In most countries for the majority of developers, $235k is a LOT of money and enough to finance a startup for the first two years or so with 2 developers.
There is this romantic notion that the huge company gets it all wrong and a couple of guys in a garage with the right approach can dethrone them. The Apple story all over again. This success story is actually exceedingly rare in practice despite how much we like it.
But Abode isn't even that. They appear to want to create what Adobe creates, but with a small team. Something many other companies have failed to do with bigger teams and more funding. It's basically competing with Adobe at Adobe's game, but with a tiny fraction of the resources. Well, good luck to them, but meanwhile expect to pay Adobe's tax for a few years still...
Everyone misses that Adobe is not whatever software they are selling, they are that and a modern 16 deck luxury cruise ship completely loaded with marketing professionals. It's not only the software that has to be beat but that gargantuan marketing machine. It's that marketing machine that wins software battles these days - it sure ain't the software, as too much of it is not what the marketing claims.
It is however true that the friction, internal bureaucracy and absence of accountability makes large companies typically slow and delivering far inferior products and services than the talent they employ are capable of.
Maybe, if you're surviving on Ramen. That said, I wouldn't want to go up against Adobe with a team of two Ramen-fueled developers in Bulgaria.
I don't doubt you can make a cell phone app for that money, but something that would compete with Adobe's incredibly polished and well-funded software suite... I'm thinking the odds aren't good at all.
Exceptionally unproductive? What are you on about? Could they make larger swings? Sure. Are they exceptionally unproductive? Compared to whom? They dominate pretty much all market segments they're in. For example, they took on Apple, after a grudge, and won (Apple had something to do with that too). AI showed up, Adobe is pretty much the only major established player that put it in consumer hands ASAP and in a way that is both legal and makes great sense. Others (majors), if they even showed up with anything AI leaned on others (Microsoft -> OpenAI).
Adobe is moving at a steady strong pace which one cannot ignore. They don't have ferocity or (sometimes) velocity of a hungry small player.. yet, there aren't any in their space. There's Autodesk (lol) and of smaller in video there is The Foundry (if you want to see exceptionally unproductive, at small scale).
I'm the last person to stand behind Adobe (where my linux apps at?), but:
- procreate - yes, I agree. They do compete there and procreate is iPad only. Pricing is what sets them apart and Adobe being a bit stupid there
- Figma - yes and it's Adobe now.
- Blender and Maxon are in different space. Unless you consider Blender's subpar video capabilities and Maxon's buying of video plugins (for Adobe programs). Also, Maxon.. come on, talking about stale. C4D "light" is also part of After Effects.
- Blackmagic is in hardware business. Their Fusion (bought) is stale af. AVID might be a better comparison.
- Autodesk - only overlap is between Flame and Lustre. Flame is in another space where they don't compete and Lustre has been stale (just like Adobe's CC offerings, seems both ceeded to free DaVinci Resolve)
- Stability - look at how wonderfully Adobe actually did put out AI and integrated it well with Photoshop!
Dunno how anyone can un-ironically call anything stale next to Adobes 10 year track record.
> Pricing is what sets them apart
Nah the whole app is built on modern technology, Adobes dusty old apps chugging away on single cores struggling to draw a paint stroke are pretty laughable compared to Procreate. All this is stuff Adobe could have shipped 10-15 years ago in Photoshop if they cared at all.
> Blender and Maxon are in different space
It's all the same space, if you're differentiating 3D from 2D design you're living in the past. Besides we're talking about creative tools shipping features so it's irrelevant as long as its a tool.
https://www.photopea.com/ started as a hobby project of a single guy and is surprisingly close to at least the core functionalities of Photoshop, certainly better than most open source applications.
Well Figma started eating their lunch in 2015 having started with a 4 millions seed round and 15 employees for two years so it’s clearly is doable to take on Adobe with far less money that they themselves spend provided your offer is good.
$235k and 2 engineers is completely different to $4M and 15 employees. Not to mention that it was 5-7yrs before Figma had any revenue.
"While Figma was founded in 2011, the first five years were spent trying to get to product. The company printed its first dollar in revenue in 2017 and will hit $400 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2022"
Figma is an outlier. "it's clearly doable to take on Adobe with far less money", he says about one of the fastest growing decacorn startups in history.
> Please man, use your brain at least a little bit.
Thank you for being condescending. If you expected being a bully might shield you from tearing apart your argument you will be very disappointed.
15 people is a lot closer to two than to Adobe which is the point of my comment you entirely fail to grasp.
Every companies taking out a large companies is an outlier by definition. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist and remains a clear counterexample to your extremely wrong original opinion.
This discussion is finished as far as I’m concerned by the way. You have clearly demonstrated you are not worth talking to. I will let you massage your fragile ego by yourself.
Yes, you are right. I was confused by what I read as they started offering a free preview in December 2015 and was convinced they released at the same time they did their serie A.
But Abode isn't even that. They appear to want to create what Adobe creates, but with a small team. Something many other companies have failed to do with bigger teams and more funding. It's basically competing with Adobe at Adobe's game, but with a tiny fraction of the resources. Well, good luck to them, but meanwhile expect to pay Adobe's tax for a few years still...