Has recent US antitrust and tech policy helped or harmed startup innovation?

Michael Eisenberg · Jun 19, 2024

Lina Khan is a threat to American capitalism and should be removed from her post regardless of whether Biden or Trump wins the election

0:00 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg

Michael Eisenberg · Jun 19, 2024

Lina Khan is a threat to American capitalism and needs to go regardless of whether Biden or Trump wins, because big companies must be able to do M&A

As best he can tell she hasn't redefined what antitrust is, so she is taking liberties that are bad for capitalism globally

30:51 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg

Max Altman · Nov 21, 2025

Trump has clearly helped US tech on net

Less regulation is generally good, and the reopening M&A and IPO markets return money to LPs and back to VCs, making the whole system healthier

53:31 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster

Josh Browder · May 18, 2026

The current administration is objectively better for tech than the last one, whose tech policy — epitomized by Lina Khan's FTC — was actively harmful

Several of his portfolio companies had acquisitions blocked under that approach, and he heard of a biotech acquisition blocked such that a drug never got developed and people die each year as a result

Scope: independent of whether you agree with the administration generally

66:28 20VC: Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio | The One Man Accelerator at The Four Seasons | Why VCs Can Be Sharks and What Founders Need to Know | Why Stocks and Cash are BS and You Should Invest in Land with Josh Browder

Imran Khan · Aug 26, 2024

The M&A market is not actually shut; the real blockage is that seller price expectations are too high, not regulation

Public acquirers trading at 20-30x earnings cannot afford to pay 50x revenue for a target, and private-to-private mergers are impossible because valuations and cap tables are messed up; people simply like to blame everything on one cause

21:48 20VC: Why the IPO Market is not Closed | Why Revenue Multiples are BS and Founders Need to Change | Advice From Jack Ma, Jamie Dimon and Evan Spiegel | Lessons from Taking Snap & Alibaba Public with Imran Khan

Mamoon Hamid · Oct 21, 2024

Replacing Lina Khan would not restore the M&A market, and she and the FTC do not deserve most of the blame

In his own experience with Adobe-Figma, the FTC was not the issue — the UK's CMA was the heavily involved regulator

31:01 20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Mamoon Hamid on Investing Lessons from Leading Rounds in Figma, Slack and Rippling | Lessons Building a Generational Defining Firm with Kleiner Perkins | AI: Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws

Imran Khan · Aug 26, 2024

Regulatory risk only meaningfully affects the top ~20 US public companies; the other ~1,980 companies above $2B market cap will not have much difficulty acquiring, so blaming everything on Lina Khan is unfair

Scrutiny concentrates on the largest acquirers like Google, Facebook and Adobe, and in many of those cases high scrutiny probably makes sense

Scope: high scrutiny on the top 20 is probably justified

23:30 20VC: Why the IPO Market is not Closed | Why Revenue Multiples are BS and Founders Need to Change | Advice From Jack Ma, Jamie Dimon and Evan Spiegel | Lessons from Taking Snap & Alibaba Public with Imran Khan

Harry Stebbings · Aug 26, 2024

It is only mega acquisitions that draw regulatory scrutiny; mid-size deals continue to clear, as Loom's $950M sale to Atlassian and Clearbit's $150M sale to HubSpot show

24:01 20VC: Why the IPO Market is not Closed | Why Revenue Multiples are BS and Founders Need to Change | Advice From Jack Ma, Jamie Dimon and Evan Spiegel | Lessons from Taking Snap & Alibaba Public with Imran Khan

Hussein Kanji · Jan 20, 2025

The Trump administration will open up the M&A and IPO markets

JD Vance has made clear that the FTC has no business blocking sub-$500M transactions

73:13 Trump administration will open up ma and ipo markets

Roger Ehrenberg · Feb 19, 2024 · hedged

Antitrust enforcement was extremely weak for a generation and has now over-corrected all the way in the other direction; he expects the pendulum to swing back

63:28 Antitrust swung from decades of weak enforcement to overcorrection and will revert