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Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger
- paxys 3y agoBest outcome for consumers. I really hope the experience was expensive enough for Adobe (due diligence, lawyer fees, "lobbying" 3-4 different governments, $1B break-up fee) that the entire big tech M&A market takes a hit.
- supafastcoder 3y agoHonestly, as a Figma user and fan, this is great news. For Figma employees probably not so much.
- saos 3y agoThey will go public and can unload then. It’s an opportunity for figma to offer their customers early access to shares before IPO. Many of us will support them.
- stephen_g 3y agoYeah, I do feel a little bad for the employees with equity but honestly I'm really glad Adobe isn't allowed to buy it. I hope they find a much better company to sell to if that's what they want to do.
- samwillis 3y agoThere's a $1B fall through fee, I assume that gets paid to Figma now? I wander if that will make its way to early employees who were hoping for a liquidity event.
- smileysteve 3y agoPerhaps it could make an IPO more likely instead? And that would make its way to early employees.
- mbauman 3y agoI would expect that to only get paid if solely one side were responsible for blowing up the deal. This is expressly saying both have mutually agreed.
- eigenvalue 3y agoNope, from Adobe’s 8K filed today with the SEC: “On December 17, 2023, the Company and Figma mutually agreed to terminate the Merger Agreement and entered into a mutual termination agreement effective as of such date (the “Termination Agreement”). The mutual termination of the Merger Agreement was approved by the Company’s and Figma’s respective Boards of Directors. In accordance with the terms of the Termination Agreement, the Company will make a cash payment to Figma in the previously agreed amount of one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) (the “Termination Fee”) within three business days following the date thereof. The Termination Fee is the sole and exclusive remedy under the Merger Agreement, and the Company and Figma have each waived any and all other claims in connection with the Merger Agreement and the transactions contemplated thereby.”
- reustle 3y ago> the Company will make a cash payment to Figma in the previously agreed amount of one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) (the “Termination Fee”) within three business days following the date thereof Three business days to wire $1b, the week before Christmas. That has to be a fun phone call with the bank.
- Ekaros 3y agoI hope they have big bank... Then again it would also be funny if bank crashed because someone was forced to transfer 1 billion.
- eddiewithzato 3y agobanks move so much more daily
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- jonplackett 3y agoI don’t even use Figma, but I a glad Adobe won’t be owning them.
- Erratic6576 3y agoYeah I miss Adobe Lightroom but you don’t get to install it, adobe takes over your computer
- politelemon 3y agoSame, I miss the ownership of my photos and photographic workflows from the older lightroom days. It's sad that the industry rolled over to accept this and it trickled to the consumers.
- vr46 3y agoIt’s total madness, isn’t it. Long time user, from 1-5, then everything fell apart with CC, subscriptions and the clusterfuck of shite installed on my Mac.
- airstrike 3y ago> then everything fell apart with CC, subscriptions and the clusterfuck of shite installed on my Mac except it also made Adobe more valuable than it ever was before and pretty much jump-started the ARR / SaaS valuation model that defines Tech today, so it's not ever going away
- jq-r 3y agoI'm in the same boat. A very long time user and I really liked everything about it. When they started pulling that subscription shit with tons of crapware I had enough. Cancelling subscription (even a short one) was also a terrible (I would even call it criminal) experience. Tried couple of alternatives, and frankly I don't like them. They are either slow, got abandoned in a year or have unintuitive workflows. I would even pay $500 for a LR Classic without all of their other crapware, but they just like that too much to take my money.
- madeofpalk 3y agoExcellent news. I think there should be more products, more companies, and more competition. Adobe just buying up it's competition will only ever directly hurt consumers. See also, "Adobe says the FTC is looking into its subscription cancellation practices." https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/15/24003532/adobe-says-the-ftc-is-looking-into-its-subscription-cancellation-practices https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/15/24003532/adobe-says-the-...
- dkyc 3y agoExcept outlawing acquisitions by larger tech companies will absolutely reduce funding and incentives to start companies, and result in less products, less companies, and less competition.
- michaelcampbell 3y agoJust like when there WERE no megacorps to buy smaller companies and we were left with none at all.
- kwertyoowiyop 3y agoThis is so far from outlawing. And we are soooooo far from having a shortage of tech startups.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> This is so far from outlawing It's not that far. A bureaucrat will decide if you can exit the way you want to. Still want to fund this venture? > And we are soooooo far from having a shortage of tech startups. Because there hasn't been a fear of them blocking exits.
- airstrike 3y ago> A bureaucrat will decide if you can exit the way you want to. It's not up to the bureaucrat but to the courts. The FTC doesn't "approve" or "reject" deals--it can just take legal action to try to stop a deal, but that still gets adjudicated either in a federal court or in an FTC administrative law court to a judge which is appointed independently. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/administrative-law-judge-system https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/administrative-law-...
- hallway_monitor 3y agoIt looks like regulators are actually doing their job. I would love to see more of this, along with breaking up companies that have gotten too big for their britches.
- scarface_74 3y agoThe entire purpose of starting a company is to get acquired. Of the literally hundreds of companies that YC has invested in, only 5 have gone public. The VC market will dry up even more if they see their chances of an exit diminishing because of an overzealous government.
- earthnail 3y agoOr we’ll see more IPOs. It might change valuations as expectations might be lower but it won’t dry up the VC market.
- mushufasa 3y agodeclining frequency of IPOs is mostly driven by regulatory requirements that keep getting harder over time; the 90s were before sarbanes-oxley. I don't see any reason to believe fewer acquisitions will cause more IPOs.
- endisneigh 3y agoThe purpose of a for profit company is to provide a good or service and profit from doing so. You don’t need to be acquired to accomplish that.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoYes. But when you're driven by the idea of exit striving towards such things becomes ultra focused. Put another way, exit is the ultimate recognition that these purpose(s) have been acheived.
- 3y ago
- zlwaterfield 3y agoThis is sad for the overall M&A market. Companies are going to be scared to enter into these agreements because it’s just a waste of time and money when it inevitably ends up like this.
- nolongerthere 3y agoWhich I think is overall good for the consumer, many of the companies are only merging to lessen competition, not provide any extra value to us.
- ssgodderidge 3y agoWhile I agree that this deal was ultimately bad for consumers, weaker M&A markets, in the long run, may hurt consumers equally as bad. A lot of “copycat” companies get created when they see a particular company doing well. While sheer profitability is the major factor in this, M&A, and the likelihood of a liquidity event play a large role here too. Hopefully future us won’t look back at this deal as the beginning of a weak M&A market
- graphe 3y ago"May". Less small business and more corporate control isn't making the world good enough to say we need more M&A.
- ddkper 3y agoThe value accrues in the form of incentivizing new products and companies to enter the market. The two options these founders (and their investors) have to capitalize on building a good company is to either go public or get acquired. Severely limiting the ability to be acquired reduces the incentives for new founders as well as investors in new companies if the only realistic path is waiting for them to go public. Especially since being acquired doesn't require you to be in nearly as good a financial position in terms of profit as going public does.
- 3y ago
- xd1936 3y agoGreat news for Figma lovers.
- nolongerthere 3y agoI’m just shocked that it’s been over a year since this merger was announced, I feel like it was sometime this summer, turns out it was last summer!
- saos 3y agoAmazing news!!!!!!!
- thrillgore 3y agoThank fucking god. I am worried though that Figma will take the cancellation fee and start the layoffs to maximize it for an eventual IPO, and then blame the merger.
- sokoloff 3y agoThat’s a reasonable worry because that’s a reasonable path for the company to take, isn’t it? Try to sell to the buyer who would maximize the return to company [shareholders]; when that falls through, take whatever the next best path for them is.
- chrjxnandns 3y ago[dead]
- pavlov 3y agoFigma is VC-funded. Now that they’re not going to be part of Adobe, they’ll just more slowly turn into another Adobe because the investors want the exit. Prices will creep up, product segmentation will be introduced, pop-ups pushing expensive service add-ons will eventually appear. And when the revenue number is pumped enough, it goes public or is sold to private equity which has no trouble with antitrust regulators.
- capableweb 3y ago> Prices will creep up, product segmentation will be introduced, pop-ups pushing expensive service add-ons will eventually appear Have you used Figma lately? All of those things have been happening for years with Figma, even before rumors about the Adobe purchase appeared.
- wolfpack_mick 3y agoIn terms of pricing model Adobe is generous compared to Figma. Someone with their own creative cloud subscription can open my .psd's. But if I want to collaborate with someone in Figma, I need to pay for their access even if they have their own paid Figma account.
- capableweb 3y agoAbsolutely, that I agree with. But even so, Figma's prices have been increasing, the product is being segmented, they're increasingly pushing for various addons, even if Figma still is cheaper than Adobe.
- pavlov 3y agoYes. Which is why I’m surprised that people seem to think this break-up will prevent Figma from turning into yet another Adobe-like SaaS with heavy upsell.
- WillAdams 3y agoGiven how Adobe's last purchase of a drawing program (buying Macromedia ten years after being told to wait a decade after buying Aldus and it being split off to be acquired by Macromedia and then off-shoring Freehand/MX to India and then burying it), good.
- zukzuk 3y agoI still mourn the end of Freehand. Illustrator’s UI never matched Freehand.
- pier25 3y agoAnd Fireworks
- kubrickslair 3y agoFireworks so elegantly captured the vector level control along with bitmap effects like Photoshop!
- seanalltogether 3y agoI still keep a copy of CS6 on my windows machine just for access to fireworks. I should probably learn something new at this point but there is just something about the presentation of the canvas, pixel snapping, and palettes that I can't give up.
- pier25 3y agoThey really hit the sweet spot with Fireworks. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe's decision to phase it out resulted in all these new UI design apps to appear in the market (Sketch, InVision, Figma, etc).
- unsupp0rted 3y agoAnd Dreamweaver
- josefresco 3y ago
- T3RMINATED 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- duringmath 3y agoThe US should start doing something about these foreign governments meddling in US business before it's too late. EU and UK and seemingly everyone else is passing laws and setting up bureaucracies specifically to implement unfair trade restrictions and barriers against US companies and they're basically doing it unopposed, you'd think these actions would at least trigger some tariff threats and WTO complains sadly the government is in a self destruct spiral at the moment.
- xuki 3y agoIt’s very easy, just don’t operate in said jurisdictions.
- duringmath 3y agoThat's not how free trade works or not how it's supposed to anyway. You can't just go after a sector of your trade partner's economy just to compensate for your home sector's deficiencies.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoSo governments are supposed to let corporations run unabashed in their jurisdictions? > You can't just go after a sector of your trade partner's economy just to compensate for your home sector's deficiencies. Is that what the EU is doing, or is it what you yourself think they are doing?
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoOnly if the US wants to lose those pesky UK and EU markets.
- dboreham 3y agoEU and UK authorities are not quite as corrupt as the US.
- wg0 3y agoLet's forget Europe and let's focus on the US market alone. If we do the math, we have to ask - where would those 20 billion dollars come from that were to be paid by Adobe to Figma investors? I'm sure not from Adobe's coffers, their bean counters would place them onto subscription pricing with a time cap to recoup all that cost. For sure. I would assume that regulators aren't unaware of that in the said markets (UK/Europe) and are not pro investor (few hundreds) rather pro consumers (millions)
- David_Annabelle 3y ago[dead]
- Hi_hacker_here 3y ago[flagged]
- kossTKR 3y agoGreat news. Adobe is already the kind of company that should be forcefully closed down for scamming people with their subscription practices. The sign up, and cancelling process of their various services are so "dark design" it's criminal. I've had to wait in a chat window for days to have a service cancelled after signing up for something i clearly didn't sign up for, a yearly payment instead of a monthly with no warning for a very expensive suit, and many are in the same boat almost bankrupting entire small companies. More and more places does this and they should all banned and their CEO's put in jail because they prey on vulnerable people, steal millions and waste everyone else's time. I'm not kidding one bit with the jail thing, lines have been crossed so much it's getting ridiculous now, i don't care how rich or powerful you are. This is why we need strict regulation and serious consequences for CEO's and shareholders of straight up criminal companies.
- wolfpack_mick 3y agoI have the feeling this is only getting worse now that borrowing money is suddenly more expensive..
- lvl102 3y agoAs someone who enjoyed using Figma, this is an excellent news. However, I am afraid they will sell to someone else. Namely, Microsoft.
- airstrike 3y agoThat's still a better long term outcome than selling to Adobe
- lvl102 3y agoAgree 100%. Microsoft would actually make the product a lot better and add useful AI elements to it. I just don’t trust Adobe.
- sensanaty 3y agoDepressing to see people trusting M$ over literally anything else...
- Solvency 3y agoWhat other beloved product has MS acquired and made a lot better?
- airstrike 3y agoGitHub? But that's not the point. The point is the value of not having Figma sell to its largest competitor.
- macspoofing 3y ago>The point is the value of not having Figma sell to its largest competitor. Adobe does not compete with Microsoft in any meaningful way. There is some overlap in some products here or there, but it's not meaningful competition.
- 3y ago
- nbzso 3y agoI am opening a bottle of champagne as we speak. It is time to remove electron based app and invest in something that will have a proper memory management. Not only 2gb. My phone has more than this. You have cornered the market. Now deliver.
- pier25 3y agoIt's amazing though. The performance of Figma is better than all native vector apps out there.
- nbzso 3y agoYes and no. Everything is fine until you hit the 2gb limit. The average professional laptop has a 16gb ram. Figma is not only the vector app. If someone wants serious vector work, Illustrator and Affinity Designer provide a solution. Figma is more than this, and the complexity of the workflows requires offline support and more memory available to the app.:)
- spiderice 3y agoHas performance in Sketch fallen in recent years? I know it's not as popular any more, but years ago when I used Sketch the performance was always top notch.
- pier25 3y agoI used sketch around 2017-2018 and the performance was really bad. Much worse than Illustrator. At the time I was on a top of the line 5K iMac. Currently on an M2 Pro MBP and Figma is more responsive than Affinity Design. The latest versions of Illustrator have had a bunch of GPU rendering issues that affect performance. In fact these issues were the reason I started using Figma.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yangity 3y agoI tried to cancel an Adobe CC subscription the other day and they wanted to clawback $60 for a $120 yearly subscription. And their customer support wasn’t helpful at all. Needless to say, we don’t need more of this kind of behavior, especially with Figma!
- willsmith72 3y agoI've been there too, it turns out to be a battle of persistence. I just kept the chat window open for 3 hours one afternoon while working, replying every 5 minutes that no, it wasn't acceptable, and I wouldn't pay anything. Slowly they started reducing the amount until they got to 0. At points they got extremely aggressive, but from reading other people's stories online, that's just part of their training.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pointlessone 3y agoFigma got out better than it was before. It's still a strong product. And Adobe abandoned XD basically giving up this market to Figma.
- bryancoxwell 3y agoNot to mention the $1 billion termination fee Adobe now owes them.
- echelon 3y agoFigma's employees are probably devastated and demotivated. Their exit dollar signs just went poof. And they've probably been working on Adobe's roadmap / integration for the past 15 months. I'm not so sure Figma is in a better spot, even with this new cash in hand.
- bryancoxwell 3y agoOof, that’s a really good point. That would be utterly demotivating.
- gunapologist99 3y agoInstead imagine that the workers actually did get that huge chunk of cash but still had to come into work every day.
- echelon 3y agoBut that's Adobe's problem instead of Figma's and the employees'.
- gunapologist99 3y agoGood point, and I agree, but nevertheless the product itself will probably suffer less in the current situation, and meanwhile Figma gets another bite at the apple down the road, and that might be a MUCH bigger bite and apple later.
- codeptualize 3y agoThat is wild. It's a good thing as it means Adobe won't ruin Figma like they did with so many great software products before, but just imagine founders, investors and employees, thinking they had a really good exit.. That must hurt, I hope they can stay motivated. If Adobe can't buy them, what other exit options do they have? Go public?
- sowbug 3y agoWhat's wrong with selling goods and services for more than they cost?
- codeptualize 3y agoThere is nothing wrong with that if that is the type of company you build from the start. VC funded startups generally want to have an exit/IPO to get a return for their investors and give their founders and employees an opportunity to cash out and de-risk. Without an exit or IPO that is a lot harder, especially for employees. It's about the expectation of everyone involved. Eventually every company needs to turn a profit, so for the company it might not make that big of a difference or even be better (if they can turn a profit which I assume Figma can), but for the investors and individuals involved it's a very different situation as it means their capital is pretty much stuck. And I bet a $20B exit would be life changing money for a lot of people involved.
- david38 3y ago“Everyone involved” includes customers
- codeptualize 3y agoThose should also know that this is a VC backed company that is going to try to provide a return on investment at some point. I do think its the right outcome and better for customers, the government is doing what it needs to do. But I still empathize with the people involved.
- 3y ago
- max_ 3y agoThis really makes me sad as an aspiring entrepreneur. What would be the use of starting a business if the government can arbitrarily block it from being acquired? I understand this happening in Europe but not America. I think America is going to lag behind in tech entrepreneurship just like Europe and I wonder what the next potential tech entrepreneurship hub will be.
- replwoacause 3y agoIs the main goal for every entrepreneur to be acquired? Also, there is nothing “arbitrary “ about antitrust laws.
- ivanjermakov 3y agoWhy would you start a business with the end goal of selling it?
- mwidell 3y agoPerhaps you could aim to actually make money through your business? As in, selling a product at a profit? Taking dividends? I know it sounds wild, but that's how it went down in the olden days.
- niek_pas 3y agoHow is this 'arbitrary' ("based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system")?
- danieljacksonno 3y agoThe use would be to make a profit
- corry 3y agoUmmm. This seems like a huge overreaction. Do you think the founder of Figma -- which is still worth $B's, making him obscenely wealthy 'on paper' (but 'on paper' in a way that most wealth is counted) -- plus, he likely sold enough via secondaries during the later rounds to be set for life -- is bemoaning his career path? Furthermore, there's something like 20k M&A deals / yr completed in North America alone, the majority that are still life-changing wealth creation events for the founders. So don't despair - 1 problematic anti-competitive M&A deal blocked by the government does not signal the end of entrepreneurship in the US.
- ThomPete 3y agoI see a lot of people in the thread thinking this is a good thing, it's not. First of all the reason for the UK not allowing the merger is completely absurd and based on a false premise which is most likely based on not understanding the field they are regulating. Regulation based on speculation about the future means that regulators can simply just make up reasons. Thats akin to when kings could just make up reason for their ruling. We were supposed to move away from that so that rule of law was the base. Second, the fact that the UK can kill a deal like this is wildly problematic and unfortunately not the first time. They did the same with Facebook and Giphy where it made no sense either. It's immature and they obviously aren't understanding the field they regulate. Talk about undermining the growth of society. Lastly I see a lot of people saying exits is not a good thing and shouldn't be the purpose. But the fact is that a healthy M&A culture is good for startups as that will encourage investors. Once you start killing the ability for exits by introducing such unquantifiable into the settings you are making investors more nervous of spending their money and much more risk averse. Sad.
- airstrike 3y agoYou're surely entitled to your opinion. It doesn't mean you're right. I tend to agree the CMA is pushing some esoteric arguments in their rulings, but I don't thinks deal is at all like Facebook / Giphy. "A healthy M&A culture" isn't undone by a single deal being pulled, especially when that deal is clearly an anti-competitive one. Also if anything, Adobe overpaid for Figma given it was one of the last deals before Tech stocks properly melted, so even Adobe shareholders can be happy with this outcome
- ThomPete 3y agoYou are right its not like Facbook/Giphy, it's worse and we aren't talking about a single deal being pulled but multiple. It's not clearly anti-competitive in fact if anything in the B2B space M&A done by bigger companies is where products go to die and opens up for a whole new set of competitors.
- barnabee 3y agoThere is no way a company Adobe's size should ever be allowed to grow by acquisition. At a certain point that route needs to be cut off forever.
- andy_ppp 3y agoHow hard is it for Adobe to offer a competing product? It's not like the new features are deal breakers.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- raiyu 3y agoAnyone else think this has nothing to do with the regulatory agencies but instead the market has dramatically shifted in the past 15 months in terms of valuations and this is a nice cover to cancel the deal? Figma still gets $1B "investment" without giving up any equity or control and Adobe gets to walk away from a massive $20B fee. Adobe makes $17B a year in revenue, they would need some pretty strong growth out of Figma to justify the price tag especially after valuations came down. But it is nice to "blame" the regulatory agencies for the breakup so that both companies save face. Also just seems unlikely that it was regulatory. Sure Adobe has the market cornered but it doesn't seem like this is where the agencies would suddenly choose to care so much. And if it was regulatory, then shouldn't those agencies come out and say "We blocked this, no go."
- disgruntledphd2 3y agoThey were being investigated in the UK, the EU and the US. It seemed very unlikely (to me, at least) that all three would approve. That being said, if valuations hadn't changed so much then maybe they'd have stuck it out.
- chicken3pointer 3y agoNah, I think this is truly a case of regulatory agencies shutting the deal down. Adobe knows Figma is best-in-class in their category, and even in the current market downturn, $20b still feels like a good bet to own the winner in and up and coming category for the next 5-10 years
- zpeti 3y agoI dunno, seems like there are massive risks to Figma as a business at this point with the developments in generative AI. I'm not that confident spending $17bn is justified if its going to take 10-20 years to make it back. Some generative AI startup could easily leapfrog figma. And Adobe already has its own massive trove of copyright images that it can use for much better generative AI. I think the last year has put adobe in a much stronger position and figma in a much worse position.
- boeingUH60 3y agoImagine being Dylan Field staring at a $1 billion+ payday, and the government tells you that ain't happening, lol
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andsoitis 3y agoWhy did Figma want to sell itself to Adobe in the first place? Even though their revenue is only about $400MM, As far as I know, they make a very healthy profit (operating margin of ~90%), and they’ve also been expanding through organic and acquisition means (e.g. they bought Diagram). Is it because they see the ability to grow the company’s products even more given the Adobe footprint?
- fnikacevic 3y agoThe $20B price was a massive overpay is the most likely reason.
- paulpan 3y agoThis exactly. When someone offers you $20B, it's hard to turn it down. In Adobe's case, $20B is a bargain price to stifle a competitor. Even if Figma founders didn't want to sell, all the VCs and other investors would force the hand.
- fnbr 3y agoAssuming your numbers are correct, they sold for 50x ARR, which is a very very good price. I bet that’s why. It’s hard to do better than that.
- cartermatic 3y agoI think they saw 20 billion reasons to sell to Adobe. Their last valuation was $10billion in 2021 so a 2x on that a year later would be hard for anyone to pass up. They can pretend they went with Adobe for aspirational aims to make the product better, but at the end of the day it was about the very juicy multiple Adobe was offering.
- eklitzke 3y agoWhat makes you think they have an operating margin of 90%? The blog post says in the last 15 months alone they've hired 500 additional employees ("figmates"), there's no way their margin is anywhere close to what you cite.
- ProbablyRyaan 3y agoWonderful news. Adobe was bound to ruin this product, whether on purpose or not. This is a win for the consumers (for once).
- preommr 3y agoWhat a disaster for Adobe. They signal they can't build something to outcompete Figma. Their stock price falls They axe their existing competing product, and is therefore now way behind. They face problems with the acquisition, which makes their stock price fall again because it signals that not only can they not build products they can't use their money to buy companies that do. Then it's confirmed they can't acquire Figma. Then they have to lose 1bn dollars. And that money is going to a competitor that they took seriously enough to try and acquire at a sky-high price. QQ
- blagie 3y agoI don't think that's a correct analysis. Adobe is very good at building software. It's not the problem. It's not that Adobe can't compete with Figma. It's that they don't want to. Adobe has a great engineering team and ships wonderful products. The problem with Adobe is that the business side is anticompetitive, exploitative, and sleazy. Buying Figma, they lose a competitor. Competitors have a nasty tendency to expand to adjacent markets, and that's the sort of thing Adobe likes to nip as early as possible. If not for their business practices, I would totally buy Adobe products, because they're great. As is, I don't know if Adobe won't triple prices tomorrow for me to continue to be able to edit my own documents (once they know I'm locked in), or find some other way to !@#$ me up the !@#$. The slight hit to product quality going to competing products and open-source is more than made up for with the stability of having a reliable business partner, or source code I can build myself, respectively.
- 542458 3y ago> Adobe is very good at building software. Is that actually true? XD attempted to directly compete with Sketch and Figma, and was not generally considered to be a success at that primarily because they couldn’t ship features fast enough to catch up.
- jyunwai 3y agoAt the same time, however, Adobe maintains products with no clear competitors due to their quality. This is especially true for After Effects (for motion graphics in videos).
- pier25 3y agoThis is good news for Figma. They make amazing products and the last thing they need is the Adobe enshitification. Adobe needs to get their shit together. 15 years ago they were universally loved and now everyone hates them. Their software is super bloated and Creative Cloud runs so much crap in the background even when you're not running any Adobe app and even when you've disabled its background apps in macOS.
- Stokley 3y agocompletely unexpected. wonder what this means for the long-term future of Adobe. I only see Figma growing in importance from here
- izolate 3y agoThat's assuming the company still has motivation to continue and improve. I can only imagine there's a lingering feeling of dejection at Figma right now.
- petercooper 3y agoIf countries want to heavily regulate business deals, I think the quid pro quo should be a tax system that provides a good way for founders and early employees to take some money off the table without having to sell to big companies like Adobe, by going public, or having half of any gain wiped out in taxes. Why shouldn't those folks able to pick up a lump sum for their work and the risk they took? They may as well have got a job at a big enterprise if an annual paycheck was all that mattered, and then you end up with fewer new companies and entrepreneurial risk-taking.
- arrosenberg 3y agoGo public? Why shouldn't you have to pay taxes on it? Are you going to stop using the roads when you are rich?
- petercooper 3y agoNot no taxes, just something that maintains a good reward/risk balance and an invcentive for people to be founders or early employees of these types of companies. The UK used to have so-called Entrepreneur's Relief, for example. Some countries have low capital gains tax regimes. It's not an uncommon thing. (Sure, a country could gleefully milk everyone to the max, but then they can't complain when they lack for entrepreneurship.)
- arrosenberg 3y agoIt just makes no sense and has never been necessary to incentivize Americans to take business risk. I don't understand why the entrepreneur, who is presumably getting a big exit in this scenario, deserves additional tax relief on top of that windfall. That sounds like another way for the rich to get even richer.
- pcurve 3y agoI wonder if Figma is cashflow positive. They must've hired an army of people over the past 18 months. The $1billion cash infusion will help for sure.
- Zetobal 3y agoI am curious if XD will still stay EoL or if they write a blog post about it's bright future in 1-2 days.
- kibwen 3y agoEvery time a merger fails, an angel gets its wings. Force megacorps to actually compete rather than just snapping up their potential competitors. Force startups to aspire to create an actual product rather than just manipulating the lizard-brain fears of irrational megacorp execs in the hopes of a payout.
- samhuk 3y ago> Force startups to aspire to create an actual product rather I'm getting on to 10 years in the software industry as an engineer at the moment and in my view this is one of its most disappointing and frustrating aspects. The whole software start-up scene just feels saturated with FIRE-obsessed individuals who prefer just about anything (money, vacation, travel, fame, ...) over company, product, real building, craftsmanship, etc. I legitimately hear phrases like "5th time's the charm for an exit and payout!" way too often. It frequently just exacerbates the consolidation of technology, knowledge, wealth, and often hurts innovation, let alone can result in the solid team(s) of engineers left out to dry (although some can be also gunning for the payout in the end too). In my view, there are just too many sell-outs pawning off solid products and teams to the highest bidder. I wish it wasn't that way.
- Invictus0 3y ago[flagged]
- notnullorvoid 3y ago> Software engineers are mercenaries hired to create value for shareholders, and anything else is just delusion. Value is a sustainable product, not some shovelware piece of crap. If the shareholders don't see that then that's their problem, and it's probably best to part ways and warn everyone you know from working with them.
- Maxion 3y agoThe truth is probably somewhere between yours and Invictus0 comment
- wg0 3y agoYeah that's sad because couldn't pull a VMWare onto unsuspecting UX desgin community I suppose. What's wrong with staying a small profitable company that loves what it builds and cares for its customers?
- eddiewithzato 3y agodifference between giving the early employees a lamborghini vs a yacht
- JadoJodo 3y agoWhile I do see this as great news (for all the reasons others have outlined), I wonder how this will impact VC in the future; If the current goal is for companies to get VC money, burn that cash for years and years and years, and then have a huge IPO or acquisition (that makes it all worth it), it would seem regulatory issues would start to scare away investment.
- willsmith72 3y agoIf they just wanted to cash out, they could still IPO or be acquired by almost literally any other company in the country. Adobe might be the only one who cause regulatory issues. I'd rather have "regulatory issues" in a case like this even if it does slow down VC money
- cartermatic 3y agoI think the door is still open for Microsoft, Google, Apple or Salesforce to make a play. Figma was rumored to have approached Microsoft during their talks with Adobe but Microsoft declined to put in an offer as they were working through the Activision Blizzard acquisition at the time. Either one could probably get a "deal" at a $10-$15b valuation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- yellow_postit 3y agoI’d hope this somehow influences regulators too. 15+ months of uncertainty and it’s the tiny UK market that tanks things. The lack of regulatory certainty will push for more lobbying and influence peddling which I think is net worse for the global industry.
- blackenedgem 3y agoIt's not really the UK regulator's fault though, if anything they were the best as they gave their response first (a provisional no). The EU was still investigating and the US DOJ was also preparing similar investigations. The CMA also provided Adobe with a list of changes they could make in order for the application to be approved, so it's not even like they were unwilling to entertain it. As we saw with the Blizzard acquisition the UK CMA will bend to international pressure if it's the only one holding out.
- noahhh 3y ago"The companies have signed a termination agreement that resolves all outstanding matters from the transaction, including Adobe paying Figma the previously agreed upon termination fee." - that's from the announcement on the Adobe blog. Does that mean that they do not have to pay the $1bn break-up fee to Figma now?
- asylteltine 3y agoGood! This would have created yet another monopoly and adobe would have ruined the company
- hmage 3y agoThat's great news. I wish someone would undo Adobe's Allegorithmic buyout, they lost all their ambition after buyout.
- fsloth 3y agoCan someone tldr why Figma is so important? I’m not familiar with their offering.
- karaterobot 3y agoOn the one hand, as a designer who uses Figma every day, this is great news. On the other hand, the fact that Dylan Field was willing to do it in the first place felt like a bit of a heel turn. Yeah, it's a lot of money, I know. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I've already shifted my expectations for the long term direction of the product from "they can do no wrong" to "when is the other shoe going to drop?"
- hipadev23 3y agoA CEO also owes it to their employees and investors to let everyone have a massive payday.
- deweywsu 3y agoI think this is at the core of the rot of American society. The thinking that a CEO "owes" the marketing of their company so as to cash it in or even turn profits is, in my opinion, is a mark of the biggest moral ineptitude of the western world's thinking. Yes, I realize this is the 'norm', but it clashes with deep values of the people who aren't shareholders, but are no doubt vested in the product the company produces, mainly the customers. It ignores their needs completely because they don't own stock. "We sold the company, and the new owners bastardized it by slapping their logo on it by eliminating the free tier" is almost commonplace now in business dogma, and yes, most people think it is the kind of strategy 'owed' to shareholders, but this one-sided thinking ignores the better interest of users who the company has built their business on the backs of, and who will now be bait-and-switched into a subscription model, never mind the needs that drove them to the product in the first place. Yes, this is how capitalism works. What I'm saying is that capitalism, as a model, is flawed from a moralistically balanced point of view. It's a never-ending race to the bottom by optimizing for greed until every drop of monetization is squeezed out and every person is left without. Should the owner's employees make money, I mean after all they do the work? Yes, but who takes into account the inestimable value added by the initial users who's interaction with the product shaped it into what it is today?
- jzl 3y ago
- ramijames 3y agoI can not describe how happy this makes me. Fuck Adobe. I will never forgive them for buying and killing Macromedia.
- poisonborz 3y agoYes, but they will probably just sell to number 2 on the buyer list, who may not be much better than Adobe.
- ramijames 3y agoHave to be positive. Just about any company is better than Adobe.
- sgammon 3y agomacromedia was amazing and this is such a real comment
- ricardonunez 3y agoUntil Afinity came out with their products I was still missing fireworks.
- ramijames 3y agoI like and use Affinity products. They are a decent alternative. In particular Publisher is an excellent alternative to Indesign. I do wish the default shortcuts weren't so wonky though.
- josefrichter 3y agoBest news ever. I don't know anyone in design community who was happy about this.
- eurekin 3y agoAdobe acts like a proper "wealth manager" and not a creative company - good for Figma!
- echelon 3y agoOr they could see the competitive landscape for creativity changing fast and view that Figma's product is an evolutionary dead end. They might see a Gen AI approach to Figma that will kill Figma in 5 years.
- eurekin 3y agoWell, they could use the figma to actually develop that AI; users, documents and etc.
- FredPret 3y agoPhotographers: is Adobe Photoshop still the king of photo editing? I strongly dislike Adobe’s “subscription only” business model, but it seems the market is telling them that subscriptions are a-OK: Adobe’s profits are very steady and are up 70+% in five years. [https://valustox.com/ADBE https://valustox.com/ADBE]
- bastawhiz 3y agoI'm not a photographer, but pretty much everyone I know who does anything with photos or image manipulation is using Photoshop. I'm the only person I know who uses a Photoshop alternative in any capacity (pixelmator)
- threetonesun 3y agoThe Affinity suite of products is pretty popular, at least what I've seen from non-professional use. Not sure what their professional use numbers look like, but for at least Photoshop/Illustrator/Publisher they seem like a real competitor.
- phlsa 3y agoI feel like there are actually more great options out there today than back in the pre-subscription days of Adobe. It all depends on what parts of Photoshop you're actually using, but between Affinity Photo, Pixelmator, Capture One and many others, there's a good chance that you can find something for your needs.
- capableweb 3y agoDepends on what kind of editing is needed. Most professional photographers I encounter use Lightroom, but they don't do any heavy editing like cutting out/in actual objects, but just modify color curves and whatnot. Besides, Photoshop really isn't a competitor in any way to Figma, they have two very different use cases. Closest competitor would be Adobe Illustrator.
- pier25 3y agoFor photo editing, PixelMator Pro and Affinity Photo are great.
- jacknews 3y agoGood news. I guess there are some valid (societaly desirable) reasons for companies to buy other companies, but this doesn't seem to be one. Now, I want to read that Microsoft is abandoning the Activision/Blizzard acquisition, a similarly anti-competition deal.
- frankchn 3y agoThe Microsoft/Activision-Blizzard acquisition had already closed in October.
- aleph_minus_one 3y agoA consideration: could these regulatory issues not rather be some welcome pretense for Adobe to cancel the merger since Adobe by now realized that they would overpay for Figma?
- stainablesteel 3y agoregulators in the eu and us didn't seem to mind this, a few select regulators in the uk for some reason seemed to care off of some strange speculation. this seems like a really bad thing that it was held up for so long and without any good reasoning. nightmare scenarios both in and coming out of the uk right now
- CodeNest 3y agoBad news for Figma. I am hundred percent sure that Adobe's alternative product will dominate the entire design market.
- tristan957 3y agoAdobe discontinued their product. What do you mean?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brandensilva 3y agoAdobe XD never gained adoption so I don't see that happening with this failed deal so you will be 100% wrong. Where Adobe will likely win out though is in the AI side of things so time will tell if that would be enough to replace Figma alone.
- anonu 3y agoThe UK regulator blew this deal up. Founders should think twice about doing business in the UK.
- tristan957 3y agoThe DOJ was surely going to sue, and most likely win. Adobe killed their own worse product to buy a competitor. Seems like an open and shut case. Your analysis seems extremely short-sighted.
- C0mm0nS3ns3 3y agoSo you're saying if you try to build a product, fail and want to acquire that product from another company - now that you have 0 competition with that product - that should somehow be illegal? Why exactly? Also what product did Adobe had that was in direct competition with Figma?
- siliconwrath 3y agoAdobe XD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_XD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_XD
- Narretz 3y agoAdobe XD was a Figma competitor. However, Adobe stopped development after they announced the Figma merger, and you can still use it today.
- fairity 3y ago> 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 the merger should be approved, but regulators need to make up their minds quicker or else you can expect a serious chilling effect on M&A. Can you imagine agreeing to get acquired knowing that it can take up to 2 years to close? Anyone operating a real business would be crazy to sign on for the distraction.
- pas 3y agowe 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 in all, it's likely that relevant authorities quite soon signaled that Adobe-Figma is facing an uphill battle, and now, as they announced, they backed down. we have no idea of the negotiations, who was fast or not, who recommended what, asked for what guarantees, and so on.
- kmlx 3y ago> 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-inquiry https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/adobe-slash-figma-merger-inquir...
- pas 3y agothanks! very interesting. how do these big M&As work? was Adobe-Figma supposed to file some request? (but that would be on the timeline I suppose.)
- pininja 3y ago> Figma’s founding vision was to “eliminate the gap between imagination and reality.” While this is the first time I’ve seen their vision written down, it feels like they’ve done a great job in fulfilling this initially for software product design. Excited to see what comes with a renewed independent focus!
- wkirby 3y agoGood.
- htrp 3y agoHow much does figma lose from a year's worth of operational focus being distracted by this impending merger?
- michelb 3y agoI guess not much seeing what they have been shipping.
- peanuty1 3y agoAdobe is paying Figma a 1 billion dollar breakup fee this week. Sounds like a very good deal for Figma.
- azemetre 3y agoMaybe not much. They’ve released some big things like dev mode that have been in the making for a while. They’ve obviously still developed new features and fixed bugs, along with future roadmaps as shown in their showcases. It’s not like they had the entire company focused on this but likely hired an outside firm to walk them through it.
- wmeredith 3y agoOh thank god. I've used Adobe tools professionally for about two decades now. They are too big, and their software suffers for it. Sigma is rad. I'm glad they aren't going to get enshitified by Adobe.
- Ericson2314 3y agoRenewed anti-trust is an interesting experiment. I don't what the consequences will be, but I am excited to find out! If a nothing else, I want people to think "we should try more policy experiments to become wiser" rather than "oh no, effect uncertain, better stick with status quo".
- gunapologist99 3y agoHow is this an experiment? Don't we remember Standard Oil, AT&T, DOJ vs MS, etc?
- __loam 3y agoYeah it's more like the regulators are trying to do their jobs again after decades of the failed hands off approach.
- el-dude-arino 3y ago[flagged]
- altairprime 3y agoPeople don’t remember cassette tapes, much less robber barons and monopoly breakups of the 20th century.
- locallost 3y agoRenewed anti-trust. It hasn't been enforced in a long time.
- Ericson2314 3y agoThe experiment is quickly varying the policy. Trying to compare n=1 decades apart, in the century that saw the greatest change in human history (so far), is a cool intellectual exercise but not simple-stupid enough to be empirical.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoI think on average, more competition is better for consumers than all these massive oligopolies. I doubt it is for stockholders, though, especially those who want to ditch the stock soon.
- lewisjoe 3y agoI'm wondering why is there zero competition for Figma? I understand their app is basically a browser-like engine running inside the browser - which is cutting-edge tech, tough to copy, etc. But given enough interest in this space and the valuation Figma has now - I'm wondering why isn't other big tech companies not building their own Figma alternatives.
- rosywoozlechan 3y agoIsn't Zeplin a competitor?
- karaterobot 3y agoZeplin doesn't do what Figma does, but Figma does what Zeplin does, if that makes sense. You wouldn't stop using Figma and use Zeplin instead, you'd only supplement your Figma license with Zeplin if you thought Zeplin did design handoff better than Figma (maybe it does, I haven't used it in years, but that wasn't the case a few years ago).
- enos_feedler 3y agoI will suggest that perhaps: 1) because the valuation is wrong? 2) because Figma has not actually created a new category/market? this is where you get new entrants into the market. Take AI chips for example. I think its entirely possible that Adobe has realized 1) and/or 2) and didn't fight all that hard to make the deal work?
- corkscrew 3y agoSketch
- Solvency 3y agoBecause literally 90% of developers today are wholly incapable of producing the cutting edge performance Figma requires. It's an engineering marvel. It's like wondering why more people can't just compete in F1. Money and talent at the rarest levels. Most companies engineer at the performance level of Atlassian. Which is not remotely sufficient.
- lhnz 3y agoCounterintuitively this will lead to more monopolies since with less likelihood of "exiting" startups via mergers and acquisitions there'll be reduced interest in venture capital and therefore fewer startups capitalised to the extent that they can compete against large monopolies.
- yandie 3y agoIf you think VCs are rational, you’d be in for a fun ride.
- lhnz 3y agoI don't think that you need VCs to be rational for what I'm saying to be true. LPs will see this as reducing the likelihood of making their money back via investing in VCs -- or at least, this is a reasonable theses, and those that grow their customer's funds the most might make this assessment. In the long-term this would transform the landscape of VC which is downstream from institutional investors. It can also have a cascading effect due to how reports and disclosures over investment strategies get shared and firms benchmark themselves against leading firms.
- wantsanagent 3y agoCan Figma issue bonuses out of the $1B payout?
- echelon 3y agoThat would be a really smart move to keep employees motivated. They're probably extremely upset and anxious about this deal falling through.
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoMany employees will say thanks and go on updating their resume: surely you don't expect more generosity in the future.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MenhirMike 3y agoSo, which company is Figma going to try to sell itself off to next? Atlassian maybe? I guess that Microsoft wouldn't be interested since they abandoned Expression/Blend/etc., Apple isn't in the market for web tools, and Miro is probably too small. So, Atlassian makes some sense to capture more of the developer audience.
- gigglesupstairs 3y agoI think on the contrary, Microsoft may look into it as another AI driven or AI enabled product that can deliver UIs on the fly, and hence can attract creative crowd towards them. TBH, possibilities are limitless.
- tsycho 3y ago[Pure speculation; I don't work in the UI space at all, and at neither of these companies] I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this. They were acquiring Figma at the peak of the market (for growth stock/startup valuations) because of the existential risks that Figma was threatening, due to their collaborative development UX. But since then: * Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new acquisition deal today would be cheaper. * Gen AI and Adobe Firefly are the new rage, and Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma. And Adobe can now add collaborative features to Firefly, and it doesn't even have to be as good as Figma's to win. So paying the 1B breakup fee is probably the cheapest and best option for Adobe at this time. Meanwhile, Figma employees, expecting a big payout, are probably a bit demotivated at this point. And potentially, they might have been working on integrating into Adobe over the past year, so they might have even slowed down in their development pace.
- sam1r 3y agoHmph, I was more under the assumption that this was more of a "We're going to get into Adobe's space" and become a competitor to drive up our valuation. [Pure speculation]
- omnimus 3y agoAdobe Firefly is cute but it wont get you any customers from Figma because it's different product for completely different purpose. Figma has something that Adobe lacks and wanted probably more than Figmas customers. Huge database of essentially all web/ui design done in past 3 years. If Firefly is such a hit wait once FigmaAI will start generating their stuff. Also it doesn't seem Figma as product was slowed too much - they have recently launched dev mode. One of the biggest features in a while. That put them more ahead of the competition.
- dumbo-octopus 3y ago> Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma Unlikely. Based on the google trends [1], Figma sees around 10x more traffic than Firefly, but more importantly it experiences severe weekend drop-offs, meaning people are using it for work. Firefly on the other hand has a constant amount of attention, in line with people playing around with it but not committing to it for serious projects. Anecdotally I work in UI/UX space as a contractor and I've been given every design in Figma, I hadn't even heard of Firefly until this comment. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&geo=US&q=%2Fg%2F11y1gbqmy3,%2Fg%2F11f65940xs https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&ge...
- dcreater 3y agoWow regulators win for a change!!
- j45 3y agoSince due diligence can take 12-24 months, I wonder what other than a much lower valuation being worth it caused this Did Adobe get or figure out enough tips and tricks for their other products? I have used adobe a bit over the years but no relation to either group. That is a lot of subscription to walk away from for a company who is good at subscription, unless one of their parked projects was able to be written in webassembly.
- htk 3y agoSorry my melancholy but it seems that sooner or later everyone sells out.
- zombiwoof 3y agosomeone help me understand: Figma is a UI designer/Balsamiq like app worth a billion dollars?
- braum 3y agoSo will Adobe put more resources to help their pre-maturely abandoned XD catchup?
- epicweb 3y agoMSFT acquisition instead..?
- Ensorceled 3y agoI have no idea why so many people are asserting that the FTC has been sitting on this for 15 months. The first paragraph of the article, FROM FIGMA, says: "Figma and Adobe have reached a joint decision to end our pending acquisition. It’s not the outcome we had hoped for, but despite thousands of hours spent with regulators around the world detailing differences between our businesses, our products, and the markets we serve, we no longer see a path toward regulatory approval of the deal." The FTC has not been slow rolling this, they have been in discussions. No one wants the FTC to sue unless they have too, especially Figma/Adobe ... it sounds like Figma and Adobe have finally admitted that they were not going to win this one.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- izktj 3y agoThis was a dirty dirty move by Adobe, not regulators. Insiders will know what I’m talking about
- wsgeorge 3y agoNot an insider: can you share some perspective?
- mkreis 3y agoOh please elaborate! But I can guess that a lot of confidential information was shared during the due diligence and that’s, even worse, most Figma employees already assumed it was a done deal and started openly sharing source code etc. with Adobe.
- nottorp 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 4ggr0 3y agoi don't use figma or photoshop products, but this makes me happy.
- dcchambers 3y agoI don't use Figma or Adobe tools so I don't really know or care about this acquisition. It seems like public opinion is split - some saw this as a good thing and others as a bad thing for Figma. Who I really feel bad for is some of the early employees that just saw life-changing amounts of money vanish in the blink of an eye. I can't imagine how gutted they must be headed into the Holidays. Obviously that value isn't truly gone - but it certainly changes things, and I am sure many of them did not plan for this.
- N3cr0ph4g1st 3y agoGood fuck em. They dangled this deal in my face why I was interviewing with figma and at least the people I dealt with were so sure it's a done deal. Lame
- bastardoperator 3y agoI just feel bad for Figma staff today. Y'all make a great product, keep your head up!
- orf 3y ago$1 billion termination fee split between 900 employees = happy times. I’m sure that will happen.
- corytheboyd 3y agoNot a fun day to be a Figma employee. It’s all “yeah fuck tech monopolies!” until it’s you who will receive a fat payout. Can’t say I’m not playing the same game, hoping for a similar outcome. I can only _dream_ of a $20b acquisition.
- bagels 3y agoYeah, that's my sentiment too. I have no stake in this transaction at all. It was okay for Whatsapp, Instagram, Waze, etc. employees to get a payday, but not Figma employees.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vlovich123 3y agoI 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 industries). The one-time 1B infusion puts their revenue growth quite a bit higher for 2023 than they would have had organically I suspect (4x growth vs best case of 2x). If Figma fixes their sales trajectory in 2024 this bodes extremely well for them. They do need to have a better story about generative AI which is a real thing in their space (e.g. wireframe -> mockup automatic conversion, wireframe construction assistants, etc etc). Will be interesting to see if they build that in-house or via acquisition.
- gkoberger 3y agoIt could be negotiated as an investment, but that only benefits Adobe. Figma wouldn't want it (would you want your biggest competitor to be an investor? they'd have information and leverage you wouldn't want them to have), and it defeats the purpose of a break-up fee (Figma negotiated for it because they didn't want to spend a year of their lives focusing on something that would benefit their competitor if it's all for nothing... Adobe gained a year, has a ton of information, and distracted Figma).
- theultdev 3y agoAnd in reality, Adobe actually lost progress on XD and Figma has come out with an incredible amount of features this year. Now Figma has an extra billion for development and Adobe has to start back up the thing they couldn't catch Figma with in the first place. It was pretty much a win/win for Figma regardless of outcome. Though this outcome is a win for Figma and it's users.
- matwood 3y ago> And in reality, Adobe actually lost progress on XD and Figma has come out with an incredible amount of features this year. Features and free advertising. Many people knew of Figma, but now everyone knows of Figma. It's the tool that was good enough to scare Adobe into paying 20B and stopped by regulators.
- lovegrenoble 3y agoFor the best
- wentin 3y agoI’m an ex-Adobe employee who worked on Adobe XD, which is basically Adobe's answer to Figma. when Adobe decided to buy Figma, my first reaction was pretty much "Wait, what?" I wrote down my initial thoughts about it[^1], it felt like a losing situation all around - for Adobe, Figma, and all the designers out there. The only folks who really seemed to win were Figma's investors. Now, let's talk how bad the breakup deal is for Adobe. You've got Elon Musk buying Twitter for a massive 54 billion, with a breakup fee of 1 billion if it doesn't go through. But then, there's Adobe, buying Figma for 20 billion, and they also get slapped with a 1 billion breakup fee. Musk tried to back out of his deal, no real reason, and didn't want to pay the fee. But Adobe? Their deal gets killed by regulators, and they still have to pay the full 1 billion. Makes you really think about the decision-makers' negotiation at Adobe, do they work for Figma? Before the deal was sealed, Figma didn't start integrating their tech with Adobe’s. However, Adobe put XD on the maintaince mode[^2], losing market share since then. Yes, XD wasn't as cool as Figma, but it had its sizable share of big corporate users. The data backs this up[^3]. The whole fallout from this? For the design community and Figma, it's kind of a win. The CEO of Figma is pretty well-respected for how he treats his team. That 1 billion from Adobe might help out the Figma folks who got left in the lurch. Morale over there is still pretty high. But Adobe stopping development on XD? I think that was a misstep. I suspect they might have done that to please the regulators. Now put the team back together and continue development? That takes time for big machine like Adobe, spoken from my past experience. But I am happy XD get to live on, at least hopefully. Here are the references I mentioned: [^1]. My initial thoughts on Adobe acquiring Figma: [Typogram](https://typogram.co/build/on-adobe-acquiring-figma/ https://typogram.co/build/on-adobe-acquiring-figma/) [^2]. Adobe XD Enters Maintenance Mode: [Typogram](https://build.typogram.co/p/adobe-xd-enters-maintenance-mode https://build.typogram.co/p/adobe-xd-enters-maintenance-mode) [^3]. Design Tool Survey Report: [Survey 2022](https://uxtools.co/survey/2022/toolkit https://uxtools.co/survey/2022/toolkit), [Survey 2023](https://uxtools.co/survey/2023/toolkit https://uxtools.co/survey/2023/toolkit)
- tomgeoco 3y agoFYI, the 2023 version of the design tools survey was published recently: https://uxtools.co/survey/2023/ https://uxtools.co/survey/2023/
- edwincoronado 3y agoGood.
- EMCymatics 3y agoProbably good for both parties, better for Adobe.
- jtdev 3y ago[dead]
- low_tech_punk 3y agoPure speculation: Microsoft is bidding against Adobe 1. Figma could benefit from the AI infrastructure from Microsoft 2. Figma has outgrown the design tool genre, and is becoming productivity/collaboration platform and low-code no-code app builder. Adobe's roadmap seems misaligned 3. Regulation: Figma is big enough and similar enough to Adobe XD and Illustrator
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- himaraya 3y ago> The decision by Adobe and Figma to spike their $20 billion merger on Monday dented the imminent dream of startup riches for Figma investors and employees. But Figma’s business is still growing quicker than that of most mature startups, potentially putting it in position for an initial public offering in 2025 or later. And the billion-dollar breakup fee from Adobe will strengthen Figma’s already robust balance sheet. > The design software firm expects to finish this year with over $600 million in annual recurring revenue, an increase of more than 40% over the past year, people familiar with the matter said. The San Francisco–based company has also been generating cash for a few years, the people said. That financial picture likely makes it one of the best-performing late-stage private tech companies, particularly in a year when many firms have struggled with sagging growth rates as corporate clients have cut their software spending. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/figma-grew-fast-even-as-executives-failed-to-clinch-adobe-deal https://www.theinformation.com/articles/figma-grew-fast-even...
- radium3d 3y agobreathes a sigh of relief
- mercurialsolo 3y agoWhat about this playing a role? Is the role of anti-trust, big tech regulation and regulatory fees playing a bigger role here? Is the era of AI more in favour of say both Figma / Adobe competing vs collaborating - similar datasets? https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/19/tech/google-play-store-settlement-hnk-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/19/tech/google-play-store-se...
- GJR 3y agoAdobe has dodged a bullet; Figma was ridiculously overvalued.
- Brosper 3y agoI think it's good for us users. We need more companies to fight with each other. We can't sell everything to one company. The EU is doing great work, in my opinion.
- tamarlikesdata 3y agoI don't get this. Any designer knows that Figma is the best tool.
- maniflames 3y agoIt’s not about the quality of the tool but the fact that regulators will most likely think that this merger will violate anti-trust laws and lawyers from both companies can’t argue for why this isn’t the case
- lazyinterface 3y agocrazy
- kmdupree 3y agoProbably better for the consumer.
- guerrilla 3y agoGood. The last thing this worlds is new mergers. It's starting to look dystopian out there.
- SandroG 3y agodumb question: why do two American companies need an approval from the UK to merge?
- seanpquig 3y agoAnyone know how this outcome is affecting Figma employees? I can imagine it's a huge letdown waiting 1.5 years for a big liquidity event and having it evaporate. Do employees see any benefit from that $1B termination fee?
- MCUmaster 3y agoSo Figma’s just Omnigraffle with a multiplayer mode?
- John112 3y ago[flagged]
- adfm 3y agoThe core of what Adobe offers is centered around a deteriorating print paradigm with digital capabilities tacked-on. Figma is of the Web whole cloth. They may look similar and do similar things, but there's a reason they made a move. Adobe has done a few cool things in the interim, but nothing that truly compensates for the jank eroding their cloud bundle, which is mostly smoke and mirrors (and if that's your thing, davinci or blender are probably what you're reaching for).
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]