> Instead of giving this one company $2.6 billion, the investors could have invested $100k in 26k different startups.
This already happens, its called angel or accelerator funding. YC gives $150K to 200+ company every year. Some of these companies then raise more, then some more.
For founder with successful exits or other outstanding achievement, they can effectively start with series C and raise 50 million as the first round.
Thereafter everyone wants to bet on the winning horse.
If there is virus growing in a Petri dish, we can inhibit the growth. But we have no idea what happens when we put this drug in a complex living being.
Monopoly market leadership in their respective fields, which translates to high gross margin, which leads to a ton of cash on hand. Conversely, being market leaders, they are solving some really hard problems related to scale and attract good engineers.
The article is not saying that - if IBM hires 100,000 developers but AppAmaGooBookSoft have a hiring freeze, then then you get a much smaller risk premium. The point being that AppAmaGooBookSoft pay insane salaries so other companies need to pay their employees somewhat well to minimize risk losing their (best) employees to AppAmaGooBookSoft.
Phew ... tragedy averted. I ranted earlier about them [0]. We didn't use google Hire exactly for this reason. And they were more expensive than existing software while providing few features with less polish.
And yes, they had a more aggressive sales force pushing the product, who would cold call, play the discount game, etc.
This could have been a good value add to the G-Suite. Alas.