Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

figma.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 1001 posts

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#701

Post by ethanbond »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #640
ethanbond wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that value just magically appears at the moment of offer to exit?

Yup. Something is only worth what someone else (i.e., The Market) is willing to pay for it. You can stack up a ton of customers and revenue but if no one else wants it...sorry...no value. At the extreme, imagine all these social media "creators". In some cases, tons of revenue. But their revenue-producing-hobby is such that no one could take the torch and carry on. If that person is abducted by aliens, the company al…

> Revenue actually is value (a subset of it) delivered to the business's customers. Enterprise value is a different thing. It's an important thing, but it's totally possible to have a business that delivers immense value to its customers and has very low enterprise value. We generally call these "not great businesses," but that doesn't make them not businesses.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#703

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#704

Post by todd-davies »

tqi wrote: post #648
todd-davies wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a bit of a problem for the field! Like many aspects of antitrust, predatory pricing applies cleanly for an industrial-era economy but as you point out, it's less clear how to translate it into the context of 21st century informational capitalism. A significant amount of legal and economic research in the field is asking these kinds of questions, and the answers are still forthcoming.

Got it, that makes sense that its not well established. I saw from your profile that this is actually something you are studying, which is very cool! I've always wondered what the examples of this (predatory pricing -> drive out competition -> jack up prices) happening in practice are? I know Uber is the ur-example but that feels different from something like pure a saas? I wonder if as long as there is VC money out…

I can't think of a good example for a sass product. I'm sure it goes on though and I'm always interested in hearing about examples!

A similar strategy which seems to be quite common these days is to cross-subsidise, which is when a firm sells one product at an artificially low price by using profits it makes from selling another product. If we think about cross-subsidisation, then lots of multi-product sass offerings might fall under our scope. That said, cross-subsidisation has economic benefits, so it's not clear-cut.

As I said, to properly adjust to digital markets I think antitrust will have to identify new patterns of harm and invent new metrics to measure them. Predatory pricing (and similar offences) will always be useful, but they might just not fit well onto these kinds of markets.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#705

Post by brandensilva »

CodeNest wrote: post #353

Bad news for Figma. I am hundred percent sure that Adobe's alternative product will dominate the entire design market.

Adobe XD never gained adoption so I don't see that happening with this failed deal so you will be 100% wrong.

Where Adobe will likely win out though is in the AI side of things so time will tell if that would be enough to replace Figma alone.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#706

Post by ethbr1 »

russell_h wrote: post #669
ethbr1 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By all means question the government! And take them to court!

Just don't disagree with them and engage lawyers AND then complain about how long "the process" is taking.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#707

Post by dharmab »

bobobob420 wrote: post #675
Solvency wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because literally 90% of developers today are wholly incapable of producing the cutting edge performance Figma requires. It's an engineering marvel. It's like wondering why more people can't just compete in F1. Money and talent at the rarest levels. Most companies engineer at the performance level of Atlassian. Which is not remotely sufficient.

where can i read more about the engineering behind Figma? Is it not just a UI for rendering polygons? Is all the technology in getting high performant rendering on top of a javascript engine? If so that doesn't seem like anything that crazy.

The hard part is the multiplayer editing, which works seamlessly with quite large groups, even on less-than-ideal internet. You can even see everyone's mouse cursors moving in real time! This is something most video games struggle with, let alone productivity tools.

https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology...

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#709

Post by tqi »

todd-davies wrote: post #704
tqi wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it, that makes sense that its not well established. I saw from your profile that this is actually something you are studying, which is very cool! I've always wondered what the examples of this (predatory pricing -> drive out competition -> jack up prices) happening in practice are? I know Uber is the ur-example but that feels different from something like pure a saas? I wonder if as long as there is VC money out…

I can't think of a good example for a sass product. I'm sure it goes on though and I'm always interested in hearing about examples! A similar strategy which seems to be quite common these days is to cross-subsidise, which is when a firm sells one product at an artificially low price by using profits it makes from selling another product. If we think about cross-subsidisation, then lots of multi-product sass offerings…

It seems like the implicit assumption is that there must be a harm somewhere, we just haven't found it yet. But as a consumer, I'm not sure that is true? Even the Amazon paper seems to admit that there isn't any consumer harm to be found, only harm to smaller competitors' businesses. But that feels like an odd standard to apply since isn't any business's primary purpose to compete with / harm competitors?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#710

Post by [deleted] »

Ensorceled wrote: post #698

I have no idea why so many people are asserting that the FTC has been sitting on this for 15 months. The first paragraph of the article, FROM FIGMA, says: "Figma and Adobe have reached a joint decision to end our pending acquisition. It’s not the outcome we had hoped for, but despite thousands of hours spent with regulators around the world detailing differences between our businesses, our products, and the markets w…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN