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Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

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Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#891

Post by porridgeraisin »

kpandit wrote: post #826
codeptualize wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of pump and dumps but this one isn't a pump and dump. Figma was founded in 2012, they pretty much took over UI design, did $400M ARR in 2022, great retention, rapid growth, great margins, there is a lots of actual value there and still quite a bit of potential left. A "proper" startup does indeed include an exit as that's the point where they give a return on investment to their VC's. That is the start…

My bad. I was just responding to the parent comment and the comment(by showbug) they were replying to in isolation. Figma is a product I liked and was so terribly disappointed with the news of acquisition by adobe. Regarding startups, I just did google "define: startup" and in the dictionary definition there has no VC and no exit.

What the dictionary says is completely irrelevant.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#892

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

015a wrote: post #845
vlovich123 wrote: post #775

I think this is great. Figma gets a free undiluted infusion of 1B cash. I’m surprised break-up fees aren’t negotiated as an investment instead of a pure cash transfer. Sure it may have impacted company focus, it didn’t impact their revenue that much (1.5x growth vs 2x growth in previous years although that could have also been caused by an adverse economic climate with sales slowing across many companies and industri…

Fun fact: Figma's ARR in 2022 was around $400M. That $1B cash infusion could be invested in treasuries with an ARR of ~$50M; this isn't just a liquidity infusion of a billion dollars, it increases their net income by like 10%, basically free of charge.

You're confusing revenue with net income.

Plus, if the best that Figma can do with a billion dollars is just invest it in Treasuries (and I'm not saying that's the case), then they should just give it to their shareholders and see if they can get a better return. I only point this out because many people are often confused by the effects of higher interest rates, e.g. "Why did this company lay off all these people when they're still profitable?" Your example highlights the reason why perfectly - if you're a company with a billion dollars of investment and the best profit you can muster is $50 million a year, you're a great business if Treasuries are only paying 1%, but when they're paying 5% you should just basically close up shop as people can get the same return just sticking their money in Treasuries.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#893

Post by drexlspivey »

paulddraper wrote: post #873
vlovich123 wrote: post #775

I think this is great. Figma gets a free undiluted infusion of 1B cash. I’m surprised break-up fees aren’t negotiated as an investment instead of a pure cash transfer. Sure it may have impacted company focus, it didn’t impact their revenue that much (1.5x growth vs 2x growth in previous years although that could have also been caused by an adverse economic climate with sales slowing across many companies and industri…

> I’m surprised break-up fees aren’t negotiated as an investment That would be very awkward (and even dangerous) to have a competitor as an investor.

As opposed to them buying 100% of the company?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#894

Post by DoesntMatter22 »

coldtea wrote: post #889
DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am incredibly happy about this. Otherwise it's like lamenting the invention of the car because it would eliminate all the jobs making buggies and whips. > No one paying cares if it's just copied from other works There are probably zero artists alive who didn't learn by copying other works or learning to make art in that style. It's no different with an AI. An AI is something that learns from others and creates it's…

> I am incredibly happy about this. Otherwise it's like lamenting the invention of the car because it would eliminate all the jobs making buggies and whips. Between road accidents, air pollution, noise, horrendous cities and suburbs built around car use, and so on, I don't mind lamenting the invetion of the car either... In general it's pretty naive to celebrate new technologies without considering drawbacks. Especia…

> even more so if the technology has the potential to eliminate human creativity

This is completely overboard. People will always be creative. There is no way in which this stops anyone from being creative but actually allows not artists to be much more creative.

It also allows the same for artists as they can now create in styles they aren't skilled in.

> killing off graphic design as a profession?

It likely will dramatically kill it and free up those people for other types of jobs as they can now be more productive.

Humans will still continue to be creative and draw and paint. That won't change.

No reason to hold society back just to hold on to some jobs

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#895

Post by kalleboo »

endtime wrote: post #578
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is my favorite comment of the year. We've all become so inured to the idea, especially in startup land, that the purpose of building a business is just the exit (and hopefully we can get out soon enough with someone else "holding the bag"). As you point out, if Figma can build a growing, profitable business, there is no reason they can't IPO at some point. But still, this shows how even the purpose of an…

> 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…

Most people who have kids make a fraction of the average salary at figma, I don't see how they are sacrificing anything

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#896

Post by arathis »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #801
yawnxyz wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I’m a UX engineer but not at Spotify) It’s always been wild to me how incongruous / inconsistent the experience of using Spotify’s web/ios/android apps have been. It points to an organizational mess rather than a Figma mess, but maybe it also shows that Figma doesn’t address the entire picture yet of addressing org level communication and syncing with prod assets

At least to the specific, valuable role of a UX designer, the biggest problem with Figma is it has no opinions or affordances for improving HCI. The best UX designers have strong HCI opinions and Figma does nothing for them. It is fundamentally a tool to (mis)-style lists. So it is unfortunate it is adopted as much as it is, UX designers should be spending their intellectual energy on more scientific stuff. > It poin…

What the hell are you talking about?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#897

Post by kmlx »

pas wrote: post #415
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…

we have no idea when they filed what papers where ... and when regulators answered and what, and then how the companies reacted, and when, and ... on the announcement, Sep 15, Adobe stock fell by 17%. the FTC opened some investigation on Nov 2. some EU thing started its process in February (based on filings by refering countries, and of course we have no idea of the details of those country-level processes) so, all i…

> we have no idea when they filed what papers where ... and when regulators answered and what, and then how the companies reacted, and when, and ...

detailed timeline, explanations, submissions etc here from UK’s CMA:

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/adobe-slash-figma-merger-inquir...

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#898

Post by whatisthiseven »

matthewowen wrote: post #105
whatisthiseven wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine if no one starts vampiric companies that dump free services on the public destroying the perceived value of software for the purpose of a fast unicorn exit. Of course, these companies always look to advertising for funding so they are obtrusive. Unless you are thinking of real companies that would be affected by this ban? Retail stores don't care about this ban. Companies that sell real products wou…

But Figma isn’t a vampiric company dumping free services for the purpose of a fast exit. It’s been around for over a decade and charges _more_ for its principal product than Adobe charges for comparable products. So by your own definition, real companies are affected by this!

I'm also ok with mega corps not buying smaller companies. It encourages further mega-corpification.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#899

Post by fuck_google »

patternMachine wrote: post #786
doctorpangloss wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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…

Remarkably ignorant comment, and bitter too. You might as well blame MS Word for all the poorly written books out there.

[dead]

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#900

Post by PeterCorless »

puppymaster wrote: post #886
627467 wrote: post #884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view the fact that figma has been built for realtime collab just places it on totally different league. It's like office vs gdocs. It tool Microsoft years (a decade?) To catch-up and accept that most people collab online one way or the other

yep. Figma's 'workflow' has become an api in itself. In order to compete everyone has to match the flow

+1 this. Website design has become an increasingly iterative, collaborative process inside companies. You can't just launch a new website and surprise your team. People need to annotate comments, and constant iteration is the name of the game. Design, solicit feedback, integrate, iterate, repeat.

There's also a lot of work needed up-front on responsive design (as opposed to it being an also-ran or afterthought), and a move away from older typical WordPress-oriented static designs to modern dynamic JAMstack-oriented development methodologies.

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