That fear, especially today, is completely unfounded. Nobody has budget, personnel or appetite for quixotic "Stamp out a tiny would-be competitor" projects. Th

That fear, especially today, is completely unfounded. Nobody has budget, personnel or appetite for quixotic "Stamp out a tiny would-be competitor" projects. The business climate inside large orgs is now more conservative and financially constrained. There is no infinite stack of cash. Headcounts have been slashed so there's no longer teams or leaders that have the bandwidth to try and spin up a new product/team. To add to that: people forget when you're private and not splashed across the pages of every business magazine nobody really knows how successful your company really is outside your own employees and maybe some savvy industry insiders. And none of them know all the details. A big company seeing slowing growth (or a shrinking market) is going to be reluctant to believe some startup in an adjacent space is seeing enough growth to get a foothold.