Lina Khan's obsession with "big is bad", especially her preexisting prejudice of Big Tech should have disqualified her from any position well before she took the wheel.
How many times did the FTC fail in court under her watch? More than I can count on two hands.
Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.
My experience with mergers and acquisitions is that it's akin to keeping a warm body on life support. When I worked at a company that did a lot of M&A I was sitting around like, "Why couldn't you have just built that?" When I worked at a company that was recently acquired and went through the merger process I was like, "wow I see why you bozos would've never built this yourselves." That isn't to say there aren't companies that do them well or there aren't places where it makes sense in an ultra-competitive landscape but I'm curious - when was the last time anyone really considered tech an ultra competitive landscape?
Post-2015 other than large language models this industry has mostly been riding on intellectual property consolidation. That's basically Lina's point; nobody actually benefits from this - not customers, not share holders, not the American people. The over practice of M&A leaves a small pool of winners who are not the kind of people that post on or read this forum.
More companies going public, earlier is better for markets and society.
Having companies stay private growing from 0 to 100B value allows VC bros to capture all the growth and then unload onto the public via IPO or selling to a larger BigTech firm.
> More companies going public, earlier is better for markets and society.
I would disagree. Japan is a good example of a market where there are a lot of small public companies and they're largely held by the founders. There is not enough share holder pressure and these small public companies are often barely profitable and run poorly. I am sure there are other markets that are similar to Japan where there are publicly traded companies without enough buyers or liquidity or transparency, etc.
Everyone in this thread who posts some variation of "wow love it how the government gets to decide if you get to sell your startup or how the market should work" should be handcuffed to their chair and forced to answer these 3 questions:
1. is there any role for gov't antitrust in your view of modern capitalism?
2. if there is a role, why is Adobe x Figma not the perfect example for enforcement?
3. if your answer is "Adobe clearly isn't a monopoly, look at the existence of Figma as evidence," why are you dumb?
So blocking a sale at a $20B valuation so the company can IPO at a $19.3B valuation 3 years later (a loss of $700M in value over 3 years) is a success?
What a stupid comment at the end of the article. The vindication is of having the company exist in the market in such a way as to encourage competition.
I think the Figma IPO proves Khan was right. $60B market cap today vs the $20B Adobe offered in 2023.
There was some criticism about regulatory overreach when the deal got blocked. Now Figma employees are rich, the design tools market stays competitive, and we have another major independent tech company instead of just another Adobe product line.
This is exactly why we need regulators willing to tell Big Tech "no" sometimes. Competition creates more value than consolidation.
the only thing I will refute is the $60Bn market cap is due to IPO. Once they start reporting earnings, in a year or two once the hype dies down we will find the true value.
a lot of tech darlings have been decimated by the stock market. & Adobe can still buy them once they're public, maybe even cheaper than $20bn.
As is the case with many startups, especially those with a limited product portfolio, it's rare for them to exceed their IPO valuation in the future. So, I think we'll have to wait and see if Figma can continue its growth.
I wonder if a simpler solution to all this regulartion would be something like imposing a tax (fee?) when larger companies acquire smaller companies? So something like, "For every order of magnitude difference between the acquirer and the aquiree, there will be a 100% tax on the acquisition price paid to the US Federal government."
So this would basically encourage companies to either have their own IPO (no fee at all) or be acquired (merged really) by a company of equivalent size. If you are acquired by a much larger company, that company will have to pay a (logarithmicaly) large fee relative to the acquisition price. If they really want it, no problem, but it will be "cheaper" for a more correctly sized company to acquire them.
> Khan’s critics are more likely to see Figma’s success as coming despite regulatory scrutiny, not because of it. For example, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told Business Insider, “Figma is a massive success, but it’s because of the company’s innovative growth and not due to the FTC and [Khan].”
That would be a great point if there were any indication at all that’s what Khan was implying. It’s either an intentionally disingenuous reading of her statements, or else an unintentionally dim comprehension of them…from an analyst…
It’s also not a great sign that Business Insider thought this was the best way to end this article. At the very least, how about interrogating whether or not their “innovative growth” might have something to do with how healthy regulatory systems might work to facilitate such things? Or whether that innovative growth could have continued apace under Adobe’s management?
I suppose I am being too credulous, and it’s more likely the same widely shared ideological bent that celebrates free market dynamism with each success, and decries oppressive regulations with each misstep. A culture that sees virtue in offshoring profits while simultaneously using them to eliminate competition, erode consumer protections, lobby for preferential tax credits, and generally skirt any/all obligations to the society which provided them with the opportunities, infrastructure, finance markets, skilled workforce, and well-qualified consumers that are all prerequisites to “innovative growth”.
On the other hand, now you see companies that don’t want to deal with government blocking acquisitions do they just get all of the people they want from startups and leave the rest of the employees high and dry and the investors worse off.
Unlike Figma, companies rarely want the startup’s product and usually end up either abandoning it or making it a part of their own offerings by getting their new hires to write it from scratch.
Even when they do need the acquiring companies IP, they license the IP and then poach the employees.
Microsoft almost did that too with OpenAI during the Altman fiasco.
There is another side to this coin: Figma's gain here is Adboe's loss. It doesn't make sense to use market-caps of specific companies as yardsticks of consumer welfare, which is the ultimate measure which antitrust actions seek to maximize.
The tradeoffs of allowing or preventing the merger are more abstract and counterfactual. We cannot know for sure what the world in which Adobe successfully acquired Figma would look like. Its natural to imagine concerns of Adobe simply killing, enshittifying or failing to improve the product - all things that still may happen under Figma's new corporate structure. Also consider the potential integrations with and improvements to Photoshop that have been missed.
That all being said I think Figma is an excellent product for the price and I have no fondness towards Adobe (though I've never really been a customer) and I'm glad that Figma exits as its own delightful product.
Lmao you cannot be serious. Lina Khan is right about m&a but if you don't understand how absurd the current price of FIG is you should never comment on anything economics-related ever again.
34 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 51.3 ms ] threadHow many times did the FTC fail in court under her watch? More than I can count on two hands.
Meanwhile local and state utility and cable tv monopolies continue to _flourish_ without so much as a peep.
Real talk Lina
Post-2015 other than large language models this industry has mostly been riding on intellectual property consolidation. That's basically Lina's point; nobody actually benefits from this - not customers, not share holders, not the American people. The over practice of M&A leaves a small pool of winners who are not the kind of people that post on or read this forum.
Having companies stay private growing from 0 to 100B value allows VC bros to capture all the growth and then unload onto the public via IPO or selling to a larger BigTech firm.
I would disagree. Japan is a good example of a market where there are a lot of small public companies and they're largely held by the founders. There is not enough share holder pressure and these small public companies are often barely profitable and run poorly. I am sure there are other markets that are similar to Japan where there are publicly traded companies without enough buyers or liquidity or transparency, etc.
1. is there any role for gov't antitrust in your view of modern capitalism? 2. if there is a role, why is Adobe x Figma not the perfect example for enforcement? 3. if your answer is "Adobe clearly isn't a monopoly, look at the existence of Figma as evidence," why are you dumb?
a lot of tech darlings have been decimated by the stock market. & Adobe can still buy them once they're public, maybe even cheaper than $20bn.
So this would basically encourage companies to either have their own IPO (no fee at all) or be acquired (merged really) by a company of equivalent size. If you are acquired by a much larger company, that company will have to pay a (logarithmicaly) large fee relative to the acquisition price. If they really want it, no problem, but it will be "cheaper" for a more correctly sized company to acquire them.
That would be a great point if there were any indication at all that’s what Khan was implying. It’s either an intentionally disingenuous reading of her statements, or else an unintentionally dim comprehension of them…from an analyst…
It’s also not a great sign that Business Insider thought this was the best way to end this article. At the very least, how about interrogating whether or not their “innovative growth” might have something to do with how healthy regulatory systems might work to facilitate such things? Or whether that innovative growth could have continued apace under Adobe’s management?
I suppose I am being too credulous, and it’s more likely the same widely shared ideological bent that celebrates free market dynamism with each success, and decries oppressive regulations with each misstep. A culture that sees virtue in offshoring profits while simultaneously using them to eliminate competition, erode consumer protections, lobby for preferential tax credits, and generally skirt any/all obligations to the society which provided them with the opportunities, infrastructure, finance markets, skilled workforce, and well-qualified consumers that are all prerequisites to “innovative growth”.
https://www.reuters.com/business/google-hires-windsurf-ceo-r...
Unlike Figma, companies rarely want the startup’s product and usually end up either abandoning it or making it a part of their own offerings by getting their new hires to write it from scratch.
Even when they do need the acquiring companies IP, they license the IP and then poach the employees.
Microsoft almost did that too with OpenAI during the Altman fiasco.
The tradeoffs of allowing or preventing the merger are more abstract and counterfactual. We cannot know for sure what the world in which Adobe successfully acquired Figma would look like. Its natural to imagine concerns of Adobe simply killing, enshittifying or failing to improve the product - all things that still may happen under Figma's new corporate structure. Also consider the potential integrations with and improvements to Photoshop that have been missed.
That all being said I think Figma is an excellent product for the price and I have no fondness towards Adobe (though I've never really been a customer) and I'm glad that Figma exits as its own delightful product.
I've learned to accept this when it comes to things like TSLA or Bitcoin. But it's new to me that we do legislation like this.