It may not be a conscious conspiracy by the big boys but the reality of the startup scene isn't too far from what he describes.
Edit: I'd also say that a certain section of startups are in on the game too - how many startups can you recall where their sole raison d'être and exit strategy was to be acquired by Google, Facebook or Apple? The dropboxes and facebooks of the startup world are much more rare.
Indeed. A lot of it comes from the lack of other exit-options. Large companies aren't cool anymore, so nobody wants their startup to become one --- that's just a means to the end of a big payout. Getting acquired is substantially less work than being a full-on success, and avoids a lot of the drudgework of the middle/large-stage parts of a company's lifecycle.
Back a dozen years ago (omg, has it really been that long now?), you'd IPO and use all that new money to hire people to take care of the actual business management for you. A founder could get back to hacking on new, fun stuff, or let his board bribe him to step down :-)
I debated not submitting it, but I thought the idea warranted some discussion. Seems like every other day I read about a startup with a free service shutting down because they were bought by Facebook, Twitter, or Google.
I didn't read the article, but...the intelligent discussion around it meant that I didn't have to waste my time reading what sounds like a lousy article. Had I found this article on my own, I would have both had to suffer through the article and been deprived the intelligent teardown of it we get here. That alone makes me glad it was submitted. (Only half kidding here.)
He's being down voted because it's so easy to call something "ignorant" without backing it up. Just like it's easy to call something "one of the dumbest articles" without backing it up. No argument, no proof, no reasoning… down votes.
Edit: I'd also say that a certain section of startups are in on the game too - how many startups can you recall where their sole raison d'être and exit strategy was to be acquired by Google, Facebook or Apple? The dropboxes and facebooks of the startup world are much more rare.