And a huge reason is risk, scale and performance. There was a good article linked on HC that was full of quotes from founders who were acquired. The difference

And a huge reason is risk, scale and performance. There was a good article linked on HC that was full of quotes from founders who were acquired. The difference between a startup experimenting with a new feature and a corporation is that if you F up it only affects a small number of people. For a corporation, an error could be millions of people affects and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars lost.