I’m incredibly disappointed to see this happening. Adobe has a history for stagnating products and really now that Figma has sold out, their team will naturally start looking for other projects to work on that the core members have life changing amounts of money and the pressure to innovate is off. They have beaten their primary competitor.
It’s funny to see Wall Street’s reaction to this but they don’t understand how much Figma is eroding Adobe’s enterprise businesses. I filled in a survey a few months ago saying I have been using Illustrator and Photoshop less for basic tasks as Figma was so much faster for those. It also fixed the collaboration step. I as the CDO, had dozens of people across our SaaS company using Figma, including the CEO and COO who were using it to design all of their slide decks. At the same time in my side projects working with small product manufacturers and HR consultants I’ve got them using it too as the infinite canvas enables thinking that other established software doesn’t (MS Office, Google). Usually Adobe’s products are only in the design or maybe marketing departments. So Figma was eating out Adobe’s core whilst reaching strongly into other parts of a company that Adobe struggles to reach. The Wall Street types who think Figma was just a pandemic boosted product are blind to Figma’s true position. Just the simple fact that you don’t have to install anything and you have something that can do basic drawing and design tasks is huge.
Congrats to the Figma team on cashing out but RIP in stagnation.
It’s funny to see Wall Street’s reaction to this but they don’t understand how much Figma is eroding Adobe’s enterprise businesses. I filled in a survey a few months ago saying I have been using Illustrator and Photoshop less for basic tasks as Figma was so much faster for those. It also fixed the collaboration step. I as the CDO, had dozens of people across our SaaS company using Figma, including the CEO and COO who were using it to design all of their slide decks. At the same time in my side projects working with small product manufacturers and HR consultants I’ve got them using it too as the infinite canvas enables thinking that other established software doesn’t (MS Office, Google). Usually Adobe’s products are only in the design or maybe marketing departments. So Figma was eating out Adobe’s core whilst reaching strongly into other parts of a company that Adobe struggles to reach. The Wall Street types who think Figma was just a pandemic boosted product are blind to Figma’s true position. Just the simple fact that you don’t have to install anything and you have something that can do basic drawing and design tasks is huge.
Congrats to the Figma team on cashing out but RIP in stagnation.