After Figma’s $20B windfall evaporated, it’s picking up the pieces
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Looking back, I think this ZIRP phenomenon of PE and VC was unhealthy (remember crypto??), unrealistic, and ultimately only benefitted a few founders, some employees, and mostly VC firms making paper gains by marking up SoftBank-esque valuations that no one actually believed.
We’re forgetting that all of FAANG IPOd when they too were much less than $20 billion. Maybe it’s time for the next generation of software companies to take control of their own destiny rather than wait for a golden parachute to buy them out.
I think Figma is the same, it captures a large part of the market and makes a lot of people reliant and pay for it.
Leaning into that with a new feature right now, actually.
I mean Figma seems more sticky than something like DataDog. I worked at a company that would hop from DataDog to NewRelic back and forth. It was exhausting but in the end it didn’t take much time TO switch.
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/05/18/looking-behind-th...
Be honest, at least. It's terrible for the employees. They went from having a guaranteed payday to gambling primarily so that "the public" can have a share they did nothing to deserve.
An IPO allows every employee and shareholder to be as liquid as they like, and optimize to your individual tax and risk situation.
An exit is a one time thing. At most, you get to elect how much cash and how much converted stock you want. More likely, the company decides what that breakdown is.
This nonsense took people from millionaires to "I don't know, let's Let The Market Decide (but not any relevant participants, only speculators)."
An exit is a one-and-done. You can do whatever you want with the money, it's yours.
An IPO means you're locked into a potentially-doomed company for three months after, solely for the good of people who did nothing to deserve anything.
Look at the VA Linux IPO; it took people from on-paper millionaires to completely broke in just the window of not being allowed to part with shares. Six months for Facebook RSUs.
This putting aside the potential privacy risks inherent to the IPO process. Have 5%? Guess what's now public knowledge? Some S-1s even list shareholders with fewer than 5%.
We are forgetting that because... well, it ain't true. Facebook was way over $20B at IPO. Google was close but still higher.
Regardless, given the fact they were close / within the same order of magnitude as Figma, it's interesting that the prospect of them IPOing is apparently considered a nuclear option.
In addition, once you announce to employees that the company is getting bought, the culture changes drastically in ways that are not favorable to independent continuation, for better or worse.
That said, the $1B cash infusion must be nice enough to soothe most of the pain. I wish and expect them all the best should they deploy that cash wisely.
Monopoly is good for business but it sucks for customers!
This may take the cake as the worst one yet. I suppose they could have gone with Figments.
Our annual sexual harassment train goes like this:
"Hi Grabbers, Please remember not to grab"
I'm a big Grab user as a resident of Thailand so I've always thought about Grab/Line or Gojek but the compensation has never lined up with what I can get elsewhere.
How is working at Grab and are you based in SEA or elsewhere?
Disclaimer: former Uber/Postmates employee
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
Adobe I’m not sure, but between Portugal and the UK it’s the same price, even though Portugal is at 40% of UK income.
That sucks. Thanks for showing me!
> Can I buy Photoshop outright? No. Photoshop is available only through a Creative Cloud subscription that you pay for either monthly or annually. You can subscribe to Photoshop alone or choose a plan with multiple apps.
https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html (bottom of the page)
Maybe you think they don't deliver enough new value through the thousands of engineers they employ to justify a subscription model, and that they should cut costs and pull a Musk and lay off 90% of them (and other employees) and simply offer what they offer today for way less money. Or that they should cater to the very small portion of the market that's willing to pay $10k for a standalone version of photoshop. But obviously enough of their customers disagree with you that it doesn't make sense for them to go that route. It's not like they're using regulatory capture to force people to only use Adobe products. There are network effects but compared to social networks they are pretty weak -- if a truly better product came along people would start using that instead (see Figma vs XD). And on top of that the barriers to entry are very low -- you could literally start to copy their products pixel by pixel starting right this instant.