Yeah I'm not fully buying a startup lives or dies based on packaging deal of a long-embedded mega corp.

Unless his startup was VC funded and was already seriously penetrating enterprise and then couldn't get round C of financing because their 100+ person sales team couldn't make the high growth math make sense.

Otherwise usually your value prop can't be closely tied to *relatively* minor accounting decisions in the early days or you're already DOA when facing an entrenched opponent whose team can easily undercut you well beyond generic bundling deals (whether via strong existing relationships, making wider non-standard sweetheart deals that wouldn't be under regulatory scrutiny, and marketing budgets).

Don't get me wrong this can harm markets generally, and megacorps should be held to higher scrutiny, but usually it's not that simple.