Thanks for posting the AMA.
What sort of business criteria are you generally looking for in acquisitions? Is it technology or is it people or something else altogether.
Thanks.
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
#62[deleted]
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#63Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#64Does 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.
Adobe is strongly supportive of HTML5 and open standards. In fact, we've recently released two tools, Edge and Muse, that are built on HTML and related technologies. We intend to help Typekit continue to grow and continue to leverage open standards.
I really want to believe you, but I've spent the last five years undoing horrors wrought by Dreamweaver on my clients' websites. Why should I believe this time is different?
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am paying attention, trust me, but I am a little dubious, too, considering Adobe's past. If Adobe tries to throw money at bringing down HTML5, I surely hope this is not the beginning of that. May Typekit continue to thrive and improve without the bloat and closeness that Adobe likes to incorporate into its products.
What part of Adobe's past are you referring to? The part where they support open web standards? Or are you merely referring to Flash, that component that was doing more for "standards" back when browsers weren't. How quickly people forget.
Haha, I hear you but I am also referring to the quality of their products.
Yes, Photoshop et al have added a bunch of really great features but along with that comes convoluted, inconsistent and sometimes ugly UI features. Is it worth the expensive prices? Not really.
Remember Homesite? They integrated that into the convoluted trash that we now have called Dreamweaver. Homesite's features made Dreamweaver the editor to have 7 years ago but I graduated from this editor b/c I couldn't stand how bloated it was and Dreamweaver fell behind.
What's to say this won't happen to Typekit? It could easily be integrated into a bloaty, proprietary crapware that will essentially kill it like many others Adobe has gotten rid of. Sorry, I just don't have a much faith in Adobe.
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Why would they close the doors?" Very good question, but one that needs a responsible answer. Adobe wants the web to live on using its proprietary formats like Flash while a growing minority is resisting this and switching to HTML5. Adobe's efforts are a good start but have a long way to go. Muse, for example, has good intentions but in practice is a horrible product with extremely convoluted code. I'm not a Flash h…
You have to understand Adobe's view of Flash. The reason they were pushing so hard for Flash support is that they wanted to be the gateway to multimedia and interactivity on mobile devices. For the longest time, Flash was how you played video on the web, and Flash was how you made rich, interactive websites. When iOS came along it threatened that, and Adobe wanted to protect their stranglehold in order to maximize th…
Sadly, Flash still is how you play video on the web and make a lot of rich, interactive presentations on websites b/c only in the last few years has HTML5 started taking off. We're stuck in a proprietary world until we get over the bickering and complacency of open standards.
I'm definitely not trying to discredit the HTML5 work Adobe has done to play catch up but part of me feels like it's too little, too late in some ways.
Adobe has to make money, they obviously have a huge grip in the design community and they're not going away anytime soon so we need to push back as much as possible to make sure they don't continue on with bad practices and listen to the community, which increasingly they are. Sadly, too many of us feel abandoned when some of our favorite software gets left behind (Homesite) or bloated (Photoshop/Flash/Illustrator).
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#671- How long (average)does it take to acquire a company from the time you send the first email to the time the check clears in their bank account? 2- For every company you acquire how many companies do you look into and end up not buying?
Typical no-shops are 60 days, and startup-sized acquisitions can be closed in that period.
A motivated buyer can turn it around in 30 if necessary.
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#68Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#69Does Adobe plan more of these types of acquisitions in the future?
I'm assuming they'll buy Medialets eventually, and the only reason they haven't yet is they're not eye-to-eye on price.
Re: I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA
#70Does 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.
Adobe is strongly supportive of HTML5 and open standards. In fact, we've recently released two tools, Edge and Muse, that are built on HTML and related technologies. We intend to help Typekit continue to grow and continue to leverage open standards.
Another point to keep in mind is that our support of HTML5 and open standards crosses a variety of audiences. The folks who appreciate our contributions to jQuery and WebKit aren't usually the same ones who appreciate the easy visual design Muse offers. So while a given single product may not make sense for your workflow, the larger point is that we're strong supporters of HTML5 as a platform going forward. That support is being instantiated via a variety of tools, services, and frameworks suiting a variety of audiences.