[tsycho]

I am less sure about the Figma acquisition[1] in particular, but overall, I strongly agree with the general point that blanket blocking nearly-all acquisitions by Big Tech (except Microsoft for some reason) is wrong and short-term populism.

More startups and more innovation gets created when founders have higher hopes of a positive exit, and in turn, this is good for the world at large.

When a startup becomes FCF positive quickly, and can sustain their growth, they generally don't want to get acquired (eg: Facebook, Snap...) and generally aim for an eventual public IPO. But this is a high bar, which only a small number of companies reach.

The ones that do choose to get acquired, often do so because they are not as optimistic about their own sustainable growth as outsiders might think. If they can't make a reasonable exit via an acquisition, then their equity becomes zero and their years are wasted.

From a founder point of view, acquisitions act as a significant floor of value for the time and effort that the founders and employees are risking. This negative Expected Value risk taking drives innovation and growth for all, significantly curtailing acquisitions makes it severely more negative EV. Worse, the impact of this will not be felt immediately so the new FTC will be able to claim political and populist wins; it will show up in reduced startup creation in the years to come.

[1] Figma feels like it has a reasonable chance of surviving on its own, and become genuinely disruptive to Adobe in the future. But if it dies and goes to zero, then I will feel sad and unhappy that the acquisition was blocked.

[layer8]

Large companies growing even larger by acquisitions, and this being the standard exit for startups, is not good for the world at large. It only leads to concentrating more and more power in large corporations, and reducing meaningful competition in the market.

A startup being attractive for an acquisition is also quite different from being attractive to clients and users, and therefore that’s an incentive structure that is worse for clients and users.

[nickff]

Perhaps the government should make it a bit easier to go public, rather than restricting every other option. The SEC and FTC seem to be all-stick, no carrot.

[adabyron]

Large companies have great distribution channels that smaller companies can benefit from.

Large companies often get bloated & collapse as well. This has always kept me from being to concerned with them over the long term.

[bigstrat2003]

> More startups and more innovation gets created when founders have higher hopes of a positive exit, and in turn, this is good for the world at large.

No, I disagree. It is a negative for the world at large if people are incentivized to build businesses solely so that they can be acquired by some big tech company.

[edanm]

Why?

[kibwen]

Large players leverage their market position in anti-competitive ways to crush challengers, and this problem becomes more acute the larger the player gets.

Even if one hopes (unrealistically, IMO) that sufficiently-large hypercorps will save us from this fate by collapsing under their own weight, why not just cut out the middleman and break up the huge players now, rather than suffering under their market tyranny while hoping for it to happen on their own?

[adabyron]

> except Microsoft for some reason

I would watch a documentary on what Microsoft had to do to get Activision. It seemed they spent a lot on the best legal team money could buy & on political capital as well. There were a ton of different angles too such as mobile gaming where Microsoft can't compete easily, studios where Microsoft has a lot, the Activision harassment fallout, the foreign competitors (Sony & Nintendo), cloud gaming competition.

Figma & Adobe had a lot less competition pre-AI wave so I understand the push back on that one. Especially due to Adobe's past on buying competition, killing it off & little innovation. Ironically now with all the AI startups I think Adobe has a lot of competition.

The Spirit/JetBlue airlines M&A being stopped is still my biggest head scratcher.

I personally think Figma & Adobe should have been allowed to merge though as companies like Affinity offer a very competitive product. I also was in favor of all the above M&As though.

[dvrp]

plausible, but dylan and early employees seem rich

[dmvdoug]

Yes, won’t someone think of the poor founders and their desire to exit?

[paulddraper]

Do you want founders or not want founders?

Because this is why founders are founders.

[dmvdoug]

And corporations only exist for the purpose of making profits for shareholders, you’ll tell me next.

[paulddraper]

For profit corporations, yes

[dmvdoug]

Whereas I view them as risk distribution vehicles, which society has agreed to treat specially because society has also agreed that they are capable of producing sufficient good for society as a whole (in a variety of forms) that they may be treated specially. If for-profit corporations now only exist solely to make profit, and not to enable a sufficient distribution of risk so that things that actually benefit society can be made and done, then it’s time to reconsider that special treatment.

[paulddraper]

That may be the reason for the law, but that's not the reason a corporation is created.