Mike Davidson, ex-VP of Design at InVision and Twitter: ​“Figma did a lot of things right over the ten (yes, ten!) years they’ve worked on the product, but one thing they did that no one else has been able to replicate is meet and in some cases exceed native app performance inside of a web browser.“ Also: ​“Within the next several years, it’s going to be possible to go from idea in the morning, to prototype in the afternoon, to working code in the evening… and the company who can do that most thoughtfully is going to be one of the most important companies in the world.”

Fantastic thread on why collaboration features in XD or Sketch would never match Figma: ​“In short, Adobe would have never caught up to Figma. It’s genuinely easier and cheaper for them to use Figma’s architecture to rebuild all of their existing applications than to try to make any of their existing apps as delightfully multiplayer as Figma.”

David Sacks on late bloomers and responsiveness of VC markets. See a more in-depth discussion in Episode 96 of the All-In Podcast.

Adobe CPO and founder of Behance: ​“Remembering the deluge of doubts in 2012 when we shared Behance’s acquisition, 10yrs later, platform grew 30x, product stronger than ever, brand intact, still free, high growth, and continued pipeline of goodness. But it takes work + principles. Like all bold moves, show > tell.”

Hunter Walk: ​“Figma had crossed the ​‘this matters to Adobe’s future’ rubicon. They hit $400m ARR and were continuing to double. Figma revenue, independent of margin, was increasingly displacing revenue that might have gone to Adobe, or more specifically, creating pricing pressure on Adobe.”

Andrei Herasimchuk, the ex-Lead Designer at Adobe, shares a list of ​“big wins” and ​“small wins” that Figma cofounders and he wrote down in December 2013. Pretty amazing to see how almost all of it is a reality now. (“Modernizing masking & gradient UI” sounds pretty sweet though!)

Adobe representative to Protocol: ​“While we have been reducing our investment in XD, we will continue to support it. We are excited about Figma’s vision for the future of product design and the potential of our teams coming together to benefit our customers. After the transaction closes (expected in 2023), we will share more information.” RIP XD.

Adam Nash, one of the early investors in Figma, remembers his conversation with Dylan Field in 2013 about WebGL and moving graphic design to the cloud: ​“Dylan was not deterred. He explained that the heavy compute was the exact reason why moving to the cloud made sense. By providing high powered machines in the cloud, anyone could get access to an almost arbitrary amount of power without spending $10K, and latency & bandwidth had progressed to the point where shipping the UI bits to the client was a solved problem.”

The official press release from Adobe. ​“Adobe and Figma will benefit all stakeholders in the product design process, from designers to product managers to developers, by bringing powerful capabilities from Adobe’s imaging, photography, illustration, video, 3D and font technology into the Figma platform. […] The transaction is expected to close in 2023, subject to the receipt of required regulatory clearances and approvals and the satisfaction of other closing conditions, including the approval of Figma’s stockholders.” See also Adobe’s Investor presentation on acquisition.

The official announcement from Dylan Field.