Hey, I'm Dan! I'm the CEO of Plus and a venture partner at Madrona. I write the DL, a newsletter about tech in the Pacific Northwest

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Microsoft's #WashingtonCheck

OK, so what could make the PNW tech ecosystem even hotter? Microsoft acquiring TikTok! Lots of interesting details came out about this deal over the weekend:

  • On Friday morning, CFIUS, which reviews all cross-border deals, was told a Microsoft / TikTok deal was imminent
  • On Friday evening, Trump said he wanted to ban TikTok in the US, which “floored those involved in the talks”
  • This led to ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) making several concessions, including CEO Zhang Yiming selling his stake in TikTok
  • TikTok projects $1B in revenue this year and $6B next year, and its valuation is likely ~$30B
  • Videos tagged with #SaveTikTok have been viewed 730M+ times


Microsoft has a lot of experience in community. They made billions of dollars investing in Facebook, and their last three $1B+ acquisitions were Minecraft, Github, and LinkedIn. TikTok doesn’t fit into their business as neatly as the other deals, but Microsoft clearly understands how to value community engagement, so I’m excited to see how this plays out.


Btw - here’s a link to my TikTok explainer if you are still wondering why everyone is so obsessed with TikTok.


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