Microsoft also tried to M&A Slack before building Teams. As far as exits go, Slack may go down in history as a particularly not-smart one: they were allegedly q

Microsoft also tried to M&A Slack before building Teams. As far as exits go, Slack may go down in history as a particularly not-smart one: they were allegedly quite rude in refusing the M&A offer for what might have been a "golden" exit, encouraging Microsoft to build a competitor in a hustle, and then their later exit to Salesforce was a lot less "golden" and at a lesser valuation due in part to the competitor they helped create through their alleged rudeness. (ETA: Of course, easy to spin things the other direction and read Microsoft's offer as a bully move "join us or we'll build a better you without you". The reality is somewhere in the middle of the two extreme perspectives.)