Adobe set to acquire Figma for $20 billion

Adobe press release:

Today, Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced it has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire Figma, a leading web-first collaborative design platform, for approximately $20 billion in cash and stock. The combination of Adobe and Figma will usher in a new era of collaborative creativity.

Together, Adobe and Figma will reimagine the future of creativity and productivity, accelerate creativity on the web, advance product design and inspire global communities of creators, designers and developers. The combined company will have a massive, fast-growing market opportunity and capabilities to drive significant value for customers, shareholders and the industry.

Dylan Field, writing on the Figma blog, says:

Today, we’re announcing that Figma has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Adobe. This has been in the works over the past few months and I’m so excited to finally share this news with the world.

Ten years ago, Evan and I set out on a journey to make design accessible to all. Looking back, I’m proud to say we’ve made progress through introducing Figma to designers of all ages, geographies and levels of experience.

He goes on to say,

There is a huge opportunity for us to accelerate the growth and innovation of the Figma platform with access to Adobe’s technology, expertise and resources in the creative space. For example, we will have the opportunity to incorporate their expertise in imaging, photography, illustration, video, 3D and font technology to the Figma platform. Additionally, we will have the opportunity to reimagine what the best creative tools could look like within the Figma technology stack.

And clarifies that,

Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to David Wadhwani.

Figma has gone on to become an immensely popular design tool in the last few years, and designers are noticeably disappointed about this news.

There’s no doubt that this is a big win for Adobe, and I’m very curious how much Figma changes going forward. My bet is that it gets worse.

September 15, 2022 ✚ Permalink

Backblaze Raises its Subscription Prices, But it’s Still Well Worth It

Let’s face it — Backups are IMPORTANT.

There are no two ways of looking at it. You either have backups, or you’re fucked! If not today, then tomorrow.

Without backups, you’re living a risky life that doesn’t value the data you have. Your important files, photos of your loved ones, client files, app preferences, the files you’ve downloaded over the years — they’ll all be gone one day if you don’t have backups.

I have been using Backblaze — a popular online backup service, for many years now. Backblaze has been providing unlimited personal backup service for $5/mon. Whether you have a Mac or a PC, whether you have a measly 128GB SSD in your Mac or whether your PC is stuffed with Muti-terabytes of Hard Drives, Backblaze will back it all up for just $5/month or $50/year. Not only can you do a full restore of your backup — via multiple reliable methods — in the event of a horrible data loss, but you can also log into the website to browse and download individual files, remotely, whenever you want.

These are easily the best $5 you’ll spend in a month to get a feature-rich and reliable backup service for your computer. If you’re in India, that’s less than ₹10 a day, or about the cost of a cutting chaai.

Earlier this week, Gleb Budman — Co-Founder and CEO of Backblaze — announced some changes to the subscription pricing of Backblaze, starting next month. The company is raising the prices of the subscription by $1 month — that’s right, by a dollar.

Monthly Plan: $5 → $6
Yearly Plan: $50 → $60
Two-Year Plan: $100 → $110

This is the first change in pricing since the launch of the service in 2008, over 10 years ago.

Gleb explains why they had to raise the subscription:

The short answer is that we have enhanced the service in many ways and storage costs have gone up. We have continually removed impediments to getting data backed up — no file size restrictions, speeding up uploads, all while data sets have grown larger and larger. We’ve worked hard to avoid raising our prices, which resulted in some great storage innovations and has allowed us to keep our original prices for more than a decade. By making this decision now, we are ensuring we can continue to offer unlimited backup and keep improving our Computer Backup service. I’d like to go into further detail on the two primary sources of our increased costs: 1) enhancements to the service, and 2) the market cost of storage.

Even at $6/m, Backblaze is a fantastic purchase that everyone should be using. Take a look at some of the comments by customers on the blog post announcing this change. People sure are crazy!

If you still aren’t convinced, here are my top three reasons why Backblaze is worth it!

  1. You get Unlimited Backups. I’m currently backing up close to 12TBs of data to the service.
  2. You can Remotely Access and Download any file or folder from your backed up data, using their website. They even give you mobile apps to download files up to 5GB.
  3. You get Native Apps for your Mac or PC that comes with a whole bunch of features to help you efficiently upload your data. You can throttle your uploads depending on how much bandwidth you have or want the app to use, and you’ll need this for that initial batch of uploads.
  4. You can Offload Files to B2 for permanent storage and free up space from your computer. This is especially useful if you work with video projects and have old archival data. Sure, additional B2 pricing applies, but it’s super cheap.

If you aren’t already using Backblaze, do sign up using this link and you’ll get a whole month of Backblaze for Free.

February 15, 2019 ✚ Permalink