[tschellenbach]

Feels like they were first in the space but then somehow Ramp ran away from dev with a higher dev pace. Fascinating to see.

[ipnon]

Personally I'm okay with being outcompeted if their's a billion dollar payout at the end.

[throwup238]

Everything that's wrong with venture capitalism condensed into a single fifteen word sentence. Bravo.

If you can't provide a billion dollars worth of value, extract a billion dollars worth of grift!

I hear A16Z is hiring.

[skrebbel]

How is being outcompeted “grift”? I feel like I’m missing some context here.

[DSingularity]

Why do you start a startup? Is it to build an idea you believe in and believe it is potentially lucrative or is it so you can go through the motions, say the trendy things, and get outcompeted because in the end you are primarily focused on getting acquired with a 1B exit?

[qeternity]

Spoken like someone who has never started a business. Brex raised much less than $5b and Capital One apparently thinks it is worth more than that (otherwise they wouldn’t buy it).

This is called value creation.

[jjfoooo4]

I think the investors who put $300m in at a $12b valuation would disagree

[pinnochio]

Definitely. No company has ever overpaid for another company. No fraud or FOMO-driven overvaluation has ever occurred in an acquisition. And all acquisitions have always turned out for the best. It's all 100% pure value creation.