2. Expectation from you is to raise PR until you 'know' how it's done. By showing up from bigtech and by suggesting solutions, you are basically telling them you've seen it done better, and that's a bitter pill to swallow.

3. The startup has been around for 10 years, and tech changes fast; things might have been built rapidly and to a paying customer's corner case, and now the product looks terrible from an external observer's perspective.

4. Even bigtech products evolve into terrible things and nobody has time to go fix on a haunch from someone, however insightful it is. If you claim to have tech skills, why not come up with metrics to prove your point and how much money it can save or bring in.

5. You can't convince people from your pedigree, but from your insights AND backing it with data (latency, resource usage ==> revenue).

6. Startups don't have money laying around so if features don't have $$$ printed on them, they get canned.

good luck!