M&A only really makes sense to me in the #2 case, where the merger actually better enables us to deliver our product. I certainly think there are cases where acquisition can be a boon to your users, we just don't hear about them as much.
For money to be a motivating factor, though, it would have to be enough to ensure that I could fulfill our promise to our users and also bankroll working on one of the problems from #1 :)
Can you say more about this? I ask because it is a common reason people go and start their own company. The risk of course is if you decide wrong your company goes out of business. I've suggested to folks a contract, basically they have some idea that is going to change the world, and I'm willing to give them fully autonomous authority to make the decisions, with the caveat that we define the success criteria of the idea, which is to say a measurable way to say that they have achieved success or not, and a timeline for when that has to be met. They have to agree that if they don't meet the criteria they're out of a job.
The goal is to tie "primary decision maker" to "is most directly impacted by". That binding is a natural pair when doing your own company, it's less natural when you are in a larger company. I've found when my decisions could affect the future of someone "above" me in the food chain, that made them quite nervous if they didn't trust my decision making ability.
I wonder sometimes if this request for decision making authority is really a request to be trusted. Would be interested in thoughts on that.
To some degree I think I agree with you that what this ultimately comes down to is trust - trust that I can fix this, or that I can make blah happen. I've worked for some great people who did trust me, but unfortunately someone up the chain didn't. To make any real impact I think you have to be willing to take some serious risks and when you're that far away from the problem, it's hard to imagine why those risks are worth taking.
In any sufficiently large organization, preaching a disparate vision is bound to hit a wall, because somewhere in there is another guy just like you - someone crazy enough to start a company because they believe in their own vision.
1) Chance to work on a dramatically more interesting problem (I'd probably jump ship in 15 minutes to do seriously credible human Mars settlement, or space cannon/ram accelerator for a $1/MB LEO sat constellation, or a viable way to deploy blinded ecash globally, or a US Senate seat or SCOTUS appointment, or "Commander, ISAF" so I could effect the complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan within 6 months...)
2) A more effective way to deploy my product/service to more users (i.e. if Apple wanted us to turn the OSX and iOS network infrastructure into the most secure/performant/reliable way for businesses and groups to network)
More money generally wouldn't be enough; even just "go work for an immediate pre-IPO company where you're likely to get a $3mm payout if things go well, plus a $200k/yr salary" if #1 or #2 weren't met. SpaceX is really the only place which meets #1 and viable pre-IPO in the next year I think.