Reddit mentions of Mergers and Acquisitions: A Condensed Practitioner's Guide

Not in way of argument, but it's very important that the ideators of the world understand the difference between ideation and investment.

Bill Gates is well known for giving start-ups the cash

There are investors out there that throw money at ideas purely based on the idea, and nothing else. But these are the exact type of people that are being mocked in this thread - I haven't met one, myself, after many years in the field. In truth, the amount of diligence that goes behind anything beyond simple market investment is tremendous. I would argue doing research on angel investment is a sticky path. If anyone with an idea who has dreams of starting a company really wants to find that dream investor, I recommend starting with one of these books on how acquisitions work. Then work your way to understanding early-class investment. At the end of the day, they're tremendously easier to understand, and give you a better learning curve into the grit that goes into determining which - of thousands of ideas - to invest in, and which not to. There are literally thousands, if not orders of magnitude more, ideas currently being tossed around to earn money. Investors, like Bill Gates, who want to turn their money into more money, do (or pay people to do) the grit work to ensure they pick the right ones.

In this way - developers are an investor. They invest time, not money, but in essence it's exactly the same, because they could easily spend that time working on a better investment.

Books:

• Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies
  
• Mergers and Aquisitions: A Condensed Practitioner's Guide
  
  And maybe my favorite:
  
  
• How to Be an Angel Investor by Paul Graham
  
  Edit/Source: I manage and perform technical due diligence for startup acquisitions for a Fortune-500 company