Do I think there's significant political pressure to have his product, ahem, driven into the ground as to not be a viable competitor to larger firms? I think i

Do I think there's significant political pressure to have his product, ahem, driven into the ground as to not be a viable competitor to larger firms? I think it's likely that he's getting exactly the same treatment one of those "larger firms" would get if they did the same. The difference between him and those "larger firms" is that the "larger firms" would've been planning for the regulatory checks from the start. They would never have been blindsided by a request for information because they'd have known this stuff is a legal requirement and would've been proactively having discussions with regulators, figuring out what they'd need to provide, etc. And speaking from what I've seen working at a startup in a heavily-regulated industry: federal regulators aren't black-suited startup-killing robots. They don't seem to care much how new or "agile" or "lean" or "disruptive" a company is. They care that the things or people protected by the relevant regulations... are actually protected. Crazy idea, I know, but it certainly does appear to be the case most of the time (cue people lining up with anecdotes to angrily tell me I'm some kind of statist apologist whatever and shouldn't be listened to...).