[scottrafer]

Treat the 'explicit assurances' like politicians' campaign promises. If they lose, the promises are irrelevant. If they win, those promises had better align with the new incumbent's larger aims or they were just marketing.

The risk is not very hard to assess. It's pretty binary per startup opportunity. Do the relevant incumbents' revenue models, distribution models, or inherent cultural limitations prevent them from competing with you. @paulsutter covered the first two well early in this discussion. For the last, Apple has great difficulty with social, Facebook hasn't figured out Touch, Google is excessively focused on those two competitors, etc.

Please also see these two comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4336783 http://rafer.net/post/28638883246/mark-i-know-for-a-fact-tha...,