So this project was started in 2017, raised enough money from backers to get to (some) fruition, and was acquired within 18-24 months? Did its founders get a good payout from that, or were they just grateful to get funding to continue the project with someone else's capital? I can't tell from the article but this seems like a darned flash in the plan.
Compare - I sold my bootstrapped company in 2018 after 16 years. It had been my entire career, and had hit a wall basically because of me & my big head not being able to work with my co-founder (and old friend & brother-in-law). Even then I understood the lie you have to tell everyone for the cash - we're very excited, nothing will change, etc. etc. The awful blog post is still up :-O
The acquirers insisted on an earn-out based on profit over the next 12 months. And 2 weeks after the acquisition I realised. I called them on Friday and said "so I had started a lot of projects with a payoff in much longer than this time. Nobody at the parent company seems interested in them, I've contacted (long list of people) and had nothing back. Since you were explicit about short-term profit being the goal, I'm intending to start firing 40-60% of staff related on Monday, which should lift profit considerably in the remaining quarters on my contract - there's no risk to operations."
I had a pearl-clutching call back from the CFO who was shocked SHOCKED at how I would treat my former company. That's not how they do things at (parent company). He would put his foot down and use his statutory right as a company director to stop me. Then he offered me & my co-founder about 20% of the earn-out cap to leave immediately, and we took it.
Of course they fired everyone anyway 3 months later. Maybe I'm just older than the OP was, I was 38 and tired of the whole thing, but (after travelling up a few times to the parent company's offices) I assumed the acquirers would do the worst, most short-term thing possible and I was not disappointed.
(A small consolation was seeing the CFO purchasing gobs of his company's own shares at the near-peak share price following the acquisition - it's declined steadily, and now suddenly, and is stands at 40% that peak).