In my mind, the ideal startup would be middle-shifted towards MIT. Following the author's story, the only advantage the Stanford startup has is first to market vs. the MIT startup which has a technological advantage over competitors.
Furthermore, if their new process is truly innovative it can be patented and may end up being adopted by their competitors in exchange for royalties. Similar to the story of Pilkington Glass, which invented the float glass process for making large sheet of plate glass. Pilkington made as much money from royalties and license fees as from manufacturing glass.