Adobe have already canned XD, which was a poor alternative to Figma, but Adobe had to at least pretend to compete.
Problem is, even though Figma have captured a large proportion of the digital design market, they took on so much funding that their only real options are a purchase or IPO.
I don’t believe that subscriptions alone would bring in enough for the kind of returns the VCs are looking for, especially as it’s almost free for individual designers.
I tried uninstalling Adobe software from my PC a few weeks ago.
Clicking on ‘uninstall’ booted up their cloud launcher app, and then I had to log in with an account, and then it had to install four or five different updates in sequence, and then it tried auto-updating the software I had installed, and after about thirty minutes of making sure Adobe obtained all of their analytics I was finally able to uninstall everything.
It is one of the worst user experiences I’ve ever encountered in recent times and it is a sign of what will happen to Figma under Adobe’s leadership. Figma is too much of a threat to them, so they can just squash it in an acquisition.
They all need to realise one thing. You can choose to start something, but it's only the audience that can choose to end it.
Whether that's a new app, series, or web tool: the problem is the same, no one is going to invest their time and effort on something that will be canned if it is not an instant success.
Each are now trapped in a problem of their own making: people avoid their new offerings for fear of wasting their time, dooming the new entry.
This is absolutely right, and why their new dev tools feature add an additional $25 per seat to use.
Even though I would rather pay less — if the integration between a Design System and Github is clean enough it might be worth it for my DSM team? It's real value. It's also why they launched Figjam — which has gotten Miro off of my balance sheet.
I want Figma to scale up and be the anti-Adobe. Financial balance of Figma aside - this acquisition kinda sucks.
They also recently got rid of most of the free tier. Many files I had from years of use gone overnight without warning. I used the free version as a personal depository for files, I made using the pro version paid for by my employers.
I interned at the CMA in 2014 and had several friends working on merger control.
This [1] page has more details on the case, and has an invitation to comment at the bottom. In my experience, detailed comments from relevant industry participants, e.g. customers, competitors, are given serious weight and consideration, and very few are supplied. It's a useful mechanism for those concerned about a tech merger.
"Invitation to comment: closes on 18 May 2023
3 May 2023: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction if carried into effect, will result in the creation of a relevant merger situation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002 and, if so, whether the creation of that situation may be expected to result, in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services.
To assist it with this assessment, the CMA invites comments on the transaction from any interested party.
These comments should be provided by the deadline set out above.
Contact
Please send written representations about any competition issues to:
Interesting. Right now Figma is THE standard for UX design. It completely blew Sketch away thanks to Covid. I really haven't heard UX designers talk about going back to Sketch or any other program, in fact I've only heard multiple people talk about how Figma is just getting better with their new update (especially around prototyping). Personally, I'm not a fan of Adobe, but it seems like there's a lot of UX designers who simply don't care if Adobe buys them or not.
I love sigma and have been using it for years, but I'm already starting to look for alternatives. They've already made some changes to free versus premium tiers and anyone who trusts Adobe is an absolute fool. I've moved away from all of their products entirely with the exception of Figma.....for now.
I think many Figma users are concerned with Adobe's purchase of Figma. I've already removed Adobe products twice from my life (professional and personal) and would prefer to not have to do it again.
That said, I can't see the acquisition being a problem for competition in this particular space. It's not hard to imagine someone just making figma-but-different and becoming the next big thing. There are also countless other existing options.
It would be very hard to build a product from scratch that competed with Figma. Even if you just straight-up stole all their product choices, features and UX and so on, the engineering under the hood seems pretty high level. Anything is possible, but it would not be trivial.
They were losing the battle for the design software market, so they bought the competition. The less innovative company bought the more innovative company. Of course it would reduce innovation.
In my person opinion, in the grand scheme of things, the impact on innovation in this particular case is negligible because only under exceptional circumstance, anti trust regulators intervene to block a merger of a startup.
If it becomes more of a common occurrence, I agree it could stifle innovation.
On the contrary, the ability for startups to be purchased by larger companies is the majority of the financial incentive towards creating startups. If competition regulators prohibit these transactions, it will harm the startup ecosystem and reduce innovation.
The large tech acquirers have extremely high market valuations partly because of the expectation that they continue to get away with doing exactly this.
If we had more competent competition regulators and this sort of acquisition was basically not on the cards at all, ever, once a company reaches a certain size then that value would stay in the innovating startups until they IPO or are acquired by a smaller, less predatory/monopolistic company. Either way there’s still an attractive exit.
We need to stop inventing reasons to tolerate and justify this behaviour that is clearly bad for society and start pushing for a more diverse tech ecosystem with proper antitrust enforcement.
Maybe the real innovation that we need is how to create companies that are designed to operate indefinitely as a going concern, breaking even or turning a profit without the need for an "exit" event.
Let's work on business fundamentals that aren't three financial engineering schemes in a trenchcoat, for once.
Or they could have focused on building a sustainable company that made a profit from the start and didn’t use VC money to essentially give the product away for free.
I was really unhappy about switching my design team to Figma because their only ways forward are to either IPO or get purchased, with all the pain they involve. Or worse, if they actually have to start making a profit, then prices will be raised immensely and features will be diminished.
None of those things lead to a stable platform to base on potentially years of work.
You are saying without trying.Penpot can only compete in functionalities. Due to their architectural choices of using SVG ,no WebGL renderers, very resource intensive java backend they will never reach performance req of FIGMA.
Designing just a few screen is crippling it.
In the current environment, money-losing software companies aren’t exactly hot. The valuation from an IPO would be extremely disappointing for investors compared to the $20 billion Adobe is paying. A price/sales multiple of 10x would be generous, and that would be a $5B valuation.
I did not want this to go through, but totally expected it since I’m in the US and until a few months ago it seemed our regulators no longer cared about monopolies
If you want to talk about reducing innovation then have a look at Apple's walled garden. They're preventing so many innovative new apps from ever being created by being inaccessible to young/poor developers.
mattkevan|2 years ago
Adobe have already canned XD, which was a poor alternative to Figma, but Adobe had to at least pretend to compete.
Problem is, even though Figma have captured a large proportion of the digital design market, they took on so much funding that their only real options are a purchase or IPO.
I don’t believe that subscriptions alone would bring in enough for the kind of returns the VCs are looking for, especially as it’s almost free for individual designers.
And so the enshittification begins.
ljm|2 years ago
Clicking on ‘uninstall’ booted up their cloud launcher app, and then I had to log in with an account, and then it had to install four or five different updates in sequence, and then it tried auto-updating the software I had installed, and after about thirty minutes of making sure Adobe obtained all of their analytics I was finally able to uninstall everything.
It is one of the worst user experiences I’ve ever encountered in recent times and it is a sign of what will happen to Figma under Adobe’s leadership. Figma is too much of a threat to them, so they can just squash it in an acquisition.
The revamped Serif suite is much nicer.
quitit|2 years ago
They all need to realise one thing. You can choose to start something, but it's only the audience that can choose to end it.
Whether that's a new app, series, or web tool: the problem is the same, no one is going to invest their time and effort on something that will be canned if it is not an instant success.
Each are now trapped in a problem of their own making: people avoid their new offerings for fear of wasting their time, dooming the new entry.
spandrew|2 years ago
Even though I would rather pay less — if the integration between a Design System and Github is clean enough it might be worth it for my DSM team? It's real value. It's also why they launched Figjam — which has gotten Miro off of my balance sheet.
I want Figma to scale up and be the anti-Adobe. Financial balance of Figma aside - this acquisition kinda sucks.
mushbino|2 years ago
oli5679|2 years ago
This [1] page has more details on the case, and has an invitation to comment at the bottom. In my experience, detailed comments from relevant industry participants, e.g. customers, competitors, are given serious weight and consideration, and very few are supplied. It's a useful mechanism for those concerned about a tech merger.
"Invitation to comment: closes on 18 May 2023 3 May 2023: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction if carried into effect, will result in the creation of a relevant merger situation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002 and, if so, whether the creation of that situation may be expected to result, in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services.
To assist it with this assessment, the CMA invites comments on the transaction from any interested party.
These comments should be provided by the deadline set out above.
Contact Please send written representations about any competition issues to:
xxxx@cma.gov.uk"
Other cases can be found here [2].
[1] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/adobe-slash-figma-merger-inquir...
[2] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases?case_type%5B%5D=mergers&market_...
ClumsyPilot|2 years ago
GenerWork|2 years ago
elforce002|2 years ago
mushbino|2 years ago
have_faith|2 years ago
That said, I can't see the acquisition being a problem for competition in this particular space. It's not hard to imagine someone just making figma-but-different and becoming the next big thing. There are also countless other existing options.
karaterobot|2 years ago
safety1st|2 years ago
tuukkah|2 years ago
DHPersonal|2 years ago
v3ss0n|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
karaterobot|2 years ago
danielmarkbruce|2 years ago
Ie, they are driving innovation by killing the leader.
rvense|2 years ago
fortenforge|2 years ago
pcurve|2 years ago
If it becomes more of a common occurrence, I agree it could stifle innovation.
lhnz|2 years ago
barnabee|2 years ago
The large tech acquirers have extremely high market valuations partly because of the expectation that they continue to get away with doing exactly this.
If we had more competent competition regulators and this sort of acquisition was basically not on the cards at all, ever, once a company reaches a certain size then that value would stay in the innovating startups until they IPO or are acquired by a smaller, less predatory/monopolistic company. Either way there’s still an attractive exit.
We need to stop inventing reasons to tolerate and justify this behaviour that is clearly bad for society and start pushing for a more diverse tech ecosystem with proper antitrust enforcement.
M2Ys4U|2 years ago
Maybe the real innovation that we need is how to create companies that are designed to operate indefinitely as a going concern, breaking even or turning a profit without the need for an "exit" event.
Let's work on business fundamentals that aren't three financial engineering schemes in a trenchcoat, for once.
mattkevan|2 years ago
I was really unhappy about switching my design team to Figma because their only ways forward are to either IPO or get purchased, with all the pain they involve. Or worse, if they actually have to start making a profit, then prices will be raised immensely and features will be diminished.
None of those things lead to a stable platform to base on potentially years of work.
crest|2 years ago
Pete-Codes|2 years ago
daveoc64|2 years ago
1) Cancel the merger/acquisition completely.
2) Work out some sort of mitigation with the country.
3) Spin off/discontinue business in that country.
RadiozRadioz|2 years ago
hiidrew|2 years ago
v3ss0n|2 years ago
mercurialsolo|2 years ago
bannedbybros|2 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
rvz|2 years ago
Did people here really think that the regulators are going to allow this merger to happen?
Adobe might as well pay the $1BN break up fee and the Figma will just use that to fund their IPO.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33919862
pavlov|2 years ago
In the current environment, money-losing software companies aren’t exactly hot. The valuation from an IPO would be extremely disappointing for investors compared to the $20 billion Adobe is paying. A price/sales multiple of 10x would be generous, and that would be a $5B valuation.
edgyquant|2 years ago
drumhead|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
olliecornelia|2 years ago
floomk|2 years ago
whalesalad|2 years ago
This comment is so ironic because Apple has been the #1 innovator in so many arenas for decades.