[wbsss4412]

I suppose I just don’t understand you original point then?

> What would the alternative be? There will always come a day when founders and investors want to move on.

Going public means you can move on and sell your shares at any time on the open market, they never needed Adobe to buy them out except to get a higher valuation.

Your original comment implied that if companies like Adobe weren’t able to buy out smaller competitors, the products would just die, which, obviously isn’t even the case here.

[randomdata]

I guess I don't understand yours. There is no functional difference between offering shares to the public directly or offering shares to the public by proxy through Adobe. Either way the public controls the company and gets to decide the fate of the product. If they see value in continuing it, they'll do so. If there is more value in letting it die, they'll do that instead.

The problem with shareholders made up of the general public is that they aren't interested in the product itself. It it goes by the wayside, oh well. They never used it in the first place. This doesn't serve to protect the offering in the manner the customer expects. It might work out, but often it doesn't. Adobe's products themselves are a prime example of what happens when the general public has more say than the users. No user-controlled company would play those shenanigans, but the general public doesn't use Adobe products, so they don't feel the pain. They only see the profit pleasure.

This is why, traditionally, customers who want to ensure that a product remains aligned with their expectations pool their resources and enact a buyout before it reaches the hands of outsiders with other ideas. This allows them to put priority on the product itself, not competing concerns like profitability. But there is no evidence that happened here, so they decided it was okay to let it go to the whims of the rest of the world.

It's a tradeoff. Such is life.

[wbsss4412]

I’m making my comments in the context of the thread:

>we need new antitrust laws that are a bit more proactive when it comes to super-massive companies like Adobe

> What do you think happens to VC investments when it’s harder for companies to be acquired?

> maybe a culture of creating small companies out of VC capital only to be acquired by megacorps is not the best way forward for society

> What would the alternative be? There will always come a day when founders and investors want to move on

> A company like figma could have always just gone public if the founders/investors just wanted to get out

The whole point was that anti trust should be stepping in more, and then people were making over the top claims about there being no alternative.

The whole point is that it is not up to the public shareholders to sell to whoever they want if the government will block the sale.

[randomdata]

> then people were making over the top claims about there being no alternative.

Nobody said such a thing. I did ask what the alternative is. Going public isn't an alternative. That's what is happening. Figma is being transferred into a public trust. And that is the worry expressed with respect to its future, because the general public has no reason to care about the product and will not act in the interest of the product.

Anti-trust could, in theory, do more to prevent the general public from not caring about the product they control. The problem is that laws (where Figma and Adobe are located) are prescribed by the very same general public, so you have to convince them its a good idea. And if you've done that, the law becomes largely superfluous because at that point they're already on board and will act as such on their own accord.

[wbsss4412]

> What would the alternative be? There will always come a day when founders and investors want to move on. Retirement age comes faster than you might think. Even if you deny an exit strategy, the principals are still going to stop eventually, and the product will still come to an end at that time. Allowing a sale at least provides an opportunity for the product to live on, even if there can be no guarantees about how the next guy decides to treat it.

This is what you wrote in response to the idea that anti trust should be used to block these kinds of buy outs.

> The problem is that laws are prescribed by the very same general public, so you have to convince them its a good idea. And if you've done that, the law becomes largely superfluous because at that point they're already on board and will act as such on their own accord.

That is frankly an absurd oversimplification. Shareholders are a miniscule subset of the general public.

[randomdata]

> Shareholders are a miniscule subset of the general public.

You mean shareholders of Adobe? Sure. But the rest of the population see how it applies to their own shareholdings. According to Gallop polling earlier this year, 58% of Americans own stock. I speculate you'll find even more owning stock indirectly (pensions, etc.).

Or do you mean in other countries? America certainly ranks much higher than many other countries with regards to what portion of the general public are interested in such matters. Which is no doubt why it is more relaxed about such things. This probably wouldn't fly in many other countries, but those countries are not where this is taking place.

[wbsss4412]

Setting aside the fact that your own measure means that 42% of Americans own zero shares, meaning that it is already not representative. The fact that 58% of Americans own a share does not imply that they are shareholders of every single one of the ~6,000 companies listed on the public markets in the US. Further, 10% of Americans hold 89% of the stocks in the US, and therefore as many voting shares.

So yes, I do mean the US. I’ll reiterate: it is absurd to imply that “the public” in reference to shareholders is somehow synonymous with “the public” in reference to voters in America.

[scarface74]

Until a billionaire or a Bain capital comes along and tries to do a hostile takeover.

If anyone can buy stock in a company, that means any entity can come along with deep enough pockets and buy a controlling interest unless the founder has enough clout to keep a majority of voting shares.

[scarface74]

Going public also leaves you to the short sightedness of the public market. There is a reason that public companies are taken private when they need to make long term changes.

Also, Adobe can invest money in a product without going to the public markets for more money or taking out loans.

[wbsss4412]

You can argue whichever is better for society, more anti trust, more big corp acquisitions. My point is only that the idea that without big corp acquisitions, founders would have no options besides walking away and letting their product die is preposterous.

[randomdata]

So preposterous, in fact, that not a single person even tried to say such a thing. What purpose does this straw man serve?

[scarface74]

LinkedIn didn’t “need” to be acquired as a public company. But they did