Like other pathologies in the startup ecosystem (e.g. acquisitions like FoundationDB getting acquired by Apple and promptly killed, yanking the rug out from und

Like other pathologies in the startup ecosystem (e.g. acquisitions like FoundationDB getting acquired by Apple and promptly killed, yanking the rug out from under everyone who built a business on it and so making it less likely anyone will trust database startups in the future), this is a tragedy of the commons: it's rational, if extremely scummy, for an individual founder to accept liquidation preferences that fuck over their ICs, but as people keep doing it, it's gradually emptying the talent pool as engineers realize the game is rigged. I don't have a good answer for this. Humanity in general is terrible at coordination problems like this, even when our survival is on the line, so I'm not sure how a purely capitalist endeavor like startups are supposed to do anything about it.