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Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

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Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#171

Post by virgilp »

BrenBarn wrote: post #154
conradev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just a bulk discount: everyday folks simply can’t be relied upon to buy hundreds of millions of dollars the stuff and that’s what the company is selling. Little fish can buy in, but only if the big fish provide liquidity in the first place! In other words: someone needs to be paid to sell it and big buyers need to be incentivized to buy it. Ultimately the IPO price is driven by supply and demand with a limited s…

Saying "big buyers need to be incentivized to buy it" is just another way of saying it's undemocratic. The democratic version would be that there are no big buyers and your IPO gets however much money it gets from small investors and that's it. There don't need to be any companies with a $45 billion IPO.

I feel like complaining about things being "undemocratic" is like complaining about a software system's architecture that "it's not microservices". Not everything needs to be - and some things would be actively harmed by making them "democratic". I wouldn't want drug approval to be a democratic process.

Raising capital can be done "democratically" if the founders want to. They can use direct listing. IPO is an option, not an obligation.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#172

Post by saagarjha »

jeffbee wrote: post #39
xrd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading when they defended Albertsons and Kroger merger. Can anyone defend the consolidation of grocery stores with a straight face? Walmart has obliterated any competition and it has destroyed local food sources everywhere. They can do it at scale that no one can compete with. If the only solution is to further consolidate then we might as well just hand over the government to Walmart.

And yet, groceries have never been cheaper. So the question becomes which do you want: consumer benefits, or your aesthetic preferences regarding how big a company should be?

Groceries have gotten cheaper because the companies selling it pass off their negative externalities to society.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#174

Post by Thorrez »

timr wrote: post #27
bix6 wrote: post #5

founders would ultimately benefit from “a world in which you have six or seven or eight potential suitors” rather than “just one or two.” Real talk Lina

yep. So perhaps don’t block every potential transaction on flimsy pretense? Icing the transaction market seems like a great way to scare off potential competing acquirers in the name of social engineering. I don’t know. All I know is that Lina is out of power, and suddenly we see an upswing in M&A. Coincidence, I’m sure.

Lina claims she let the vast majority of deals through. I wonder what the data shows.

>While her aggressive stance led to intense criticism from corners of the tech industry, she defended her approach by saying that only a tiny percentage of deals received “a second look”

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#176

Post by LudwigNagasena »

conradev wrote: post #139
SilverElfin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems undemocratic. Everyday folks can’t buy even though they would want to

It’s just a bulk discount: everyday folks simply can’t be relied upon to buy hundreds of millions of dollars the stuff and that’s what the company is selling. Little fish can buy in, but only if the big fish provide liquidity in the first place! In other words: someone needs to be paid to sell it and big buyers need to be incentivized to buy it. Ultimately the IPO price is driven by supply and demand with a limited s…

It makes no sense in the digital age. It costs almost nothing to solicit demand curves. And you can still do wasteful roadshows and presentations for special buyers.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#177

Post by dabedee »

I think the Figma IPO proves Khan was right. $60B market cap today vs the $20B Adobe offered in 2023. There was some criticism about regulatory overreach when the deal got blocked. Now Figma employees are rich, the design tools market stays competitive, and we have another major independent tech company instead of just another Adobe product line. This is exactly why we need regulators willing to tell Big Tech "no" sometimes. Competition creates more value than consolidation.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#178

Post by ichik »

dabedee wrote: post #177

I think the Figma IPO proves Khan was right. $60B market cap today vs the $20B Adobe offered in 2023. There was some criticism about regulatory overreach when the deal got blocked. Now Figma employees are rich, the design tools market stays competitive, and we have another major independent tech company instead of just another Adobe product line. This is exactly why we need regulators willing to tell Big Tech "no" so…

> design tools market stays competitive

Adobe killed their Figma competitor (XD), so the reality of the UI design tools niche in the design tools market is that Figma actually has a near monopoly. Sketch still chugs along, but its market share is negligible. Penpot is a neat idealistic community effort that is lightyears behind.

This is one of the reasons why Figma continues to tighten the screws on their userbase, who doesn't like it one bit, but continues to pay.

Now, this is all not to say, that it would've been any better with Adobe's involvement, more like lamenting the fact that Figma lived long enough to become a villain.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#179

Post by nl »

vasco wrote: post #136
bix6 wrote: post #5

founders would ultimately benefit from “a world in which you have six or seven or eight potential suitors” rather than “just one or two.” Real talk Lina

Or in this case, none?

The point is that Figma is now another one of these suitors.

Re: Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny

#180

Post by bornfreddy »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #21
grandmczeb wrote: post #2

So what is iRobot’s bankruptcy evidence of?

Evidence that you can only coast for so long on patents. Eventually you have to get back to work and provide value to customers.

And also that the patents matter only if your competitors are actually bound by them. If not (China) then there is zero value in them.
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