This was kind of entertaining and it actually happens a lot. There appeared to be a person wo took great pride in trying to publicly bash his competitors because at the time he felt that he could without any repercussion considering those companies were virtually unheard of. Well, you know how this story plays out where those companies appeared to have grown to a respectable size which just happens to affect the person who originally criticized them publicly in derogatory way.
The funny thing was the person appeared to then casually try to strike a conversation with the owners as if noting have ever happened. As a joke it seems, the owners just kind of played along but ultimately swayed him off. In these cases I don’t see how people wouldn’t feel that they need to actually apologize before attempting to connect these ways. I’m sure it hurts the ego, but it’s necessary I think to give the other party an opportunity to forgive the person or not. Otherwise, that means the person never changed and why would one want to go into business with them?
It would have been best of course to just try and be professional from the start huh?