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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

#421

Post by blitzar »

duped wrote: post #374
Dylan16807 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that there's a significant lobby on fucking Hacker News unhappy that a startup IPO'd for a zillion bucks and made everyone rich is twilight zone shit. It makes no sense according to the stated values in the fucking masthead. Blocking the merger was good. But I'm not convinced the IPO was good. I think trying to be a company that's worth tens of billions of dollars is only going to make Figma worse. I care…

I mean the bigger problem with the IPO was that they opened at a 20b valuation and by the end of the day a bunch of investors got richer than anyone who built anything because the investment bankers left 30+ billion in valuation on the table for their buddies

> bankers left 30+ billion in valuation on the table for their buddies

Small float, big hype, litterally designed to pump the stock on the float.

1.2bn was raised - of which only 0.8bn was cashing out existing shareholders - all the other investors got the pump as planned all for the low price of $1.6bn.

Basically the existing shareholders got watered down by ~5% and the value of the shares they still hold are 3x and now liquid, better than they got in any of the vc funding rounds.

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

#422

Post by anon191928 »

gkanai wrote: post #381
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.

> More companies going public, earlier is better for markets and society. I would disagree. Japan is a good example of a market where there are a lot of small public companies and they're largely held by the founders. There is not enough share holder pressure and these small public companies are often barely profitable and run poorly. I am sure there are other markets that are similar to Japan where there are publicl…

Japan does not have a growing stock market index or economy. So Japan with aging population is not a good example. It does not grow in real terms. It's just an old peoples country at this point and for the future. Nikkei performed bad for decades

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

#423

Post by stereolambda »

gkanai wrote: post #381
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.

> More companies going public, earlier is better for markets and society. I would disagree. Japan is a good example of a market where there are a lot of small public companies and they're largely held by the founders. There is not enough share holder pressure and these small public companies are often barely profitable and run poorly. I am sure there are other markets that are similar to Japan where there are publicl…

I wouldn't automatically say this is bad. If the money that would end up being more profits percolates throughout society, employees, communities etc., and even the founders themselves (as opposed to concentrated capital), it is actually fine and could produce a healthier society. On the other hand, I grant you that it might (also) feed corruption. But then, I wouldn't bet on concentrated capital not being corrupt as well.

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

#424

Post by AnthonyMouse »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #380
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a market where there are only a small handful of incumbents and then a bunch of precarious cash-strapped startups, the incumbents collude with each other so that they only have to outbid the startups. The startups, meanwhile, are at a disadvantage because e.g. the incumbents control search engine rankings or app distribution channels, which lowers their competitiveness and therefore the amount they can afford pay…

The startups in question weren’t building apps or advertising on Google. The entire reason most startups exist is to get acquired or acquire hired.

Maybe that has something to do with the incumbents (and the laws) making it hard for them to build a sustainable independent new business.

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

#425

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kaibee wrote: post #407
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people are so ideologically opposed to any regulatory intervention that they can't admit when it works, even when the evidence is staring them in the face. We have a problem where regulators are bad at their jobs most of the time, and then people develop the heuristic that all regulation is bad. You need some rules to price major externalities. Not minor externalities, because regulatory overhead and enforceme…

> We have a problem where regulators are bad at their jobs most of the time, and then people develop the heuristic that all regulation is bad. No, we have a problem where 95% of regulations work so well that no one even remembers that they exist (child labor, etc). A media environment that reports on outliers for clicks and corporations that want to dump industrial waste in rivers.

> No, we have a problem where 95% of regulations work so well that no one even remembers that they exist (child labor, etc).

This is quite false. There are a few regulations that have a high cost/benefit ratio (e.g. ban leaded gasoline), and a few that are completely upside down (e.g. DMCA 1201), and then there are the vast majority which are the regulatory bureaucrat equivalent of busy work and are neutral at best. Positions exist to make new regulations, so they make new regulations.

But each new one has overhead, and then we get cost disease and high cost of living and increased market consolidation because regulatory compliance is a fixed cost that large corporations can bear more easily than smaller companies, and the complexity is used to disguise corruption. All of that is legitimately bad.

90% of them are completely worthless, and it's a significant problem that we have an apparatus structured to perpetually accumulate new ones without ever going back and cleaning house to remove the ones that can't be justified.

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

#426

Post by AraceliHarker »

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…

As is the case with many startups, especially those with a limited product portfolio, it's rare for them to exceed their IPO valuation in the future. So, I think we'll have to wait and see if Figma can continue its growth.

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

#427

Post by smoser »

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…

On the flip side Khan was wrong about iRobot. The results were layoffs at iRobot and now Roombas are made by a Chinese ODM.

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

#428

Post by missedthecue »

GreenWatermelon wrote: post #415
missedthecue wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and because HP did that, we now have no mobile smartphones. If only the government would have prevented that!! Caplan said it best. The market is great at doing good things that sound bad. The government is great at doing bad things that sound good.

Imagine a world in which Internet Explorer is the only browser around. That's what would happen without government intervention. Regulations are literally the only thing slowing down the corporate dystopian future.

The idea that government regulation created chrome is so bizarre I simply have to discard your comment out of hand

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

#429

Post by scarface_74 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #424
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The startups in question weren’t building apps or advertising on Google. The entire reason most startups exist is to get acquired or acquire hired.

Maybe that has something to do with the incumbents (and the laws) making it hard for them to build a sustainable independent new business.

So in what world are startups going to have the funding or the infrastructure to have warehouses worldwide to compete with Amazon or servers to compete with AWS?

Or in Google’s case the infrastructure to design custom processors with the demand to actually buy enough slots from TSMC to make it affordable?

You can’t make laws to undue scale efficiencies. A startup isn’t going to make a phone in their garage to compete with Apple no matter what magically thinking they have about the government passing laws.

Most startups can’t even pay the wages of a mid level employee at BigTech company that has been out of school for three years.

Just like any other industry, if a startup can’t afford the free market price of labor, that’s a them problem.

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

#430

Post by scarface_74 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #405
scarface_74 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they just give me a job as the leader, then other people want to follow. Is it them illegal for Google to offer other former coworkers a job? Isn’t that kind of like the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”? So exactly how does a Google “monopoly” (which definitely doesn’t exist in AI if anywhere), harm customers? And would I as a potential employee better off or worse off? Am I paying more for search today because of the monopol…

Just offering normal jobs would generally be fine, doing a big group deal that also comes with IP licensing would generally not be fine. I'm not going to try to give you the exact line. > In other words, you do want the government to force employees to stay at a company when they could get a better offer? > Isn’t that what we wanted to prevent with outlawing non competes? That's way too general. You could use that sa…

So the law is now that they can’t license the technology to companies that higher former employees?

You don’t see what kind of Kafkaesque mess these proposed laws are creating?

Who are we benefiting again?

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