Right but I can't imagine this is something you can change as long as the other participants are willing to take that risk. For VCs this is like playing a lot o

Right but I can't imagine this is something you can change as long as the other participants are willing to take that risk. For VCs this is like playing a lot of roulette tables at once for a potential big pay day. A single player like the article's Masimo Corp doesn't have the luxury of multiple roulette tables so they are far more exposed. Letting someone else go first doesn't have to be bad practice, someone always goes first and the others follow. Different players have different risk appetites and this can lead to healthy competition. Unless it's abusing a position of power. Look at Amazon when they use knowledge about products and sales that are normally not public to launch their competitors, or Apple here taking over the engineering team legally but then stealing the tech probably assuming the chips will fall their way.