[smugma]

As this is HN, I wonder what this implies for technology companies as a whole. It's easy to see how the Trillion dollar companies are engaged in this e.g. Tim Cook attended the premiere.

And we see how crypto companies court the Whitehouse through various mechanisms.

How might this factor into "mere" unicorn startups? I think it does but not sure how.

My guess is that if you're an early stage startup that isn't an AI company already worth billions, you can probably ignore this as noise and focus on building product. It's reasonably likely that by the time your startup is sufficiently large, there will be a new administration (because it takes a few years and presumably he will not be president in 2029).

[jfil]

I think one implication is that ad-driven tech companies are at great risk. In a political system where National Champion businesses are selected/assisted on the basis of bribery, advertising becomes irrelevant. Why spend money advertising Widget X when this widget is already the only one that's officially sanctioned?