Very true about the politically-connected team winning. That said, the high level point is even without the M&A lever, these companies can still succeed by doi

Very true about the politically-connected team winning. That said, the high level point is even without the M&A lever, these companies can still succeed by doing things that seem wasteful. FB is a good example with Snap. They didn't have the M&A lever (for different reasons in that case), but they just built Stories into Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. If you were willing to spend billions on M&A you can just spend them internally. And you don't even need to build a free-market best product, because you have a brand and user base that startups don't. In any case, I do hope that alone isn't enough to keep big companies entrenched. Also hi Scott!