A month after Adobe announced its plans for acquiring Figma, the popular digital design startup, Figma CEO and co-founder Dylan Field sat down with our own enterprise reporter to discuss the deal and his motivations for selling to Adobe, a company that Figma's own
The more I spent time with the people at Adobe, the more I saw that they were a great company. Dylan made his media trainers happy with his non-answer. He noted that Figma offers a number of tools that can be used to design and prototype mock ups, with plans to launch additional tools to make it easier to take those mock ups and turn them into code.
The standard answer that 99% of founders give when they sell to a bigger rival is "creativity is the new productivity". It will take a lot of time to make it so that we can go into all these productivity areas. It gives us a huge leg up and I am really excited about that.
The fact that this deal will create a new generation of wealth for Field was a motivator, but for some reason, they always deny this.
Field denied that any pressure from investors was a factor in the sale.
What is the best opportunity to achieve our vision was never considered. The company's vision is to make it easy to use. Design is more than just an interface. Creativity is what it is. Productivity is what it is. Making it so that we can all be part of the digital revolution is what it is. The global economy is going from physical to digital. We will either leave a bunch of people behind or give everyone the tools. I think it is important that we give all of these people the tools they need quickly.
After this answer, the Figma PR team had a happy expression on its face.
Field stressed multiple times that Figma will remain an independent company and that there are no plans to change the company's pricing plan. Let's see if the $20 billion price tag for Figma changes over time.
Adobe wants to learn from Figma. They are wondering how to go to more of a freemium model. How do you get yourself to be bottoms up? Adobe doesn't pay all of the money for education. It's cheaper than $20 billion. The company has a responsibility to its shareholders to increase revenue, so we will see how that plays out. In the current regulatory environment, that is not a given.
Field thinks that this is a very offensive move by Adobe.
They are trying to figure out how to make it so that they can adapt their products to the new platform. I don't believe that's risk-averse.
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