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Figma acquired by Adobe - a silicon valley success story

Figma acquired by Adobe - a silicon valley success story

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Adobe announced the acquisition of Figma for twenty billion dollars in September 2022, 10 years after it was founded in 2020 by Dylan Field, a dropout from Brown University and Forbes 30 under 30 alumni.


This story is far from an overnight success, Figma made a few pivots in its early days before finding success with a web-based design product. According to Dylan, the Figma story was very messy, the original idea was around drones which didn’t work due to privacy violations. Next, they built a 3-D demo of a ball in a pool of water to showcase real-time graphics in a web browser. This is what eventually become the fundamental technology of Figma - “Photoshop in a browser”. Like many startups, this promising idea lacked focus, so Dylan and the team sat down and decided to zero in on interface design. From there, the rest is history.


2022 has not been friendly to investors, especially those in tech. This acquisition is regarded as a bright spot for some of Figma’s investors. Its top venture capital firms are poised to make over one billion dollars. Figma last raised private capital in 2021 at a $10 billion valuation as the company benefited from the emergence of work-from-home trends where designers were forced to adopt new software tools. Adobe is set to acquire Figma for 20 billion dollars, 50x its ARR multiple.


Some reported reasons Adobe is acquiring Figma

  • Market share. Figma’s explosive growth took away business from Adobe’s design products, ultimately forcing Adobe to decide to continue to lose market share or pay it forward.
  • Build vs buy. Figma has integrated innovative design technology and practices, and its differentiation has led to its popularity. Adobe was faced with a decision to re-build what Figma has or buy it
  • Team. Figma’s team is young, innovative, and ambitious - often older companies value the team almost as highly as the product itself.

Despite being an outlier, this story further deepens the need for outsiders to have access to start-up investments. Find out how you can be a part of the next potential start-up success story on our website.

Investors

Dec 18, 2022

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Austin Yoshino

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