[ngrilly]

I'm afraid this is a form of reversion to the mean. Successful startups are made of exceptional people: the founders, the initial investors, the first employees, the first clients. But when they get acquired by much larger companies, they are necessarily diluted in pool of people that are more "normal", less exceptional. This includes the customer base that is more "normal" as well. Slowly but surely, the extraordinary product/service the startup has been developing reverts to the mean. This is quite sad, because it feels inevitable. I'd like to know how to avoid it.

[jzb]

“I'd like to know how to avoid it.”

To paraphrase a popular quote from IBM: “Executives and MBAs can never be held accountable: therefore executives and MBAs must not be allowed to make decisions.”

Slightly less flippant: The only way to stop this is to stop letting companies like MSFT gobble up smaller companies. That doesn’t seem likely in the near future, though. Once the Borg assimilate something, it’s just a matter of time before it’s digested and drained of value.

[tardedmeme]

The process is necessary for both sides. Acquisition by large companies is the primary way that people get rewarded for building good things. If you take it away, there won't be many startups left - all new developments will come from the big companies that can afford them, and only the types of developments those companies' managers want to make.

[jzb]

It's only "necessary" if one accepts that the current way is the only way.

I'm not really sure what the point of encouraging new development is if the end result is "big company scoops it up and makes it shitty, but people get to enjoy it for a few brief moments before that happens."

[hilariously]

That could be A problem, but to me THE problem is that the larger companies buy these smaller companies for resource extraction, not to make the product better.

In this frame you can see that making the product worse (paying less for its upkeep) and raising prices are just two sides of the same coin - extract more resources.

Almost no big company has any reason to shepherd a product in a way that's beneficial to its users because they have so much momentum that even changing their approach either costs too much money or those in power are too insulated from the outcomes (fix it for me or I will fire you while I continue to make bad choices and under fund the product).

[bonoboTP]

It's not inevitable that the founders have to sell to big tech. They wanted money more than the excellence of the craft. They got the money, the company got to grow and made way more profit than when it was small scale but excellent. The wheel keeps turning.

[andruby]

There might be a few (debatable) counter-examples: 37 signals, balsamiq, zoho?

Afaik they never took any (serious) VC money.

[ngrilly]

I was referring to the case where the founders and investors sell the startup to larger company. Of course, if they don't sell, and the company stays founder-led, the outcome is often better. I didn't know Zoho never took (serious) VC money.

[shaky-carrousel]

I use only self hosted free software. Admittedly it's not for everyone. But solves the issue for me.