[mintycrisp]

The article doesn't really offer any alternatives to fighting fire with fire (money vs money). More like different approaches to how to use your fire money. Source talent outside of the Valley, compete in a newer market and utilize smaller governments to avoid regulations. They touch on culture at the end, but explains it only as having access to new/untapped talent to hire which is basically their first point.

I think the best way to fight monoliths and huge money pits is with your company's ideals such as share everything, privacy at all costs, don't be evil tech, focused on the best user experience/optimization/features, building an open source metaverse, etc...

As well as letting your users have a say in someway or another into what the end product is. Allowing them to be invested in how it turns out, the way it is used and whom it benefits the most. I believe this is the best way to get sticky users who are not just looking at the bottom dollar and those users become your biggest advocates helping you grow more and more.