[miki123211]

There's also the fact that antitrust regulators seem hell-bend on killing the M&A market entirely.

Historically, there were two main paths for startups, IPO and being acquired by a larger competitor. The latter path is now a lot more difficult, due to the DoJ, the EU and whatever the UK's thing was called suing everybody who tries to do an acquisition.

In the long run, this means fewer startups will get acquired, fewer startups will have an opportunity to exit, the potential upside for VC firms is going to diminish drastically, fewer companies will get funded, which will ultimately lead to the incumbents having all the power and startups having none. This is a very bad thing.

[woooooo]

Any links handy to justify that claim? My impression from headlines was that some massive enterprise M&A was blocked recently but not so much "startup exits". Maybe I missed it though!

[Vegenoid]

I don’t know very much about business - but having the goal of most new companies being to be bought by a larger company doesn’t really sound healthy to me.

[Ekaros]

Shouldn't goal for most companies to be self-sufficient and to generate reasonable dividends for their owners? Then depending on goals of owners they might or might not be private.

For me that sounds much more desirable than having a handful of extremely highly valued giga corporations. It cannot be long term good to have so much valuation concentrated to what less than 10 or so companies...

[happyopossum]

> Shouldn't goal for most companies to be self-sufficient and to generate reasonable dividends for their owners?

No, the company founders should be allowed to set their own goals and not have them dictated by regulators.

[dartos]

Sounds like a slippery slope fallacy.

What’s to say startups don’t start being creative or truly innovative and focus on making and selling products while making a profit?

I’m sure another viable exit strategy will be discovered

[_DeadFred_]

Man the 'it's really bad government is enforcing antitrust laws' crowd sure is pushing this hard on HN this week. You understand all of the original thought on capitalism explained how it was essential the government keep this type of control on markets in order for capitalism to work, right?

If your only business model is to get bought out by a larger company capitalism SHOULD world to reduce the number of startups.

Also, the incumbents just buying everyone up also = incumbents having all the power, and is also a very bad thing. Hence the creation of antitrust laws, and the concept of it being baked into foundational capitalist thought.