Most importantly Auth0 was beating Okta on execution. Auth0 was leaner and would soon get to feature parity for both use cases. Without this deal they would slowly have lost ground to Auth0.
> Anti-competitive practices are commonly only deemed illegal when the practice results in a substantial dampening in competition, hence why for a firm to be punished for any form of anti-competitive behaviour they generally need to be a monopoly or a dominant firm in a duopoly or oligopoly who has significant influence over the market.
Since there are many auth providers (ie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OAuth_providers) in the market, the takeover of auth0 by okta is not a problem for "the market". It is therefore up to the shareholders of auth0 to sell their shares or not and clearly they chose to cash out instead of gambling that they could continue to out-execute okta and their other competitors.
It's a tortured argument to say that SoftBank's investments are creating more competition or innovation.
Specifically, the "Mergers"[2] section outlines the cases in which government interference might be efficiency promoting.
[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
[2]: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
While you could say there are other offerings, are they as mature? A big shark swimming in a sea of minnows is not a balanced/competitive market.
This is exactly the problem, the assumption that huge conglomerate juggernauts hoovering up or invading every sector is adequate or healthy competition.
Also that list seems to be very iffy at listing actual competitors to the Auth0 product offering. Much of it looks like services that use OAuth integration for access to their proprietary platform, not necessarily a dev-focused blank canvas for SSO/CIAM integration within your own app. Many specificly list OIDC as No. The list doesn't even have Auth0 on it.
What? What definition are you using for anti-competitive. What you're describing is competition.
Here's the wiki article listing examples of anti-competitive action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices#Typ...
once you hit a certain level, you run out of buyers, and thus lose much of your ability to sell at multiples over value... so effective price ceiling.
There's always salesforce :).
No, thank you for a cogent analysis; interesting to me how the incentives shift as you grow and how an IPO can be riskier than a sale.
not a lot of buyers at that level, so as soon as > $1B, and bought for way more than 10X on revenue, so unclear if/when they'd see $6B again. capital is cheap right now too, and while interest rates are expected to stay low for 3+ yr, in reality no one knows as the current situation is confusing economists...
Business hasn't been about the long term for a while, especially if you're a startup. The goal is to gain recognition and sell at the first good chance you get... rinse, repeat.
You only need to look at what happened to Sears and K-Mart to know that what people look for in value of a company is what you can sell off, not how well you can compete.
He said, expecting the answer, "no."