Is design witnessing a bloodbath? $2B InVision’s death signals a Figma-led revolution. Buckle up as more startups face the axe. Get the inside scoop.
Esteemed design enterprise InVision, previously appraised at a staggering 350 million from financiers like Goldman Sachs and Spark Capital, once led the pack in collaborative design tools. However, InVision’s trajectory took a nosedive as competitor Figma’s offering skyrocketed in adoption, seizing market share…
Not long ago, InVision disclosed a 50% reduction in its workforce, and we received a letter from the CEO of Invision today, that they are closing the company at the end of 2024.
As a founder and designer, it was unique to see how badly Invision could not move beyond their original simple prototyping platform. They were way ahead of the curve when they began and never did anything useful beyond that.
What was even more wild was watching them dump money into gimmicks and sales over their product. I worked at a large agency during the heyday invasions, typically with salespeople flying out for in-person visits, buying whole office lunches, etc. I prob sat through a dozen pitches in a year where nothing fundamentally improved or changed about their product. People who had no idea what a design system was would pitch a half-baked "design system manager" or similar but could not discuss design systems or answer questions about gaps in their product. It was very clear they would fail.
We had been users of Invison for over 4 year, but stop using it since 2019. and Our motivations for departing from InVision were multifaceted:
- InVision DSM’s offerings could have been more extensive in capabilities.
- InVision’s scalability needed to be improved for larger enterprises. Essential features like searching, sorting, version comparisons, author tracking, and commentary were rudimentary at best. Our team’s struggle to manage 200 prototypes highlighted the platform’s inability to support large-scale operations akin to those at SalesForce, Cisco, or Amazon.
- Sharing prototypes securely was a persistent challenge. A straightforward mechanism to toggle sharing was perpetually absent.
- Integration with Sketch could have been better. The inaptly named Craft Manager was rife with bugs, leading to duplicated screens in intricate, detail-dense projects, necessitating days of corrective work. InVision and Sketch blamed each other for these failings, leaving us to grapple with erratic screen loading and updates.
This brings us to the pivotal reason behind InVision’s 2B downfall.
inVision : The future of collaboration is (Not) here
The ONE Reason why InVision Failed: Hype. – Indeed, hype.
This is a reassuring signal that the market sometimes is entirely rational, and that product is more critical than marketing/sales/distribution…at least in the design tools space.
Invision focused on dumping millions into marketing and enterprise sales and growth hacks…yet had mediocre software.
Meanwhile, Figma created a better product (and I’d guess spent way less on marketing for the first 5 years), and they won.
I remember when we managed to add InVision to the internal list of approved apps in a bank after years of struggle with branding kit creation, and the moment it was available internally, Figma was suddenly the hot stuff. No one wanted to stick with InVision.
InVision was good, but Figma hit hard.
Figma was valued at
As founders, what can we learn from Invision’s failure?
And often, they apply much sooner than anticipated. Be wary of succumbing to your propaganda, lest you meet the same fate as InVision and many other companies misled by their marketing hype instead of a product road map of those features that can find the product market fit from the competitors (aka. Figma).
As we should always ask ourselves the following questions:
- Does your organization truly enhance customer conditions?
- Are you consistently delivering augmented value?
- Do you prioritize foundational elements like search, sorting, user management, and connectivity?
- Are you addressing critical bugs before venturing into ill-advised new features?
- How do you measure up against your rivals? Where do you excel? Where do you falter?
- What is your product’s return on investment? What informs your pricing strategy?
- Have you addressed the primary grievances your customers expressed last month? When will you rectify these issues?
- Are you diligently observing customers interact with your or your competitor’s products daily? If not, why?
- What is the medium-term vision for your product or service?
If these questions leave you uncertain, it’s time for introspection. I wish you the best on your journey.
RIP Invision. I loved the original product and fondly used it at my startups. They became an afterthought once Figma became a way more powerful alternative.
