Specialist background
- Over five years' experience in Adobe's Digital Media segment, during which the Specialis saw that division's revenue more than triple
- Implemented self-service ecosystems for Adobe’s Creative Cloud and Document Cloud products with global, multifaceted partners
- Expert knowledge of all Adobe Creative Cloud products, its marketing, sales and routes to market, as well as generative AI's impact on Adobe's competitive positioning and the benefits and risks associated with this technology
- Comprehensive understanding of Adobe's acquisition of Figma, as well as the competition the company faces
Questions
1.
Maybe just kicking off with Figma. Could you give your thoughts or views on what you think the motivations for the Figma acquisition really were? Some of the investment community seem to think that the price tag suggested the acquisition was somewhat defensive. Since then we've seen some reports linking Microsoft to have an interest in Figma. Would be great to get your thoughts and perspectives on the motivations behind the acquisition.
2.
Do you think that then Figma allows Adobe to address that communicators market which they're called in a much more meaningful way than they could do in the past?
3.
Why do you think there was that lack of success with XD? Why couldn't Adobe develop that kind of product design tool that Figma has and the technology that Figma have internally?
4.
The one thing we've heard from Adobe since then more recently is that they are building or have in beta versions web-based products for things like, let's say Photoshop, which seems to be occurring independent of Figma. Then you would ask the question, did they really need to acquire Figma to have that collaboration or web-based collaboration if they're doing that internally? Or do you think that there aren't likely to be major waves made in that kind of web-based collaboration side of their product suite internally, and much of their reliance will come through Figma?
5.
Just a final one on the Figma side, I don't know if you have any major or strong thoughts on the deal approval, from a regulatory standpoint, and any views you want to share there? Then a second part to that question being, if a deal isn't approved, what kind of success do you attribute for Adobe being able to develop or execute on this strategy of moving their products to web-based versions and facilitating that collaboration without Figma?
6.
Maybe then just switching gears to the AI side. As you've probably seen, there's been a massive influx of these generative AI tools that have taken the creative imaging market by storm more recently. If you could maybe just at a high level underpin what you think the potential risks could be to Adobe, and then we can drill into some questions more specifically from there?
7.
In that doomsday scenario, you noted that assumes that Adobe doesn't obviously create its own meaningful capabilities in that space. They have shown snippets of that already. I guess the question you would ask in counter to that is then why haven't they done that already in a meaningful way, just considering how big they are and the mountain of data that they're sitting on to be able to do this? Is it more that legal side of it, you think, that is driving it or do you think there are real business implications from a monetisation standpoint that is limiting them from making a bigger push here?
8.
That's the area I was going at. The second point I think I would ask the question of is, if suddenly you push too far into this market, does the monetisation of those kind of products become lower than what you've enjoyed in the past with Photoshop and, let's say, Illustrator where there is that argument that people have trained in the creative design world for many years to be able to use such tools and things like that? If you suddenly remove all the barriers and almost anyone can do it, are people going to be paying even as much as they were for things like Photoshop, even if Adobe was the one to be leading this field?
9.
It would be interesting to get your thoughts on which of the tools you think have the most promise at the moment from the generative AI side, and which you think are the ones to monitor the most in terms of potential competitive impact?
10.
It would good to get your perspective on what you think integrating those type of technologies, let's say like a Dall-E or a Stable Diffusion, into existing tech players that already have scale? To use an example, Microsoft Designer for example, where they could start leveraging open AI partnership to integrate Dall-E. Google have been linked to using generative AI products for their products like Google Muse or Imagen (ph). What competitive impact do you think that might have in a scenario where not only do you have that disruptive technology but you also have the distribution as well?
11.
In terms of what you need to be happening in the generative AI space for you to have greater levels of concern for Adobe's competitive position? What do you think are the main things to be watching for? Is it primarily that product quality improving over time or is it other things you're looking at as well?
12.
I know we've covered the doomsday scenario but it would be good to get your perspective on what you think, zooming out to get into the future, what you think your best-case scenario is and how it impacts Adobe? Maybe also the reverse where, why won't this technology, I know you covered the big hurdle already in copyright (ph) and legal issues but anything else around why we may not see this transpire from just a fad to something meaningful?
13.
Just in terms of the view, then, that there'll be some, let's say, collaboration between human and AI in that kind of scenario, where generative AI becomes part of the toolset, not the entire toolset, do you think there's some sort of sliding scale where you think that there's maybe 70/30 human/AI, or 80/20 human/AI, then is that a future scenario, or how would you use that sliding scale if you were to split it between the two?
14.
Maybe then just switching gears away from AI to a few more general questions on the company more broadly, do you have a sense of how you measure maybe the saturation or the penetration in their professional user base today? How much further can that business drive growth in the technical user market?
15.
Just on that, it does seem like Adobe has been pushing the narrative on non-technical users a lot more, maybe because of this saturation. It would be useful to get your thoughts on what that means for the company going forward from a business standpoint? Secondly, do you see the competitive environment there with the likes of, let's say, Canva and others is much more than what Adobe has probably seen in the past in their professional market?
16.
One thing I've heard from just speaking to others and those in the design communities that just generally, younger cohorts of designers are more easily able to switch between creative tools, let's say. A lot of the post-analysis between Figma and Adobe seemed to suggest that people were switching much more easily than they had in the past where people were ingrained or trained on, let's say, Photoshop. Especially with the implementation of AI which may be lowers the hurdles going forward, do you think that's valid risk for Adobe where younger professionals can switch more easily and AI lowers the knowledge threshold as well?
17.
The broader point being the one you mentioned where younger creative professionals are more easily able to switch and that just forces Adobe to innovate and improve their product faster to try and catch up.
18.
If you were to zoom out to five years from now and we posed a question where Adobe, for any given reason, isn't as successful, let's say, as it has been in recent history. What would you say are the main reasons for this happening?
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