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by drchopchop 1433 days ago
I'd disagree re: Figma and Notion. These are very sticky, best-in-class tools which have a lot of use outside of "VC-land". Figma is becoming the de-facto way to share designs across the internet. Notion has a good shot at becoming the internet's default business wiki, killing Confluence.
2 comments

But the problem isn't the product. That is the mistake that people make when they say it is nothing like 2000.

The problem is: way too many staff, not enough revenue, no route to profit. It doesn't matter if you have a "best-in-class" tool...where is the money coming from, how are you making payroll next month with no VCs.

The main problem with tech companies isn't the products, the products are fine. The issue is that they have taken a profitable product and built an economic model around that product that incinerates money.

Notion is already profitable and has been for many years.
Figma's incredibly hard to replace because its tools are highly customized for specific design workflows. Notion, I'm not nearly as sure about.

With Google Workplace having pageless Google Docs now, and other shops having content centralized on Office 365, a lot of cost-cutting companies will ask "we just use Notion for a wiki anyways, can we migrate over to the system we're already paying for?" And sure, Notion is making the right move here, to move rapidly on becoming a hub for project planning and other structured content, which is harder to move into a plain collaborative document. But is enough of Notion's userbase using those table features to such a level that it would cause pain? I'm truly not sure.

This is a 2000s mindset as well. Designers are a few YouTube tutorials away from jumping from Figma to Dingus or whatever will come next. Notion’s moat erodes with every iteration of Google Docs and Office — it’ll be the WordPerfect of 2025.

Maybe, anyway

I won't disagree here. Before Figma it was Sketch, and before Sketch it was Photoshop etc.
Notion is such a "local maximum" it's hard to see not being outcompeted by anything else

Firma has a deeper moat around it