Adobe and Figma call it off: is this the end of the billion-dollar startup myth?
On September 18, 2022, software giant Adobe announced it was buying its biggest competitor, Figma, in a deal valued at no less than $20 billion.
The figure, worth around 250 times the company’s turnover, reflected Adobe’s determination to control the editing software market, and above all, the conviction that a company as strong as Figma, which was becoming a headache for the much larger Adobe, could really go places if it had the resources the acquisition would provide.
For Figma founders Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, the acquisition meant joining the billionaires’s club following a decade of working and growing a company that Field started after leaving school in 2012 on a Peter Thiel fellowship. For the company’s shareholders, the deal meant impressive returns, a rare thing these days.
On Tuesday, exactly fifteen months later, Adobe and Figma announced their intention not to proceed with the deal, anticipating the regulatory issues that US, UK and EU antitrust authorities have signaled. Now…
