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> How in the world did it take fifteen months for regulators to reject this? I agree with your overall point that the current regulatory process related to ant

> How in the world did it take fifteen months for regulators to reject this? I agree with your overall point that the current regulatory process related to anti-trust M&A very much needs to be improved. While the delay may be the proximate cause, focusing on that risks failing to address the fundamental root cause of the problem, which is A) lack of clarity in regulatory policies and the underlying laws authorizing them, and B) their inconsistent application across different industry contexts and between different international jurisdictions. The lack of clarity can be improved by regulators adopting clearer public guidelines about how they will interpret and apply the rules (and then establish credibility by actually sticking with those guidelines over time). Improving consistency across jurisdictions is more challenging but still possible if regulators in the largest domains (US and EU) collaborate to harmonize their policies (as is done in many other regulatory contexts). Recently, Lina Khan in the US has made this problem far worse by aggressively pursuing quite extreme interpretations of anti-trust law, and worse, doing so without establishing any corresponding framework or justification. As a result, this bungling has caused her agency to lose several high-profile cases. So far, much of this bungling seems to be "just for show" (ie political posturing) since it's not working. Unfortunately, it also has the effect of nerfing the market for entrepreneurial exits via acquisition. While it's true that acquisitions large enough to attract anti-trust scrutiny are outliers, much of the money invested in earlier stage startups (which drives most new job creation in the US), is justified by average returns substantially propped up by a few such >100x acquisitions. Half the extreme high-end outliers being lopped off by regulatory uncertainty around large acquisitions is one reason capital for new business creation and growth is getting scarcer and more expensive. The point being, this matters to our industry and jobs.

wins32767 3y ago
> earlier stage startups (which drives most new job creation in the US) This is absolutely not true.
- mrandish 3y ago
  I was referring not to just valley tech startups but investing in new small businesses overall. Per the U.S. Gov Small Business Administration: > "Despite the jobs lost during the recession, large businesses generated 6.7 million net new jobs over the past 25 years. During the same period, small businesses generated 12.9 million net new jobs, meaning small businesses have accounted for 66 percent of employment growth over the last 25 years." https://advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Small-Business-Job-Creation-Fact-Sheet-Apr2022.pdf https://advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Small-Bu...
  - mkl 3y ago
    That's about the size of the business, not about being new and rapidly growing. I think the large majority of small businesses are not startups.
    - mrandish 3y ago
      > "18% of small businesses fail within their first year, while 50% fail after five years and approximately 65% by their tenth year in business. This information is as per the Bureau of Labor Statistics." https://www.chamberofcommerce.org/small-business-statistics/ https://www.chamberofcommerce.org/small-business-statistics/ Combined with the long-term (25-year) data I cited further above, this indicates the majority of small businesses are started up recently. The pool of small companies is constantly turning over and refilling with new startups - of which the vast majority die in less than ten years and a very few grow to be large companies (thus no longer counted in the pool). By definition, the shape of the small business pool must be a very slender, very long curve when graphed by employee count. I think the tech community has perhaps a different set of connotations associated with the term "startup" than the non-tech, non-valley populace. The vast majority of startups (ie small companies started in the past five years) aren't technology companies and aren't fast growth. Yet there are so many of them, they comprise two-thirds of new job creation. Even better, many of these newly created jobs are entry-level, don't require advanced degrees or rare skills and don't require relocation to costly and crowded urban centers. I think this misconception of small businesses is pretty common in the high tech community. Before I was a tech entrepreneur in the valley, I started out as a non-tech entrepreneur far from the valley. Then I was a tech entrepreneur far from the valley, in a mid-western U.S. state. Despite being in the fairly large state capital, the largest regional newspaper wrote a story about "Tech Companies Here in the Capitol", citing my software startup and the local Radio Shack store as the only two :-). Yet the local Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Administration and entrepreneurship clubs were overflowing with pre-launch and just launched new startups ranging from a new kind of farm animal feed distributor to sandwich shops to (non-franchise) local restaurants to karate studios. Together these small businesses employed thousands of people in a city whose population could probably all fit within a few square blocks of NYC. I also want to point out, the organic, diverse, self-renewing nature of small business reality outside the tech, valley, urban bubbles is incredibly encouraging. As much as I love tech (and how rewarding it's been for me personally), I'm thankful the fickle, boom/bust, incestuous nature of high-tech startups is statistically the rare exception of new companies being started which drive new job creation.

wins32767 3y ago

> earlier stage startups (which drives most new job creation in the US) This is absolutely not true.

mrandish 3y ago
I was referring not to just valley tech startups but investing in new small businesses overall. Per the U.S. Gov Small Business Administration: > "Despite the jobs lost during the recession, large businesses generated 6.7 million net new jobs over the past 25 years. During the same period, small businesses generated 12.9 million net new jobs, meaning small businesses have accounted for 66 percent of employment growth over the last 25 years." https://advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Small-Business-Job-Creation-Fact-Sheet-Apr2022.pdf https://advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Small-Bu...
- mkl 3y ago
  That's about the size of the business, not about being new and rapidly growing. I think the large majority of small businesses are not startups.
  - mrandish 3y ago
    > "18% of small businesses fail within their first year, while 50% fail after five years and approximately 65% by their tenth year in business. This information is as per the Bureau of Labor Statistics." https://www.chamberofcommerce.org/small-business-statistics/ https://www.chamberofcommerce.org/small-business-statistics/ Combined with the long-term (25-year) data I cited further above, this indicates the majority of small businesses are started up recently. The pool of small companies is constantly turning over and refilling with new startups - of which the vast majority die in less than ten years and a very few grow to be large companies (thus no longer counted in the pool). By definition, the shape of the small business pool must be a very slender, very long curve when graphed by employee count. I think the tech community has perhaps a different set of connotations associated with the term "startup" than the non-tech, non-valley populace. The vast majority of startups (ie small companies started in the past five years) aren't technology companies and aren't fast growth. Yet there are so many of them, they comprise two-thirds of new job creation. Even better, many of these newly created jobs are entry-level, don't require advanced degrees or rare skills and don't require relocation to costly and crowded urban centers. I think this misconception of small businesses is pretty common in the high tech community. Before I was a tech entrepreneur in the valley, I started out as a non-tech entrepreneur far from the valley. Then I was a tech entrepreneur far from the valley, in a mid-western U.S. state. Despite being in the fairly large state capital, the largest regional newspaper wrote a story about "Tech Companies Here in the Capitol", citing my software startup and the local Radio Shack store as the only two :-). Yet the local Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Administration and entrepreneurship clubs were overflowing with pre-launch and just launched new startups ranging from a new kind of farm animal feed distributor to sandwich shops to (non-franchise) local restaurants to karate studios. Together these small businesses employed thousands of people in a city whose population could probably all fit within a few square blocks of NYC. I also want to point out, the organic, diverse, self-renewing nature of small business reality outside the tech, valley, urban bubbles is incredibly encouraging. As much as I love tech (and how rewarding it's been for me personally), I'm thankful the fickle, boom/bust, incestuous nature of high-tech startups is statistically the rare exception of new companies being started which drive new job creation.