Sep 19, 2022 · 36m · another-podcast
Figma, unbundling and $20bn of antitrust
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Tech analysts Benedict Evans and Toni Cowan-Brown examine Adobe's $20 billion acquisition of Figma, analyzing browser-native software disruption, enterprise SaaS economics, regulatory antitrust hurdles, and the future impact of generative AI.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 7.3 Guest teaching 1.4 Guest disagreement 1.5 The hosts pushing back 2.1
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 19:48 Banter regarding French language pronunciation
Toni playfully challenges Benedict over correcting her grammar before teasing him about conducting the podcast in French.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 15:39 Reframing Big Tech antitrust definitionsBenedict directly challenges the mainstream framing of Big Tech antitrust, pointing out that giants like Google, Meta, and Apple do not operate in Figma's product category.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 25:03 Contextualizing SaaS net retention benchmarksToni highlights Figma's exceptional 120-150% net dollar retention metrics compared to industry standards of 90-95%.
The host holds their own ▶ 8:23 Explaining the displacement of QuarkXPress by InDesignBenedict provides deep domain history by detailing how Quark's complacency and OS X transition failure enabled Adobe InDesign to capture the desktop publishing market.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defining Figma, Browser-Based Software, and Modern Disruption | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Benedict Evans demonstrates high expertise by deconstructing Figma's disruptive browser-based model versus legacy binary desktop software like Photoshop and Illustrator. | |
| Google Docs Analogy, Creative Suite Models, and Customer Responsiveness | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Benedict contrasts Google Docs with Figma, explaining how continuous collaboration models expand total addressable markets beyond legacy desktop upgrade cycles. | |
| Historical Precedents: The Fall of QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign | 8 | 1 | 2 | 2 | Evans brings deep industry history into the analysis, detailing how QuarkXPress lost the market to InDesign by stagnating and failing to migrate to modern operating systems. | |
| Why Adobe Bought Figma: Architectural Moats and Switching Costs | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Benedict outlines the technical and architectural reasons Adobe could not easily retrofit collaboration into Photoshop, creating a massive moat for Figma. | |
| Antitrust Scrutiny, Big Tech Definitions, and the Regulatory Landscape | 8 | 2 | 2 | 4 | Evans pushes back on the conventional rhetoric around 'Big Tech' regulation, questioning FTC antitrust logic regarding deals like Within, One Medical, and Figma. | |
| Creative Workflows, Frame.io Acquisition, and Total Addressable Market Expansion | 7 | 1 | 2 | 2 | Benedict and Toni dissect Adobe's acquisition strategy across Frame.io and Behance, examining the shift from boxed software to Creative Cloud subscription economics. | |
| Figma's Retention Metrics, Founder Dynamics, and Autonomy Realities | 6 | 2 | 2 | 3 | The conversation covers Figma's impressive 150% net retention rate alongside realistic constraints on post-acquisition founder autonomy. | |
| Adobe Financial Breakdown, Document Cloud, and Enterprise IT Friction | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Benedict breaks down Adobe's revenue segments from investor filings and reflects on the persistence of PDF and Document Cloud in enterprise IT workflows. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Evans: Adobe's $20B Figma acquisition is a top 10 software deal
“So yes, it's certainly a top 10 software acquisition.”
Evans: Disruptive tools add capabilities legacy software structurally cannot match
“What tends to happen is that firstly, firstly, so there's two bits to this. Firstly, the new tool tends to be bad at the things that the old tool is valued for, but add some completely new kind of capability. That turns out to be structurally extremely difficu…”
Evans: Users initially force new tools into old workflows before adapting
“When you get a new tool, what you tend to do is start out by forcing the tool to fit the old way that you were doing the job. And then over time, you change the way you do the job in order to fit the new tool.”
Evans: Google Docs never displaced Office for analysts and lawyers
“Google Docs never unseated office or word for financial analysts or lawyers who actually needed those very, very specific sets of features.”
Evans: Figma expands the market by trading tool depth for browser collaboration
“It does less than Photoshop or Illustrator on one axis, but it has this whole bunch of new stuff on another axis and so pulls this whole new market in.”
Cowan-Brown: Adobe does not intentionally listen to its customers like Figma
“Adobe isn't, I think, right up there as one of those companies that you know, intentionally listens to their customers, but also they're much bigger than Figma.”
Evans: Zoom's market cap briefly surpassed ExxonMobil in late 2020
“There was a point in late 2020 when Zoom's market cap was higher than Exxon's market cap.”
Evans: Zoom is a feature, not a $200B enterprise platform
“It's just a feature. It's not an enterprise software platform. It's not going to be like the next, you know, a hundred billion dollar, two hundred billion dollar company.”
Evans: Meta struggled with Reels because it requires an interest graph
“Facebook has struggled a lot more to get reels working because that's actually a different graph. It's not just another thing you would share with your friends. It's a whole other graph of different people.”
Evans: Adobe's Market Cap Dropped Over $20 Billion on Figma Deal Announcement
“The market cap was down more than twenty billion dollars.”
Evans: Figma will grow to replace all of Photoshop and Illustrator
“This is clearly an existential question because this thing is going to grow. You know, it is going to grow, expand and take over all of Photoshop and all of Illustrator. It's going to be the better way of doing that in a way that Google docs never really did f…”
Evans: Retrofitting Collaboration Onto Legacy Binary Software Requires Building New Products
“It's really difficult to add that real time, multiple people working on it, multiple people collaborating at the same time to like a 50 meg binary file that was never intended for that and software that was never built for that. And so you'd almost kind of hav…”
Evans: Video Conferencing Lacks Switching Costs Unlike Creative Production Tools
“There's no switching cost in, you know, no one cares if this call is Teams or Zoom or Meet. Or hangouts or whatever it's called today. No one cares or knows you just click the link. Whereas switching, switching between different production tools is a big deal.”
Evans: Microsoft buying Figma would make more strategic sense than Adobe
“It would have been actually strategically much more interesting for Microsoft to buy this, whereas for Adobe it's just really fucking obvious.
Of course they should buy it, and they should have bought it five years ago.”
Evans: Adobe bought Frame.io for $1.25B, matching Avid's entire market cap
“Adobe bought that for like one and a quarter from memory. Which interestingly was roughly the same as Avid's market cap and Avid is the leader in pro video editing.”
Evans: Video collaboration TAM is much larger than video editing TAM
“The TAM for the collaboration around the video edit was actually much bigger than the TAM for the video edit.”
Evans: Adobe copied Disney's playbook by acquiring all cool creative tools
“Adobe has basically done what Disney did in movies. They bought all the cool shit, and it's all Adobe.”
Toni Cowan-Brown: Figma's customer retention rate sits around 120% to 150%
“As I was doing a little bit of research I went down a rabbit hole on, on how impressive Figma's customer retention rate is, and that it's, I think it's offers around a 120, 150%, which is pretty impressive.”
Evans: Founders wanting autonomy shouldn't take $20 billion acquisitions
“Yeah, you're going to reach a point where, like, if you didn't want to be part of Adobe, then you shouldn't have taken the fucking twenty billion dollars. Which was always the problem with WhatsApp. Like, and yes, there were all sorts of things about broken pr…”
Evans: Generative AI will expand to video and precise creative workflows
“It's probably, I feel like there's a whole second wave of what you can do with this stuff. And it will get to video, and it will get much more specific and precise and controllable, and it will answer a lot of sort of make me 20 options of X and Y and Z that h…”