Adobe

Adobe is the 30th largest company in the world at $315 billion

Sam uses Adobe's market cap to argue Figma's $10B valuation has huge headroom. Adobe was worth $315 billion — the 30th largest company in the world — making it a massive target for Figma to chip away at.

“It is $315 billion. And if I'm not mistaken, that might be one of the— let's look it up. It might be one of the 50th— let's see. Adobe would be— it's one of the biggest companies in the world. So Adobe is the 30th largest company in the world.”

Unbundle, move to cloud, make it multiplayer — Figma's three macro trends

Shaan breaks down why Figma wins: unbundle the most valuable piece out of a suite (Photoshop from Creative Cloud), make it cloud-based, and make it multiplayer (live shared cursors on one canvas). Riding all three macro shifts at once.

“It's like first unbundling. It's like, well, Creative Cloud brings in $12 billion a year. Well, let's unbundle the most valuable part of it, Photoshop, and let's do it differently. Okay. What's different? Second trend, cloud-based, right? Third trend, multiplayer, right? Like when I'm using Figma, my mouse is moving around, your mouse, I'll also see what you're doing on the same canvas.”

Steal thisTo attack an incumbent suite: unbundle its most valuable feature, rebuild it cloud-native, and add real-time multiplayer collaboration.

Photopea: free browser Photoshop clone doing ~$1M/year on one ad

Photopea is a free, in-browser clone of Photoshop built by one person who chipped away until it replicated the full UI. Monetized by a single banner ad, Shaan says it does about $1M/year, and pitches cloning the model for the rest of the Adobe suite.

“It's a free version of Photoshop that has cloned every feature of Photoshop pretty much. It's like, uh, it's the exact UI of Photoshop, which is crazy because Photoshop is such a complicated piece of software to build. And this guy just chipped away, just chipped away, just kept chipping away and basically built Photopea.”

Steal thisBuild a free browser clone of an expensive desktop tool with millions of users; do it across the whole Adobe suite.

Behance was a 10-year slog: 5 years bootstrapped, then sold to Adobe

Belsky built Behance to organize the disorganized creative world by inverting the portfolio model so work is searchable and discoverable. The journey was a decade-long grind, not an overnight success.

“long slog. I mean, Behance was 5 years of bootstrapping, 2 years as a venture-backed business, acquired by Adobe, 3 years of integration.”

Behance sold for ~$150M, mostly bootstrapped

Scott Belsky built Behance through 5 years of bootstrapping (funded by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences), raised only $6-7M right before exit, and sold to Adobe for about $150 million.

“He sold that company for about $150 million, and when he sold it, it was mostly bootstrapped. He eventually, uh, raised a little bit of money, like $6 or $7 million, but they raised that money like right before they sold. So, they had built most of the business without funding. And he funded the company by selling notebooks and speaking at conferences.”