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There are bigger differences between Sketch and Figma than collaboration / web native. According to Crunchbase, Sketch has received 20M of venture funding and

There are bigger differences between Sketch and Figma than collaboration / web native. According to Crunchbase, Sketch has received 20M of venture funding and has less than 50 employees. This is a rare company that has been largely profitable and an independantly sustainable business. Figma has received over $300M of funding and has over 1000 employees. They burnt cash for years with close to zero revenue trying to get the underlying technology to work. Once they got their tech to work they did the VC funded hyperscale strategy with massive budgets for everything from marketing to community engagement. In order for Sketch build some of the features that Figma has, they need to (1) raise a ton of money (2) forget about short term profitability, (3) burn money for many years (4) hope to get a big exit. That is extremely difficult to execute in the best of times but under the current financial environment, almost impossible. Even if they did execute, they would be chasing another product's smoke instead of being a category innovator. Sketch cannot out-Figma Figma at this point. Success for Sketch at this point will look very different from the route that Figma took. We should also recognize that the software world moves quickly. Sketch was a huge success already. The fact that it was overtaken by another success story is very normal in the industry and should not take away from the success that Sketch was in its heyday.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
I didn’t realize that Sketch’s operation was so much more lean. That difference is staggering. I agree that Sketch should focus on its strengths rather than chase after Figma. There’s at least a few things Sketch is better at… for example Figma is pretty pointedly squarely focused on prototyping, which makes it awkward for asset creation and sometimes even high-fidelity mockups (particularly for styles that aren’t some variant of flat and require a lot of layers). Sketch on the other hand handles those use cases quite well. And I realize it’s comparatively niche and not where the money is at, but I find that Figma doesn’t bring much to the table over Sketch for purely solo projects. Its value is almost entirely tied up in its collaborative abilities.
karaterobot 4y ago
> Sketch cannot out-Figma Figma at this point. Not sure what you mean here. It is good to point out the investment in the tech, but that's been made already. There are people who know how to do it, and some of them are going to be leaving Figma soon. Even if not, the very fact that it's out there in the world means it'll be a lot easier for someone else to build the second time around. I know that Penpot is a very different scale and level of polish than Figma, but it is an example of someone saying "we believe we can do what they did, without the budget," and being at least somewhat successful already. And in terms of chasing another product's smoke, I think the problem a lot of people have with the Adobe acquisition is that Adobe has no track record of innovation in the software design space. Rather, their history is of buying innovative design companies and ruining them. If they've learned their lessons, if their product culture has changed, then maybe that won't happen this time. My fear (as a designer who uses Figma) is that they bought Figma precisely because they can't innovate on their own, and that they'll spread their bad culture to Figma rather than the other way around.
- aiisahik 4y ago
  Oh I totally agree they bought Figma because they couldn't figure it out themselves and to protect the products / revenue streams they already have. At some point in the future after designers have gotten tired of Adobe Figma, some new product will offer something that Figma is failing on and take the market. However, (1) that something won't be multiplayer web based collaboration - Figma has solved this one. The killer feature will have to be something else (2) In all likelihood, Sketch won't be the company that does this.
rglover 4y ago
> In order for Sketch build some of the features that Figma has, they need to (1) raise a ton of money (2) forget about short term profitability, (3) burn money for many years (4) hope to get a big exit. No software feature (at least, nothing they'd need to do to improve Sketch) requires you raising a ton of money to build it.
- aiisahik 4y ago
  I agree that most features don't require a lot of money to build. But building enough features to make Sketch come close to rivaling Figma in terms of design department wallet share is going to require some $$$. Also I think the multiplayer web native feature that is at the core of Figma is not trivial. It is possible that you can find a very talented small team of engineers to get it done but the motivation here needs to be more than just financial upside.
  - rglover 4y ago
    I have to ask, what features? As a profitable company, assuming they have competent developers, they could get what they need to built. Figma's "secret sauce" is using WebAssembly [1] to do their rendering. The reason I harp is that everybody is complaining about the demise of Figma while completely ignoring its demise was precipitated by massive venture capital investment. [1] https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/ https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...
    - aiisahik 4y ago
      Why are you calling it "demise"? Having $200M of ARR and selling for $20B - it's a tremendous achievement that should be celebrated. If all it took to build a figma was to plug in web assembly, I'm pretty sure Adobe would have pocketed the $20B and built it themselves. There's a reason they didn't. They tried and they couldn't do it.
      - rglover 4y ago
        I'm not personally, but there was a near-universal meltdown as soon as the sale to Adobe was announced with people scrambling about to find alternatives. I agree that Figma was highly successful and achieved its goals. > There's a reason they didn't. They tried and they couldn't do it. Time, mindshare, and brand. They could absolutely do it (all of their apps are insanely complex), but it's far faster to cut a check and wipe out your primary competitor and eliminate the cash flow leak (which based on that number, they estimated would be greater than their purchase price for Figma).
staticautomatic 4y ago
>Sketch ... has less than 50 employees. Sketch's website says it has 220 employees.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I didn’t realize that Sketch’s operation was so much more lean. That difference is staggering. I agree that Sketch should focus on its strengths rather than chase after Figma. There’s at least a few things Sketch is better at… for example Figma is pretty pointedly squarely focused on prototyping, which makes it awkward for asset creation and sometimes even high-fidelity mockups (particularly for styles that aren’t some variant of flat and require a lot of layers). Sketch on the other hand handles those use cases quite well. And I realize it’s comparatively niche and not where the money is at, but I find that Figma doesn’t bring much to the table over Sketch for purely solo projects. Its value is almost entirely tied up in its collaborative abilities.

karaterobot 4y ago

> Sketch cannot out-Figma Figma at this point. Not sure what you mean here. It is good to point out the investment in the tech, but that's been made already. There are people who know how to do it, and some of them are going to be leaving Figma soon. Even if not, the very fact that it's out there in the world means it'll be a lot easier for someone else to build the second time around. I know that Penpot is a very different scale and level of polish than Figma, but it is an example of someone saying "we believe we can do what they did, without the budget," and being at least somewhat successful already. And in terms of chasing another product's smoke, I think the problem a lot of people have with the Adobe acquisition is that Adobe has no track record of innovation in the software design space. Rather, their history is of buying innovative design companies and ruining them. If they've learned their lessons, if their product culture has changed, then maybe that won't happen this time. My fear (as a designer who uses Figma) is that they bought Figma precisely because they can't innovate on their own, and that they'll spread their bad culture to Figma rather than the other way around.

aiisahik 4y ago
Oh I totally agree they bought Figma because they couldn't figure it out themselves and to protect the products / revenue streams they already have. At some point in the future after designers have gotten tired of Adobe Figma, some new product will offer something that Figma is failing on and take the market. However, (1) that something won't be multiplayer web based collaboration - Figma has solved this one. The killer feature will have to be something else (2) In all likelihood, Sketch won't be the company that does this.

rglover 4y ago

> In order for Sketch build some of the features that Figma has, they need to (1) raise a ton of money (2) forget about short term profitability, (3) burn money for many years (4) hope to get a big exit. No software feature (at least, nothing they'd need to do to improve Sketch) requires you raising a ton of money to build it.

aiisahik 4y ago
I agree that most features don't require a lot of money to build. But building enough features to make Sketch come close to rivaling Figma in terms of design department wallet share is going to require some $$$. Also I think the multiplayer web native feature that is at the core of Figma is not trivial. It is possible that you can find a very talented small team of engineers to get it done but the motivation here needs to be more than just financial upside.
- rglover 4y ago
  I have to ask, what features? As a profitable company, assuming they have competent developers, they could get what they need to built. Figma's "secret sauce" is using WebAssembly [1] to do their rendering. The reason I harp is that everybody is complaining about the demise of Figma while completely ignoring its demise was precipitated by massive venture capital investment. [1] https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/ https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...
  - aiisahik 4y ago
    Why are you calling it "demise"? Having $200M of ARR and selling for $20B - it's a tremendous achievement that should be celebrated. If all it took to build a figma was to plug in web assembly, I'm pretty sure Adobe would have pocketed the $20B and built it themselves. There's a reason they didn't. They tried and they couldn't do it.
    - rglover 4y ago
      I'm not personally, but there was a near-universal meltdown as soon as the sale to Adobe was announced with people scrambling about to find alternatives. I agree that Figma was highly successful and achieved its goals. > There's a reason they didn't. They tried and they couldn't do it. Time, mindshare, and brand. They could absolutely do it (all of their apps are insanely complex), but it's far faster to cut a check and wipe out your primary competitor and eliminate the cash flow leak (which based on that number, they estimated would be greater than their purchase price for Figma).

staticautomatic 4y ago

>Sketch ... has less than 50 employees. Sketch's website says it has 220 employees.