Figma’s Battle Against Figma Clones
In a billion-dollar industry, there tend to be new competitors who either try to reinvent the wheel or compete openly and directly with Figma.
Figma is of course not very happy with this, and is going on a parade of trying to shut down or compete with its competition.
Figma Sues Motiff
During this rain of Figma clones, one competitor has recently made its mark called — Motiff. Motiff is essentially the same tool with a slew of unique AI powered features.
You might notice that Motiff has a very similar UI as Figma. According to a recent lawsuit filed by Figma against Motiff, they might have stolen Figma’s source code! This means that the company just copied some of Figma’s code to create their own software.
But, what does this big lawsuit entail? Well, Figma has filed a lawsuit in the US district court, claiming that Motiff has infringed their subscription agreement by purchasing a Figma license and reverse engineering the code in order to create their own app. Figma is claiming an amount of $75,000 or more, however the actual amount is not yet disclosed.
Read the entire court document here.
What is worse, that Motiff has been doing some scummy marketing against Figma, using its name and claiming that it is better than figma.
Isn’t it ironical!
Figma Goes Shopping!
For the past few years, Figma has been purchasing companies all over the world. These purchases are either to acquire the tech of that company, or to eliminate that company from its list of competitors.
Two such companies that Figma has acquired are — Diagram & Visly.
Diagram — Figma’s Dive Into AI
Diagram was an innovative AI tool company that was eager to make strides in the design market. They came up with some powerful AI plugins to generate custom icons, produce unique images, and even get an AI companion inside Figma. In a few years they managed to work on 100+ such innovative products.
Diagram had even raised $3 Million in their seed round, which proved to the world that they meant business.
Figma noticed this, and acquired Diagram for an undisclosed ammount (I assume it was upwards of $10 Million). They even announced this to the public, saying that they inteded to use Diagram’s tech for their own AI powered design features.
However, what they truly wanted, was for the Diagram founder Jordan Singer to come on board and lead the AI innovations at Figma. This actually shows that Figma appreciates good leaders and innovators. Cut to 2024, Jordan has left Figma to pursue other endeavours.
Isn’t it fishy, how the head of AI at Figma leaves shortly after Figma announced Figma AI? I guess this will remain a mystery.
Visly — Better Design to Code
Visly was another funded startup that was acquired by Figma in 2021. It was a design tool that focused on useful features for front end developers. It had powerful features that could convert UI designs into developer friendly code.
Visly’s software and their engineers being acquired by Figma, led to what we now know as - Dev Mode in Figma.
We can now see the pattern of Figma buying companies to develop technology, instead of making features from scratch. This is similar to what FANG companies do too, acquiring competitors before they become bigger than them, or as a shortcut to launch new tech without developing it from scratch.
What do you think of this era of Figma clones? Lets discuss in the comments! Also, a clap goes a long way.
