah so to two other questions here then for you that I would pose one is there a fourth like will we see Disney make a play for another large piece of content and I've been sort of racking my brain to think who that could be. Or who is the content that we don't think of as the big content yet is the up and come or and then to while you're you're sort of new on that. I generalize this to distribution combined combined distribution content company buying more content and pumping it through their distribution do we see that in other verticals like are we seeing that in tech outside of entertainment or any other forms of content being bought by. Distribution plus content companies. Interesting questions well on the second. I mean to a certain extent I think we see it a little bit with Facebook and. And Instagram I mean it's very different like I think Instagram would have grown hugely on its own but no question that on the. Add sales side of the house being able to just plug in Facebook add sales and Instagram was hugely valuable there. On the first question you know I'm not close enough to. Have a super informed opinion on on that front but one thing that just popped into my mind especially because the company is struggling a bit now. What about Nintendo. Boy that's like the you're right that that is like the another huge treasure trove of IP that as we saw with with Pokemon go I mean you you take an existing piece of technology or relatively existing with the. My antique and and slap highly valuable IP like in tendos on top of it you create something you know that the world goes crazy for we can have debate on how lasting that is but. certainly the IP that Nintendo has in Mario and Zelda. And so even, I mean, there are in a lot of ways, like the parallels to Marvel are very similar. You've got lesser known stuff like Kid Echorus, and then you've got Pokemon, obviously, which is super well known. Man, if all of that IP were liberated from the challenged business model of gaming console hardware sales, what could you do with it? And this is interesting, almost all of this, probably excluding Pixar, but at this point Pixar is kind of an older company too. What IP is super valuable and a major part of the American consciousness and new? Because all of this is buying the Star Wars stuff from 77 and buying the Marvel stuff from the 40s and 50s and buying Nintendo from the 80s. Where is, where is 2010s Mario? And does that exist in the era of the internet and short attention spans and social media where individuals are their own content creators and content is short lived? Yeah, well, maybe it lives on Facebook. Yeah, and it's funny. And all the rumors have to have maybe Disney buying Twitter. Yeah. And then that sort of fell through, probably because of pricing issues. Like, none of these platforms own the IP. There's like shared licenses between the tweet and the between Twitter and the originator of the content. But like, it's hard to think of new intellectual property that everyone cares about. Like everyone cares about their little filter bubble or like Twitch too, right? Like, all the big entertainment franchises of the last five years, certainly. I think they're apps, right? They're not IP themselves, they're platforms. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like all the major value in the recent stuff is the platform on which massively distributed democratized IP is created and distributed, not actually being content powerhouse. Yeah. Other than, you know, actually, we are seeing this with Netflix, right? Netflix, Amazon, they have the distribution and we're previously licensing the content and now we're creating content in-house. And that's a pretty good allegory for sort of question number two there of who else is doing this these days outside of Disney. And I guess Netflix isn't necessarily buying up other companies that have content, but we are seeing heavy investment by the people that have the pipes in creating their own content. Yeah. Well, actually, you know, there are plenty of IP franchises out there being created and great ones. I should have thought of this, Jenny and I with my parents over Thanksgiving weekend went to see Fantastic Beasts and where to find them. Oh, Harry Potter. We loved Harry Potter, of course. Oh, another. Yeah, totally. And that's the last couple of decades or decade and a half. Yeah. Or at least younger than some of these other franchises that Disney's been buying. Yeah, maybe that's not a fair. But also, you know, that was really created not pre-social media. The internet, but certainly pre-social media and, you know, the first Harry Potter I don't think JK Rowling or Harry could have, you know, peered into the future and seen the world that we live in today. Yeah, absolutely not. In fact, you know, by the way, Ben and I both got iPhone 7s recently and one of the... I don't use the ton, but just one of the sort of delightful features on it that I enjoyed discovering is the live photos. You know, the Harry Potter photos. Yeah, right. It's kind of a... for those of us who are on the off cycle, I guess the on cycle and didn't have the six, I just discovered live photos too and you're like, whoa, oh. These are weird when I send them to people and they give me too much context. Yeah, totally. Yeah. All right. Should we move into tech teams? Yeah, totally. So the one... I've got one that's based on a stat. So of the top 10 grossing films in 1981, seven of them were original content. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Arthur Stripes, Cannonball Run, chariots of fire, four seasons, time bandits. You've got one that's an adaptation on Golden Pond and then you have two sequels, Superman 2 and Four Your Eyes Only. Fast forward to 2011, so three decades later. Mm-hmm. I'll read you the top 10 grossing films. Harry Potter 8, Transformers 3, Twilight Saga 4, hangover part 2, Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Fast 5, Cars 2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Thor, Captain America. So that is eight sequels, two adaptations and zero original pieces of content. Yeah, all of them franchises. Yeah, and it's fascinating to see the shift of the playground that is the movie studio, the movie theater, the whole olive Hollywood as a feature film production. The creativity and originality is not happening there anymore. It's happening elsewhere. And we're in this era right now simultaneously of a great TV renaissance. There's every season, there's like brilliant dramas on with Hollywood acclaimed actors and best in class writing. And there was Mad Men, there was the sopranos. We're leading it up to this and I'll say if there's one I'm watching that's my car about that, I don't know I mentioned yet. But all of the experimentation has moved to cheaper things. TV or YouTube or social media. And the Hollywood is the way to go and make a billion dollars off of sure things because if you're going to go pour a couple hundred million and you want to get big, big money out and you're not willing to take a chance. Yeah, it's interesting. I think the question for me that that begs is I've been thinking about he was starting to do the research and as we've been doing the episode for all the justifiable admiration, deserved admiration that I think we're keeping on Marvel and Disney here. I think there is one really key existential risk. And that's, you know, if and when the pushback to this dynamic comes from the public, you know, how many people have been asking this for years. And so maybe it'll never come. But how many sequels can we take? How long our superhero movie is going to be in Vogue? You know, is this just a very extended, fad cycle that we've been living in? Like in 10, 20, 30 years when we look back on this and feel like, man, that was like leisure seats. Remember the superhero movie days, you know? Yeah. And I just wonder, you know, like I don't know, I don't know, I don't have a good answer to it. Well, yeah. And if it's, I guess it's interesting to like, if, if this is like a permanent thing, what changed in the world that, like what piece of technology or what societal norm shift or something changed that made it so that we were, well, maybe it's this. Maybe it's, we're actually capable of creating something that resonates so strongly with people's nostalgia. And we're actually capable of creating multiple billions of dollars of revenue on a single film. Therefore, we're going to spend all the money to produce that thing. Therefore, we're not going to take chances. Yeah. And it's like, maybe producing those films costs hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. So it's like maybe the technology got good enough both in distribution and production where it was possible to spend that much money on making a film. And it was possible to spend, or to earn that much from instant global distribution that, you know, we actually, we actually are seeing it come to fruition. And it was only technology limited before. Yeah. And the flywheel like Disney of consumer products and theme parks. Yeah. And you know, when you're investing in an IP as something as an entity like Disney, like, that is a huge investment. And you really can't, and they do take risks and, you know, have failed on stuff like, what was that one? They had a couple live action movies that were total flops, like right around the time that they bought Marvel. Which is interesting. They're taking big risks, but they're flopping. Yeah, right. But you can't afford to have too many of those flops. Right. And I wonder if like, you know, you get a few of those that are big risks that are flopping and then you just get scared away from doing it. Yeah. And you start pushing all your, your, your effectively prototyping down into cheaper, cheaper distribution mediums. Yeah. It's interesting though. I mean, like, where, you know, as you said, so much, there's so much innovation and arousands going on in the television format right now. Is there or will there be something similar in the, you know, film format? I mean, obviously there's independent film and there's lots of innovation going on. But, but not at the, not at the, you know, kind of mass audience scale, that something like Netflix and Amazon has allowed risk to be taken in television and still have the ability to a channel to distribute that to a mass audience. Yeah. It's interesting. I think sort of the same thing has happened with music, where there's like a psychological thing where we love the things that other people love and we all love having the same darling and the same heroes and like the same sort of music feels good to us, that feels good to the other people around us. And with global distribution happening so quickly and so cheaply, you have the ability to achieve much more sameness and have much more people agree on what the best thing is. And it lead, we like to think that we have independent tastes, but a lot of the time we're sort of just like looking to hear from people like, oh, what's the best, you know, who's the Taylor Swift right now? Yeah. And that's why we're getting so many fewer, it's like, there didn't, except for like the Beatles, like there was never like the Beyonce, the Taylor Swift, they were much more distributed and there were many more people that could make it big. And now there's like this echelon of people that you can count on one hand who are like these super phenomenon, phenomena and I think the same thing sort of happening in movies. Yep. And this totally leads super well into my tech theme, which is something I've been thinking about. I've been reading this great book, it came out last year I think, or a couple of years ago called Sapiens by this guy, you've all know a Ferrari. And it's a great book and it's about, it's sort of a biological time history of homo sapiens and how, you know, our species came to take over the world basically. Even though there were, there are no longer, but there were other species of the genus Homo, Neanderthals and many others, but homo sapiens sort of quote-unquote one, and you know, you could argue now we're destroying the planet, but certainly we've taken over the planet. What like actually differentiates us from other homo species and from the rest of the animal kingdom? And he argues that the primary thing is our ability to believe in, create and believe in fictions, because of which a reality is like there is a lion over there run, but a fiction is like there is a company and there is a story. And you know, this, we are, you know, the internet is a fiction, right? But like it's not that it's not real, it's very real, but it's not something that any other species could comprehend. And so that, that kind of makes me think about like IP and exactly what we were just talking about like as the internet has spread communication instantly and globally, you know, are we seeing these major blockbuster franchises just continue to consolidate because of the power of these fictions? Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. Heady stuff for Marvel. I highly recommend the book, not my carve out for the week, but because I'm not done with it yet, but great book. Cool, cool. You want to grade it? Let's do it. So an interesting stat that I found when I was looking through all this, if you look at the first eight films from Marvel post acquisition and the first eight from Pixar post acquisition, Marvel made about $6 billion gross, Pixar made about four and a half costs of creating them are fairly similar. The box office profit from Marvel is about 1.2 billion versus 600 million. So it's like this interesting thing where Marvel does phenomenally better at the box office. But over the long term, Marvel's home video sales are about 400 million and Pixar's are 1.6 billion. And for there's an interesting thing that happens where it with Pixar films, like people get attached to that one character and that one storyline, and they just continue to watch and buy that film forever. And when you look at the Marvel movies, even just me thinking about what would I rather watch Toy Story 3, which even though that's a sequel that has its own storyline that I can remember, and I'm emotionally attached to, or do I care about owning or even buying and watching again on a streaming service or from Amazon Iron Man 2. And you can sort of see that these serialization films don't have lasting value, or nearly as much as the Pixar ones do. And so I went back and listened and I've an A, not an A plus for Pixar. And I think that it's fair for me to say Disney, great acquisition, almost a necessary one. We'd be sitting here saying like, you were fools not to buy Marvel, but it's an A minus to me. It's not as good as the Pixar acquisition. And I think the characters are brilliant IP for a long time. I think they've basically already recouped the cost of that $4 billion outlay. And we'll see what they can do with the character intellectual property, because unlike Pixar, that those already created assets on a shelf will just keep creating value for them with the assets that they have from Marvel, from these characters and this intellectual property, they're going to have to keep pouring cash out. Yep. I think we found that same infographic that I had it copied in my notes and I was looking at it too. Yeah, it's interesting to think about our grading benchmark throughout this, throughout the life of this show. What, you mean Instagram? Yeah, well we start, well, no, I was going to not take the evolution of our benchmark. Oh, yeah. I think Instagram is still one of if not the top on the benchmark, but I keep thinking about to next. I don't think you can argue that that's not the greatest acquisition of all time. When you create a trillion dollars of value, it's the top that. But it also makes me think a little bit about the as cool as much as we love IP and these fictions of what I was just talking about in media and movies and these franchises, the value that you can create in technology is so much more like the leverage is so much higher than you can get from the media industry. Or really any other industry. This is why technology companies are so valuable. 13 people at Instagram can create many, many billions of value. You can't make Iron Man 3 with 13 people or the Iron Man theme park. And reiterating something we talked about last episode. Last quarter, Facebook's operating margin went from 32% to 45% on the incredibly large revenues that they have as a mature company. Technology. That is why technology companies are worth so much. And you just can't pull lever to make the 23% profit margin from these Marvel films into something 1.5X that. Yep. And of course there's a dark side to that too, as we also talked about the Facebook episode. You don't create nearly as many jobs when you're pulling that technology lever. But anyway, we're getting off track here. I agree on A- and I think about it in terms of lasting impact to Disney and sustainable value creation within Disney. And thinking about these three companies that they acquired, Pixar, you know, Marvel Lucasfilm. I think in a lot of ways there is the most risks to the future value of Marvel. And it's in, you know, will superhero, because it's a portfolio of superhero franchises, will superhero franchises continue to be as popular. You know, I think so. They've been popular for 100 years, but how popular will they be? You're totally indexed to that. Lucasfilm is all about Star Wars. You know, in Star Wars you could argue you have even more risk index to that. However, you could probably also argue it is one of if not the single most beloved franchise in the entire world of all time. So they were buying something very specific there. But then Pixar really was, you know, they were buying a process and a, you know, both a people and a process that they've applied to their whole film and creative business. So I think for both the reasons you said Ben and those reasons, I think Pixar needs to be rated higher than Marvel in this Disney trilogy. So I'm going to go, I'm going to go A- for Marvel. Cool. Cool, cool. All right. Follow-up? Follow-ups. One real quick follow-up. Spectacles have launched and people think they're cool. People do. Snap-ing. Would love, if any listeners have them, would love to hear your comments and slack or email us at acquiredfm.gmail.com. We haven't made it to a vending machine yet. No, no. And my God, Evan Spiegel is a product marketing genius. I think launching them, what, in a custom vending machine in LA, and then that going away. And of course, selling out immediately and having a huge line. And then popping one up. Where was the one in the kind of like great planes area, like Tulsa, I think. And then on the Grand Canyon, and then once people are saying, where is it going to be next? Then having a store in New York City that just has the vending machine in the back of the store. And like, I just wonder what's next. And maybe there's even something before this show goes live. But. Spectacles in space. Yeah, like doing everything right. Like, you could totally see other companies being like, okay, we have to work with retailers to make sure there's enough of these things available. And it's totally just like demand generation at its finest and brand building. And also the fact that like from all accounts, the product is right and has like a good use case and people enjoy using it and say it's good. Like, talk about controlling the message and really giving people confidence that they're on to something when they're about to go on this IPO road show. Yeah, super cool. I can't wait to try them. All right, hot takes. This is less of a hot take and more of a more of a congratulations to friends, but high tower announced very, very recently, if not today as we're recording this, which is a startup in New York with lots of Seattle roots that they're emerging with VTS in a deal valued at 300 million. Yeah, huge congratulations to Donald DeSantis and that whole team. Really, really cool story startup weekend guys got together actually to to gel as a team at a startup weekend moved to New York when it was very clear that to be in commercial real estate, they should be in New York. Really just nailed product market fit quickly built a great team and you know, this is not the end. It's a reported estimated 300 million dollar merger with their competitor and the Wall Street Journal article that will link to like and it kind of to to the Zillow truly a merger. Yeah, but awesome awesome awesome to see you see it happen for that company. Yeah, and great to have a startup weekend the lungs of startup weekends played as an organization and events such a huge role in bending my lives and careers and whether it's rover.com getting started at startup weekend or been been media while leading indirectly to us meeting and. Yeah, I mean, PSL and yeah, yes, I'll and Moderna. I've got a really a gushing blog post about how much how awesome startup weekend is on my blog at some point if anybody actually wants to check that out. But should we move on to carve outs. Alright, carve outs cool so there's going to be some people who are like, I knew this is what he was going to say earlier on when I was hitting this, but I am so into Westworld. It's HBO show based on a Michael Crite and book which then got turned into a movie in the 70s with the old Brenner as a cowboy. And I don't want to say too much about it now, but if you if you like the concept of where is AI and robotics going and you like really high production value entertainment, it's created by JJ or Broms and Jonathan Nolan who of course worked on all the recent Batman films and the prestige and so yeah, a bunch of great films. You got to watch it. It's so good. And I just signed up for HBO now and it's like trivially cheap and you get a month free. So highly recommend it. Technology technology and super heroes all in one. My car about for the week real quick. I don't think I've done this before on this show, but I should have because I love it. Super cool app called overdrive, which is, which is a way to digitally through an app and through your kindle connect with your local library and borrow books, borrow ebooks and audio books from your local library and then read them on your kindle or on your smartphone and listen to the audio books for free with your library membership. And I actually used this few years ago, kind of forgot about it and picked it up again earlier this year and it's just like removing that little bit of friction to you know not that ebooks are very expensive, but audio books are. Yeah, I'm reading like four or five times as many books as I used to because of it. So highly recommend it. Go sign up at your local library, support your libraries and use overdrive. That's all we've got. If you aren't subscribed and you want to hear more, you can subscribe from your favorite podcast client now. If you're a long time listener or even if you've just picked us up and you really like us. We don't ask for much, but we would really, really love if you'd share about us on Twitter, share about us on Facebook, leave a review. It's how we grow the show and it's how we can reach more people and do more things. Thank you so much for being a listener and we will hear you next time. We'll see you next time.