Stewardship
Posted October 3, 2011 @ 12:21 pm
On Saturday, I finally paid for a Typekit account. You’re looking at the result of that purchase. The fonts used on this site are being served up by Typekit’s servers. Pretty, right?
Today, I’m debating asking for my money back and shutting down the account. Why?
Just a few moments ago, Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch took the stage at their annual MAX conference and explained the company’s Creative Cloud strategy. Part of that announcement is very big news for us: Typekit has been acquired by Adobe.
God. Fucking. Dammit.
Next Verse, Same As The First
This scene plays out over and over again.
- VCs fund a startup.
- Startup creates a product.
- Startup attracts users.
- Startup sells to some mega-corporation for tons of money.
- Mega-corporation lets the startup’s technology wither and die.
We’re at step 4 in Typekit’s story. The sad thing is, I really believed they were in it for the long haul, what with Jeffrey Veen talking about how the point of starting his own company was to ensure he’d always have a seat at the decision-making table.
Step 5 isn’t always a guarantee. Whether it comes to pass depends on the ability of the mega-corporation to be a good steward, to continue to steer the product or service in a forward direction. Most of the time, this never happens because either the company doesn’t care enough (see Cisco’s buyout of Flip), because the purchase was a talent acquisition (see Facebook’s purchase of Drop.io), or because the smaller company was a direct (and successful) competitor to the mega-corporation.
Typekit is a successful competitor to Adobe. I don’t suspect this buy-out is going to go well for Typekit’s users because Adobe will likely be a poor steward. They have no reason to push this product forward, as that would mean promoting other type foundries.
Typekit’s team is convinced that this won’t happen, though.
Ask Michael Arrington how long “business as usual” lasted after TechCrunch was sold to AOL. (Spoiler: it took about a year for Arrington to be ousted and for the team to disintegrate even after AOL promised he would retain creative control.)
As a paying user of Typekit, I’m concerned that the product will suffer from poor stewardship under Adobe. As a person who purposely avoids purchasing Adobe products, I feel duped into tangentially giving them my money. And as a person who respects the company’s founders, I feel a bit like I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me—I expected better.
The only people who stand to walk away from this without a shred of doubt or trepidation would be the folks at True Ventures. Congrats to them on a successful exit, and thanks for giving hope to the next guy-with-an-idea that he, too, can one day leave his users stranded while making a fuck-ton of cash.
