11 ms·

[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

by 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 ago
Hmph, 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 ago
Adobe 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...
- DoesntMatter22 3y ago
  Things happen quickly and AI will change things quickly. Figma is nearly 8 years old and Firefly isn't even a year old. Of course a massive tool is going to be bigger than a very new tool and there is a lot of momentum at companies. The future is going to be AI/prompt based because it's a 100x speed savings. Who wins that pie is up for debate but Figma as it stands right now is very disruptable.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Things happen quickly and AI will change things quickly. Yes, but oversold hype also dies quickly, not changing much in the end.
    - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
      That is a very silly way of viewing things. AI has already dramatically change logo creation and all sorts of image generation. The impact on design is already being felt and is going to rapidly increase. The cost savings are immense.
      - gibbitz 3y ago
        Sadly this is how we look at art thanks to AI. "It's just like a real person thought about it and made it intentionally -- but it's nearly free!". No one paying cares if it's just copied from other works and nearly randomly put together at the expense of those who can barely make a living doing it. Why don't we focus more on automating C-suite jobs? That's where a lot of corporate costs come from. Automating a logo design saves you 20k or likey (much) less. Automating a corporate merger saves you millions of dollars and years of time.
        DoesntMatter22 3y ago
        I am incredibly happy about this. Otherwise it's like lamenting the invention of the car because it would eliminate all the jobs making buggies and whips. > No one paying cares if it's just copied from other works There are probably zero artists alive who didn't learn by copying other works or learning to make art in that style. It's no different with an AI. An AI is something that learns from others and creates it's own art. There isn't anything illegal about it any more so than you learning to draw and making characters that are similar to Mickey Mouse. You can trademark a specific thing but not a style. So at the end of the day, how is it any different than a person doing it other than the fact now a person won't be getting paid?
bluishgreen 3y ago
" Adobe can now add collaborative features to Firefly" - Except they won't. If you have been inside old big tech companies you'd know. Hard for me to articulate though. An open acknowledgment of this phenomenon is Satya staying out of OpenAI and still sucking the milk. They can never hope to move the same. Sathya's brilliance is that he decided and quietly said to himself and his board.. "And that's ok". Being humble brought MS back into the race. Adobe should have done the same with Figma.
poisonborz 3y ago
What does Gen AI and Adobe Firefly has to do with Figma? Not even the target group is similar - Figma didn't even try to touch raster/illustration. Building or acquiring a product is not a one-shot try at a popularity contest.
- scubadude 3y ago
  >What does Gen AI and Adobe Firefly has to do with Figma? Something something blockchain
zamadatix 3y ago
> So paying the 1B breakup fee is probably the cheapest and best option for Adobe at this time. Do they still have to pay the fee if the reason was regulatory in nature?
- vmatsiiako 3y ago
  Yes. They do
tempsy 3y ago
Badly run startup valuations fell. The good SaaS cos that are publicly traded are almost all closer to highs than lows. The company is still likely worth at least $10B if not much more.
RickS 3y ago
(ex-Adobe, on a team highly related to an area where Figma out-executed XD, less knowledge about genAI stuff) > Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma GenAI/Firefly's success is in a totally different domain to what Figma's doing. Figma's equivalent at Adobe is XD, which has never held a candle to Figma. The existential problem Adobe tried to buy their way out of still exists in the same form at, if anything, a greater severity. I was at Figma's config conf this year and they're finally shipping stuff I tried unsuccessfully to get from the XD team _years_ ago. > potentially, they might have been working on integrating into Adobe over the past year Highly, highly unlikely. I have no insider knowledge of Figma, but Adobe's a grown up company and _really_ does not fuck around on the legal stuff (which is part of the basis of Firefly's success – significantly cleaner legal provenance on their training data). Everyone I've spoken to at Adobe says they've been kept at a long arms length.
- ska 3y ago
  Curious: would you say that's reflective of Adobe's dev culture as a whole? I heard some similar comments coming out of a (claimed?) Lightroom developer about the motivations for that project...
  - dharmab 3y ago
    Also ex-Adobe, worked directly with regulatory compliance in my role there. Adobe is a huge company with a diverse set of dev team cultures, but is a monoculture in regards to legal and regulatory compliance. They do not fuck around. (They're also very serious about security post-2013.)
    - lucubratory 3y ago
      What happened in 2013?
      - organsnyder 3y ago
        https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/adobe-source-code-and-customer-data-stolen-in-sustained-network-hack/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/adobe...
jahewson 3y ago
Adobe’s market cap is $272bn. They’re not sweating about $10bn
- vmatsiiako 3y ago
  Almost 5% of market cap is a very significant amount.
ska 3y ago
> Gen AI and Adobe Firefly are the new rage Gen AI isn't going to solve a number of the problems a system like Figma are used for today - not in this generation or foreseeable next ones. It may be a shiny new ball to chase but it's not going to make Adobe's problem in the area go away (if they still care).
mrandish 3y ago
> I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this. I think they probably are. I follow Adobe closely and when the acquisition was announced I was pretty skeptical it would be net good for Adobe in the long-run. The problem wasn't the idea of buying Figma, it was the very rich price being paid. Adobe has a history of not doing a lot of big acquisitions (for it's size and massive cash position). When it does acquire big, Adobe is mostly strategic and a "value shopper", meaning they generally don't pay extremely high prices bid up by frothy auctions. This means Adobe must walk away from a lot of deals we never hear about over price. That's why the Figma deal struck me as so unusual. In the >year since the deal was announced, it's started to look even less plausible to me. Despite being required to pay a large break-up fee, I suspect, Adobe's management is relieved.
- karmasimida 3y ago
  One thing we could all agree is 20B for Figma is too expensive considering how the market has shifted. Figma is still solid company/business, but Adobe probably could acquire them much cheaper in today's market.
  - tekkk 3y ago
    Google was too expensive for Yahoo multiple times. You should look this from a bigger time scale. Sure they were paying a lot of goodwill on the deal. But if, down the road, Figma now starts their trajectory to become an equal to Adobe it sure would have been nice to capture that market all to yourself. Like Nvidia or TSMC. For the record, I am happy this fell through since it's clear Adobe needs competition to stop it abusing its market position.
    - intelVISA 3y ago
      You're suggesting there's a lunch to be eaten? I'm getting kinda famished...
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      Yes this is exactly why governments should not allow acquisitions like this
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ksec 3y ago
>* Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new acquisition deal today would be cheaper. Figma reached $400M in 2022 and on its way to hit $600M this year 2023. For perspective they reached $200M in 2021, and $75M in 2020. That is pretty impressive growth rate. Straightly on a revenue / market cap, Adobe makes $20B Revenue and values at $270B. That is 13.5x multiple. If we expect Figma to hit $1B mark by 2025, they could be worth $13.5B. i.e Even with today's market, I dont think it is hard to do an IPO with that $13.5B valuation. And if Adobe were to acquire a listed company with 30% premium, that is $17.5B. Not that far off from $20B. Now that Figma has an extra $1B cash flow, I hope they spend it wisely and continue to do well. So while some may argue this is bad for employees and investors. I dont think it is that bad. I do hope they consider IPO, as I am slightly worried the window of opportunity may be gone when market turns.
low_common 3y ago
You don't work in the space, you don't work for either company, you don't know what you're talking about. How is this the top comment here?
rapht 3y ago
I don't know about Adobe's motives, but it sure looks like despite the "we ended the process by mutual agreement" talk, Adobe somehow walked away... otherwise they wouldn't let $1bn out of the window - unless they actually signed something along the lines "we will take responsibility if antitrust throws the deal away" but that would be quite unlikely in such a high profile transaction.
- lucubratory 3y ago
  >unless they actually signed something along the lines "we will take responsibility if antitrust throws the deal away" but that would be quite unlikely in such a high profile transaction. This is absolutely standard in M/A. Part of the risk of accepting an acquisition offer is that you're essentially putting your company's strategic future on hold, and if what you're doing that for falls through for any reason (including regulatory oversight) you want compensation for at least some of the lost time. Specifically, you won't even sign the acquisition contract without such a guarantee; the only real question is price.
wentin 3y ago
I see where you're coming from, but there are a few critical points about the Adobe-Figma deal that you got wrong. (I am an ex-Adobe XD employee) When Adobe announced its plan to acquire Figma in September 2022, the timing was actually at the valley of startup valuations. The market was really down then. Since that time, the market has actually warmed up, not cooled down. This means if Adobe were to negotiate a deal now, it would likely cost them even more than what they agreed upon last year. Contrary to what you said. Speaking of the negotiation, I think Adobe dropped the ball. They agreed to a whopping 20 billion dollars, which in my view was four times too high given Figma's real valuation at that time, especially considering the low market (I wrote about how I calculate this 5B valuation in https://typogram.co/build/on-adobe-acquiring-figma/ https://typogram.co/build/on-adobe-acquiring-figma/). Then, with the deal being halted by regulators, Adobe still had to pay the full breakup fee, within just three days! It's kind of laughable how poor their negotiation strategy was. About Adobe's product strategy, there's a bit of confusion. Firefly, their new thing, isn't even about UX tooling; it's more focused on creative AI. The real product that is actually relevant here is Adobe XD, which Adobe has just put on maintenance mode (since at least September). a change I noticed on their help page as recently as this September (https://helpx.adobe.com/support/xd.html#troubleshooting https://helpx.adobe.com/support/xd.html#troubleshooting). This move is a huge strategic mistake. It's a clear loss of momentum for Adobe in the UX tooling space, making them even less competitive against Figma. Meanwhile, Figma hasn’t missed a beat and continues to surge ahead.
vl 3y ago
I wonder if Figma will have to pay taxes on 1B they are getting as the fee.
- moon_moon 3y ago
  [flagged]
- cj 3y ago
  Will probably be an expense on Adobe's books and income on Figma's. Lowering Adobe's tax and potentially raising Figma's. Not sure about this exact scenario, but the government taxes legal settlements. Not sure why they wouldn't tax this. Will definitely lower Adobe's tax bill.
quitit 3y ago
I agree but for a slightly different reason. UX is going to get a shake up from AI. We're already seeing a bit of the new paradigm of on-demand UI/UX with Gemini (and the various me-too demos). Both Figma and Adobe are now vulnerable to disruption in this space. Adobe can use the time to ape Figma while flexing their rather good AI expertise.
- gibbitz 3y ago
  I wonder about the UX created by AI when we start delegating browsing to AI. The major search engines already are looking to lean on AI and we complain about ads enough that it's clear we see browsing as a chore. It's only a matter of time before the web is written in a new bytecode that is meant for AI only. Turtles all the way down...
  - quitit 3y ago
    I think this is what the "Digital Assistant" will become. At the moment we craft some kind of prompt then scour the results which are largely book-like representations of information. Per your suggestion, it would be logical that alongside our usual text-driven sites we have digital information repositories for AIs to query information rather than trying to glean it from the text-driven webpage. Google Knowledge and Siri Knowledge are both implementations of this idea, but I assume it will grow to something that is more general purpose, so any AI could access it. Then extend that to all manner of services, such as bookings, tickets, shopping, etc. That's where the real turtles are.
- maroonblazer 3y ago
  I dunno. I work with a lot of designers and there's so much substantive back and forth in terms of clarifying goals, objectives, understanding design choices, and business priorities. I.e., there's a ton of nuance that is uncovered and deconstructed in those conversations. I'm skeptical that AI, at least in its current and foreseeable form, can fill those shoes in any meaningful way. I liken it to engineers who respond to the threat of AI making them obsolete with "Half my job is clarifying requirements and/or changes in priorities...can Copilot do that?" I think it's the same for UX/UI/Design. I say that as a very vocal supporter of this latest generation of AI. Both personally and professionally it's upped my game significantly.
turtle_ 3y ago
Having gone through one major acquisition, my experience was that legal put a huge block on any technical integrations and even meetings that might reveal ip until the ink was dried. I'm skeptical they started any kind of collaborative work other than pie-in-the-sky, "wouldn't it be cool if" type meetings with lawyers present.
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  Correct, till all legal things a cleared upon both companies must act as there were no acquisition. Only specific M&A teams can look deeper and plan for integration. This leads to a complicated limbo for acquired companies as customers consider the acquisition (buy now before new owner raises the price or hold out as they will cancel the product line?), employees are uncertain (conflicting products on both sides, which will continue, with which direction? Will yesterday's priorities still count tomorrow?) while all are counting their shares and make plans.
dolmen 3y ago
As I've been involved in 3 successive acquisitions of the company I work for, I can tell you that no integration happens at all until the deal is signed. Some plans may have been draws at the top executive level, but that stops here. Everything is done under the legal department supervision and "mitigate risks" is the primary concern. The time before signing the deal is spent mostly dealing with writing the contract between the 2 parties, not integrating.
lloydatkinson 3y ago
> I don't work in the UI space at all > Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma I agree with your initial point - only someone not in the UI space could make such an outlandish, and honestly deranged, claim.
hawk01 3y ago
> * Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new acquisition deal today would be cheaper. The chances of them buying Figma this decade is lowered. I wouldn't be surprised if figma doubles the valuation at that point

by tsycho 3y ago

sam1r 3y ago

Hmph, 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 ago

Adobe 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...

DoesntMatter22 3y ago
Things happen quickly and AI will change things quickly. Figma is nearly 8 years old and Firefly isn't even a year old. Of course a massive tool is going to be bigger than a very new tool and there is a lot of momentum at companies. The future is going to be AI/prompt based because it's a 100x speed savings. Who wins that pie is up for debate but Figma as it stands right now is very disruptable.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Things happen quickly and AI will change things quickly. Yes, but oversold hype also dies quickly, not changing much in the end.
  - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
    That is a very silly way of viewing things. AI has already dramatically change logo creation and all sorts of image generation. The impact on design is already being felt and is going to rapidly increase. The cost savings are immense.
    - gibbitz 3y ago
      Sadly this is how we look at art thanks to AI. "It's just like a real person thought about it and made it intentionally -- but it's nearly free!". No one paying cares if it's just copied from other works and nearly randomly put together at the expense of those who can barely make a living doing it. Why don't we focus more on automating C-suite jobs? That's where a lot of corporate costs come from. Automating a logo design saves you 20k or likey (much) less. Automating a corporate merger saves you millions of dollars and years of time.
      - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
        I am incredibly happy about this. Otherwise it's like lamenting the invention of the car because it would eliminate all the jobs making buggies and whips. > No one paying cares if it's just copied from other works There are probably zero artists alive who didn't learn by copying other works or learning to make art in that style. It's no different with an AI. An AI is something that learns from others and creates it's own art. There isn't anything illegal about it any more so than you learning to draw and making characters that are similar to Mickey Mouse. You can trademark a specific thing but not a style. So at the end of the day, how is it any different than a person doing it other than the fact now a person won't be getting paid?

bluishgreen 3y ago

" Adobe can now add collaborative features to Firefly" - Except they won't. If you have been inside old big tech companies you'd know. Hard for me to articulate though. An open acknowledgment of this phenomenon is Satya staying out of OpenAI and still sucking the milk. They can never hope to move the same. Sathya's brilliance is that he decided and quietly said to himself and his board.. "And that's ok". Being humble brought MS back into the race. Adobe should have done the same with Figma.

poisonborz 3y ago

What does Gen AI and Adobe Firefly has to do with Figma? Not even the target group is similar - Figma didn't even try to touch raster/illustration. Building or acquiring a product is not a one-shot try at a popularity contest.

scubadude 3y ago
>What does Gen AI and Adobe Firefly has to do with Figma? Something something blockchain

zamadatix 3y ago

> So paying the 1B breakup fee is probably the cheapest and best option for Adobe at this time. Do they still have to pay the fee if the reason was regulatory in nature?

vmatsiiako 3y ago
Yes. They do

tempsy 3y ago

Badly run startup valuations fell. The good SaaS cos that are publicly traded are almost all closer to highs than lows. The company is still likely worth at least $10B if not much more.

RickS 3y ago

(ex-Adobe, on a team highly related to an area where Figma out-executed XD, less knowledge about genAI stuff) > Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma GenAI/Firefly's success is in a totally different domain to what Figma's doing. Figma's equivalent at Adobe is XD, which has never held a candle to Figma. The existential problem Adobe tried to buy their way out of still exists in the same form at, if anything, a greater severity. I was at Figma's config conf this year and they're finally shipping stuff I tried unsuccessfully to get from the XD team _years_ ago. > potentially, they might have been working on integrating into Adobe over the past year Highly, highly unlikely. I have no insider knowledge of Figma, but Adobe's a grown up company and _really_ does not fuck around on the legal stuff (which is part of the basis of Firefly's success – significantly cleaner legal provenance on their training data). Everyone I've spoken to at Adobe says they've been kept at a long arms length.

ska 3y ago
Curious: would you say that's reflective of Adobe's dev culture as a whole? I heard some similar comments coming out of a (claimed?) Lightroom developer about the motivations for that project...
- dharmab 3y ago
  Also ex-Adobe, worked directly with regulatory compliance in my role there. Adobe is a huge company with a diverse set of dev team cultures, but is a monoculture in regards to legal and regulatory compliance. They do not fuck around. (They're also very serious about security post-2013.)
  - lucubratory 3y ago
    What happened in 2013?
    - organsnyder 3y ago
      https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/adobe-source-code-and-customer-data-stolen-in-sustained-network-hack/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/adobe...

jahewson 3y ago

Adobe’s market cap is $272bn. They’re not sweating about $10bn

vmatsiiako 3y ago
Almost 5% of market cap is a very significant amount.

ska 3y ago

> Gen AI and Adobe Firefly are the new rage Gen AI isn't going to solve a number of the problems a system like Figma are used for today - not in this generation or foreseeable next ones. It may be a shiny new ball to chase but it's not going to make Adobe's problem in the area go away (if they still care).

mrandish 3y ago

> I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this. I think they probably are. I follow Adobe closely and when the acquisition was announced I was pretty skeptical it would be net good for Adobe in the long-run. The problem wasn't the idea of buying Figma, it was the very rich price being paid. Adobe has a history of not doing a lot of big acquisitions (for it's size and massive cash position). When it does acquire big, Adobe is mostly strategic and a "value shopper", meaning they generally don't pay extremely high prices bid up by frothy auctions. This means Adobe must walk away from a lot of deals we never hear about over price. That's why the Figma deal struck me as so unusual. In the >year since the deal was announced, it's started to look even less plausible to me. Despite being required to pay a large break-up fee, I suspect, Adobe's management is relieved.

karmasimida 3y ago
One thing we could all agree is 20B for Figma is too expensive considering how the market has shifted. Figma is still solid company/business, but Adobe probably could acquire them much cheaper in today's market.
- tekkk 3y ago
  Google was too expensive for Yahoo multiple times. You should look this from a bigger time scale. Sure they were paying a lot of goodwill on the deal. But if, down the road, Figma now starts their trajectory to become an equal to Adobe it sure would have been nice to capture that market all to yourself. Like Nvidia or TSMC. For the record, I am happy this fell through since it's clear Adobe needs competition to stop it abusing its market position.
  - intelVISA 3y ago
    You're suggesting there's a lunch to be eaten? I'm getting kinda famished...
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Yes this is exactly why governments should not allow acquisitions like this

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ksec 3y ago

>* Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new acquisition deal today would be cheaper. Figma reached $400M in 2022 and on its way to hit $600M this year 2023. For perspective they reached $200M in 2021, and $75M in 2020. That is pretty impressive growth rate. Straightly on a revenue / market cap, Adobe makes $20B Revenue and values at $270B. That is 13.5x multiple. If we expect Figma to hit $1B mark by 2025, they could be worth $13.5B. i.e Even with today's market, I dont think it is hard to do an IPO with that $13.5B valuation. And if Adobe were to acquire a listed company with 30% premium, that is $17.5B. Not that far off from $20B. Now that Figma has an extra $1B cash flow, I hope they spend it wisely and continue to do well. So while some may argue this is bad for employees and investors. I dont think it is that bad. I do hope they consider IPO, as I am slightly worried the window of opportunity may be gone when market turns.

low_common 3y ago

You don't work in the space, you don't work for either company, you don't know what you're talking about. How is this the top comment here?

rapht 3y ago

I don't know about Adobe's motives, but it sure looks like despite the "we ended the process by mutual agreement" talk, Adobe somehow walked away... otherwise they wouldn't let $1bn out of the window - unless they actually signed something along the lines "we will take responsibility if antitrust throws the deal away" but that would be quite unlikely in such a high profile transaction.

lucubratory 3y ago
>unless they actually signed something along the lines "we will take responsibility if antitrust throws the deal away" but that would be quite unlikely in such a high profile transaction. This is absolutely standard in M/A. Part of the risk of accepting an acquisition offer is that you're essentially putting your company's strategic future on hold, and if what you're doing that for falls through for any reason (including regulatory oversight) you want compensation for at least some of the lost time. Specifically, you won't even sign the acquisition contract without such a guarantee; the only real question is price.

wentin 3y ago

I see where you're coming from, but there are a few critical points about the Adobe-Figma deal that you got wrong. (I am an ex-Adobe XD employee) When Adobe announced its plan to acquire Figma in September 2022, the timing was actually at the valley of startup valuations. The market was really down then. Since that time, the market has actually warmed up, not cooled down. This means if Adobe were to negotiate a deal now, it would likely cost them even more than what they agreed upon last year. Contrary to what you said. Speaking of the negotiation, I think Adobe dropped the ball. They agreed to a whopping 20 billion dollars, which in my view was four times too high given Figma's real valuation at that time, especially considering the low market (I wrote about how I calculate this 5B valuation in https://typogram.co/build/on-adobe-acquiring-figma/ https://typogram.co/build/on-adobe-acquiring-figma/). Then, with the deal being halted by regulators, Adobe still had to pay the full breakup fee, within just three days! It's kind of laughable how poor their negotiation strategy was. About Adobe's product strategy, there's a bit of confusion. Firefly, their new thing, isn't even about UX tooling; it's more focused on creative AI. The real product that is actually relevant here is Adobe XD, which Adobe has just put on maintenance mode (since at least September). a change I noticed on their help page as recently as this September (https://helpx.adobe.com/support/xd.html#troubleshooting https://helpx.adobe.com/support/xd.html#troubleshooting). This move is a huge strategic mistake. It's a clear loss of momentum for Adobe in the UX tooling space, making them even less competitive against Figma. Meanwhile, Figma hasn’t missed a beat and continues to surge ahead.

vl 3y ago

I wonder if Figma will have to pay taxes on 1B they are getting as the fee.

moon_moon 3y ago
[flagged]
cj 3y ago
Will probably be an expense on Adobe's books and income on Figma's. Lowering Adobe's tax and potentially raising Figma's. Not sure about this exact scenario, but the government taxes legal settlements. Not sure why they wouldn't tax this. Will definitely lower Adobe's tax bill.

quitit 3y ago

I agree but for a slightly different reason. UX is going to get a shake up from AI. We're already seeing a bit of the new paradigm of on-demand UI/UX with Gemini (and the various me-too demos). Both Figma and Adobe are now vulnerable to disruption in this space. Adobe can use the time to ape Figma while flexing their rather good AI expertise.

gibbitz 3y ago
I wonder about the UX created by AI when we start delegating browsing to AI. The major search engines already are looking to lean on AI and we complain about ads enough that it's clear we see browsing as a chore. It's only a matter of time before the web is written in a new bytecode that is meant for AI only. Turtles all the way down...
- quitit 3y ago
  I think this is what the "Digital Assistant" will become. At the moment we craft some kind of prompt then scour the results which are largely book-like representations of information. Per your suggestion, it would be logical that alongside our usual text-driven sites we have digital information repositories for AIs to query information rather than trying to glean it from the text-driven webpage. Google Knowledge and Siri Knowledge are both implementations of this idea, but I assume it will grow to something that is more general purpose, so any AI could access it. Then extend that to all manner of services, such as bookings, tickets, shopping, etc. That's where the real turtles are.
maroonblazer 3y ago
I dunno. I work with a lot of designers and there's so much substantive back and forth in terms of clarifying goals, objectives, understanding design choices, and business priorities. I.e., there's a ton of nuance that is uncovered and deconstructed in those conversations. I'm skeptical that AI, at least in its current and foreseeable form, can fill those shoes in any meaningful way. I liken it to engineers who respond to the threat of AI making them obsolete with "Half my job is clarifying requirements and/or changes in priorities...can Copilot do that?" I think it's the same for UX/UI/Design. I say that as a very vocal supporter of this latest generation of AI. Both personally and professionally it's upped my game significantly.

turtle_ 3y ago

Having gone through one major acquisition, my experience was that legal put a huge block on any technical integrations and even meetings that might reveal ip until the ink was dried. I'm skeptical they started any kind of collaborative work other than pie-in-the-sky, "wouldn't it be cool if" type meetings with lawyers present.

johannes1234321 3y ago
Correct, till all legal things a cleared upon both companies must act as there were no acquisition. Only specific M&A teams can look deeper and plan for integration. This leads to a complicated limbo for acquired companies as customers consider the acquisition (buy now before new owner raises the price or hold out as they will cancel the product line?), employees are uncertain (conflicting products on both sides, which will continue, with which direction? Will yesterday's priorities still count tomorrow?) while all are counting their shares and make plans.

dolmen 3y ago

As I've been involved in 3 successive acquisitions of the company I work for, I can tell you that no integration happens at all until the deal is signed. Some plans may have been draws at the top executive level, but that stops here. Everything is done under the legal department supervision and "mitigate risks" is the primary concern. The time before signing the deal is spent mostly dealing with writing the contract between the 2 parties, not integrating.

lloydatkinson 3y ago

> I don't work in the UI space at all > Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma I agree with your initial point - only someone not in the UI space could make such an outlandish, and honestly deranged, claim.

hawk01 3y ago

> * Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new acquisition deal today would be cheaper. The chances of them buying Figma this decade is lowered. I wouldn't be surprised if figma doubles the valuation at that point