Interesting. Yeah, I'm in Canada, so perhaps too near the Belly of the Beast! Haha...

But how confident are you that those companies aren't just months away from acquisitions? If they're VC funded then it's kind of that or an IPO. Of course, I realize that venture firms do exist that are trying to find different ways of doing things, so perhaps that's the case with the companies you mention. Obviously disruptive technologies and services are everywhere, but the big funnel that (eventually) drags them all into the hands of a few corporations is fairly ubiquitous.