Figma CEO Dylan Field explains why he sold to Adobe

A month after Adobe announced plans to acquire popular digital design startup Figma, Figma CEO and Co-Founder Dylan Field spoke with our own corporate reporter Ron Miller at Disrupt 2022 to discuss the deal and his motivations for selling to Adobe, a company that Figma's own marketing materials haven't always described in the most glowing terms.

“We had fun, we had fun, but then we started chatting with Adobe. Adobe is a fundamental and truly impressive company. The more time I spent with the people there, the more trust was built. , the more I could see: 'Okay, wow. We're in this product development box right now,” Dylan said, surely pleasing his media trainers with his non-response. He noted that Figma offers mockup ideation and design tools today, with plans to launch additional tools to more easily take those mockups and turn them into code.

"I've started forming a thesis on 'creativity is the new productivity' and we don't have the resources to do that right now at Figma," Dylan noted, giving the standard answer that 99% of founders tend to give away when they sell to a larger rival. “If we're going to go and make sure we can get into all of these areas of productivity, it's going to take a long time. "To be able to go and do this in the context of Adobe, I think that gives us a huge head start and I'm really excited about it."

Certainly the fact that this deal - assuming it gets done - will also create generational wealth for Field was a bit of a motivating factor, but for some reason the founders still deny that.

Asked about any potential pressure from investors, Field denied that played a role in the sell-off, particularly as Figma continues to double revenue year-on-year.

“That was never the consideration here,” Field said. "It was: What's the best opportunity to achieve our vision? The company's vision is to make design accessible to everyone. So design isn't just interface design. It's design. creativity. It's productivity. It's you who are making sure we can all be part of the digital revolution that's taking place. The entire world economy is going from physical to digital right now. Are we going to let a bunch of people behind or are we going to give everyone the tools. I feel a lot of pressure and I think it's really important that we get those tools to all of these people very quickly."

The Figma PR team surely had a smile on their face after this answer.

I don't think that's necessarily what Adobe thinks of its $82.49/month Creative Cloud subscription plan that surely not everyone can afford, but Field has repeatedly pointed out that Figma will remain an independent company and there are no plans to change the company's pricing plan. Adobe is paying $20 billion for Figma, so let's see if that changes over time.

“What Adobe has told us is that they want to learn from Figma,” he said. "And I think in general they're going 'okay, how do you go to a more freemium model? How do you make sure you can really go all out? However, Adobe doesn't pay all that money for education. A Coursera marketing course costs a lot less than $20 billion, after all. Over time, the company has a responsibility to its shareholders to grow its revenue, so we'll see how that plays out - always assuming the deal is done. This is not obvious in the current regulatory environment.

Field, for what it's worth, thinks this is a very offensive move on the part of Adobe, whose XD rival Figma never quite got the designers.

"They're trying to figure out: how do you make it possible for you to adapt the products that they already have, but also kind of strengthen this new platform. And yeah, I don't think it's a dislike for the risk in any way."