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Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

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Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#651

Post by finnh »

cj wrote: post #446
finnh wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting those numbers from? The valuations of small acquisitions are closely held information; afaik there is no place to just look this stuff up.

1st hand info / network. I'm a CEO. YC Founder and Techstars founder. My CFO is a fractional CFO that works with other startups clients, same stories. This kind of information and what really goes on behind the scenes is rarely revealed. Mainly because if I told you about the shitstorm story of a top tier VC trying to buy my company and the deal exploding, that VC will do everything in their power to bury the story a…

Thanks. I've sold two companies, and gotten a pressurized squeeze from a major player (which we said no to - we were profitable so didn't have runway problems), but I've never heard of dropping an offer valuation at the last minute.

Nasty business!

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#652

Post by smachiz »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #623
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business The number of such mergers, globally every year, is countable on two hands. They involve the wealth of nations (this one’s similar to Malta’s GDP [1][2]). It would be unreasonable to permanently staff the regulatory force that would be required to quickly review such deals in any industry. […

I don't understand. If there are several per year, and they're going to take a couple months even at maximum speed, then permanently staffing the regulatory force sounds very reasonable to me! (For the US and EU which are going to weigh in on a big fraction.) Why would you want to be hiring and firing constantly?

There are permanent staff. The issue of time isn't any individual regulator - it's that there's regulators in every country they operate in. And the company is negotiating with them all simultaneously - figuring out what would make the EU say yes, and then taking that to the US and see if that will let them say yes, then going to Japan and making sure they'll say yes, then going to India - and you don't want some of them knowing that everyone else has already said yes, because then they'll hold out to get some last special thing.

These are complicated negotiations, in many complicated jurisdictions.

How quick do you think they should be? For everyone to understand the potential ramifications and consult appropriate industry experts? Let competitors et al file briefs?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#653

Post by vpribish »

ajmurmann wrote: post #487
Bjorkbat wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the regulators made their point pretty clear early on when the DOJ opened a lawsuit against Adobe. The people most responsible for keeping this in limbo were Adobe’s lawyers.

The Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business. I'm general against mergers and think it's better for consumers and the market if competitors fight to the (metaphorical) death instead, but if we do something, let's do it smoothly and right. That said, for mergers like that a ton of countries are involved which makes things even more co…

VMW-AVGO was held up by the Chinese and South Korean regulators - it gets geopolitical. sure would be nice if everything was clear and clean for businesses but also it would be nice if I had a pony and magic shoes.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#654

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

vasco wrote: post #490
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible that they have $1b sitting around in cash. Wouldn't you at least put it into a bond or treasury?

Nothing that is public that I've seen says this is true. You can get a bridge loan for $1b backed by whatever iliquid assets you have from any major bank, and then it's up to you how quickly you want to unwind other things. The loan might even be interest free if the bank wants to keep Adobe's business for other M&A activities.

Bridge loan with $1b liquidity in 4 days? Or are bridge loans essentially open lines of credit?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#655

Post by Erratic6576 »

vr46 wrote: post #572
jq-r wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. A very long time user and I really liked everything about it. When they started pulling that subscription shit with tons of crapware I had enough. Cancelling subscription (even a short one) was also a terrible (I would even call it criminal) experience. Tried couple of alternatives, and frankly I don't like them. They are either slow, got abandoned in a year or have unintuitive workflows. I woul…

I found a loophole - check my older comments - to let me get out of their system, but they may have closed it. I bought Affinity for a laugh but switched to Capture One for better skin tones, Photo Mechanic Plus for better management. Both those have gone to the terrible subscription model but I’m just going to freeze my Mac‘s OS where it is and have a reliable machine for this.

I’m installing mojave on my 2017 macOS and call it a “black pearl”

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#656

Post by ThomPete »

airstrike wrote: post #359
ThomPete wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't measure this on the size of the company but on market share. By that definition of course it should be allowed. There are many powerful competitors in this space Canva being just one of them.

Canva is nowhere near Adobe. Adobe is the dominant software seller for creatives. Figma and Canva are the two only notable competitors to have emerged in the past 10 years or so. Doing away with one of them isn't better for society.

Canva is 5 times bigger than Adobe Express which is how you compare the two.

Adobe don't dominate 3D, illustration, ads, video and I could go on.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#657

Post by mrandish »

tsycho wrote: post #549

[Pure speculation; I don't work in the UI space at all, and at neither of these companies] I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this. They were acquiring Figma at the peak of the market (for growth stock/startup valuations) because of the existential risks that Figma was threatening, due to their collaborative development UX. But since then: * Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new a…

> I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this.

I think they probably are. I follow Adobe closely and when the acquisition was announced I was pretty skeptical it would be net good for Adobe in the long-run. The problem wasn't the idea of buying Figma, it was the very rich price being paid. Adobe has a history of not doing a lot of big acquisitions (for it's size and massive cash position). When it does acquire big, Adobe is mostly strategic and a "value shopper", meaning they generally don't pay extremely high prices bid up by frothy auctions. This means Adobe must walk away from a lot of deals we never hear about over price. That's why the Figma deal struck me as so unusual.

In the >year since the deal was announced, it's started to look even less plausible to me. Despite being required to pay a large break-up fee, I suspect, Adobe's management is relieved.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#658

Post by zombiwoof »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #643
RickS wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(ex-Adobe, on a team highly related to an area where Figma out-executed XD, less knowledge about genAI stuff) > Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma GenAI/Firefly's success is in a totally different domain to what Figma's doing. Figma's equivalent at Adobe is XD, which has never held a candle to Figma. The existential problem Adobe tried to buy their way out of still exists in the…

> (which is part of the basis of Firefly's success – significantly cleaner legal provenance on their training data). Yeah... I mean the pre-trained text encoder Firefly uses is filled with copyrighted, unlicensed-for-express-purpose training data. Firefly is successful in the same sense that DocuSign is, in that it is selling a holistic social experience, but I think maybe don't opine on "legal provenance on their tr…

nailed it

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#659

Post by Dylan16807 »

codeptualize wrote: post #126

That is wild. It's a good thing as it means Adobe won't ruin Figma like they did with so many great software products before, but just imagine founders, investors and employees, thinking they had a really good exit.. That must hurt, I hope they can stay motivated. If Adobe can't buy them, what other exit options do they have? Go public?

They just got a billion dollars as a breakup fee. A billion dollars could be: $500M to early investors, $250M to the people that built the company, $400k each for anyone employed before the merger announcement, $100k each for anyone hired since, $50M under a pillow for safekeeping.

And that's without needing to give up ownership. Is that not a good 'exit'?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#660

Post by ThomPete »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #610
ThomPete wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't measure this on the size of the company but on market share. By that definition of course it should be allowed. There are many powerful competitors in this space Canva being just one of them.

Depending on how exactly you segment the market, Adobe's market share is somewhere between 33% and 75%. The runner-up is in the single digits. In my view, the case for blocking this acquisition couldn't be any clearer. If Adobe wants to grow in this space, it should make better software or cut prices or both.

You have to segment it into the verticals.

Canva is 5 times bigger if not more than Adobe Express which is the equivalent.

Substance is miniscule in the 3d market compared to Max, Softimage, Maya etc.

Adobe is big because of the many vertical they are in, not because they own them.

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