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On Adobe acquiring Figma

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Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#21

Post by mkl »

radley wrote: post #12
mkl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the market did agree with him. Adobe's stock went down because the market, like the author, thought they paid too much, right?

His beef is that his project was viable competition. The design market and the purchase price made it clear that was not true. I don't think they paid too much. It will give Adobe 10 more years of subscriptions without effort. Without Figma, they would be reduced to metrics software (in 10 years).

Got it, design market vs. stock market. The acquisition at that price was like Adobe admitting they thought they couldn't compete.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#22

Post by dmurray »

askafriend wrote: post #4
quantified wrote: post #2

The person that the Figma org will report it just recently was with Greylock investing in Figma? Even if he has no money in it himself, it smells like taking care of family and friends. They'd remember his largesse and return the favor somehow later.

He was also at Adobe for 15yrs.

According to TFA, he was at Adobe for 1 year.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#23

Post by lucideer »

SpaghettiX wrote: post #9

Regarding the justifications for Figma's price: > most startups cut their valuation by a lot in 2022 Most startups are not used by every single other startup, whereas I would be very surprised if any startup doesn't use Figma for UI design. I've never used Canva and never heard a company using it. The only time I heard of Canva is to create a nice looking CV. Comparing outliers to the average/most isn't very helpful.…

> founders desperation (very low, especially to sell out to Adobe)

What makes you say this metric is "very low"?

Evan seemed (to my eyes) to be the technical drive behind Figma as a product, and left in 2021 (shifting focus to esbuild)

Dylan has come out criticising Adobe (in what mainly seemed like good marketing) in the past, but other than that, his focus has been investment, and - more recently - NFTs, crypto & web3. An exit seems very natural.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#24

Post by lucideer »

rippercushions wrote: post #19
SpaghettiX wrote: post #9

Regarding the justifications for Figma's price: > most startups cut their valuation by a lot in 2022 Most startups are not used by every single other startup, whereas I would be very surprised if any startup doesn't use Figma for UI design. I've never used Canva and never heard a company using it. The only time I heard of Canva is to create a nice looking CV. Comparing outliers to the average/most isn't very helpful.…

Canva is huge among casual users, eg. school-age children.

True, but I think that's the point. It's not really competing as directly in the Adobe/Figma market. Figma has massive corporate use & Canva's casual users would've been much less likely to have shelled out for a CS/CC licence anyway.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#25

Post by chx »

mkl wrote: post #21
radley wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His beef is that his project was viable competition. The design market and the purchase price made it clear that was not true. I don't think they paid too much. It will give Adobe 10 more years of subscriptions without effort. Without Figma, they would be reduced to metrics software (in 10 years).

Got it, design market vs. stock market. The acquisition at that price was like Adobe admitting they thought they couldn't compete.

Perhaps they could as things are but what would have happened if, say, Apple acquires Figma? What if Microsoft did? 20B is a lot of money -- to Adobe. Just to demonstrate how absurdly uneven the playing field is, Apple has ten times as much cash at hand.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#26

Post by bushbaba »

saos wrote: post #10

I simply believe Apple/Microsoft were circling Figma for an acquisition. That would be serious competition for Adobe and I imagine they got scared and threw the kitchen sink at Figma. If you're Apple or Microsoft PM. Please make internal noise to purchase a Figma competitor like Sketch and give Adobe/Figma a run for it money. Adobe clearly doesn't like competition.

*Some* VCs will invest and play off this, knowing they can run up the price by starting a bid war.

How it plays out.

VC: Hey Oracle, did you hear salesforce wants to buy XYZ Startup for 1M, you want to counter?

Oracle: Screw Benioff. I'm in for 2MM.

VC: Hey Salesforce, thanks for the first call. Oracle wants to buy XYZ startup for 4M, you want to counter.

Salesforce: Those devils, I'll do 5M.

....

VC continues the game until they've hit the ceiling or are about to, and walks away with a ton of cash.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#27

Post by ideamotor »

saos wrote: post #10

I simply believe Apple/Microsoft were circling Figma for an acquisition. That would be serious competition for Adobe and I imagine they got scared and threw the kitchen sink at Figma. If you're Apple or Microsoft PM. Please make internal noise to purchase a Figma competitor like Sketch and give Adobe/Figma a run for it money. Adobe clearly doesn't like competition.

I agree that would justify it. As they admitted, the article’s author is an outsider.

They threw out some questionable aspects of the purchase but let’s also realize they are not objective. This person worked on XD and haphazardly already consider this a loss of their personal investments in Adobe.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#28

Post by Arn_Thor »

saos wrote: post #10

I simply believe Apple/Microsoft were circling Figma for an acquisition. That would be serious competition for Adobe and I imagine they got scared and threw the kitchen sink at Figma. If you're Apple or Microsoft PM. Please make internal noise to purchase a Figma competitor like Sketch and give Adobe/Figma a run for it money. Adobe clearly doesn't like competition.

Maybe it’s lack of imagination but I can’t see how Figma fits into Apple’s software portfolio. Sure, it’s in the realm of “creative stuff” but so is a lot of software Apple isn’t involved with

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#29

Post by conro1108 »

dmurray wrote: post #22
askafriend wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was also at Adobe for 15yrs.

According to TFA, he was at Adobe for 1 year.

According to David Wadhwani’s LinkedIn, he was at Adobe from 2002-2015 with his title listed as SVP and GM of the “digital media business unit” before rejoining in 2021 as the Chief Business Officer.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#30

Post by alexghr »

bambax wrote: post #11

> Who is David Wadhwani, the person Figma is going to report to? (...) A little further research shows he joined Adobe in June 2021, just over a year ago. His last position prior was Venture Partner at venture capital firm Greylock. (...) Greylock invested in Figma in Series A, B, C, D, and E! Figma Series A’s price was $0.2 per share; it 200x’ed at the acquisition deal. Even if he didn't personally invest in Figma,…

Maybe the author should've opened David Wadhwani LinkedIn profile instead of just linking to it. He worked for Adobe for 13 years until 2015 and rejoined in 2021.

PS: not defending the purchase or Adobe but this statement in the article is factually wrong ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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