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

Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

961–970 of 1001 posts

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#961

Post by brokencode »

isnhp wrote: post #663
bears-n-beets wrote: post #648

As a current software engineer at Adobe, I was really disappointed when I got the internal email announcing this this morning. It's reminiscent of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior in the early 00s. Figma is the better product and Adobe knows it - but instead of using that to light a fire under them and work harder to create a better product, Adobe just used its deep pockets to make the problem go away. I was alre…

Adobe loses the game with their skill and use money to win it. Figma won the game with their skill but lose the money game.

It’s hard to say they lost the money game when they ended up with $20B.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#962

Post by DonHopkins »

TheCondor wrote: post #699
ortusdux wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself coming back to this Steve Jobs quote more and more: "It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketin…

MS's Office collaborative cloudish stuff is a prime example of this. I don't know how many times my team has ganged up on a document in Google Cloud and collaboratively banged it out. Likewise, I can only remember a couple times I've done it with Office and not ended up with n different copies of the doc that we had to manually merge back together, if we even could.

A Pissed Off Tutorial For Google Wave

Josh from the Game Helpin' Squad actually tries to get some work done. Or, rather, he complains about how people didn't appreciate it when he got some work done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z4RKRLaSug

"Google Buzz: Like Twitter, But With Bees"

"I've Got A Bad Feeling About This" Button

"The Third Time's The Button" Button

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#963

Post by zhte415 »

shabbatt wrote: post #523
hackitup7 wrote: post #458

So smart for both Adobe and Figma. Figma posed a serious threat to Adobe and it makes sense for them to do it. The losers are all of us poor sods who were happy Figma customers. Just goes to show that if you want an outsized exit multiple the best way is to put a gun to a $100B company's head.

This type of multiples is only possible when rates are low. Likely their last infusion of capital made their valuations possible but I reckon it is reduced as rates are ticking up fast.

Would valuations not be discounted on interest rate futures, not overnight? Or am I missing a piece?

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#964

Post by antihero »

emanuelez wrote: post #734
GuB-42 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their tools were unsurpassed Why the past tense? Which tools have been surpassed? Have Photoshop been surpassed? I am genuinely curious here. I take note of Capture One, but is it an "acceptable yet technically inferior alternative that I picked because I don't agree with Adobe business practices" (which I think is a valid reason) or a viable alternative even for someone who doesn't have a problem dealing with Adob…

Disclaimer: Capture One employee here. That being said I invite anyone to try out the free trial and confirm or dis-confirm my claims. In my opinion Capture One best features are: 1) image and color quality 2) tethering capabilities 3) workflow customization and optimization

Is there some sort of cloud storage integration? One thing I like about Lightroom CC is how seemlessly I can move between devices and not have to worry about having large HDDs and backups.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#965

Post by sure_about_that »

epolanski wrote: post #870
tus666 wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this how competition works? Big payoffs create massive incentives for people to create great products in the hope they will be bought out. Adobe may have "destroyed" one great product, but think of the hundreds of new ones they have incentivized to be created. People look at this all wrong and ignore the downstream effect.

I count more software that has been ruined and/or killed by acquisitions than the one bred by those.

Does this include the people who got paid out and went on to build new software companies?

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#966

Post by lawgimenez »

wishfish wrote: post #884
lawgimenez wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife tried to cancel her subscription but the agent on the live chat just quickly and out of the blue gave her 4 months of free subscription. Not sure if this is unusual or part of their playbook.

Part of their retention playbook. I needed Illustrator for a short term project. Only needed it for less than a month so paid for a 30 day term . Almost forgot about it but went to cancel it on the last day. They gave me a month for free automatically. No customer service rep was involved. - It was rather annoying I had to check & double-check that I was only paying for 30 days and not getting ensnared in the annual…

Ahh makes sense. We are looking to threaten them with cancellation again to get another 4 months of free subscription I hope.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#967

Post by rmbyrro »

epolanski wrote: post #870
tus666 wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this how competition works? Big payoffs create massive incentives for people to create great products in the hope they will be bought out. Adobe may have "destroyed" one great product, but think of the hundreds of new ones they have incentivized to be created. People look at this all wrong and ignore the downstream effect.

I count more software that has been ruined and/or killed by acquisitions than the one bred by those.

Weren't most of these ruined software bred by the prospects of acquisition in the first place?

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#968

Post by matwood »

altacc wrote: post #670
patcon wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> discovered it had gone subscription-only as well, meaning my entire photo library would now be trapped on my old laptop unless I paid a monthly fee forever. I empathize, but isn't all this the reason they would fork out so much for figma? I mean, people hated them for going subscription with the tools that used to be desktop, but they absolutely adore figma that has never been anything but subscription. It's confus…

A lot of amateur photographers used Lightroom and were willing to pay a one off purchase price whereas a monthly cost for something you might hardly use in a month is too expensive. Figma has a high percentage of users who use it regularly as part of their paying jobs. It also has online features, which you expect to pay continuously for. Lightroom Classic had no online features. I still use Lightroom 6, the last sta…

I've yet to find anything that matches LR DAM.

And the cloud version of LR does offer cool features if you use them. I just need my iPad now when traveling. Can proof and start edits right there, then continue on the computer. I pull my images onto the iPad and let the cloud sync and back them up.

The only system that might be able to replace the workflow I currently use is Apple Photos, but it doesn't deal that well with RAWs and editing outside of the Photos.app.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#969

Post by jahnu »

adventured wrote: post #686
isnhp wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe loses the game with their skill and use money to win it. Figma won the game with their skill but lose the money game.

Adobe got the money in the first place via skill. Photoshop has been the leading photo editing software for a generation. Hundreds of companies over decades, some with deep pockets, have tried to knock them off and have failed. Figma didn't lose the money game, they sold out specifically to reap the money. The owners of Figma - where the profits tend to go in a business - are extracting at an epic scale. They sold ou…

Photopea guy must be making large coughing noises right now.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#970

Post by BurningFrog »

epolanski wrote: post #870
tus666 wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this how competition works? Big payoffs create massive incentives for people to create great products in the hope they will be bought out. Adobe may have "destroyed" one great product, but think of the hundreds of new ones they have incentivized to be created. People look at this all wrong and ignore the downstream effect.

I count more software that has been ruined and/or killed by acquisitions than the one bred by those.

This sounds like a very complicated study to design.
Post reply on HN