I'm Kenneth Berger, I work in product management at Adobe driving acquisitions and partnerships. I helped build the business cases, perform due diligence, and plan integration for both deals. I've been working at Macromedia and then Adobe for 7+ years. Very excited to work with both these awesome teams! Obviously I can't reveal certain details, but ask me anything, I'll answer as best I can.
I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
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Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#2When does Adobe decide to buy vs. build?
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#3When does Adobe decide to buy vs. build?
Obviously it really depends on the specific circumstances, but often it comes down to time, talent, and community. Sometimes the need is urgent, sometimes there's exceptional talent we'd love to join Adobe, and often there's a community that's not easily duplicable. I'd say all three played a role in these deals.
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#4What strategic value does the acquisition of PhoneGap possess for Adobe? Is the idea to introduce integration of Adobe services (e.g. CreativeCloud) into PhoneGap to make it easier for developers, designers, agencies to build Adobe-enhanced mobile apps?
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#5Have you seen any good examples of iOS apps made from HTML5 with PhoneGap that are actually good?
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#6Lots of small companies, like YC co's post demo-day, get bought as talent acquisitions. Adobe doesn't seem to focus on that stage much. Why?
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#7Does Adobe have a strategy to fight HTML5 or make good progress with open standards b/c of the Typekit purchase? We don't want Adobe to shut down Typekit by any means b/c of how awesome it is and I'm afraid Adobe is resistant to HTML5 as an open standard. Please don't throw money at solutions to killing amazing products which enhance HTML5.
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#8What strategic value does the acquisition of PhoneGap possess for Adobe? Is the idea to introduce integration of Adobe services (e.g. CreativeCloud) into PhoneGap to make it easier for developers, designers, agencies to build Adobe-enhanced mobile apps?
If you consider it as a mobile version of AIR (http://www.adobe.com/products/air/) then its relevance should be apparent. Not sure why AIR is important to them in the first place though.
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#9What strategic value does the acquisition of PhoneGap possess for Adobe? Is the idea to introduce integration of Adobe services (e.g. CreativeCloud) into PhoneGap to make it easier for developers, designers, agencies to build Adobe-enhanced mobile apps?
Well, the first thing to note is that Adobe has not and doesn't intend to acquire PhoneGap itself. PhoneGap is in the process of being contributed to the Apache Software Foundation, and will remain free and open source. That said, we're definitely interested in continuing to support PhoneGap's development via contributions from the Nitobi team. PhoneGap Build, the hosted service based on PhoneGap, will become part of Adobe. So part of the value is that service, but the key is simply enabling efficient, expressive design and development across devices, regardless of technology. We're excited to investigate what integrations will make sense, but right now it's too early to say.
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#10Why?
Getting past the normal corporate mumbo jumbo, what did you see in the companies that piqued your interest? Was it a talent acquisition? Do you actually see these technologies being integrated with existing adobe technologies (specifically Flash)?