I respect the regulatory arbitrage, but for example Uber and Airbnb both arguably had pretty revolutionary tech layers on top of that. Trying to figure out what the equivalent here is.
Well, there are two big equivalents here:
One, Uber successfully lobbied cities (NYC DeBlasio comes to mind, but there was one in London) - getting to a scale before meaningful enforcement action (which sometimes means investors maintaining their trust in the team, and the team sticking through the lawsuits) usually means you now have a customer base that is of voting age, and can substantially impact politics.
Two, Chevron deference is over. This is linked somewhat to the first - the overreach of federal agencies is now judicially balanced against the economic impact, not merely presumed authorized by Congress. Under this SCOTUS it is relatively uncertain which way FDA's authority will be curtailed - people will try, the fact that FDA wants to regulate the sale of non-invasive diagnostic equipment and mobile apps.. does warrant review and political discussion.
I'd wager the technical advantage is on the backend not the consumer facing. You'd be surprised how unsophisticated an unoptimized a lot of industries are.
On the manufacturing side of the world, "did this thing show up when I expected" is a remarkably difficult yet valuable question.
