Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by dkarl » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 1:39 PM UTC

ichik wrote: post #178

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, w…

Adobe would have killed one product regardless. If they had been allowed to acquire Figma, they might have killed the better one.

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

#222

Post by benreesman » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #104

snowwrestler wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrutiny scaled with the size of the buyer. When a top-five tech company is the buyer, it doesn’t really matter how small the purchased company is. Many of the most concerning acquisitions were small… Instagram had 13 employees when Facebook bought it. When a huge company can easily acquire basically any small promising competitor, that is exactly what Khan (and many others of both parties) consider a problem. Chilli…

> Scrutiny scaled with the size of the buyer. Maybe, but it doesn't take a lot of scrutiny to scare the crap out of you if you're a major player in some niche industry with a few hundred million in ARR. Which is most public companies. That's the perverse thing about this stuff: the biggest players are probably the least sensitive to the regulatory burden.

Not even a little. The biggest players are the most sensitive to this kind of thing. Imagine an independent Instagram and Whatsapp running around. That's a fucking nightmare for Mark.

It is precisely the companies that have lost the internal capacity to innovate (Meta) that have the most to lose and the companies that were going extremely well already (Instagram had a bunch of suitors and could have chosen to punch out later in the process, I heard this from Krieger in person) who have the most to gain.

The losers here are people who can buy and hold FAANG as a basket and just sit back and let the market transfer all wealth to pensioners. The winners are founders, employees, new startups, consumers, cities with more offices in them, that's a partial list.

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

#223

Post by ferfumarma » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 1:43 PM UTC

yard2010 wrote: post #181

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…

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

I cannot understanding your argument at all.

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

#224

Post by benreesman » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 1:47 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #215

benreesman wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Big Tech is especially good at this (its arguably far more their speciality than technology is). Well, yes. But that does seem to gloss over the important part which is how they do it - hiring lobbyists and influencing the official regulators. If the frame is that someone is going to be the most powerful force in the market then sure, but the government setting it to be a particular body by fiat just creates a ripe…

Time and again people make the utterly unsubstantiated claim that attack dog regulators like Lina Khan are actually good for big business and bad for the small guy.

Year after year, big business lobbies, bribes, cajoles, blackmails, whatever it takes to get rid of attack dog regulators like Lina Khan.

I'm sorry friend, history does not say what you think it does. History says that good outcomes come from either brutally regulated monopolies (ATT / Western / the Labs), public/private partnerships (DoD funding the Internet, basically every major innovation we coast on today), and busting the fucking chops of mega-trusts (JP Morgan, Gould, steel, railroads, telegraph, it goes on and on).

Why does big business hate aggressive regulation if it's "actually good for them"?

They like a Goldilocks regulation, a little friction to new entrants, a lot of discretion in the hands of pliant former industry people.

They hate Lina Khan.

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

#225

Post by holmesworcester » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

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…

I'm sympathetic to a prohibition on big companies buying their competitors, but a 3x difference over two years seems too low to suggest that antitrust creates more pure business value.

First this is all hindsight now. We don't know the probabilities of this outcome vs. others. Figma's shareholders didn't at the time, which is why they chose to sell. Khan didn't either.

Second, 3x over two years isn't that much. There must be many opportunities in SV for all of Figma's employees and investors that could have given them a much higher return than that with much less risk.

I don't have this data, but one could look at secondary sales in the past two years as a measure of the increased risk and opportunity cost, right?

Any delay of people getting liquid impacts the creation of other startups, both by the Figma people who can now leave and do their own thing and for the companies Figma stakeholders would have invested in . This is super hard to measure but it is the kind of thing markets are good at measuring when they ask shareholders "sell now to Adobe or wait to IPO?"

This seems really good for Figma users, most of all. Most of the value destroyed by the acquisition would have been in the distortion and likely ultimate destruction of a company culture that made an insanely good product.

But those people are capable of going and making new products, and maybe Figma at its current phase is now too boring a thing for their talents, and should be managed by a more boring organization staffed by people who are slightly less able to make another Figma.

Who knows, but I doubt Khan (or any one individual or organization) is in a better position to assess the optimal delivery of what people want than the incentivized distributed intelligence of all the stakeholders and the people and markets around them.

Again, there are other reasons to do this that markets wouldn't quantify.

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

#226

Post by benreesman » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 2:03 PM UTC

holmesworcester wrote: post #225

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…

I'm sympathetic to a prohibition on big companies buying their competitors, but a 3x difference over two years seems too low to suggest that antitrust creates more pure business value. First this is all hindsight now. We don't know the probabilities of this outcome vs. others. Figma's shareholders didn't at the time, which is why they chose to sell. Khan didn't either. Second, 3x over two years isn't that much. There…

The lengths people will go to to avoid the facts on this are fucking remarkable. I'll let Opus explain:

"The Bottom Line

A 73% annualized return would:

    Easily rank in the top 10-20 best-documented investment returns of all time if sustained for multiple years
    Significantly outperform virtually all professional fund managers and legendary investors
    Be 7x higher than the long-term stock market average
    Turn $10,000 into $30,000 in just 2 years (your 3x example)

Such returns are typically only achieved during:

    Early-stage growth of revolutionary companies (like early Apple, Amazon, or Netflix)
    Cryptocurrency bull runs
    Highly leveraged trades
    Exceptional market timing during recovery periods
    Small/micro-cap stocks experiencing explosive growth

While spectacular, returns of this magnitude are extremely difficult to sustain and often involve significant risk."

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

#227

Post by holmesworcester » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 2:10 PM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #226

holmesworcester wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to a prohibition on big companies buying their competitors, but a 3x difference over two years seems too low to suggest that antitrust creates more pure business value. First this is all hindsight now. We don't know the probabilities of this outcome vs. others. Figma's shareholders didn't at the time, which is why they chose to sell. Khan didn't either. Second, 3x over two years isn't that much. There…

The lengths people will go to to avoid the facts on this are fucking remarkable. I'll let Opus explain: "The Bottom Line A 73% annualized return would: Easily rank in the top 10-20 best-documented investment returns of all time if sustained for multiple years Significantly outperform virtually all professional fund managers and legendary investors Be 7x higher than the long-term stock market average Turn $10,000 into…

Then why did shareholders choose to sell?

In choosing to sell they decided the risk wasn't worth the reward.

If you were in their position, would you have sold or held?

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

#228

Post by benreesman » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

holmesworcester wrote: post #227

benreesman wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lengths people will go to to avoid the facts on this are fucking remarkable. I'll let Opus explain: "The Bottom Line A 73% annualized return would: Easily rank in the top 10-20 best-documented investment returns of all time if sustained for multiple years Significantly outperform virtually all professional fund managers and legendary investors Be 7x higher than the long-term stock market average Turn $10,000 into…

Then why did shareholders choose to sell? In choosing to sell they decided the risk wasn't worth the reward. If you were in their position, would you have sold or held?

I have no idea why they agreed to the deal, one imagines a bunch of competing interests ranging from late D, E, F+ round holders, to founders, to influential employees. By the time a company is selling to a mega-conglomerate (in effect, a holding company) for 20 billion dollars it's pretty hard to un-grind the sausage on how a bunch of competing incentives got resolved.

As a founder? Obviously I hold unless I know something is rotten in Denmark and it's about to collapse like a Michael Siebel sale to Autodesk. Are you kidding? I've got a startup so successful that I'm already a billionaire and my choices are:

- let it ride, be a star, chart my own course - go work for fucking Adobe lol

Yeah, easy one.

If I'm an early VC or a limited partner with some structural reason to need the cash before some accounting period ends or something? Maybe I want the sale. Maybe I own a bunch of Adobe stock and I want the consolidation. Maybe a lot of things.

Don't know why the deal got agreed to pending regulator approval. If I'm an already richer-than-God founder, or an employee who can either get full value for my shares or get Windsurf'd in some preference shenanigans, or most anyone else involved? Then fuck Adobe.

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

#229

Post by lvl155 » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #219

lvl155 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get the downvotes. He’s just stating his opinion. Lina Khan had zero real-world experience. She wrote ONE widely circulated opinion piece in law school. It contained barely any rigorous economic analysis. This is akin to giving authority to some 21-yo philosophy major to direct the entire direction of US AI policies.

What AI experience did Sam Altman have before becoming OpenAI CEO? Wasn’t he just a VC wunderkind beforehand?

I am not a big Sam Altman fan but this is not a good comp. Sam is an insider in SV and one of the biggest at that. He knows everyone. You are basically saying Sam didn’t know anything about AI yet he is one of OpenAI’s founding members. Unlike Elon, at least Sam knows a thing or two about actual software dev.

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

#230

Post by Wilder7977 » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 2:34 PM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #187

Wilder7977 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone who believes in free market, how is it acceptable to have consolidated monopolies? The market is free when there is competition. If there is no competition there is no freedom. Of course I know that for many "free market defenders" "competition is for losers" (was it Peter Thiel?), and ultimately nobody cares of the abstract value of freedom.

Monopolies are natural in highly technical industries. But monopolies don't last forever. New technologies wipe out monopolies all the time. ChatGPT is disrupting Google search monopoly. Solar/EV is disrupting oil. Tools like V0 is disrupting Figma. ChatGPT itself is disrupting iOS and Android. The list goes on and on and on.

You are mixing industry and company. LLMs are overtaking Google search (I.e., internet search which is a monopoly), but it doesn't have to be chatGPT (I.e. openAI).

In any case, it's irrelevant they are not eternal (especially if we go from monopoly to monopoly), the point stands: if you have a monopoly you don't have freedom and free market doesn't work at all.