Ah yes, startups, bastions of rational thinking.

More like, a large company has to be rational, as the article points out, throwing money at research for uncertain returns is not as straightforward as throwing it at scaling for known returns.

Startups are allowed to be irrational because investors know upfront that what their dollars are getting is a high variance outcome. People buy a stake in Microsoft when they want what they perceive to be a safe investment.