
I helped drive Adobe's acquisitions of Typekit and Nitobi. AMA - kberger
I'm Kenneth Berger, I work in product management at Adobe driving acquisitions and partnerships.  I helped build the business cases, perform due diligence, and plan integration for both deals.  I've been working at Macromedia and then Adobe for 7+ years.  Very excited to work with both these awesome teams!  Obviously I can't reveal certain details, but ask me anything, I'll answer as best I can.
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jacobian
Jason Kottke writes:

 _When I heard the news, my immediate reaction was not positive. [...] No one
I know is filled with joy when using Adobe products...mostly the opposite.
Typekit is a great service; I hope Adobe keeps it that way._

(<http://kottke.org/11/10/adobe-acquires-typekit>)

This sums up my reaction, as well: I use Adobe products because I have to, not
because I want to.

I assume you'd disagree with folks like Jason and I about the joylessness of
Adobe products, but I'd guess that we'd all agree of the importance of keeping
TypeKit simple and elegant.

So what safeguards, if any, have you been able to put in place to ensure that
TypeKit maintains its je ne sais quoi as it becomes an Adobe product?

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spiralganglion
I'm a lead developer at a company that creates highly-specialized training
tools using Flash. We have an enormous library of content built over the last
10 years that we intend to support into the future. Adobe seems to be
considering HTML5 as an alternative/addition to the Flash Player. There's a
lot of conflict in the industry about Flash/HTML5, and Adobe is appeasing both
sides by continuing to develop the Flash Player while investigating HTM5
export, acquiring and developing prominent HTML5 tools, etc. This is
fantastic.

Do you have any recommendations for teams with lots of Flash-based content, to
prepare for the transition to an HTML5 environment? Can we continue creating
Flash content as we always have, trusting that Adobe will provide a means to
migrate/recompile our existing FLAs or SWFs to HTML5 when the time comes? Or
should we take any preparatory action to ease the transition? For instance,
authoring our graphics using SVG, writing our code in an intermediate
scripting language that may be compiled to ActionScript or JavaScript, etc?

I realize you might not be the best person to ask about this, but in your
position it seems probable that you'd be aware of the roadmap for Flash. I
realize the roadmap is confidential, but any tips or recommendations would be
greatly appreciated. Alternatively, if you could recommend someone for me to
talk to about this, I'd be grateful.

EDIT: Any sort of response would be great. There seem to be a lot of folks
here who are interested in this issue.

~~~
kberger
Unfortunately I don't have the detail on our technical roadmap to give this
the answer it deserves. I'll see if I can get someone from the Flash team to
address this...

~~~
spiralganglion
Thank you.

I have an email address in my profile if you (or anyone on the Flash team —
Senocular, perhaps?) would like to take this conversation private. But I'm
sure all the people up-voting my question would absolutely love an official,
public answer.

And to clarify: I don't mean to imply that I think the Flash Player is going
away. I'm just hopefully awaiting the day that my existing Flash-made content
can run beautifully on the iPad and Win 8 Metro. Platform independence was the
ideal that led me to choose Flash, and I'm excited about this ideal continuing
into the future.

I just need to be sure that the processes I'm using today won't limit my
options. My ever-growing library of resources — the result of a decade of hard
work — depends on this.

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latitude
Oh. HN/AMA, long time coming I'd say.

Q: Say I have a product or a service that I think might be a very good fit for
Adobe, including a realistic, well thought out business side of things. Is
there a way to pitch it to the people of your position _if_ I have absolutely
no connections in Adobe?

This is a hypothetical question, just trying to understand options for seeding
initial acquisition interest. Thanks.

~~~
cloudwalking
Yes, go to Mars Bar (7th and Brannan) and start buying people beers.

~~~
davidu
Seconded. This bar is full of Adobe people just about every single day, but
particularly on Thursday and Friday around 5pm.

~~~
latitude
Point taken, but Adobe was just an example.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm sure you can extract a genericised suggestion out of those given.

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ivankirigin
Have you seen any good examples of iOS apps made from HTML5 with PhoneGap that
are actually good?

~~~
kberger
There's a variety of examples here: <http://www.phonegap.com/apps>

I'm also a fan of the Travelocity Android app, which was built with PhoneGap.

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dcurtis
None of those are actually any good. I installed the Travelocity app, and
after fighting with the keyboard to select the airport from a dropdown, I got
a javascript error that rendered the app useless.

PhoneGap does not make good apps.

~~~
ryanglasgow
Phonegap has nothing to do with form inputs, and is used to access native
phone functionality (camera, address book, location, device information etc).

I'm building mobile app with HTML5/CSS3/Backbone.js/PhoneGap and it's an
excellent stack that allows you to build native-like apps for multiple OS's.
Everyone I've demo'd the app to has no idea it's not written in Obj-C..

~~~
noisebleed
You're absolutely right. I've spent hours debugging strange form input
behavior related to quirks in Mobile Safari / UIWebView which are hardly
Phonegap's fault. It really comes down to optimization and ironing out all of
the wrinkles, though it can be a bit painful since most mobile browser quirks
aren't well documented online.

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veyron
Why?

Getting past the normal corporate mumbo jumbo, what did you see in the
companies that piqued your interest? Was it a talent acquisition? Do you
actually see these technologies being integrated with existing adobe
technologies (specifically Flash)?

~~~
kberger
It's exactly the properties that made them popular in the first place:

Typekit elegantly solves the licensing, technical, and user experience
problems of serving rich typography on the web. That's something we've heard
repeatedly is important to our customers, so we're excited to keep growing
their business and investigate the right ways to integrate with Adobe
applications.

PhoneGap makes it drop dead simple to develop native applications across
devices using your existing HTML/JS development skills. As mobile devices
continue to fragment and more and more companies need mobile apps deployed
across platforms, this problem will only become more important to solve. We're
excited to continue to contribute to the PhoneGap open source project, further
develop the hosted PhoneGap Build product, and investigate what tool
integration may make sense. We've already integrated PhoneGap with Dreamweaver
in CS5.5.

So I would say these acquisitions are about talent, technology, and community.
They are both amazing teams that have built great products with enthusiastic
user bases--and it's important that they stay that way as they grow.

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dinocoder
First, huge kudos to you and Adobe for making these acquisitions. And double
kudos to you for doing your AMA here on HN!

Just curious, but since the move of PhoneGap to an Apache incubator project
was announced within such a relatively close proximity to today's acquisition,
I can't help but wonder if the decision to open source the code was something
Adobe was aware of.

I mean, you must have been in the process of doing the due diligence during
this time, right? It leads me to speculate the decision was somewhat of a
joint one, or, alternatively, that maybe there were points of contention
around it.

This might touch on sensitive information so I fully understand if you'll have
to pass on answering this one.

~~~
kberger
Actually it wasn't contentious at all! Nitobi already had plans to donate to
the Apache Foundation, and Adobe already had strong existing relationships
with both organizations. We were glad to support that move to reinforce that
we're here to support PhoneGap and further fuel its growth as a free open
source project.

~~~
matthewn
Can you point to anything in Adobe's history that would indicate it is a
company that has any clue how to "fuel the growth" of a "free open source
project"?

~~~
jonah
The first example off the top of my head is Adobe's involvment in jQuery
development.

A little bit here: <http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeandjquery/>

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rokhayakebe
1- How long (average)does it take to acquire a company from the time you send
the first email to the time the check clears in their bank account?

2- For every company you acquire how many companies do you look into and end
up not buying?

~~~
kberger
1- It really depends: on the urgency, on the size of the company, on the
specific synergies. Big deals can be done quickly if we're confident enough in
the high level rationale to figure out the details later. But sometimes the
details really matter, even in very small deals. Sometimes only a few weeks,
sometimes it's an ongoing relationship over multiple years.

2- For every deal we look at a variety of companies in the space, at least two
or three, usually more.

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ebiester
While Photoshop and Illustrator are top products, developers' tools from Adobe
have been frustratingly bad. (Flex/Flash builder would be but one example.)
Poor documentation, long-standing bugs, poor on memory usage, the list goes
on.

Adobe's DNA seems to be to stuff as many features into a product, even if
they're half broken. Does Adobe have a plan to prevent these new products from
going the same way?

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kvnn
How long did the acquisition process take for each?

How important is conflict resolution during these deals?

(This one is really broad and shows some ignorance) When you are driving
acquisitions, do you treat the deal like a developer would treat a large
project? Do you have a set of requirements that you work toward? Do you have
to track changes and perform QA?

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ivankirigin
Lots of small companies, like YC co's post demo-day, get bought as talent
acquisitions. Adobe doesn't seem to focus on that stage much. Why?

~~~
kberger
Hard for me to say since I'm in product management--naturally my focus is on
product.

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jlambert1
Hey Kenneth:

I watched your two M&A announcements today with keen interest, because I've
been watching the overall market change and we're kind of trying to figure out
where Adobe fits into things. Where we used to use flash, we're using HTML5
for web and mobile, and where we used to use Adobe SMS, we're now using
brightcove, kaltura, and others. We're phonegap hackers as well.

I'm trying to figure out if Adobe is more interested in building supporting
tools, or if Adobe is trying to build more of a "one stop" platform a la
brightcove appcloud and what people have built out in various verticals for
different toolsets (heroku for rails, brightcove for video, pantheon for
drupal, etc). As you look forward from the M&A strategy, how do you see the
technical solutions coming to market? Are you guys trying to do a rollup, or
augmentative strategy? I'm only asking because a lot of recent technical
offerings have been out of tune with out Open Source stack approach, and while
I'd love to work more with Adobe products, it's been really hard to figure out
how and where you guys fit into the new Open Source / Cloud / SAAS / Mobile /
HTML5 & CSS3 landscape.

It's obvious you guys are trying to get in front of the trends, but I just
can't figure out what that actually is going to look like six months from now.

Any insight there into the overall strategy? I know you might not be able to
answer it, but I'd love to know.

~~~
kberger
I'm not the right person to speak to overall corporate strategy. For an
overview of the context of the announcements today, I would watch the MAX
keynote or check out the Creative Cloud product page:

<http://www.adobe.com/products/creativecloud.html>

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friendstock
What strategic value does the acquisition of PhoneGap possess for Adobe? Is
the idea to introduce integration of Adobe services (e.g. CreativeCloud) into
PhoneGap to make it easier for developers, designers, agencies to build Adobe-
enhanced mobile apps?

~~~
kberger
Well, the first thing to note is that Adobe has not and doesn't intend to
acquire PhoneGap itself. PhoneGap is in the process of being contributed to
the Apache Software Foundation, and will remain free and open source. That
said, we're definitely interested in continuing to support PhoneGap's
development via contributions from the Nitobi team. PhoneGap Build, the hosted
service based on PhoneGap, will become part of Adobe. So part of the value is
that service, but the key is simply enabling efficient, expressive design and
development across devices, regardless of technology. We're excited to
investigate what integrations will make sense, but right now it's too early to
say.

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johnrob
Contracts aside, what is the normal expectation regrading how long founders &
employees of the start up remain with the acquiring company?

~~~
kberger
It really depends--every company is different and has a different set of
dependencies between its employees. Both Typekit and Nitobi have amazing teams
that we hope will be with Adobe for a long time.

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technojunkie
Does Adobe have a strategy to fight HTML5 or make good progress with open
standards b/c of the Typekit purchase? We don't want Adobe to shut down
Typekit by any means b/c of how awesome it is and I'm afraid Adobe is
resistant to HTML5 as an open standard. Please don't throw money at solutions
to killing amazing products which enhance HTML5.

~~~
kberger
Adobe is strongly supportive of HTML5 and open standards. In fact, we've
recently released two tools, Edge and Muse, that are built on HTML and related
technologies. We intend to help Typekit continue to grow and continue to
leverage open standards.

~~~
technojunkie
I'm glad to read this and hope that HTML5 and open standards becomes a huge
priority for Adobe and not an after-thought.

I see decent intentions with products like Muse but its faults outweigh its
benefits and I do not expect this particular product to see much life unless
its vastly improved or changed.

As a web coder, I heavily rely on products like Photoshop and am disappointed
with bloat and inefficiencies I've experienced over the years, so I really
have hard time believing the same fate won't happen to Typekit. That said, I
am going to try to keep the skeptic in me quiet as I watch what happens to
this awesome product.

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sylvinus
What are your plans for build.phonegap.com, regarding pricing, feature scope
and API?

~~~
kberger
Nitobi already announced preliminary pricing here:
[http://www.phonegap.com/2011/09/30/phonegap-build-moves-
to-o...](http://www.phonegap.com/2011/09/30/phonegap-build-moves-to-open-
beta/)

We don't have anything else to announce right now.

------
kberger
By the way, you can replay the official announcement and see live broadcast of
tomorrow's keynote at the Adobe MAX conference here:

<http://www.max.adobe.com/online/>

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diegogomes
How Adobe is gonna position Omniture's products now that Google Analytics has
a premium offer and has a huge installed user base? Are you looking for
specific acquisitions in the web Analytics space?

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abcd_f
Were you at all involved with Amicima acquisition few years back?

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friendstock
When does Adobe decide to buy vs. build?

~~~
kberger
Obviously it really depends on the specific circumstances, but often it comes
down to time, talent, and community. Sometimes the need is urgent, sometimes
there's exceptional talent we'd love to join Adobe, and often there's a
community that's not easily duplicable. I'd say all three played a role in
these deals.

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scottmcleod
Keep up the good work-Solid acquisitions by bigger companies will move good
tech forward.

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aaronblohowiak
Thank you for posting here. How do you design the technical aspects of due
diligence?

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ivankirigin
your question is confusing

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Put another way, how do you design the due diligence process for examining the
technical assets of the organization you are going to acquire? IE: is it
uptime stats, code review, etc

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rebelde
How do you arrive at valuations for acquisitions like these?

~~~
kberger
[http://www.quora.com/How-do-large-tech-companies-like-
Google...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-large-tech-companies-like-Google-value-
startups-that-they-acquire)

------
pasbesoin
[EDIT 2: I deleted my first posting of the following comment, out of concern
that it might not be appropriate. But darned it, it was a frustrating enough
experience -- and one that others should not have to go through -- that I'm
reposting my comment. My apology to anyone (other than Adobe) whom this may
irritate.]

[EDIT: I'm hesitant to use HN for what might -- perhaps legitimately -- be
seen as a rant. But this may be my only opportunity to make someone at Adobe
having any degree of authority or ability to communicate with the relevant
management, aware of this problem. Further, we are all at the mercy of Adobe
technical support, to the degree we need it. And this applies, in this
specific context, to the many students and staff on this site who might face
issues in particular with regard to academic licensing.]

OT, but I recently spent in aggregate 7.5 hours [1] getting one your tech
support to walk over to a manager and convince them to generate a _correct_
license code for a thoroughly documented academic purchase, after the third-
party licensing vendor who was supposed to do so failed to and then only,
finally responded to an Adobe tech support rep, whom they told that they had
no clue what license the Adobe tech support rep was talking about.

Said license generation and delivery took only _10 minutes_ , once Adobe tech
support -- AFTER 7.5 HOURS of phone calls -- finally did it directly,
themselves -- and for the first time, finally, did it correctly after also
following _my_ instructions as to what specific type of license was needed.
(Rhetorical: What is wrong with this picture?)

Briefly put, someone needs to straighten out the delivery of secondary CS 4
license codes for support of academic purchasers of CS 5.x who are running Win
XP 32 bit (said support being clearly described on the product package and in
its marketing).

I realize that, officially, you are not the correct party to address, but
since you're the only member of Adobe management who is likely to even see a
comment on my part, let me just say that in this case your technical support,
while always polite on the phone, sucked in terms of results and follow-up;
you took several hundred dollars from the person I was helping while failing
for over a month to deliver the product (license code) and support that was
clearly described on the package; and on this basis I, personally, [changed to
calm my tone down] cannot wish your company well.

(I was tempted to send your corporate HQ an invoice for my time, but I figured
they'd be too obtuse and/or dismissive to get the point.)

1\. I would never have spent that kind of time on the endeavor, except for the
nature of my relationship with the purchaser.

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pgryff
Thanks for posting the AMA.

What sort of business criteria are you generally looking for in acquisitions?
Is it technology or is it people or something else altogether.

Thanks.

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wavephorm
Does Adobe plan more of these types of acquisitions in the future?

~~~
gyardley
I'm assuming they'll buy Medialets eventually, and the only reason they
haven't yet is they're not eye-to-eye on price.

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utunga
Please for the love of all that is holy - stop buying companies!

It's really just so painful to see good companies sucked into the gaping maw
of installer hell, 50MB downloads and bureaucratic 'enterprise' sales that -
with exception of Photoshop - seems to be Adobe's main value add.

