If you were a founder and wanted to sell your company, would you want the government telling you that you can’t sell it for the best price?
Traditionally, when a product doesn't want to be lost, the customers will pool their resources together and offer a buyout. That seemingly didn't happen, so Adobe probably is the next best thing. Adobe is a public company, so the public still has the ability to shape its future.
A company like figma could have always just gone public if the founders/investors just wanted to get out.
Donate it to the Earth. https://www.patagonia.com/ownership/
Your imagination can't be this limited?
Are you really not able to come up with any other scenario than "bought up by your biggest competitor"?
Like...they could go public, or sell to a new owner that isn't already the biggest in the field, etc.
But I'm very glad they generated income for their shareholders.
It's fine if a company like Figma takes VC to build a good product that fills a niche that hasn't been explored before and uses the VC to grow and eventually exit to the general public market so that the investors get their return.
It's not fine if larger companies like Adobe can simply swoop in and pay billions to get rid of a competitor, although that one should be dealt with by anti-trust agencies anyway.
It's not fine if a company like Uber uses cheap VC money to price-dump against essential services - and yes, taxis are essential for those without a car, and the anti-discrimination frameworks make sure that access to them is fairly available to everyone, no matter why they would need a taxi for. Uber, in contrast, routinely got associated with everything from wage dumping over racism [1] to extorting people with excessive surge charges [2].
It's not fine if a company like AirBnB uses cheap VC money to wreak havoc on local rental markets [3][4] or to run effectively hotel-like operations in residential zones, while conveniently ignoring things such as fire codes [5], neighbors' quality of life [6], taxes [7] or that people (both guests and hosts) were and are randomly banned for "background checks" [8][9], a return of ages-old banned housing discrimination.
Society definitely needs a hard regulation on anything where VC is involved.
[1] https://venturebeat.com/ai/researchers-find-racial-discrimin...
[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...
[3] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/ferienwohnungen-stehen-le...
[4] https://travelnoire.com/the-airbnb-effect-on-an-already-high...
[5] https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-and-medi...
[6] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/living-next-to-airbnb-sharin...
[7] https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report-state/airbnb-...
[8] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/spotlight/201...
[9] https://www.airbnbhell.com/banned-from-airbnb-over-backgroun...
You didn’t think they were doing it for the good of society?
Once any founder accepts VC funding, all of the talk about “vision” and “impact on society is also null and void”
Going public should be the norm, not being bough by a monopolist, otherwise the entire premise of what makes capitalism desirable is broken.
