Why Figma is Worth $20B And Other Observations From The Adobe Acquisition
Hint: The Answer Doesn’t Involve a Spreadsheet
I’m not an investor in Figma. I don’t know Figma CEO Dylan Field. And I’m not a designer. So this means I’m either perfectly positioned to give you my objective comments on Adobe’s $20 billion purchase of the startup, or totally unqualified to ask for your time on this matter. With that out of the way, here are three statements about this acquisition.
- Is Figma really worth $20 billion? I mean that’s 50x ARR!
Any spreadsheet that Adobe’s corp finance function used to justify the multiple, or the bankers presented to suggest what valuation it would take to get this deal done, is basically CYA math. There’s one single method for Adobe’s calculation:
Figma had crossed the ‘this matters to Adobe’s future’ rubicon. They hit $400m ARR and were continuing to double. Figma revenue, independent of margin, was increasingly displacing revenue that might have gone to Adobe, or more specifically, creating pricing pressure on Adobe. It was a product designed natively to be collaborative, to be easier to use than Adobe’s professional tools, and without the baggage of features and nomenclature leftover from years of software releases, platform shifts, and business model changes.
