Dave Baggett on strategy tax
From David Baggett: Special Presentation to UM EIP Students · · MarylandTechnologyEnterpriseInstitute
“What a 'strategy tax' is: a company like Microsoft with a large established market share will not do things that benefit them because they are afraid those things will harm their existing market share.”
On , Dave Baggett, Cofounder at Inky, spoke about strategy tax during David Baggett: Special Presentation to UM EIP Students on MarylandTechnologyEnterpriseInstitute.
About Dave Baggett
In a September 2025 executive roundtable hosted by CRN, Baggett advised that managed service providers (MSPs) should position themselves as AI advisors for their clients. He stated that AI is "going to be way too complicated" and that MSPs can "morph into the adviser" who can sift through a "zillion AI based solutions" and recommend a few. Baggett noted that while there may be a "window of opportunity" for MSPs in this role, the space could eventually be "subsumed by the big tech monopolies" like Google and Microsoft. Baggett, a University of Maryland alumnus and co-creator of Crash Bandicoot, previously co-founded ITA Software, which was acquired by Google. In a 2011 presentation to University of Maryland students, he discussed his entrepreneurial experiences, including the founding of a stealth-mode startup called Our Code, which he described as "fixing email." He characterized startups as "time bombs" and advised that entrepreneurs should "multiply your honest best guess of time and money needed by ten."