It's unfortunately very common for people to believe that they'll get bought out based solely on the ingenuity of their product. The business reality is that a

It's unfortunately very common for people to believe that they'll get bought out based solely on the ingenuity of their product. The business reality is that almost any software can be easily replicated by BigTechCo for a max of a couple million dollars, far less than any founder is hoping to get acquired for. In an acquisition, buyers are not buying the software despite whatever PR-friendly face gets put on it. They're buying something they can't just easily generate by locking a few of their already-employed engineers in a closet, which means either a) intellectual property via patents; or b) an audience/userbase that the acquiring company can't already easily access. No entrepreneur should go into it without internalizing and understanding that. Code is cheap. If you want to be acquired, you have to bring something to the table. (also note: for Google and Apple, "a lot of mobile users" isn't really part of that equation)