Anshu Bhardwaj

The original concept for Brij crashed and burned   Before becoming a founder, I spent 10 years getting intimately acquainted with the retail space as an investor.    It was there where I got a front seat for the evolution of consumer brands and gained perspective about omnichannel and the future of retail.    I learned that retail (& Amazon!), which is a HUGE part of a brand’s distribution, is literally a black box. Brands know almost NOTHING about their customers - and they certainly don’t have a way to contact them.   As a consumer, I experienced these brands across various channels - online, social media, in-store, but my experience with the brand was different, fragmented and inconsistent across these channels.    Sitting on the sidelines as an investor I was jealous of all the founders I was investing in and the cool brands they were building. I wanted to be in their shoes.     So I went back to business school to explore entrepreneurship.    That’s where I met my co-founder, Zack Morrison, while pitching an idea at a startup bootcamp    He approached me with some cool ideas around QR codes and we ended up starting a business together (that was not Brij).    COVID crushed that business, but in failure, we found a massive opportunity.   The pandemic fueled mainstream adoption of the QR code.   We pivoted the business to solving the problem of brands losing access to the customer relationship and related data.    Today, we are more committed than ever to the mission of helping brands create amazing customer experiences that connect the offline and online.   This connected experience helps brands capture 1st party data, provides new visibility into customer behavior and opens the door for amazing education, loyalty, retention, and upsell opportunities.    Which in turn generates a happier, more engaged and more profitable customer.    #foundersjourney #startuplife

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Episode 341 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Somak Chattopadhyay, Managing Partner at Armory Square Ventures. Yes, markets like the Bay Area, NYC, and Boston get a lot of attention when it comes to building startups and having the ability to raise capital, but there are lots of other places to build a successful company. This has always been the case, but the pandemic definitely pushed this reality further.  This is why a firm like Amory Square Ventures exists. There are lots of secondary markets where entrepreneurs need access to capital and it is also a very important matter for the local economy for these companies to grow and create jobs, versus relocating. Somak shares the details of what led him down the path to start Armory Square Ventures, a seed and early stage venture fund, and why their approach of investing in seconday markets has not only been a differentiator for their firm but what they also consider as an optimism engine and a community catalyst for regions outside Silicon Valley. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Advice on how founders can push back on advice from investors. * Somak’s background story and his early career in startups. * How he landed in venture capital at Edison Ventures and Tribeca Venture Partners. * The details on what they are targeting for investments and portfolio company examples like Machinery Partner and ACV Auctions, a Buffalo company that went public. * Somak’s anti-portfolio, companies that he reviewed and an investment didn’t work out and went on to be a successful company. * Advice on building a marketplace. * And so much more. #venturecapital #startups #marketplaces

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its not just about VC/investor appetite for more mature start-ups where the risk is relatively less, its the turn now of VCs being treated the same by LPs. very likely to happen in India as well if not already happening. The infamous long tail in VC universe is very much going to be a reality.

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Looking forward to meeting women entrepreneurs who are on their journey to create some pathbreaking ideas and inspiring others to do the same. #advaitawomenentrepreneurs #womeninbusiness #entrepreneurship #womenentrepreneurs #EmpowerWomen #womenleaders #businesswomen

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I had a lot of fun recording a podcast episode with Shiva Singh Sangwan. We discussed the evolution of Humba Ventures & Susa Ventures; tips for raising and building a fund; how to improve investment sourcing & picking; the role of luck in investing, and so on. https://lnkd.in/eiqsStej

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I first met Mike Maples, Jr in 2010, when Founders Network was just an idea. Over the years, Mike and his team at Floodgate (special shoutout to Arjun Chopra) have been great mentors, sharing their insights and guiding our founders. Most recently, their advice played a pivotal role in helping us launch Founders Network Fund. Today, Mike shared the key ideas with FN'ers from his new book Pattern Breakers (https://a.co/d/buKBd5O ), which explores the insights he’s gained from backing companies like Twitter, Twitch, and Okta -- and which put him on the Forbes Midas List 8x. This is the most important book on startups in the last ten years, according to Steve Blank. My notes on the key concepts of his talk: 1) Inflections – "not a trend but a change event that represents a turning point in our ability to provide empowerment." e.g. The GPS chip in iPhone 4s 2) Insights – "a non-consensus and right insight about the future that's powerful and non obvious and leverages inflections." e.g. Lyft = GPS + strangers driving you 3) Founder future fit – "Living in the future before other people live in the future and then try to build what's missing in the future." If you're a founder, check out the book. Grateful for the impact Mike and Arjun continue to have on both me and the Founders Network community!

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Woke up to seeing Arjun Vaidya's post on deck hygiene (link in comments) and, while agreeing with everything mentioned, felt compelled to add a few points. 🖥 Yes you need a deck: It may not be fun, you may feel that you're the brightest star in person or over a call, but them's the rules of the game. It makes it easier for funds to have a reference point to look back to, quickly assess whether you're a fit within fund mandates and current thesis, as well as gauge your abilities. After all, if you can't pitch your own company for investment, sales will be a VERY uphill task. ❗ Deck hygiene matters: We actually do read decks, and if you end up contradicting your deck in your pitch, we will catch it. Poorly formatted decks showcase a lack of attention to detail, which, once again, acts as a signal that this is the founder mindset (hint: no one wants to invest in a founder with lack of attention to detail) ⚖ Mandates exist: Most funds are very very open about what they are looking for, on their websites, blogs, Partner/Principal's LinkedIn etc. If you choose to ignore all of these and pitch to a fund completely unaligned to your business, it's probably going nowhere. 🤝 Outreach works: The biggest reason why people cry that they don't get responses from VCs is because you're ignoring any good form of engagement. A LinkedIn message saying "Hi, I'm building the next Airbnb, would you like to join me and make so so much money" will likely get ignored. A message like "Hi, I'm building XYZ to solve ABC, which I realized was a problem while working across 123. We currently have 10 paying customers generating $$, with a pipeline of 20 more. I'm looking to raise $100 to help expand and hit Y metric, I'd love to share more about what we are doing. I've attached my deck with more details", this I reply to 100% of the time ✅ ✅ ✅ A few more rules of thumb: 💲 - Have a financial model ready. If you don't know how to make one, we have the length and breadth of human knowledge available via devices we're reading/typing this on 💥💥 - Traction wins, followed by experience, followed by hope. If you don't have traction, showcase your experience. If you don't have traction or experience, fundraising will be hard, bet on hope. 🙌 🙌 🙌 - The market is always right. This doesn't mean VCs, it means paying customers. Phil Knight funded what today is Nike by working a full time job at PWC to get to scale. VC funding is one way to grow, NOT the only way. #funding #fundraising #venturecapital #startups

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As a lover of "Think:Act Magazine" and longtime admirer of Roland Berger (shout out to Neelima Mahajan! Rita McGrath!), you can't imagine how cool it felt to get to share some insights from Ideaflow. For folks who haven't dug into the book, this exceptional piece is a great introduction. I welcome your feedback. Hats off to the team for crafting the piece. *** "Breakthrough innovation is the lifeblood of progress, the driving force behind some of the world's most transformative technologies and companies. But how does one come up with the next big thing? How does one come up with the first kernel of an idea? How does one break out of the creativity rut? A mistake a lot of us make is assuming that for breakthrough innovation, we need to find that one good idea. But if Jeremy Utley is to be believed, more ideas lead to better outcomes. Utley, Director of Executive Education at the Stanford d.school and co-author with Perry Klebahn of Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters, challenges the common perception that one good idea is the key to success. He explains why. RB: You define the idea as a “connection”. Why? JU: My study of the underlying neuroscience has led me to realize that an idea is a bridge between two things already in your mind. The conventional view of ideas as coming from nowhere or being built from nothing lacks practicality and is not helpful. When you hold onto such thinking, you're essentially searching for something to materialize from nothing – this is not beneficial in terms of operating... RB: How can we successfully manage the inputs we receive from outside to maximize the impact we achieve? Inputs are important. Many people who aspire to lead a creative life or fail to recognize the value of that tend to focus solely on problem-solving. When you think about that, you're often concerned with the output. But what's the answer? The brain's just like anything else. When we consider the outputs of our thinking, we realize that they depend on the inputs we receive. Therefore, we call this kind of thoughtfulness about a deliberate pursuit of input inspiration. Unlike those of us from corporate environments, that is a design word that means something. To me, it is necessary to create space for looking even when you don't know what you're looking for..." Much more at the link below.

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In November 2023, Crunchbase famously declared that 'VCs no Longer Do DTC' - as financings in the category were down 97%. This has led to much conversation around the viability of VC x DTC, and has left many wondering where it all went wrong. Fear not, as I wrote 4,000 words outlining exactly what happened, and it starts by considering the following high profile failures: - Dollar Shave Club, divested by Unilever after a $1 billion acquisition. - Bonobos, sold $75 million after being acquired by Walmart for over $300 million. - Outdoor Voices, imploded after raising $70 million. - Smile Direct Club, from IPO to bankruptcy in just four years. These stories are part of a longer list of DTC brands that faced similar fates. So, how did it happen? The Rise: To understand the downfall, we need to look at the rise of venture capital. VC has grown exponentially—from $30 billion in 2006 to hundreds of billions by 2021. This influx of money meant there were far more funds than viable 'venture scale' investment opportunities. Investors looked for opportunity beyond SaaS The SaaS Illusion In the early days, DTC brands looked remarkably similar to SaaS. High gross margins, recurring revenue models, and heavy investment in technology infrastructure made them appealing to VCs. Oftentimes, DTC brands would have full teams of engineers building their websites and analytics. Ultimately, the products these technology teams were making would prove to be valuable vertical SaaS products (Shopify). Then, Dollar Shave Club was acquired for $1B. Proving that DTC could in fact produce venture returns at real scale. The Fall: VCs had seen DTC as a new frontier. The internet enabled a new wave of brands that could sell directly to consumers that could [apparently] generate massive returns. But as the market matured, cracks began to appear. Ironically, DTC brands that swore to cut out the middleman (retailers) and pass on margin to the customer created new, more powerful middlemen—social media platforms and online marketplaces that proved to be able to capture more margin than any retailer, x100. Additionally - bad accounting, Facebook arbitrage convergence, market saturation, increased competition, inflation, privacy changes, and shifts in consumer behavior post-COVID further eroded profits. The Conclusion: In the end, the DTC model couldn't sustain the weight of expectations. Don't get me wrong - many VCs made a killing on DTC. It is rumored that Kristen Green of Forerunner turned $250k in $35M by investing into Dollar Shave Club's first financing - a notable transaction that I theorize skewed investor underwriting models for the next 10 years. My prediction is that By 2028, it's likely that CPG-focused 'venture' capital will be a thing of the past, and traditional PE firms will prove to be the CPG capital provider of choice. For a deeper dive, read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/g5xnCwHM

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Excited to announce the launch of Bracket by BoldCap 🚀 India's first Go-To-Market platform for entrepreneurs building global AI companies. For the past year, Bracket has been exclusively supporting our portfolio founders to tackle the complexities of scaling AI-native products in the global market, especially North America. Today, I am excited to launch Bracket; to provide all AI builders with the same GTM accessibility.. 🎯 The new landscape shift has made it absolutely clear that traditional SaaS playbooks no longer fit the bill for AI-native products. We are redefining this through Bracket – our closely curated community of 50+ GTM operators across North America and Europe who offer the resources, networks, and the new-age playbooks that founders need in their $0-$1M journey of building an AI company from India to the world. 🌍 We work with some of the smartest minds in GTM globally– from the Revenue director at Clari, Pricing leader at DocuSign, GTM leader at Databricks, Sales leader at Outreach to Growth Leader at Snowflake and many more– all exceptionally talented operators who have built multiple GTM motions from scratch and are now committed to support the upcoming generation of entrepreneurs along with us. We deeply believe this is what our ecosystem needs: accessibility to the right leaders in the global market, and we aim to bridge this for Indian founders. Thanks to our early GTM partners Jyoti Swarnkar Samuel Sunderaraj Kiran Surapaneni Merritt Baer Murali K Atul Sahai Ramana Narayanam Sara Archer Sara Jones Shiv Sundar Stan Rymkiewicz Andreas Drakos Andres Lozano Sanudo Ashwath M. Brant W. Cody Harris Connor Williams Daniil Krets Jake Haselden Jeff de Ruyter Karthik Ramamoorthy Kevin Flitcroft Laura Handy LeeRon Yahalomi Paul McGhee Shane O'Neill (and the list goes on.... unfortunately not able to tag more) who shaped Bracket into a powerful community along with us. Big shout out to Aditi Gera for all her effort on putting this together and to the rest of the BoldCap team Shiv Tayal Pratham Chadha Kevin D'Souza. Thank you Bhuvana Kamath and YourStory Media for this exclusive coverage - https://lnkd.in/gZBXTsmv If you're founder in the AI software space, we are excited to work with you! BoldCap

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The Three Lessons I've Learned When I reflect on my career, it is unequivocally the paths less traveled that have had the most profound impact. Lesson 1: Embrace the Unexpected In 2008, I moved to London on the very day Lehman Brothers collapsed. My new job evaporated as the person who hired me was let go. Instead of despair, I found opportunity. I took a temporary position at The BMJ, where I met Dr Charles Young. Earning just £10 an hour, I worked with his team as a publishing assistant, exploring decision science data for Point of Care. Our groundbreaking work was later licensed by epocrates, which became one of the largest healthcare databases in the world. Takeaway: Sometimes life doesn't go as planned. Just take the next best step; you might be surprised at the opportunities it opens. Lesson 2: Connect and Collaborate In 2012, I changed seats on a flight to my TRIUM Global Executive MBA and met Professor Marianne Winslett. During that flight, we connected and virtually commercialized everything in her lab. This led me to moonlight at the Advanced Digital Sciences Center (ADSC), where, fast-forward a decade, Marianne is now my esteemed partner at R3I CAPITAL and R3i Ventures. Together, we are changing the flows of capital in #appliedAI and #frontiertech investments for #climate, #water, and #healthcare impact. 306 founders accelerated cross border today via R3i Ventures! Collaborating with prolific VC Henry Wong and brilliant humans and inventors like Kyle Rupnow, Swathi Gurumani, Shaunak Ahuja, and Vasileios Vonikakis, we pioneered applied AI projects in robotics, surveillance, sports analytics, healthcare, and safety. Takeaway: Open your mind and truly connect with the person next to you. Genuine engagement can lead to incredible collaborations and intertwined lives. Lesson 3: Be Present Back in 1994, as a Queensland University of Technology student working as a palliative care nurse, I learned the importance of presence. Helping people in their final days taught me that what matters most is being present for those we love. Nobody cares about money or missed deals in their final moments; they only wish they had spent more time with loved ones. Robert Frost once said, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." Takeaway: Being present in the moment is what truly makes a difference in life. I'd love to hear from you! What unexpected turns in your career have led to new opportunities? My life has been completely transformed by what were or could have been transient passing interactions. We are all so connected to our screens. Imagine what could happen if we just put the phone down. When was the last time you looked up? My life has been transformed by these experiences. How have connections and collaborations shaped your journey? Share your experiences and let's inspire one another! #CareerJourney #ProfessionalGrowth #LifeLessons

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My Entrepreneurial Kickoff for 2025 In 2024, a dream of mine came true: co-founding my own startup with my childhood best friend, Aayush Shah. We incorporated our company, kickstarted beta development, tackled compliance hurdles, and laid out a multi-year roadmap. Now I’m stepping into 2025 with a positive outlook—knowing we’re just months away from our beta launch! Our startup, Zennoia, is transforming how early-stage ventures interact with investors — from the very first pitch to long-term collaboration. What type of content to expect from us: • Bi-weekly updates on our journey • Short videos & reels to share behind-the-scenes moments • Candid conversations about both the highs and lows of startup life This year, Aayush Shah and I will both be sharing content from our unique perspectives—though not limited to just “tech” or “business.” As an engineer, Aayush Shah will talk about coding challenges and product development, but he’s also diving into the business side of things to understand how engineering decisions align with market realities. Meanwhile, I (Sharvil Ved) bring a business perspective, but I’m immersing myself in the technical foundation that fuels our vision. Each new insight shows how engineering decisions shape strategic outcomes—and how real impact arises when business insights and technical execution work in tandem. If 2025 is your year for bold moves—whether you’re starting something new, scaling up, or stepping outside your comfort zone—let me know! I’d love to cheer you on or swap stories. Where to Find Us Zennoia • LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit: @zennoia • X (Twitter), YouTube: @zennoiaofficial Sharvil Ved (Me) • LinkedIn, instagram and youtube: @sharvilved • X: @sharvil_ved Aayush Shah • All Platforms: @shahaayush1999 Here’s to turning big ideas into realities and celebrating every step along the way!

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Susan Wojcicki made Google work. And we are all lucky that she did. From selecting office spaces (starting with her garage & then all the epic ones thereafter) to selecting board members, from designing the new hire orientation to the first onsite daycare, from negotiating the biggest partnerships to making game changing acquisitions to deciding how to tell the Google story the night before the IPO, from mentoring fresh college grads to mentoring former CEOs who joined Google in senior leadership roles, Susan was involved in every single important decision that Google ever made. The reason why Google today is the company that touches billions of people's lives daily and does that with empathy, humanity and a fundamental belief that doing good is the primary north star is because of Susan. The same founders, the same vision and the same leadership team could have produced an entirely different type of company if it were not for Susan's unreal abilities as a leader who always knew what was the right thing to do. Why did Susan have such a monumental impact? When I first joined, I understood that amidst the breathtaking ambition of the founders & the chaotic execution of a hyper-growth company where the inmates ran the asylum (by design), there was one sacrosanct unwritten rule = "Susan gets what Susan wants". Everyone in the company understood this. And this meant that whenever anything important was stuck, you knew that Susan could solve it. She always did. Utter chaos would turn into serenity once Susan took hold of an initiative. She was a magician IRL whose craft was sublime & inspirational to watch. But why did Susan get what Susan want from every stakeholder in the company, many of whom had come from very powerful prior positions/experiences from all over the world and didn't even report to her? = Because she had better judgment than any of us. It was as self-evident as the rising sun. Now imagine how this could be at a company that hired the best of the best, had tens of thousands of people, many of whom went on to lead other great companies all over the world. Why was Susan so special? = I don't know. We all know she just was. I have worked in Silicon Valley for 33 yrs now across many companies in all sorts of organizations. I have never met anyone like Susan. I got lucky that she was my boss for most of my time at Google and through immense patience, persistence, ridiculously great insight & empathy, Susan figured me out before I figured out myself. She gave me the best performance review ever which summed up everything and was very actionable and a review that I still think about every day ("Keval, you are so lazy, imagine if you were not"). The outpouring of love we see for Susan and her beautiful family is because losing Susan is like losing mom. No one will take her place in our hearts and minds. Thank you Susan for everything. May the almighty give strength & peace to Dennis Troper & family.

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Back in Bangalore, but an exciting few days in Boston and NYC with the Citizen Stack team as they take the India Stack on the road, including at the UN.   What was built in India, for India, is a monumental achievement in showing what is possible when imagination, will, and dedicated group of spirited volunteers (ProductNation/iSPIRT) combine the best of technology, public policy, legal frameworks, and private sector participation to create the rails for citizen inclusion and the delivery of public goods.   This is such a significant story for world that few outside understand for myriad reasons—including complacency and complexity—and so large and difficult to grasp (at least in the west) that when one looks at what India has achieved in such a short time it feels like the stuff of science fiction.   Having seen this story unfold, from the early days of Aadhaar, the well-worn assumptions about how India consumes, transacts, travels, saves, and invests, have been rewritten and will evolve with new stacks in health, agriculture, and data protections. Given India’s average age is 28, there is a whole generation that is going to experience a vastly different set of public goods and services that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.   For starters, India has: ·     Authenticated 1.4 billion people with a digital identity ·     $230 billion of monthly UPI transactions and on track to hit 1 billion transactions per day in the next 2 years ·     Reduced the time to open a bank account from 6 days to 1 hour ·     Efficiently administered 2 billion covid vaccination doses over 18 months, without adding an additional clinic   Having set a benchmark for inclusive growth, low cost delivery, consent, and data privacy, the story has now gone global. It was inspiring to hear directly from numerous UN participants (France, Philippines, Ethiopia, among them) on implementing elements of what India has open-sourced to the world. Specifically, the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), which was developed at International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore provides a flexible and scalable identity platform that caters directly to the needs of diverse populations, including those in remote and underserved areas. Already implemented by 18 countries, representing 110 million people, MOSIP-based systems are on track to providing a legal and verifiable ID for the remaining billion world citizens that still lack one. Thank you Sharad Sharma and Jasminder Singh Gulati, and your teams for including me on what I hope is the beginning of many Citizen Stack events around the globe. What a time to be proud of what India has given the world. #ExportQuality #IndiaStack #Aadhaar #UPI #DPI Amie Patel Pankaj Jain Vaibhav Parikh Anurag Saxena Digital Public Goods Alliance Ravi Tyagi

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Super excited to welcome back Prof Aswath Damodaran for a second year on TRIUM Angels Ascend Program and R3i Venturers. 9 Key Takeouts from our workshop on #StartupValuation 1. Numbers Meet Storytelling: Every valuation starts with a narrative. You can't understand a company's value if you don't know the story behind it—whether it's a growth market, a disruptive force, or a brand with cultural cachet. Your company isn't just about products and financials; it's about where it's going and why. 2. Revenue Growth & Target Margins: Growth potential is sexy, but profitability is the goal. Investors care about the path to target margins. Can you scale without bleeding cash? Show them the road—profitable, and efficient. 3. The Corporate Lifecycle: Understand where the company is—startup, growth, maturity. Different phases need different strategies, different stories. Not every company is meant to be the next Nvidia, but every company needs to understand where it stands. 4. A Good Narrative: Keep it simple, make it compelling, and hook the audience. Nobody remembers buzzwords, but they do remember a powerful story about unmet needs and market gaps. Make it memorable, not just measurable. 5. The Runaway Story: Charismatic leadership, disrupting an unliked status quo, with a bonus benefit for society? That's a formula for a runaway narrative. People root for the underdog—and that includes the market, sometimes even irrationally. But be careful—don't let hype override rationality. 6. Check the Narrative Against Reality: A great story is compelling, but it’s even better when backed by numbers and common sense. Always pressure-test your narrative—does it hold up to market dynamics, macro factors, and historical precedent? 7. Link Story to Value: If it doesn’t impact cash flow or risk, it doesn’t impact value. Make sure every part of your story affects a key value driver—revenue, margins, reinvestment. The narrative must translate into financial outcomes. 8. Keep Feedback in the Loop: Defending your narrative without critique is a one-way ticket to poor decisions. Open yourself to opposing views—have the people who disagree with you the most challenge your assumptions. Hubris kills investors. 9. Be Ready to Adapt: Market conditions change, competition moves, your strengths may turn into weaknesses. Always be ready to adjust the narrative—because what works today may not work tomorrow. Huge thanks to Professor Aswath Damodaran sharing knowledge this #Deepavali on TRIUM Angels program. What does it take to be the most loved Corporate Finance Professor on the planet? A heart of #servantleadership, #passion, #humility, and a consistent commitment to  #accessibility, #disruption, and #excellence. The spirit of TRIUM Global Executive MBA and our fellow alumni at NYU Stern School of Business HEC Paris and The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) shines brightly this #deepavali.

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I was surfing my notes taken during my time at MIT Sloan School of Management and I was surprised pleasantly by one class which was more fun than a serious lecture. It was called leadership seminar. It was taught to us by a Senior McKinsey Partner Vijay D'Silva . In every class there was one American CEO coming in person. Some of them failed as CEO , some of them retired as great CEOs and some of them were current CEOs. And I think Prof. deliberately ensured that all of them were not founder CEOs. While during the class I always kept on wondering and trying to get pattern from their sucess of failure. At the end I concluded that their was no pattern but the lessons to be learnt as a leader and manage your career with clear learnings from those lessons. I think for those of you wondering what are those lessons, I will keep it for some other day... You can do better networking but definitely it will not make you a successful leader or CEO . yes it can help you land into a starting hanky panky role .. you can try to lead larger teams and get good visibility but will it make you a successful leader ? .. possibly not .. You can remain as a polite leader who does trust his team .. Does it ensure sucess? possibly not... So what are the lessons for sucess in a Career , I am surprised that I just deduced it to just two heads.. Can you think of them ? if not I can let you know on a direct message if you are curious.. no free lunches for non curious career planners from me.... Enjoy!

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Big news in grocery retail M&A: Albertsons Companies has officially called off its USD 25 billion merger with Kroger, more than two years after announcing the deal. The decision follows rulings from state and federal judges blocking the transaction on antitrust grounds. In response, Albertsons has reaffirmed its standalone strategy and - for good order - filed a lawsuit against Kroger alleging the company failed to use "best efforts" and take "all actions necessary" to get the deal over the antitrust line. It's not uncommon for parties to get litigious when deals fall apart, but Albertsons (and its shareholder Cerberus Capital) seems pretty peeved about this one, having spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" 😨 seeking approval for the merger. A key nuance lies in the merger agreement's language: all the antitrust-related performance obligations in the agreement are based on a "reasonable best efforts" standard *except* for the clause relating specifically to Kroger’s obligations, which are held to the stronger "best efforts" standard—a small but significant distinction. It's unlikely this situation will be resolved anytime soon, but it will be interesting to see how it develops.

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