Or worth buying up. Which in many cases was the "purpose" of doing the startup in the first place.

Sure, we'd all like to think that the goal was an idealistic "startup does things for bettering humankind".

But let's face it: A large amount of startups are literally founded as an "easier" alternative of building a "more agile" sub-organization within an established and more process driven org and then just get bought out by some of those larger orgs.

Whether or not those large orgs are then actually successful in integration and actually properly leveraging what they bought vs. just "crushing competition", is not necessarily the concern of the founders, depending on how ruthless vs. idealistic they are.