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Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

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Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#81

Post by isodev »

DHPersonal wrote: post #32
karaterobot wrote: post #27

Adobe XD was meant to take on Sketch, and failed at that, which meant it was fully two generations behind Figma. They couldn't compete, and as a company they have no capacity for making innovative web design products. They do seem to have a capacity for ruining the ones they buy, so I'm glad this attempt failed.

In that time between XD's inception and Figma's buyout attempt, hasn't Sketch caught up to Figma and become a decent competitor to it? I haven't used it in a while because my employer doesn't support it and my freelance work has effectively ended.

Indeed, Sketch is a decent alternative to Figma including for collaboration. Sketch even has the advantage of still being a offline first app while Figma is quite useless without an always on internet connection.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#82

Post by graemep »

lolinder wrote: post #78
Mistletoe wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*good public businesses Private businesses don’t have to do anything and is where you get some of the best companies that exist and care about their customers like Patagonia. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/patagon... Maybe it’s the only way out of the enshittification death spiral because there are no shareholders to destroy the company to “create value” for.

> good public businesses > Private businesses don’t have to do anything Is this a baked-in legal distinction between public and private businesses, or is it that the company is supposed to do what the shareholders want and the shareholders of a private business are more likely than those of a public business to want something beyond ROI?

I think very often with private companies it is not just looking beyond ROI (they may do) but they also look longer term.

A shareholder whose children will inherit the business one day will have a very different outlook to one who is looking at their annual performance numbers, which is the sort thing institutional shareholders are looking at.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#83

Post by runako »

no_wizard wrote: post #2

Now Figma can become the de-facto choice for its software category and a merger was proved to be ultimately unnecessary for its survival and was a clear attempt at Adobe trying to buyout their competition because they can't seem to compete. I think overall this is a good thing. Adobe owning Figma isn't a great promise that it would be make Figma better, improve Figma in any way, nor keep Figma on the path of making h…

For a company like Figma, the shareholders often include many/all of the employees. Choosing not to take a deal that could net staff retirement money (or realistically in SF: "homeownership money") can also be a bad choice for morale.

Consider that many of the employees will have joined the risky startup instead of taking a larger cash compensation at a company like Adobe; helping them get liquid is part of the bargain.

This all assumes the company won't go public, the traditional path for companies to generate liquidity and raise capital while remaining independent. For whatever reason, companies like Figma are waiting much longer than historically to go public. HubSpot serves a similar market and went public in 2014 with a valuation near $1B, in a normal IPO with top-tier bankers. It's not a prerequisite for companies to wait until they are $10B-$100B to go public.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#85

Post by jampekka »

duxup wrote: post #51
no_wizard wrote: post #2

Now Figma can become the de-facto choice for its software category and a merger was proved to be ultimately unnecessary for its survival and was a clear attempt at Adobe trying to buyout their competition because they can't seem to compete. I think overall this is a good thing. Adobe owning Figma isn't a great promise that it would be make Figma better, improve Figma in any way, nor keep Figma on the path of making h…

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

A lot of people tend to not accept this plain fact that for-profits must maximize profit. It's literally illegal not to do so.

https://www.wakeforestlawreview.com/2012/04/our-continuing-s...

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#87

Post by MSFT_Edging »

foooorsyth wrote: post #31
ceejayoz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You paint this like it's a bad thing, that's why many acquisitions occur. You paint that like it's a good thing.

A lot of founders see it as a good thing -- not everyone wants to stay in the game. Some want a big liquidity event after 10 years of grind and a sale to a large competing company typically yields the biggest windfall.

It might just be me but I don't think we should structure the economy around how easily founders can sell their business to escape to the next one. All that has done is make mega corps bigger and killed competition.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#88

Post by aabhay »

htrp wrote: post #10

Reading between the lines, Adobe fired all of the people who were working on XD when they did the Figma deal.

Implausible to me. Keeping that team going would put pressure on Figma. My read between the lines is that Adobe negotiated a partnership before ending talks.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#89

Post by Bootvis »

jampekka wrote: post #85
duxup wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

A lot of people tend to not accept this plain fact that for-profits must maximize profit. It's literally illegal not to do so. https://www.wakeforestlawreview.com/2012/04/our-continuing-s...

Your link is really hard to read imo and it doesn’t present an indisputed legal fact. From a quick Googling:

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/shareholder....

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#90

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #77
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #58

I still don't understand (as a DAW author) how there are so many more people doing various graphics tasks on computers, and relatively speaking so few significant apps to do them with, whereas there so many fewer people doing stuff with audio and more than a dozen serious contenders for the toolbox.

I think the lock in with audio is significantly lower than with graphical applications. You can even tell this by the fact that there is a universe of plug-ins that work across many DAWs due to having somewhat standard interfaces. The culture of audio creation before computers was already that you connected many devices from different manufacturers together for different specialised tasks. I mean even the term “plug-…

Reasonably true, except that in reality people move between DAWs rather rarely. The real world lock-in is quite high, even if the theoretical lock-in is lower.
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