A stunning determine is celebrating Figma’s profitable IPO: Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Commerce Fee.
In a Friday afternoon put up on X, Khan linked to an article about Figma’s spectacular first day of buying and selling and argued the IPO is “an amazing reminder that letting startups develop into independently profitable companies, relatively than be purchased up by present giants, can generate monumental worth.”
Khan was alluding to a $20 billion deal for Adobe to accumulate Figma that fell by means of again in 2023. Whereas Adobe cited the dearth of a “clear path” to approval from the European Fee and the U.Okay. Competitors and Markets Authority, the acquisition additionally confronted regulatory scrutiny in the US over considerations that it may stop Figma from being an “efficient competitor” to Adobe.
Khan was FTC chair on the time, main the company to problem Huge Tech on fronts together with startup acquisitions — to the purpose that firms tried to keep away from this scrutiny with “reverse acqui-hires” during which they employed key staff members and licensed expertise relatively than buying startups outright. (The apply appears to be persevering with regardless of Khan’s departure from the FTC.)
Whereas her aggressive stance led to intense criticism from corners of the tech business, she defended her strategy by saying that solely a tiny share of offers acquired “a re-examination” and arguing that founders would in the end profit from “a world during which you will have six or seven or eight potential suitors” relatively than “only one or two.”
And though Khan — who’d been appointed by President Joe Biden — resigned at the beginning of the second Trump administration, her feedback Friday paint the Figma IPO as a vindication for her strategy, calling the IPO “a win for workers, traders, innovation, and the general public.”
After all, Khan’s critics usually tend to see Figma’s success as coming regardless of regulatory scrutiny, not due to it. For instance, Wedbush Safety analyst Dan Ives advised Enterprise Insider, “Figma is an enormous success, however it’s due to the corporate’s progressive development and never because of the FTC and Kahn.”
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