|
I see where you're coming from, but there are a few critical points about the Adobe-Figma deal that you got wrong. (I am an ex-Adobe XD employee) When Adobe announced its plan to acquire Figma in September 2022, the timing was actually at the valley of startup valuations. The market was really down then. Since that time, the market has actually warmed up, not cooled down. This means if Adobe were to negotiate a deal now, it would likely cost them even more than what they agreed upon last year. Contrary to what you said. Speaking of the negotiation, I think Adobe dropped the ball. They agreed to a whopping 20 billion dollars, which in my view was four times too high given Figma's real valuation at that time, especially considering the low market (I wrote about how I calculate this 5B valuation in https://typogram.co/build/on-adobe-acquiring-figma/). Then, with the deal being halted by regulators, Adobe still had to pay the full breakup fee, within just three days! It's kind of laughable how poor their negotiation strategy was. About Adobe's product strategy, there's a bit of confusion. Firefly, their new thing, isn't even about UX tooling; it's more focused on creative AI. The real product that is actually relevant here is Adobe XD, which Adobe has just put on maintenance mode (since at least September). a change I noticed on their help page as recently as this September (https://helpx.adobe.com/support/xd.html#troubleshooting). This move is a huge strategic mistake. It's a clear loss of momentum for Adobe in the UX tooling space, making them even less competitive against Figma. Meanwhile, Figma hasn’t missed a beat and continues to surge ahead. |