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Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

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Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#261

Post by ipaddr »

scarface74 wrote: post #142
eurasiantiger wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe’s direct competitor is Adobe XD, which launched with practically no features and was slowly developed only to dwindle to death as a rarely used cloud service, while everyone does the important work in Figma. The parent comment is spot-on. Antitrust legislation needs to be invoked to prevent this acquisition from happening.

It amazes me that people posting on a YC controlled board whose entire purpose for existing is to fund startups long enough to get an exit - statistically most likely through an acquisition by a bigger company - wants to stop acquisitions. The funding environment for startups would be a lot worse if investors thought that the only way they could recoup their investments is through exits. Look how few of YC companies…

There purpose for existing and our reasons for coming don't need to be the same. Very few readers/posters have a ycombinator startup. Stronger feelings towards YC ideals would be found on the private ycominator channel.

The goal of facebook is some meta universe. Most users go on to write a friend..

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#262

Post by MiddleEndian »

conductr wrote: post #163
nayroclade wrote: post #54

Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…

The only hope is that since Figma is subscription revenue, they will immediately feel the pain of neglecting the product. I’d imagine it’s a mature enough, well known enough product that you could say it’s already stolen as much share as it would from adobe’s cash cows. Potentially it’s the place users get started nowadays and adobe could leverage it by making it easier for those users to explore adobe’s other produc…

>The only hope is that since Figma is subscription revenue, they will immediately feel the pain of neglecting the product.

I honestly haven't observed this to be the case with subscription software. They will continue making cash because people want to continue to use it. Meanwhile, if it were individual sales, they would actually have to maintain and improve it to get people to buy new versions.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#263

Post by whiddershins »

In contrast to the negativity here, I am optimistic that Adobe won't screw this up. The past acquisitions are not necessarily an indicator of the future.

Adobe consistently upgraded Photoshop even when they had virtually no competition. Their CC subscription pricing is actually an incredible vaue if you use it as a professional. Figma has a huge user base, and a team that is excelling where Adobe is struggling - collaborative cloud-first design software.

It is very possible that a 20B acquisition is in part Adobe investing in talent to address a gap in their expertise. This isn't 20 years ago, it is now.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#264

Post by noizz »

542458 wrote: post #14
throw_m239339 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for Figma founders, they'll make a lot of money, bad for Figma users and design authoring tool in general suffering from the lack of competition in the space for the last 25 years. I've seen what happened to Macromedia products after Adobe bought them.

Yeah, over the last five years illustrator has added no useful new features (at least for my use cases) and XD has wandered around with no clear direction. Meanwhile Figma has been a rocketship of features that massively improve workflows. I’m worried they’ll sink into the Adobe pit of complacent mediocrity if they’re bought out.

As much as I LOVE to shit on Adobe (they leaked my CC info) they surprised me recently with one new feature I've been begging for years - bullet points and ordered lists in text fields. Ever since Illustrator became an alternative to InDesign for smaller print jobs, it's been my core missing feature.

Although, in the grand scheme of things, Illustrator has been really left behind and apps like InDesign or XD have seen next to zero updates in years.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#265

Post by ryanSrich »

pastor_bob wrote: post #250
garyclarke27 wrote: post #63

It’s a shame that the competition authorities don’t seem to have any interest in these type of acquisitions which destroys competition and harms consumers. Same thing happened with Architecture software eg when Autocad bought Revit - end result is extortionately priced software that many architects cannot afford because they are paid so poorly. Same will happen for graphic designers.

Yeah, i don't get this. Seems like textbook anti-competitive behavior to me. Doesn't Adobe already have their own version of Figma (XD)?

They do, but it’s not nearly as popular (or as valuable) as Figma.

In the last couple of years Figma has essentially overtaken Adobe and Sketch in terms of designer mindshare and usage. I don’t know a single designer (I know hundreds), that doesn’t use Figma. Of course, I’m focused 100% on software, so I’m strictly talking about product, UI/UX design. Not print or graphic design.

The way I see it, Adobe had to buy Figma.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#266

Post by rchaud »

For those interested in non-subscription, one-time payment alternatives, there are a few options:

1. Figma replacement - Sketch (1yr fee, updates optional, MacOS only)

2. Adobe Photoshop - Affinity Photo (Win/Mac)

3. Adobe Illustrator - Affinity Designer (Win/Mac)

4. Adobe InDesign - Affinity Publisher (Win/Mac) (I use this to create my indie magazine)

5. Adobe Animate - Tumult Hype (closest thing to Flash that we have today, replaces my need for After Effects + Bodymoovin, Mac OS only)

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#268

Post by jansan »

kderbyma wrote: post #219
mikece wrote: post #169

And now all of the Figma users are saying "Oh [crap]... now I need to find a new tool to use." When is the last time Adobe acquired something and it improved? They destroyed Fireworks and Dreamweaver when they acquired Macromedia (which they only did because they wanted Flash). At this point I'm tempted to swear off Adobe products entirely -- except that the combo of Lightroom and Photoshop are the industry standard…

I try to avoid them like the plague. Affinity while not nearly as supported and feature rich....it doesn't stab and bleed me monthly for the privilege of bloatware...

How is Affinity Designer less feature rich? It has great features like corner rounding and interactive path offsetting that I cannot find in Figma? Also, Last time I looked Figma did not even allow skewing of objects.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#269

Post by capableweb »

swyx wrote: post #218
tomaskafka wrote: post #134

> By bringing powerful capabilities from Adobe’s imaging, photography, illustration, video, 3D and font technologies into the Figma platform, we can benefit all customers involved in the product design process, from designers to product managers to developers. Figma’s community will ultimately have a continuous user experience across ideation, screen layout, interaction design and content editing, allowing product de…

for what its worth @zoink says they'll still be autonomous https://twitter.com/zoink/status/1570385560312909826 and he doesnt seem like the kinda guy to lie about it (even if this might change 1-3 years down the road)

Well, lets see what happens. But it doesn't bode well when Adobe is saying they'll add features for photography (wtf?) into Figma, when that's not what the tool is about at all.
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