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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

As much as it ostensibly is, I just cannot see the ‘acquired by Adobe for 20B’ as a success. At least I’d consider it a failure.

If it were ‘Adobe acquired by Figma’ it might be different. But if terrible old behemoths can just buy off all competitors, then where are we going?

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It's a success for Figma's founders/investors. It's a failure for everybody else.

I dunno, if I set out to build Figma I guess it would be to beat Adobe, not to join them.

Maybe the lure of several billion is too much to resist.

> Maybe the lure of several billion is too much to resist.

Well yes seems obvious, unless they already had that kind of money. It's easy to say that from the sidelines, since I assume you haven't turned away several billion of dollars

I’m kind of assuming that since they had a 20B company, they were reasonably well compensated (say several million a year).

Short of a slightly bigger house, I already have difficulty imagining what I’d use more money for (aside from start another similar company, which seems kind of pointless).

There are many interesting ways to spend a billion - funding other founders, investing in under-invested areas globally or in your community, starting a scholarship fund for folks less fortunate, building a big yatch, etc etc.

Another good reason to exit is also just to rest, take some time and enjoy the world a bit after being deep in founder mode for so long.

Amassing a ton of money can make sense if for instance we develop immortality in the next few decades. Having enough money to secure the treatment at the right time could be the difference yielding centuries of extra lifetime

The old behemoths are maybe breaking antitrust law (Clayton Act) in buying off all their competitors, and there appears to be an imminent govt investigation of the Figma-Adobe deal. The form here (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1FK7mMKOpB-Zbf387-NrByWSvr8g...) is taking comments from the public to help the investigation.

The only success would be being the “iPhone” and turning Adobe into a “Nokia”.

Might take another decade or maybe even 3 but when it happens people will finally be asking why Figma surrendered the same why we look at IG now and ask why did they ever sell.

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