Inspired by Adobe’s history

For Adobe, many people may think of design software such as PS and Ae. Few people are familiar with the development history of Aodobe and the origin of the crown as the world’s leading creative software company. This article will share with you this 39-year-old company. The history of the development of established companies and the operational knowledge learned from them.

Adobe’s founding stage

In 1982, like most great companies, Adobe was also born in a small garage. Behind this garage, there is a small river called Adobe Creek. It is said that the name is because the surrounding is rich in clay for making pottery. (that is, the original meaning of the word adobe), the founders feel that this coincides with the company’s mission for creativity, and Adobe’s company name is derived from this.

The two founders of Adobe, John Warnock and Charles Geschke, have a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, respectively. Both of them are well-deserved computer giants. The language PostScript led the desktop printing revolution in the mid-1980s until it was superseded by the upgraded PDF format. Charles Geschke, known as the father of PDF, was awarded the US National Medal of Technology by then US President Barack Obama. Unfortunately, this legendary boss passed away in April this year at the age of 81.

Adobe’s entrepreneurial road can be said to be quite smooth. When the first product, the PostScript language, was just launched, Jobs, who had a keen sense of smell, took the initiative to approach the door and hoped to acquire Adobe for $5 million. Of course, this request was a big deal. The two founders of the business decisively declined.

It is worth mentioning that in the end, Jobs still won 19% of Adobe’s shares, and purchased the five-year right to use PostScript for Apple’s newly launched laser printer LaserWriter. The value of this order is equivalent to Adobe’s valuation at that time. 5 times, which also makes Adobe the first company in Silicon Valley to achieve profitability in its first year of business.

based SaaS cloud services

Adobe ‘s transformation, I have to mention Shantanu Narayen , who is also the current CEO of Adobe. At the end of 2007, he officially took over as Adobe’s CEO, at the time of the global financial crisis.

His first strategy is to let Adobe officially start a comprehensive transformation to the SaaS model, while adjusting the internal structure, laying off 1,350 employees during 2008-2009, accounting for about 18% of the total number of employees.

The transition is obviously painful, especially for Adobe, a software company that is already one of the top five in the world. During the transition period, Adobe’s revenue and share price growth has been flat. But in the long run, the subscription system has obvious advantages. Taking photoshop as an example, the buyout system costs $900 per set, while the subscription system costs as little as $10 per month per set, which accelerates Adobe’s product popularization and customer training; in addition, after cloudification It is more convenient to collect customer experience and update it quickly to provide a better customer experience.

The various companies that Adobe acquired in the MarTech space from 2009 to 2020, these company products make up today’s Adobe Experience Cloud.

Adobe has implemented during this time :

acquisition plan	effect
Acquired Omniture	The first step from content creation to marketing analytics
Acquired Day Software	Perfect online content collaboration management module for the first time
Acquired Demdex	Enhance Omniture’s user behavior data analysis capabilities
Acquired Efficient Frontier	Add intelligent delivery and effect prediction module to advertising business
Acquired Behance	Provide inspiration and talent for content marketing design needs
Acquired Neolane	Complementing Personalized Marketing Automation Capabilities

inspired

From the development of Adobe , the development of marketing technology can be divided into five stages.

stage	illustrate
innovation stage	There are early stage companies in the industry offering different solutions.
expansion phase	The market demand exploded, a large number of companies and VCs entered the market, and the segmented industries were gradually improved.
competition stage	Segmented industries mature, and high-value acquisitions emerge.
integration stage	A large number of companies have been acquired or left, and new companies have been unable to shake the existing industry structure.
mature stage	The industry has matured, there have been numerous acquisitions, and new entrants need disruptive innovation.

Looking at the global market, there are many companies that are benchmarking against Adobe, but in fact, no company has a product line that is rich enough to compete with Adobe. Most companies are still based on their own main battlefields, such as BI, CDP, CEM, MA et al .

All in all, it is necessary to master a degree. For example, customization and standardization are about 3:7, which may be a better state. How to release the pressure and cost brought by customized services at this time ?

Here is the solution:

Program	illustrate
Build a service ecosystem	Build the richness of ISV developers’ ecological commission products and find reliable SI service customers .
Improve technical ability	For example, low-code PAAS and RPA, whether external or internal efficiency improvement, as well as AI capabilities, software developed according to empirical rules, once the business form changes, it is easy to become outdated, and AI-driven systems can achieve better adaptation.

AbcdPDF – Aggregation platform with solution-based sales

AbcdPDF is a platform dedicated to solving PDF problems for users around the world, with Online pdf A series of aggregation online tools headed by editor have the functions of famous products, and meet the needs of users through multiple aggregation products on the page. The company’s team has strong program-based sales and consulting background talents, and occupies a large part of the PDF market overseas.

The following are the aggregation functions on the platform:

Collection of PDF editing, converting, merging, splitting, adding watermark tools
Editar PDF	Unir PDF	Dividir PDF	PDF a Word	PDF a Excel
PDF a PPT	PDF a JPG	PDF a PNG	PDF a HTML	Word to PDF
Excel to PDF	PPT to PDF	JPG to PDF	PNG to PDF	HTML to PDF
Protects PDF	Unlock PDF	Filigree	Page number	Remove pages
Remove pages	Save as PDF	Download PDF file	PDF to DOCX	ODT to PDF
Save as pdf	Sign the PDF	ODT to PDF	PDF Converter	Compress PDF

For the average user, the AbcdPDF Free version is sufficient , but they also bring two other options for professionals: “Premium” and “Business” versions of the service, which will make your AbcdPDF even more free to use .

Here’s a comparison between their price points and available memory :

type	price	Function
Free	$0	Access to ABCDPDF tools Limited document processing Work on Web
Premium	$5/Month	Edit PDF	120MB
Word Edit	8MB
Word View	8MB
Excel Edit	8MB
$2.1/Month	ExcelView	8MB
Excel Create	8MB
PPT Create	8MB
Word Create	8MB

总结

This industry note introduces you to Adobe’s founding background and lessons the tech marketing industry can learn from it. Many products have gained valuable inspiration from Adobe’s development history, the most representative of which is Online pdf The editor products, as well as the functions of the benchmark Adobe products, have a function page that aggregates many tools, which satisfies the needs of users to the greatest extent in terms of subdivisions. Although it can’t be said to shake the pattern, it fundamentally solves the user’s requirements for free use and high-quality services, and actually promotes the concept of a self-contained one-stop service standard, hoping that it can withstand the final verification of the market.