Earlier this year, Jeremy Dizon led the project to enhance the Lyft Product Language (LPL) Native component library. In this blog post, he talks about the strategy they’ve used, the reason behind incorporating lightweight user research, and some key learnings from this 6‑month long project. Sometimes creating a new version of each component is the right approach, and major updates to Figma features provide a good opportunity for this work.
On this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast – Interview Series, the host Daniel Newman is joined by Ashley Still, Senior Vice President of Digital Media/Marketing, Strategy & Partnerships for Adobe, to take a look at Adobe’s acquisition of Figma.
Casey Newton interviews Dylan Field about antitrust issues, keeping control of his product road map, and whatever DALL‑E and other AI tools might mean for the future of design.
The Wall Street Journal gathered thoughts and concerns on the deal from folks in the industry, including Scott Belsky, Fons Mans, and Yuhki Yamashita.
Matt Stoller: “My instinct is that this merger is illegal and that it will be blocked or abandoned. But I’m not 100% sure, as there are also technical issues here that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. But even within the merging parties, there is genuine concern about whether this merger will close. Internally, Adobe executives are already telling employees not to write anything down about the merger for fear it will be found by government investigators.”
During a VC job interview in 2018, Kyle Harrison built a model with Figma becoming a $19B company in 2025. His analysis was called “unrealistic”. Good thread on compounding growth, and there is a deeper dive in his newsletter.
In 2018 Figma did $4M of ARR. Soon after I had a VC job interview where I did a Figma case study. I built a model with Figma becoming a $19B company in 2025
— Kyle Harrison (@kwharrison13) September 19, 2022
I didn't get the job. They said my analysis was "unrealistic"
A thread on how the best companies compound unexpectedly...
Rafa from Layout FM podcast shares his thoughts and predictions after the acquisition. Also, listen to his podcast episode on this topic.
Karri Saarinen, cofounder and CEO of Linear: “Adobe missed the one of the largest transformations in the design industry and lost the product designers for over a decade. Spending $20B on Figma is their ticket back in and hopefully evolving their thinking from the “software in a box” model.” Also love his take on Sketch “building a tool for a designer vs. building a tool for teams”.
I’ve seen a lot of takes on the Figma Adobe deal in past week and think most VCs/finance folks misses the point since they don’t really understand the market or tools Adobe and Figma makes. Figma is not a Photoshop killer and Figma didn't put "Photoshop in the cloud".
— Karri Saarinen (@karrisaarinen) September 20, 2022
A good summary of topics discussed at the Figma All-Hands call on September 16th.
Here's the TLDR of the @figma all hands spaces.
— Ashish ✦ ashuxi.eth (@Ash_uxi) September 16, 2022
🧵...
Dann Petty hosted an open chat about Figma’s acquisition with Scott Belsky from Adobe.
If you missed our design chat today about @Adobe + @Figma with @scottbelsky you can listen to the recording 🙌 https://t.co/vPlS8wnlAB
— DANN ツ (@DannPetty) September 22, 2022
Nice thread from Nathan Barry, founder of Convertkit, on Figma’s dominance.
Figma just sold for $20 Billion.
— Nathan Barry (@nathanbarry) September 17, 2022
The highest price ever for a private SaaS company. An incredible 50x multiple their $400 million ARR.
Here are the 10 reasons Figma dominated the design world:
Great point by Wendy Johansson on a positive side effect of this deal.
I'm very excited to hear the Figma acquisition news this morning!
— Wendy Johansson (@uxwendy) September 15, 2022
Startup employees often get a windfall 💰 when big moves like this happen. In the coming years (hold for those long-term gains taxes, Figma employees!), we should see two design-focused impacts coming from this 🧵 https://t.co/u9KNcxouMS
MDS with another take on Figma/Adobe: “The magic happens in the details and typically in things that you didn’t plan for”.
What makes software magical? Another take on Figma/Adobe for those of us who still wanna talk about it. pic.twitter.com/g2m5mQBEj0
— MDS (@mds) September 16, 2022
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.”
I'm not surprised that Adobe is acquiring Figma for $20B, nor that Wall Street doesn't understand it and $ADBE stock is down more than $20B today. It's a smart move for Adobe because it's nearly impossible to make legacy software applications multi-user collaborative. Thread: 🧵
— Amal Dorai (@amaldorai) September 15, 2022
David Sacks on late bloomers and responsiveness of VC markets. See a more in-depth discussion in Episode 96 of the All-In Podcast.
Figma’s Valuation (purple line; left axis) versus ARR (red line; right axis).
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) September 16, 2022
Take-aways:
1) Late bloomers can thrive. Founders should never give up.
2) VC markets are highly responsive and slightly ahead of the curve.
We discuss fully on the next episode of @theallinpod. pic.twitter.com/JDnzALwqHK
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.”
today is a big day for both @Adobe and @figma. our teams are excited by the new possibilities and recognize both the opportunity and responsibility as we share our intent to come together. 🧵
— scott belsky (@scottbelsky) September 15, 2022
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!)
Found this recently. Taken Dec 2013. It’s the list of things @zoink, @evanwallace, & myself wrote down for @figma while still in the temp office in Palo Alto. The list of “Big Wins” was all Dylan & Evan, esp. the community and team use part. They had the vision, even back then. pic.twitter.com/6mZg6cJvhp
— Andrei Herasimchuk (@Trenti) September 16, 2022
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.