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Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

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Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#151

Post by duxup »

TylerE wrote: post #123
duxup wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

It is anecdotes like this that make me think that the public shareholder model is fundamentally flawed and a large part of why many American companies are struggling to truly build long term value, and many once great companies have been destroyed by beancounters to bleating calls of shareholder value.

The long term value thing rings true. The CEO in question had been a part of building a large company and he always said his ambition was to create a company that was seen as an asset to have that country located in the US that would last for a long time. That sounds weirdly generic but I think he was honest in that. Could he? I duno, but he had helped grow it to thousands of employees and so on and they made some great products that were highly profitable.

But instead it was sold to a company who specialized in breaking up companies and selling them off for parts while squeezing out the last $ they could / maximizing income and discarding the resulting nothing.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#152

Post by FoodWThrow »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #58

I still don't understand (as a DAW author) how there are so many more people doing various graphics tasks on computers, and relatively speaking so few significant apps to do them with, whereas there so many fewer people doing stuff with audio and more than a dozen serious contenders for the toolbox.

Audio ultimately leads to a 1D data track. Ways to play that track is comparatively well understood, and well abstracted from the workload itself. We've been using 3.5mm jack at scale since the original Walkman, for example. That's 1979.

Graphics on the other hand constantly changes. Apple II around the same timeframe had 280×192 resolution -not even 4:3 aspect ratio- and 16 color that only existed because of a hack in the NTSC spec. Now we have dozen different common aspect ratios, 2 common sizes that we have to support (mobile and monitor), dozens of different resolutions, running on thousands of different hardware, that are near impossible to test the combination of their configurations, let alone the variety of behavior that comes from their software - the list is just endless.

Audio is played by speakers, there isn't much variance. Graphics on the other hand changes constantly, and most of those changes result in throwing out a lot of software. The situation is so incredibly bad that most cross platform products threw the towel and resorted to using perhaps the second most complicated software humanity ever devised - the browser - instead of trying to get a window and a button to work on 2 different operating systems.

And don't even get me started on prints :)

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#153

Post by triceratops »

jampekka wrote: post #85
duxup wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

A lot of people tend to not accept this plain fact that for-profits must maximize profit. It's literally illegal not to do so. https://www.wakeforestlawreview.com/2012/04/our-continuing-s...

For-profits must act in the shareholders' best interests. Shareholders want profit, but they also care about other things. Matt Levine has been banging this drum of late in his column. To paraphrase:

Shareholders are people who breathe air. A car company could oppose particulate emissions regulations to maximize profits for shareholders. But if they supported regulations instead, this is equally justifiable to any court in the land, even though it reduces profits. Cleaner air to breathe is very obviously in their shareholders' best interests.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#154

Post by weaksauce »

TylerE wrote: post #123
duxup wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

It is anecdotes like this that make me think that the public shareholder model is fundamentally flawed and a large part of why many American companies are struggling to truly build long term value, and many once great companies have been destroyed by beancounters to bleating calls of shareholder value.

we don't need shareholder growth capitalism as it stands... we need sustainable capitalism that is in it for the long term. no clue how to achieve that as it stands though and ceos have short term goals/bonuses tied to short term profits.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#155

Post by ysavir »

TylerE wrote: post #123
duxup wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

It is anecdotes like this that make me think that the public shareholder model is fundamentally flawed and a large part of why many American companies are struggling to truly build long term value, and many once great companies have been destroyed by beancounters to bleating calls of shareholder value.

I don't know how much of this is actually a problem with the shareholder model (though I hate it). From what I understand, the whole "legal obligation to shareholders" thing isn't actually a real thing.

What's more likely, I think, is that the CEO meant was that if he declined the offer, the board may fire him and replace him with someone who won't decline it. So if it's an eventuality either way, he may as well be the one to lead it.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#156

Post by TylerE »

weaksauce wrote: post #154
TylerE wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is anecdotes like this that make me think that the public shareholder model is fundamentally flawed and a large part of why many American companies are struggling to truly build long term value, and many once great companies have been destroyed by beancounters to bleating calls of shareholder value.

we don't need shareholder growth capitalism as it stands... we need sustainable capitalism that is in it for the long term. no clue how to achieve that as it stands though and ceos have short term goals/bonuses tied to short term profits.

Exactly. It used to be a perfectly respectable thing to have a factory that made decent widgets, provided a good life for the owners and employees, and made enough profit to gradually upgrade/squirrel away for a rainy day.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#157

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

FoodWThrow wrote: post #152
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #58

I still don't understand (as a DAW author) how there are so many more people doing various graphics tasks on computers, and relatively speaking so few significant apps to do them with, whereas there so many fewer people doing stuff with audio and more than a dozen serious contenders for the toolbox.

Audio ultimately leads to a 1D data track. Ways to play that track is comparatively well understood, and well abstracted from the workload itself. We've been using 3.5mm jack at scale since the original Walkman, for example. That's 1979. Graphics on the other hand constantly changes. Apple II around the same timeframe had 280×192 resolution -not even 4:3 aspect ratio- and 16 color that only existed because of a hack…

> Audio ultimately leads to a 1D data track.

Do people here really not know anything about surround sound, and multichannel sound in general? Apple's new surround support? Gaming use of Ambisonics? Film scoring? Do they really not understand how you need to mix differently for phone playback, car playback and "stereo system" playback (or at least pick one because that's the best you can do) ?

Sigh.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#159

Post by jhatemyjob »

duxup wrote: post #51
no_wizard wrote: post #2

Now Figma can become the de-facto choice for its software category and a merger was proved to be ultimately unnecessary for its survival and was a clear attempt at Adobe trying to buyout their competition because they can't seem to compete. I think overall this is a good thing. Adobe owning Figma isn't a great promise that it would be make Figma better, improve Figma in any way, nor keep Figma on the path of making h…

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

Its depressing how basically every tech company (except like... craigslist) is a Delaware C Corp with investors and a cap table... all these naive 20 year old technical founders getting screwed over right at the beginning when they cash that investor check.

Work for FAANG for a few years, stack $500k, and bootstrap to profitability. That's the only good path

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#160

Post by AniseAbyss »

duxup wrote: post #51
no_wizard wrote: post #2

Now Figma can become the de-facto choice for its software category and a merger was proved to be ultimately unnecessary for its survival and was a clear attempt at Adobe trying to buyout their competition because they can't seem to compete. I think overall this is a good thing. Adobe owning Figma isn't a great promise that it would be make Figma better, improve Figma in any way, nor keep Figma on the path of making h…

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

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