What investors first paid for @Figma , which @adobe buying for ~$40.20 per share:
$0.088: @dannyrimer/@IndexVentures , Jacobsen/OATV
A $0.199: @johnolilly /@GreylockVC, @semil
B $0.332: @mamoonha/@kleinerperkins
C $1.098: @andrew__reed/@sequoia
D $4.619: Peter Levine/@a16z
$21.29: @henryellenbogen/DurableJust 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Inc.#Anti-competitive_pr...
I've been so happy to have Adobe out of my life these last 10 years. I never even cared about the cost.
And figma has been so admirable, one of the best browser based apps. Always squeezing incredible performance out of the web with their crazy c++ engine. And their fast pace of delivering new features, often reworking ui just for the craft of it. It's been fun to just read the release notes.
https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...
Perhaps the silver lining will be the talent scattering, moving to and founding other companies, but for today this sucks.
After the acquisition, Adobe starved Fireworks of resources and marketing. They broke things, left major bugs and performance regressions unfixed, and eventually discontinued it altogether. I'd argue this wasn't simply negligence, but a calculated decision to kill an innovative product because it threatened the profits of their cash cows.
As much as I hope otherwise, I believe the acquisition of Figma will go the same way. Once it's under the Adobe umbrella, the simple mathematics of profits from Photoshop and Illustrator vs. those from Figma will result in the latter being starved, stripped of functionality, and eventually left broken.
Pretty positive this would lessen competition in design software and restablish Adobe as a monopoly. This merger should be blocked.
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
This is huge news for Sketch.
However, to be honest, this is the type of acquisition that should be blocked IMO. Adobe is literally acquiring a direct competitor here.
To me the consumer harm is pretty clear. Instead of a more competent org (Figma) growing further to disrupt more of Adobe’s business, we’re going to be stuck with Adobe forever.
Great outcome for the founders and investors in Figma, terrible outcome for consumers.
I'd even rather it have been acquired by Google where it could end up being graveyarded, there at least it would, if it survived, have been more easily available. I consider it for practical purposes no less survived now than if Google had killed it.
Is there anyone who could have acquired them that would have been a better custodian for such a great product?
[0] https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/
I don’t think that in the long term this will give Figma as an ecosystem any benefit — unless Adobe will keep it separate from the main Creative Cloud.
This reminds me of the Trello acquisition.
As a loyal Figma user I’m pretty sceptical of the future. Hope to be wrong.
UPDATE: Looks like it is indeed true… https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-to-Acqui...
And maybe that is fine. Adobe is not alone. Many big companies can only expand their capabilities through acquisitions. Those big companies are doing fine.
Specific to Adobe, the acquisition of Macromedia was a huge success in part because it injected a lot of talent into Adobe that stayed and succeeded. Maybe Figmates will be able to do the same.
1) dominance w/ noncom practices
2) -> disruption by a slight threat arises to threaten #1 market share
3) -> buyout of #2
4) -> return to to the desired state of #1“…approximately $20 billion in cash and stock”
Apparently it’s roughly half in cash according to other news reports.
Adobe stock is down 8% premarket, so seems like the market thinks they overpaid. (Personally I disagree — this is a good acquisition for Adobe)
1. Figma replacement - Sketch (1yr fee, updates optional, MacOS only)
2. Adobe Photoshop - Affinity Photo (Win/Mac)
3. Adobe Illustrator - Affinity Designer (Win/Mac)
4. Adobe InDesign - Affinity Publisher (Win/Mac) (I use this to create my indie magazine)
5. Adobe Animate - Tumult Hype (closest thing to Flash that we have today, replaces my need for After Effects + Bodymoovin, Mac OS only)
I do wonder if this means sunset for Adobe xD, which I'm totally cool with. This whole market was Sketch's for the losing, and I suspect at some point a merger with Abstract and Invision makes sense for them.
It’s funny to see Wall Street’s reaction to this but they don’t understand how much Figma is eroding Adobe’s enterprise businesses. I filled in a survey a few months ago saying I have been using Illustrator and Photoshop less for basic tasks as Figma was so much faster for those. It also fixed the collaboration step. I as the CDO, had dozens of people across our SaaS company using Figma, including the CEO and COO who were using it to design all of their slide decks. At the same time in my side projects working with small product manufacturers and HR consultants I’ve got them using it too as the infinite canvas enables thinking that other established software doesn’t (MS Office, Google). Usually Adobe’s products are only in the design or maybe marketing departments. So Figma was eating out Adobe’s core whilst reaching strongly into other parts of a company that Adobe struggles to reach. The Wall Street types who think Figma was just a pandemic boosted product are blind to Figma’s true position. Just the simple fact that you don’t have to install anything and you have something that can do basic drawing and design tasks is huge.
Congrats to the Figma team on cashing out but RIP in stagnation.
If there wasn't enough evidence before, this seems to strongly suggest your only salvation from user-hostile corporate monoliths is community open source projects. So... Anyone want to build a multiplayer design tool? :)
Support didn’t help, so I had to vent on Twitter before they refunded the amount.
Not happy with their obscure and deliberately misleading subscription model.
But it'll be interesting to see what they'll do with the cutting-edge web app know-how they'll acquire from Figma.
Adobe seems to be playing the game IBM did a few years ago, but it wont fool investors for much longer. The only winners here are the VCs at the cost of Adobe investors, and I predict this will be the deal that will push out Adobe current management in the next two years.
"Adobe plummets 15% after $20 billion deal to buy Figma and as earnings reveal soft 4th-quarter guidance" - https://sports.yahoo.com/adobe-plummets-15-20-billion-151612...
I don't even really dislike their software that much (although it is somewhat antiquated), I just hate the extreme bloat of CC and the poor integration between their apps. It's really 2000s legacy software. Instead of bringing Figma into the Adobe system, they should make Photoshop etc. more like Figma.
And now it's going to die. I almost feel like crying.
I hope the deal fall through NGL
Thankfully I never tried it, so I don't know what I'll miss when it's destroyed.
And now I know now why... Fuck! I mean, I am happy for the entire Figma team and everything they have accomplished, and everything they've given to the designer and the Internet-at-large community. But I fear this might be gradual end of it, hence my brainwaves going all crazy about it.
I signed up to Figma the day it was released, and it immediately became the tool I use for creating and editing vector graphics. Since then I have written well over 1,000 articles, and I can say with confidence that for 80% of those articles - all my visuals were created, edited or improved with Figma.
I have never spent a single dollar on the product. That was also one of my thoughts today - like holy shit, I can actually enjoy this fast interface, greater features, and insane amount of community resources for no cost?
Yeah, these guys did it right.
Let's see how the story unfolds.
I'm sure the people at Sketch are currently throwing a party that can be seen halfway across the world though.
Fuck Adobe.
Fuck Adobe.
Adobe consistently upgraded Photoshop even when they had virtually no competition. Their CC subscription pricing is actually an incredible vaue if you use it as a professional. Figma has a huge user base, and a team that is excelling where Adobe is struggling - collaborative cloud-first design software.
It is very possible that a 20B acquisition is in part Adobe investing in talent to address a gap in their expertise. This isn't 20 years ago, it is now.
On the other hand, there's now a lot of room for other startups to go Figma-way and try to capture market.
"autonomously". There, I fixed it for you :-) More seriously, I do hope that this will become an exception to the rule, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
0: https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/
I'm not too sure why the Figma people decided this was a good idea - but makes me grateful for Affinity & Sketch still being available.
In the late 80s and 90s many of the window managers were based on PostScript. Sun News was an extension of PostScript and Next was based on Display PostScript.
How did licensing work back then. Could Sun have OpenSource News? I mean it did implement PostScript but my understanding is they were not using actual Adobe code.
Now being part of the same owner, just makes it feel like any aggressive progress will just stall out.
This is the entire operation of how companies with tons of VC capital just work.
Now I see commenters complaining about 'anti-trust', 'anti-competition', etc. Given that you are now doing this, why not also complain about the very practises that violate anti-trust laws and anti-competition laws regularly done by Big Tech in general by blocking those deals and giving massive fines in the billions which will deter these sort of acquisitions and anti-competitive behaviour, like what happened to Plaid and VISA for example and the up-coming investigations into the Microsoft, Activision-Blizzard acquisition, etc.
We should not turn a blind eye on this and do nothing because it is Amazon, Google, Microsoft, VISA, or even Adobe or any other company that is part of Big Tech and does acquisitions like this.
First time was a book that had to be made ready for publication quickly (InDesign - my intro to paid adobe software), second time was 4k video editing (here I truly tried so many alternatives, free & paid), third time was basic motion graphics (after effects is brilliant and easy). Their software costs a lot of money though -- maybe their payment plans are what have made people bitter. I dislike the plans too. Maybe I came to adobe late, but I love their software.
Out of all the shady organizations that charge my card when I don't expect it, I mind adobe the least.
Adobe's clueless middle managers are already adding "push my useless pet feature to keep my chair busy" into their OKRs.
Basically, they are an orc army to be unleashed to destroy one of Adobe's few viable competitors. Like mafia thugs with a baseball bat.
From the blog “Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.“
Here is the discussion we had https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23654011
Indeed.
I like Figma a lot, but I'm glad I have an old copy of Sketch to fall back on. Adobe and its forever subscription model will eventually get applied to Figma.
upside: I now can roll out Figma anywhere we have adobe CC licenses without a rigamarole from management
Figma founders get money.
Figma competitors get a huge developed market to sell to when Adobe inevitably only sells Figma as part of their hellish subscription model.
Okay, Figma users lose. But that was a given.
Fuck.
That being said, I always wished Figma had the ability to import/export PSD files.
[0] 'Adobe has more than doubled the price of Creative Cloud in Australia since 2014 (2017)' https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/05/reminder-renew-your-ad...
Here's how the CEO of Figma went from a computer science intern to the head of a $2 billion company that's challenging Adobe for the love of designers across Silicon Valley - Oct 2020
https://www.businessinsider.com/figma-ceo-dylan-field-design...
InVision failed to standup their own UI design tool, but the collaboration suite is still good and they were starting to death spiral. This would be an immense opportunity for both to become the only viable immediate alternatives to the Adobe threat.
R.I.P Figma
I guess it goes to show how little I know about all of this, but surely a company with Adobe’s resources and prestige could just engineer something like this for less themselves?
Seems crazy to me. I guess it’s mostly about removing competition and giving people less options to not use an adobe product rather than the product itself that has value?
$20B price is interesting, Canva was valued at $25B recently and does way less.
Figma is one of the most vibrant platforms I've seen in recent memory — genuinely it goes well for all involved, including the users.
complicated and dark pattern pricing models free subscription extension to avoid cancelling bundle installers of unrequested software like antivirus
its all a sign that the product is over priced and there isnt enough new innovation
Google had an interest, but Adobe upped the offer.
Yes, I know this will be downvoted to hell:)
It’s a very sad day for designers.
Let's hope Figma doesn't become the next Dreamweaver.
I suppose this leaves Sketch? I imagine they are over the moon at this news.
But I’ve yet to see that happen.
Will never touch Figma now.
I guess I know now.
I think there will be more than one person against this.
Funny thing is Adobe let Fireworks languish after acquiring Macromedia, which was a good tool as it was to do UI.
I also believe this was a logical ending. I was wondering and actively discussing what Figma means to Adobe and happy to be right on my expectation on the number. This is Adobe's largest aquisition (its Whatsapp moment).
Congrats to both. I wasn't the happiest employee, but I believe it's a great company for the creative kind and I wish both a good journey.
Boooooooooooo.
We have to remember, though, that Figma leaders think otherwise…
Can someone remind me of a product that came from Adobe, rather than an acquisition?
It is fear that gives wings to men... And opens the pockets of companies.
See you in the dark ages …
Why don't Adobe just die already?
You took us all to a great place and threw us to the lion. Could have had customers for life but I’ll be canceling as soon as you transition over to Adobe.
What pains me the most is they could have easily been the ones to make Adobe obsolete if they had vision and values. In 10 years it would be a Nokia VS iPhone situation with us asking how Adobe became Nokia.
Any alternatives?
If you are shocked by this, please take note and stop investing in products and services (no matter how good) that are investment vehicles, not real businesses.
Not that $20B is anything to shake a stick at — but real innovation in this market will be worth one to two orders of magnitude more. Figma was scratching at this with their "whole org collab" vision and FigJam, but they lacked the vision to crack it, and their execution has been faltering since their early talent started jumping ship. Selling to a desperate Adobe, distressed by public markets, is the perfect chance to "fail up."
Why am I disappointed in Figma? Because they could have been so much more. Because in effect, they have held the creative world back by doubling down & cashing in on Adobe's corruption of design tooling. Play Adobe games, win Adobe prizes. It's just a shit game, and peanuts compared to latent opportunity in this space.