Sure, he scared off advertisers by welcoming nazis onto the platform. That's not something you'd want to replicate.

But he also fired 80% of the workforce, and the product kept working. If you have some subscription software where users keep paying $$$$ whether you add new features or not - getting rid of 80% of those expensive developers could be pretty tempting.

I think Unity is the next big test case. If users leave the platform in droves and revenue tanks it will continue to confirm the current hypotheses. That said private equity firms will keep trying it no matter what as the market biases make it an easier space to compete so I’m not sure it matters much to software companies.

A company that uses Photoshop, or Altium, or SolidWorks, isn't going to move off it easily. Hell, existing users will often initially be thankful when product managers stop moving the buttons every 6 months.

Of course you'll stop attracting new customers as your product gets surpassed - but there could be a lot of $$$$ to be extracted before revenue drops to zero.

SAP offered to migrate us -- on to their new HANA platform. Guess how much that would cost?

So we still have these ancient Oracle boxes and newish MSSQL kicking around. They should be entering high school before too long...