We document that many acquisitions of startups by digital platforms are of firms offering complementary rather than directly competing services. This motivates an endogenous growth model of competition among financially-constrained startups competing to create a new technology. An acquirer outside the industry can meet and acquire startups in order to provide additional financing for R&D. The presence of deep-pocketed acquirers accelerates the arrival of the new technology, but has ambiguous effects on its expected quality, both of which matter for welfare. When project quality is known, acquirers are more selective than startups to fund the project because of the option to search again, but if project quality is still uncertain, acquirers are less selective because of their deep pockets.