May is National Small Business Month. Small businesses and startups play an important part in the technology sector, and many proposed policy changes could be particularly impactful on them. While often antitrust is thought of as a “big business” issue, the reality is that changes to competition policy, such as restrictions on mergers and acquisitions, affect businesses of all sizes.

Many proponents of antitrust policy changes assert that these changes are necessary to protect small businesses particularly in the technology sector. Some assert that there is currently a “kill zone” where successful startups are gobbled up by today’s tech giants before they can become rivals, while others say these transactions occur in a healthy market for a variety of reasons that often benefit small companies and consumers as well as larger companies. Do the data support the idea of a “kill zone”? How might antitrust changes impact the evolution of small businesses and the choices they have in their journey?

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• Draft Merger Guidelines for Public Comment, FTC-2023–0043 by Jennifer Huddleston