HN user
You linked to a TED Talk from Ray Dalio at Bridgewater - a company that has hired McKinsey and BCG frequently. It's not as simple as just communicating.
The reality is that strategy consultants sell services targeted at senior management at large corporations, a category that ~0% of Hacker News falls into.
This will probably be a huge boost to Mapbox - they have great tech, are built on top of OSM, and have much better pricing
From a financial standpoint, there is a simple way to look at this. Did the acquisition price:
(a) Return the investors money? (b) Compensate the founders for the opportunity cost of their time?
If so, then the acquiring company valued the startup as being worth more than the resources that went into it, so the startup created value.
With most acquihires, I think the answer to both (a) and (b) is "no", so it's not fair to call the startup a success.
There are other considerations - the value the startup created for customers, the enjoyment of the founders, the treatment of the startup employees, and so forth. But if you burnt investor money and / or didn't make back the cost of your time, it's hard to call it a success.
I'm a management consultant. When hackers (Michael O'Church, for instance) write about "MBA Culture" as opposed to "Hacker Culture" - well, I'm in the center of the MBAs.
Why do I read HN? Mostly, because I like and enjoy working in the technology space (defined broadly) and hope to build a career in tech. HN is great at giving me a view over the other side of the fence.