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by pcurve 1372 days ago
Yep. Everybody has a price.

It's not that Figma was worth $20 billion.

It's that Adobe was likely seeing subscription revenue take hit from customers that realized there's no need for creative cloud subscription.

1 comments

> It's that Adobe was likely seeing subscription revenue take hit from customers

While being pummeled by public markets, and being forced to make a move that might keep shareholders from calling for blood.

This is certainly not the first time that Adobe has presented a number to Figma's board — but it has to be the biggest number yet, by far.

From Figma's position: take your chances on an IPO while the Fed is cracking skulls around inflation — or flip the bit on that liability, and cash out to a desperate Adobe?

Another interesting layer to this is that Adobe only has $5b in cash according to their balance sheet, so the overwhelming majority of this deal is probably in Adobe stock with a long vesting period. Also the deal being done in a downturn means that the difference between this and an IPO is academic in my view
> the difference between this and an IPO is academic in my view

More theatrical than academic — if both options have a risky short-term outlook, optimize for the story.

Sold for $20B? Or lackluster IPO? As GP of a VC fund, which story is going to better-enable you to raise your next several funds?

Why do you think there will be a long vesting period?

Vesting periods are quite common in employee incentives but not at all common in mergers and acquisitions.

Because it's just common sense to not want close to $20 billion of stock flooding the market in a short period of time