Adobe has aquired Figma! Another one gone another one gone… another one bites the dust…
At the time of this writing (Oct 2022)… This is a very sensitive dark and stormy topic for the entire UX/UI global community TBH, especially the likes of me who have been around for a fair bit. Really what is the world coming to? Bush Fires… Floods… a Pandemic… and now this!?!?!??? Give me a break already.
OK OK fine, I am being over dramatic! It’s not as big as climate change.
Back in the day (literally 2 decades ago) I was all Macromedia! Especially Flash and Fireworks. Adobe came around and acquired them in 2005 (https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/technology/adobe-buys-macromedia-for-34-billion.html). They eventually killed Fireworks and spun off XD. Sorry all of you lovely designers out there… not saying this will happen to Figma, but who knows, they have a history for that kinda stuff.
It’s not about the ‘name’ it’s about some of those really select features and capabilties of the product that matter. The only way to do that is to talk to the real users, engaging them at a deeper level. As Jared Spool puts it “[Figma] was built by designers for designers.”
Having said that… The whole concept of entrepreneurship revolves around exits. Sorry for this spoiler, but really its not much to do with ‘Making the world a better place’. That is what founders are after… Either an IPO or an acquisition. Even if they don’t want it, their seed stage and later investors want that. Well most of them anyway.
Large behemoths due to dinosaur shareholders, politics, and often red tape based inertia can either not innovate at the right pace or simply innovate in the wrong directions, which are more business focused and less user focused. Look at Clipchamp as a very recent Aussie example. Microsoft for decades have failed to create a video editing tool for a certain market segment. What did they do eventually? Bought Clipchamp last year and integrated into the Windows 11 OS. Facebook took Instagram and WhatsApp. The list is endless. Win-Win for both companies involved, often not the users. 😵💫