Pete Huang

You are basically looking at two goals for the company.

The best option is that you build the business big enough so that it can go public and you can sell your shares on the open market.

Now, for some reason, the company can't get there.

If it's sizable enough to exist on its own, but not big enough to go public, then you're hoping for the company to get bought.

And in many cases, it is bigger tech companies that buy you out.

But when you as an investor see the FTC blocking bigger tech companies from buying startups, all of a sudden, you have to change your math about what could be possible with the startup that you're working with.

if you no longer believe that an acquisition is possible then you better be sure that the company can go public otherwise you're going to be less likely to fund the startup to begin with all the work that the ftc has been doing with big tech has these downstream effects on how much investors play in startups and to what degree here's investor tomas tungus who in late 2023 pointed out that google amazon meta and microsoft

collectively have 69% of all market cap in tech and 67% of all the cash.

If the FTC effectively takes out that entire group, then the options for startups to exit gets decimated.

The general argument from the startup side is that this pressure, because it slows down the startup ecosystem, it dampens innovation.

Now, all this is a tricky balance, isn't it?

Because while startups are having a harder time finding a path forward, there are a lot of parties who believe that big tech is getting too big and we do need to rein them in a bit.

This is led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has called to break up big tech for years now.

And when Lena Kahn went on Jon Stewart's show, as soon as she was introduced as the person holding big tech accountable, the audience erupted in applause.

Heck, when Lina Khan herself was nominated for the FTC in the first place, she had to get confirmed by the Senate and she had support from politicians in both parties who all said that her views on wrestling big tech were much needed.

I mean, let's not

gloss over the impact of that previous stat.

Again, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have nearly 70% of all of the market cap in tech.

Now, that group today should now include Nvidia, which is a $3 trillion company, but still that is a pretty lopsided distribution.

Now, all of this doesn't optically get any better from the public's perspective when you see big tech finding ways to get around the rules a little bit.