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Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

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Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#801

Post by doctorpangloss »

yawnxyz wrote: post #790
doctorpangloss wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stylized comment. It is a bunch of lists, but the UI is sometimes the lists are scrolling horizontally album covers, sometimes they are popping up from menu buttons, sometimes they go full screen and scroll normally, sometimes they are cut short to 5 elements and you cannot see more, sometimes they continue to 20 elements and you can press to see more, sometimes it's a list with headers that all contain mor…

(I’m a UX engineer but not at Spotify) It’s always been wild to me how incongruous / inconsistent the experience of using Spotify’s web/ios/android apps have been. It points to an organizational mess rather than a Figma mess, but maybe it also shows that Figma doesn’t address the entire picture yet of addressing org level communication and syncing with prod assets

At least to the specific, valuable role of a UX designer, the biggest problem with Figma is it has no opinions or affordances for improving HCI. The best UX designers have strong HCI opinions and Figma does nothing for them. It is fundamentally a tool to (mis)-style lists. So it is unfortunate it is adopted as much as it is, UX designers should be spending their intellectual energy on more scientific stuff.

> It points to an organizational mess rather than a Figma mess

The two are related. It's like Conway's law.

Figma has some pretty generic opinions about how apps or shit should be made. (https://www.figma.com/blog/working-well/). Like it has this collaborative editing multiplayer thing going on, but you could just ignore that, many bosses effectively use it to tell subordinates exactly what to do without any feedback. Nonetheless they have countless public materials espousing the things it can do and how using those features to the max, especially collaboration, is the Right Way.

However if your way of doing things aligns with its unique value proposition, such as by requiring many people to collaboratively turn simple lists into confusing lists, that is bad.

If you lean into what Figma writes is "Working Well," you will create an app that looks and feels like Spotify. That is what I am saying. It's on Figma.

This isn't a fringe opinion by any means. SAP users get the most success from conforming their business to the way their SAP vertical solution says to do things. Git is also opinionated.

Jira had an opinionated way of working, Agile is a manifesto for how people should do stuff. One task, exactly one assignee is really radical! You can go and read about Jira and Asana saying "no" when people ask to allow multiple assignees. Trello got rid of that, assign as many people to a card or task as you'd like, it's less opinionated, and in my opinion, it's an inherent flaw. And woe be onto people who use Trello, that is telling me right away that they are going to be slower than Jira and Asana users.

> Figma doesn’t address the entire picture yet

The core dynamic they provide software for - and this is just as true of Google Docs and Sharepoint - is that BigCo employees need to touch things and get credit. Every BigCo I've worked with, without fail. There are like 10 people on meetings, and 9 people don't do anything but they use the stuff they touch and the calendar entries as collateral in their performance reviews.

Adobe dodged a huge bullet with this one.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#802

Post by kelnos »

crandycodes wrote: post #761
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole point though - employees want an exit event so they can sell their shares and have someone else holding the bag.

That seems like an odd way to frame it, imo. "Holding the bag" usually implies something negative, as in someone will be "caught" with something bad. As in the employees are looking to dupe someone into buying what they are selling. But employees, outside of company officers, do not control what information investors get about what they are buying. They can't trick anyone into buying something, although they could th…

> They literally have no other choice...

Sure they have (had) another choice: they could have taken employment at a more stable (possibly public) company, where compensation would have been more predictable.

But they chose to work at a smaller, private company, and accepted private-company equity as part of their compensation, which 9 times out of 10 ends up being worth zero dollars. This idea that they're somehow entitled to a payout is ridiculous.

The situation that the VCs and founders are in is often enviable, but isn't really relevant here. Regular employees need to be financially responsible about accepting jobs with private-company equity comp, and not expect miracles. That's the bottom line.

(I agree that "holding the bag" is a weird way to frame this, though.)

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#803

Post by el-dude-arino »

__loam wrote: post #797
gunapologist99 wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this an experiment? Don't we remember Standard Oil, AT&T, DOJ vs MS, etc?

Yeah it's more like the regulators are trying to do their jobs again after decades of the failed hands off approach.

[flagged]

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#804

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

solatic wrote: post #760
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is my favorite comment of the year. We've all become so inured to the idea, especially in startup land, that the purpose of building a business is just the exit (and hopefully we can get out soon enough with someone else "holding the bag"). As you point out, if Figma can build a growing, profitable business, there is no reason they can't IPO at some point. But still, this shows how even the purpose of an…

> the original intention was to get access to public market funds to grow a business. Now it's usually just a method of "exit" to let retail investors take the lion's share of the risk Founders and employees would be totally OK with staying private, if the board would ever permit issuing a dividend. That's the "normal" way to have an "exit" (i.e. return profits to shareholders) without a public offering. The purpose…

This is good analysis. As the owner of a business, I often find myself bewildered at the valuation-centric, IPO-gazing startup culture that has developed especially in tech.

Most businesses in technology are nothing like the VC-funded, exit-oriented, and/or hyper-growth culture would have you think. Yet it seems like the glitz of a great IPO or being able to shell out for a $200 million annual corporate event blinds many to the reality of most businesses.

I have wondered how much of this naïveté contributes to the failure rate of technology startups.

I’m on my second business and I intend for it to be my last, though time will tell. The key thing I’ve learned is that hyper-growth, IPOs, and VCs aren’t really good for anyone other than the equity holders. Once you start selling ownership in your business, your customers are no longer your first North Star.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#805

Post by [deleted] »

parentheses wrote: post #779
doctorpangloss wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (which is part of the basis of Firefly's success – significantly cleaner legal provenance on their training data). Yeah... I mean the pre-trained text encoder Firefly uses is filled with copyrighted, unlicensed-for-express-purpose training data. Firefly is successful in the same sense that DocuSign is, in that it is selling a holistic social experience, but I think maybe don't opine on "legal provenance on their tr…

I think this shows that you don't fully understand UI/UX and its importance/role in modern software creation. Moreover, you're conflating your opinions about Spotify with an industry. This would explain what I consider to be an mis assessment of the situation. As someone close to UX my entire life, Figma is a well positioned and useful app that has no decent substitute on the Adobe side. It has market share and poten…

[deleted]

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#806

Post by hipadev23 »

marssaxman wrote: post #567
hipadev23 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO also owes it to their employees and investors to let everyone have a massive payday.

Do you actually believe that, or are you mocking a bit of startup-culture hubris?

I absolutely believe it when the vast majority of the employees for the company in question were compensated with stock options.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#807

Post by kelnos »

solatic wrote: post #760
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is my favorite comment of the year. We've all become so inured to the idea, especially in startup land, that the purpose of building a business is just the exit (and hopefully we can get out soon enough with someone else "holding the bag"). As you point out, if Figma can build a growing, profitable business, there is no reason they can't IPO at some point. But still, this shows how even the purpose of an…

> the original intention was to get access to public market funds to grow a business. Now it's usually just a method of "exit" to let retail investors take the lion's share of the risk Founders and employees would be totally OK with staying private, if the board would ever permit issuing a dividend. That's the "normal" way to have an "exit" (i.e. return profits to shareholders) without a public offering. The purpose…

In the case where a private company has issued options or shares as a part of compensation, another way to pay back employees would be to do a stock buyback program. E.g. if I was an early employee and got options with a $1/share strike price, but the current going rate for new-employee options is $5/share, the company could offer to buy back my options from me at $4 each (or if I'd exercised those options, they could buy the shares back at the full $5 price).

If the general understanding was that the founders (well, board) weren't chasing an acquisition or IPO, this might be a good deal for employees. Of course, if the company is VC-backed (and the founders don't have majority control anymore), the VCs probably wouldn't go for this sort of thing.

I do actually wonder if the current trend of consolidation is driven in part by the standard VC-backed startup formula. Getting acquired is usually a lot easier than going public. Instead of startups fueling long-term competition, they just end up getting gobbled up by larger players most of the time, fueling consolidation and monopolistic behavior.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#808

Post by fauigerzigerk »

ThomPete wrote: post #776
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a well rehearsed segmentation game that market leaders like to play until even the biggest companies on earth no longer appear to be dominant in any specific segment. I don't buy it. It's not just about indvidual verticals in their current state. For these conglomerates it's always about buying rising competitors out of the market before they can become a strategic threat. Figma could have expanded beyond any…

You don't have to buy it. That's the reality. You can go through the numbers yourself. Adobe doesn't have network effect or anything like that. Just to give you the numbers: Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes Photoshop, has over 22 million subscribers. Thats 1/5 of Canva users. You guys are simply factually wrong.

>You don't have to buy it. That's the reality. [...] You guys are simply factually wrong.

It's the argument and the conclusion that I don't buy, not your (and Adobe's) carefully selected set of facts.

Here's a very big player in the graphics software market that tried to buy a potential strategic threat out of the market. This is the fact that matters in my view.

I wouldn't let the top 5 in any market buy another company that is or could soon become a significant competitor in that or a closely related market.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#809

Post by codeptualize »

kpandit wrote: post #785
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is my favorite comment of the year. We've all become so inured to the idea, especially in startup land, that the purpose of building a business is just the exit (and hopefully we can get out soon enough with someone else "holding the bag"). As you point out, if Figma can build a growing, profitable business, there is no reason they can't IPO at some point. But still, this shows how even the purpose of an…

My favourite comment as well in this world so full of pump and dump shows. The mentality is so intrenched that if you are not one of these pump and dump shows with an exit strategy then you are labelled a lifestyle business instead of a proper "startup". [Off topic] That is some throwaway account with 60k+ karma and almost 7 years in age.

There are lots of pump and dumps but this one isn't a pump and dump. Figma was founded in 2012, they pretty much took over UI design, did $400M ARR in 2022, great retention, rapid growth, great margins, there is a lots of actual value there and still quite a bit of potential left.

A "proper" startup does indeed include an exit as that's the point where they give a return on investment to their VC's. That is the startup game, use the VC money to accelerate growth, then exit/go public.

Not saying I like it, but once you take the VC money that is the game you play.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#810

Post by robertlagrant »

scarface_74 wrote: post #771
robertlagrant wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that ideology? "Government shouldn't be involved unless there's a great reason to do so"? If you think preventing company towns isn't a great reason to need approval, fair enough, but then why are you saying company towns are bad?

So exactly how was the government preventing a company town here? And if a town is dependent on one major employee should we do what exactly?

> So exactly how was the government preventing a company town here?

Where is here?

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