[supportlocal4h]

Perhaps you misunderstand that Figma was motivated to create value. A large part of the motivation for many startups is an exit plan wherein they get bought out by established competitors.

If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major factor in creating the value to begin with.

[ryanisnan]

The point of the stock market is to trade and build wealth. Yet we have agreed insider trading should be illegal, because it ruins the game for everyone.

Anti-trust laws are similar.

[anders_p]

> Perhaps you misunderstand that Figma was motivated to create value. A large part of the motivation for many startups is an exit plan wherein they get bought out by established competitors.

> If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major factor in creating the value to begin with.

You're basically saying that they wouldn't have made Figma if they'd only been able to sell it for 15 billion.

Same tired argument as the "unless you lower taxes on the wealthiest even more, they'll stop creating jobs!" (Even though the taxes haven't been lower in history than they are right now).

People do stuff even though there are anti-trust laws limiting how many tens of billions they get out of it.

As long as there's insane profits to be made, there'll still be an incentive.

Selling out to the market leader, creating a virtual monopoly that harms the consumers in the long run, isn't the only way to make money on a start-up. Far from it.

[supportlocal4h]

If Figma had sold to, say... Autodesk for $15B would that be an anti-trust issue for you? What if they sold to Google?

I'm pretty wary of monopoly abuse. But I'm also very wary of entitled people (including myself sometimes) demanding that somebody else has the responsibility to create great stuff for free to make their life better. It's beyond my ability to create an amazing electric vehicle so somebody else should be required to do it and give it to me for free or else it is an anti-trust violation. Somebody else should make something as good or better than SolidWorks or Fusion or XD for free or else AutoDesk/Adobe/MS/Alphabet/... are harmful monopolists.

I don't like Adobe or AutoDesk or MS or Meta or many others companies. I disagree with many of their behaviors for various reasons. I think some of what they do is or should be illegal. But I think misguided consumption is more often the root problem. And it is a mistake to punish those who take advantage of misguided consumption in a way that encourages more misguided consumption and entitlement.

[bmitc]

What are you are are describing are bad motivations. It’s like wanting a salary when volunteering. One doesn’t actually care about value if the only motivation to create said value is to get obscene amounts of money.

[scarface74]

They weren’t creating a company for the “good of mankind”.

Most non profits have plenty of paid staff.

In fact, there is a Ted Talk about non profits and why their employees should get paid well.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...

[bmitc]

> They weren’t creating a company for the “good of mankind”.

I feel most VC blurbs disagree with that, although of course that’s not their actual motivation.

I don’t see how non-profits are relevant other than as examples of companies/organizations that do actually provide value in lieu of massive gains and profit.

And I think you missed my point as I was responding to:

> If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major factor in creating the value to begin with.

[scarface74]

And you believe what the VCs say?