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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

#201

Post by wat10000 »

ptero wrote: post #52
wat10000 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t more IPOs do an auction to set the price? Trying to determine the “right” price ahead of time seems like a really bad way to do things.

An auction for IPO price is much easier to manipulate and can lead to much volatility. Pre-allocating to the entities that are not expected to sell quickly or participate in pump-and-dumps (pension funds, etc.) is considered a better long term strategy for the company, as the sister comment says.

What makes an auction easier to manipulate or more volatile than a stock traded on the market?

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

#202

Post by lvl155 »

bix6 wrote: post #6
richwater wrote: post #4

Lina Khan's obsession with "big is bad", especially her preexisting prejudice of Big Tech should have disqualified her from any position well before she took the wheel. How many times did the FTC fail in court under her watch? More than I can count on two hands. Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.

You expect a perfect success rate against the highest paid lawyers in the world? At least she was trying to enforce antitrust for once. Big is bad bro. There’s like 5 companies carrying the entire S&P rn how is that good for anyone outside of those 5 companies?

Big is bad? She went up against Amazon which is literally one company that delivered on lowering costs to consumers. She doesn’t understand the fact that there are NATURAL monopolies outside of utilities. You would know this if your training is more than a couple of intro level courses in economics.

And why is it that no one is talking about the biggest vertical and horizontal roll ups in all of corporate America in healthcare? Interesting.

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

#203

Post by lucianbr »

wat10000 wrote: post #198
vikramkr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like it when an IPO pops. It's a good news story and it makes all the banks who participated happy. If it was priced perfectly it'd get reported as the stock was flat, if it's a bit underpriced then you get headlines as the hot new stock that's taking off

Are headlines really worth billions of dollars?

I think Altman or Musk might think they are. At least they are sometimes.

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

#204

Post by steveBK123 »

chii wrote: post #123
steveBK123 wrote: post #58

More companies going public, earlier is better for markets and society. Having companies stay private growing from 0 to 100B value allows VC bros to capture all the growth and then unload onto the public via IPO or selling to a larger BigTech firm.

> then unload onto the public via IPO this implies they're unloading at a valuation that is higher than it is worth. If so, why do "the public" make the purchase?

Have you met retail investors? Meme stocks. 0DTE options. NFTs. ICOs.

It’s called FOMO.

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

#205

Post by bagacrap »

kelnos wrote: post #77
DenverR wrote: post #26

Love the FTC getting to decide if you’re permitted to sell your startup or forced to deliver more shareholder value.

I do love it. Companies don't exist solely to enrich their founders, they exist to provide a benefit to society. There needs to be a balance, of course, but if allowing a sale does not benefit society, then we should not allow it. > your startup You're under the misconception that companies "belong" to individuals. Companies are legal frameworks that society has decided upon. We could legally decide that M&A just isn…

It's also not "your" startup once there are shareholders, including employees.

If it's a one person shop, then sure it's "yours", and the FTC can't block you from being hired (that I'm aware).

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

#206

Post by benreesman »

bko wrote: post #186
yard2010 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA that no regulator simply means the sharkest shark regulates. There is no such thing as no regulator. People will regulate. The question is who and how

What does this mean? If there is no regulator, someone else will use force to prevent voluntary mutually beneficial deals from taking place?

It means that markets organize somehow. Even black markets in prison have rules (and for all I know, sensible ones under the circumstances). The drug trade has rules and norms.

Cartels form and collude, the JP Morgans or Goulds of the world see excessive competition next to their neat steel or railroad trusts and decide to organize it. And sometimes this can even be an improvement (those old telephone poles with like 90 separate junctions just got too tall to be safe!)

But on average, the public would like (or should want) a say in how markets are organized, because it is both possible and lucrative to induce market failure. Big Tech is especially good at this (its arguably far more their speciality than technology is).

Markets are inevitable (try to stop them forming if you don't believe me), but market failures are generally not inevitable, they are generally the result of poorly refereed markets.

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

#207

Post by bagacrap »

evolve2k wrote: post #103

What a stupid comment at the end of the article. The vindication is of having the company exist in the market in such a way as to encourage competition.

"Figma is a massive success [...] because of the company’s innovative growth"

Given that this sell side analyst defines success as growth, this seems rather like a tautology.

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

#208

Post by sealeck »

bee_rider wrote: post #57
bryant wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This, eventually, woudl lead to lower prices for consumers... What incentive would Amazon have to drop prices after vertical integration is done?

This is sarcasm, right? The “eventually,” the ellipses, and the underlying ridiculousness lead me to believe it is sarcasm.

Yes

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

#209

Post by benreesman »

markdown wrote: post #193
virgilp wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 everything needs to be Not everything, sure. But this one more than most, needs to be democratic. If you don't see the wealth inequality today in which the 1% own 50% of the worlds wealth, and you don't see where this is inevitably going to lead, then I don't know what to say. Stay woke at r/latestagecapitalism

I'm pretty critical of how late capitalism is shaping up (I pretty routinely get called a leftist radical here on Hacker News which is increasingly Thiel-Aligned Psycho News).

With that said, lots of options exist for a company like Figma doing a public listing: when you're the belle of the ball you can list how you want. Google did a pretty unconventional Dutch Auction thing IIRC.

In this instance the Figma folks decided they wanted an IPO pop and had the underwriters set it up that way. They were paying some premium (to institutional investors) to get one of many intangibles that are attached to that (like a bunch of press about how hot the stock is).

In a world where it was a no-brainer that this was going to be another mediocre Adobe product line rent seeking from here to the horizon, I'm pretty OK with how this turned out.

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

#210

Post by lvl155 »

elefanten wrote: post #9
richwater wrote: post #4

Lina Khan's obsession with "big is bad", especially her preexisting prejudice of Big Tech should have disqualified her from any position well before she took the wheel. How many times did the FTC fail in court under her watch? More than I can count on two hands. Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.

Her opinion should not be taken seriously on the matter. It's not just the empirically terrible track record she had as a regulator and the baffling cases she brought to bear (imo proof of your point that she had an overgeneralized bias). It's also that she was demonstrably inexperienced at the time she was selected! It was clearly performative political appointment, which the Biden administration was pretty egregiou…

What gets me about this Lina Khan hero worshipping is that she has ZERO real-world experience. It’d be one thing if she crafted a worthy law career in fighting big corp. She never put in any hard work. She essentially an influencer.
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