But this is where all/most “platforms” go. As the product offering flounders over time, your quality talent (engineering and business) boils off to other opportunities. Then the short term value extraction methodologies show up, and everyone looks on in horror as the platform is “destroyed” through “mismanaged” consumer relationships.

Working in agtech, I’ve always wondered if this isn’t just the disenfranchised farmer story.

Give a farmer 1,000 acres to farm, and if they’re playing the long game, they’ll intermix their high value crops with responsible crop rotations. Managed well, this business can go on indefinitely.

But tell them they have 5 years left to farm the ground, and that the land will be of no value after that, they’ll grow the most expensive crop they can every year, soil quality be damned. It makes the most sense from a value extraction point of view.

Broadcom seems to be the kind of farmers that buy up forsaken land and extract as much value as possible before it finally fails.