Figma turned ~$330M in investments into a $20B outcome and gave countless companies a better way to do their work. How is this a bad path for society?
If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major factor in creating the value to begin with.
Most non profits have plenty of paid staff.
In fact, there is a Ted Talk about non profits and why their employees should get paid well.
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_abou...
I feel most VC blurbs disagree with that, although of course that’s not their actual motivation.
I don’t see how non-profits are relevant other than as examples of companies/organizations that do actually provide value in lieu of massive gains and profit.
And I think you missed my point as I was responding to:
> If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major factor in creating the value to begin with.
Anti-trust laws are similar.
> If you prevent such purchases, you eliminate a major factor in creating the value to begin with.
You're basically saying that they wouldn't have made Figma if they'd only been able to sell it for 15 billion.
Same tired argument as the "unless you lower taxes on the wealthiest even more, they'll stop creating jobs!" (Even though the taxes haven't been lower in history than they are right now).
People do stuff even though there are anti-trust laws limiting how many tens of billions they get out of it.
As long as there's insane profits to be made, there'll still be an incentive.
Selling out to the market leader, creating a virtual monopoly that harms the consumers in the long run, isn't the only way to make money on a start-up. Far from it.
I'm pretty wary of monopoly abuse. But I'm also very wary of entitled people (including myself sometimes) demanding that somebody else has the responsibility to create great stuff for free to make their life better. It's beyond my ability to create an amazing electric vehicle so somebody else should be required to do it and give it to me for free or else it is an anti-trust violation. Somebody else should make something as good or better than SolidWorks or Fusion or XD for free or else AutoDesk/Adobe/MS/Alphabet/... are harmful monopolists.
I don't like Adobe or AutoDesk or MS or Meta or many others companies. I disagree with many of their behaviors for various reasons. I think some of what they do is or should be illegal. But I think misguided consumption is more often the root problem. And it is a mistake to punish those who take advantage of misguided consumption in a way that encourages more misguided consumption and entitlement.
But I'm very glad they generated income for their shareholders.
It's fine if a company like Figma takes VC to build a good product that fills a niche that hasn't been explored before and uses the VC to grow and eventually exit to the general public market so that the investors get their return.
It's not fine if larger companies like Adobe can simply swoop in and pay billions to get rid of a competitor, although that one should be dealt with by anti-trust agencies anyway.
It's not fine if a company like Uber uses cheap VC money to price-dump against essential services - and yes, taxis are essential for those without a car, and the anti-discrimination frameworks make sure that access to them is fairly available to everyone, no matter why they would need a taxi for. Uber, in contrast, routinely got associated with everything from wage dumping over racism [1] to extorting people with excessive surge charges [2].
It's not fine if a company like AirBnB uses cheap VC money to wreak havoc on local rental markets [3][4] or to run effectively hotel-like operations in residential zones, while conveniently ignoring things such as fire codes [5], neighbors' quality of life [6], taxes [7] or that people (both guests and hosts) were and are randomly banned for "background checks" [8][9], a return of ages-old banned housing discrimination.
Society definitely needs a hard regulation on anything where VC is involved.
[1] https://venturebeat.com/ai/researchers-find-racial-discrimin...
[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...
[3] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/ferienwohnungen-stehen-le...
[4] https://travelnoire.com/the-airbnb-effect-on-an-already-high...
[5] https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Publications-and-medi...
[6] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/living-next-to-airbnb-sharin...
[7] https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report-state/airbnb-...
[8] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/spotlight/201...
[9] https://www.airbnbhell.com/banned-from-airbnb-over-backgroun...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/23/...
If a company could bootstrap their company and grow organically, they wouldn’t need VC funding. By definition any company that is using VC funding is pricing their product less than it takes to make it - ie “price dumping”.
There are already laws about zoning that should keep AirBnB in check. I’m doing the digital nomad thing starting next year. I am specifically avoiding AirBnbs and staying in hotels - mostly mid range extended stays.
There's no reason to replace an already poor service with one that's even worse and requires a smartphone and a bank account, which adds a further layer of discrimination as about 5% of US households don't even have a bank account, much less a credit card, and 24-13% of poorer classes don't have a smartphone [2].
In contrast, a taxi can (at least by law) be used by anyone with cash, and the data about your travel is not available for police or anyone else to abuse [3].
> By definition any company that is using VC funding is pricing their product less than it takes to make it - ie “price dumping”.
IMO, there's a difference between using VC money to provide funds for growth (aka, a high-risk loan) and using VC money to intentionally provide a service at below-cost - five euros for half a hour taxi ride is not sustainable, it won't even pay for the working time of the driver.
> There are already laws about zoning that should keep AirBnB in check.
Yes, now after years and years of issues and complaints. AirBnB could only grow as large as it did by following the "better ask for forgiveness than permission" lifestyle and blatantly breaking all kinds of laws.
[1] https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/22/digital-div...
[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbqq7y/is-uber-doing-enough-...
At least I as a minority don’t have to worry about a taxi cab bypassing me when I take an Uber.
Taxi companies have been breaking laws for decades against discrimination and don’t get me started about the government monopoly in regards to the medallion system in major cities.
Taxis should be available for everyone, not just the 85% that own a smartphone and don't end up banned by the app out of random [1].
That existing taxi companies don't follow up to the regulations is a different problem (and one where the government definitely has to step up), but Uber and friends aren't even required to follow the same rules, that is the whole point of why these kind of services are so dangerous for society!
These laws and regulations are, I admit that, often sparsely enforced and most people don't complain anyway, which makes the problem worse as it isn't quantified and shows up on the statistics that politicians and activist groups use either. A lack of data is the single biggest issue in fighting discrimination!
The solution however is not to promote apps like Uber, to which taxicab regulations do not apply at all (or severely restricted) and which just a few weeks ago entered a multi-million dollar settlement for over 65.000 cases of discrimination because they violated the one law that actually is enforced [2].
[1] search for "taxi" on https://www.ada.gov/enforce_current.htm
[2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/uber-commits-changes-and-pays...
They did not. Uber also got caught discriminating against people.
> But you believe that the government will get it right next time?
I have more faith in government than in private companies which have a massive financial interest in saving the money that compliance with anti-discrimination regulation costs.