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On Adobe acquiring Figma

build.typogram.co

41–50 of 83 posts

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#41
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.

Figma doesn't sound like something that would fit Apple at all.

One of their differentiators is their performant web app which is something Apple is very much against. Then collaboration where Apple is also bad at on top of iterating fast, which Apple is also bad at for software.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#42
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.

Why would Apple be interested? They really don't care about applications anymore.

I'm a bit surprised they even bother with FCP and Motion at this point. I have no idea what they would do with Figma. They can't even get SwiftUI to work after several years, so offering up a design product as part of Xcode or something would definitely be lipstick on a pig.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#43
post #36
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.

Is Sketch still macOS only? That would seem like a major barrier.

I read recently that they have a read-only web version now

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#44
post #41
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.

Figma doesn't sound like something that would fit Apple at all. One of their differentiators is their performant web app which is something Apple is very much against. Then collaboration where Apple is also bad at on top of iterating fast, which Apple is also bad at for software.

Wouldn’t be surprised if Apple Freeform matures into a Figma competitor https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/06/apple-offers-snea...

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#45
"Adobe XD supports multi-player mode for three years now" – this is maybe true for some small batch of alpha version users. The designer at my last startup insisted on using XD and it was a huge pain because you couldn't work in parallel – the first person opening a file was locking it down for others to change.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#46
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also spin it the other way, that Adobe hired an expert on Figma, someone who knew it well, has seen it grow, knew how it looked on the inside, and would probably easily spot any time the Figma team would be bullshitting during negotiations. At least one such person on your team is I think a major asset, but of course someone like that will likely still be connected in some fashion to that company, and create…

Wouldn't that be more of a consultant role, rather than having the entire newly acquired org report to him as a manager?

Would you hire a consultant to manage a $20bn relationship or a FTE?

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#47
post #45

"Adobe XD supports multi-player mode for three years now" – this is maybe true for some small batch of alpha version users. The designer at my last startup insisted on using XD and it was a huge pain because you couldn't work in parallel – the first person opening a file was locking it down for others to change.

This seems strange - they are very strongly featuring "live co-editing" as the supported feature set: https://www.adobe.com/products/xd/features/coediting.html

If they didn't have support for that this would be a pretty egregious lie in the "here's our list of supported features" pitch to buyers?

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#48
post #35
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,…

Does that qualify as a form of insider trading or some other violation of FTC regulations?

By now we know that if it’s only unethical it doesn’t violate regulations.

Re: On Adobe acquiring Figma

#50
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that be more of a consultant role, rather than having the entire newly acquired org report to him as a manager?

Would you hire a consultant to manage a $20bn relationship or a FTE?

"Full Time Executive"?

Or Economist. Both are probably correct.

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