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Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

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Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#661

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

That is a pretty cynical take on what UX designers do. The PMs should be dealing with lists and spreadsheets, often they don’t and just tell the designer to just design the product in a mock. It isn’t the way things should go, just like how having programmers decide the UX while they are programming the UI leads to disaster.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#662

Post by neom »

EricDeb wrote: post #594
endtime wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that the purpose of building a business is just the exit The majority of those affected negatively by this are not the founders, but the employees. Many of them may have turned down FAANG positions that come with predictable liquid RSUs. Some may have kids (in fact, I know someone at Figma who had a kid in the past year). Liquidity's not necessarily about opportunistically passing on risk...sometimes it's just abou…

Any chance figma can go public?

I'm sure these 30+ people want their 330+ Million dollars back with "profit", they need to find an exit somewhere.

https://www.figma.com/blog/figmas-series-e/

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#663

Post by tick_tock_tick »

fairity wrote: post #392

> Fifteen months into the regulatory review process, Figma and Adobe no longer see a path toward regulatory approval How in the world did it take fifteen months for regulators to reject this? That’s an absurdly long time to be operating a business in limbo, and I have to assume it’s the regulators dragging their feet since the companies have every incentive to move quickly. I don’t have an opinion on whether or not t…

The current administration has made it very clear they will block nearly all attempts at mergers and if they can't block it will drag the process out as long as possible to make it as unappealing as possible.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#664

Post by mrandish »

wins32767 wrote: post #649
mrandish wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How in the world did it take fifteen months for regulators to reject this? I agree with your overall point that the current regulatory process related to anti-trust M&A very much needs to be improved. While the delay may be the proximate cause, focusing on that risks failing to address the fundamental root cause of the problem, which is A) lack of clarity in regulatory policies and the underlying laws authorizing t…

> earlier stage startups (which drives most new job creation in the US) This is absolutely not true.

I was referring not to just valley tech startups but investing in new small businesses overall. Per the U.S. Gov Small Business Administration:

> "Despite the jobs lost during the recession, large businesses generated 6.7 million net new jobs over the past 25 years. During the same period, small businesses generated 12.9 million net new jobs, meaning small businesses have accounted for 66 percent of employment growth over the last 25 years."

https://advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Small-Bu...

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#665

Post by gunapologist99 »

echelon wrote: post #650
gunapologist99 wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead imagine that the workers actually did get that huge chunk of cash but still had to come into work every day.

But that's Adobe's problem instead of Figma's and the employees'.

Good point, and I agree, but nevertheless the product itself will probably suffer less in the current situation, and meanwhile Figma gets another bite at the apple down the road, and that might be a MUCH bigger bite and apple later.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#666

Post by aliston »

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…

What's so bad about the Spotify app? For the most part, it looks like a bunch of lists (not so much spreadsheets) to me...

As someone that is only tangentially in the design space, why do you think collaborative design works so poorly? I have noticed that, in engineering reviews, complex backend designs get scrutiny, but rarely "I feel..", "I prefer..." types of comments, whereas frontend teams get all types of those comments. Is it a matter of too many cooks in the kitchen or something else?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#667

Post by Dylan16807 »

smachiz wrote: post #652
Dylan16807 wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Once they get working on it, I would think they could get consultation and competitor briefs back within a month. Then have an initial answer within two months of the announcement, and if that answer is a "no" they'd have a good idea of what would need to be changed.

And I don't see a great reason that negotiations should more than triple that amount of time. If they're not budging, make the "no" final. So two months initial, six months max, would be good numbers.

If the company wants to negotiate with everyone in serial... that's their problem.

> 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

Wasn't the thesis of this comment line that government regulators are being slow or being a problem? This supports that idea, I think.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#668

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

RickS wrote: post #622
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…

(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…

Yeah usually the step kids aren't allowed to talk to each other until after the ceremony. In fact it might be illegal for the two companies to do anything regarding the merger until the transaction is concluded. That is when you'll see the HR, Marketing, Sales, and Legal teams have layoffs because typically post-merger those areas don't require duplicate teams.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#669

Post by russell_h »

ethbr1 wrote: post #496
ajmurmann wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This would have gone quickly, to no, if Figma and Adobe had taken the first answer they got from DoJ at face value.

I don't know anything about the Adobe / Figma situation, but "If you just don't question the government they won't make your life so hard" doesn't seem like a very strong response to accusations of overreach.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#670

Post by dopeboy »

JadoJodo wrote: post #218

While I do see this as great news (for all the reasons others have outlined), I wonder how this will impact VC in the future; If the current goal is for companies to get VC money, burn that cash for years and years and years, and then have a huge IPO or acquisition (that makes it all worth it), it would seem regulatory issues would start to scare away investment.

Definitely disappointing. Only hope is they IPO.
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