First of all thanks for writing this article. While I disagree with the point about Sketch and Figma (more on this later). The mission of this article is near and dear to my heart.
I can't help much on the perspective on startups, because that's not my area of interest. My area of interest is what I call "the big creative apps": The Photoshops, the Logic Pros, the IDEs. But I think there's enough overlap with this space and general "tools for transformative thought" to make some interesting observations.
First lets elaborate on what happened with Sketch and Adobe. The argument that Sketch emerging was a product failure on Adobe's part hinges on three things:
1. The community was asking for exactly this type of product.
2. With Fireworks, Adobe already had exactly the type of product people were asking for, they just weren't investing resources in it.
3. They discontinued Fireworks "citing the increasing overlap in functionality"[0]. Then Sketch emerges proving there was indeed a separate category of app there.
I think it's hard to look at those three points and not see a product direction failure on Adobe's part. Compare that with what happened with Ableton Live, e.g., Apple's Logic Pro team was also well-positioned to take advantage of that opportunity, but I wouldn't call them not doing so a product failure because: the community was not asking for a version of Logic Pro focused on live performance, and Apple did not already own an existing product that filled that need that they shutdown.
Like you mentioned, the reason the distinction is important about why Sketch emerged, is that I disagree with the comment that companies that invest R&D in developing these types of products haven't been able to create moats around them. I actually think they've been able to do so rather effectively, e.g., consider Adobe's other product lines: After Effects, Lightroom, Premiere, and even Photoshop itself for everything except UI design, are all the most popular apps in their categories[1]. Even Microsoft Office is still more popular (and more well-liked) than Google Docs[2].
In fact, I can only think of two situations where an entrenched player has completely lost a market, the aforementioned Adobe losing the UI design market to Sketch, and QuarkXPress losing it to Adobe InDesign (another situation which involved a failure to read the market with Quark betting against OS X[3]). It seems that the general pattern is an entrenched player only loses the market when they make a grave strategic error.
I'll also just quickly point out that both Lightroom and InDesign both illustrate that big companies can in fact use their advantages to extend themselves into new peripheral product categories.
So now we arrive at the real question: If these companies are able to make moats around new creative apps, why don't companies invest in making more of these types of products? This is where things start to get interesting. There is some evidence that they still do, e.g., VS Code and Atom are both major new creative apps from big companies. Framer and Quartz Composer also come to mind. But somehow none of these are as satisfying as a Photoshop, Illustrator, or an Ableton Live. I'd chalk this up to three things:
1. On the desktop-space, with file-centric workflows, most of the big creative apps are based around a file type, e.g., image editor, 3D editor, audio editor. So the most obvious way for a new one to emerge is for there to be a new file type that needs an editor, and there just isn't very much we can't already represent with our existing file types.
2. The next problem I'd put squarely on Apple. Another angle for creative apps to go in, is less about more power in editing existing file types, and more about collaborative editing. But collaborative editing goes hand-in-hand with supporting mobile (collaboration is a similar problem as cross-device support, and the simplicity that comes from designing for mobile also benefits collaboration). But Apple simply doesn't allow sustainable software businesses on their mobile platforms, so you're not going to see much development in this space because the ROI is too small.
3. Finally, and this may just be me, but the business models have changed. These products used to be expensive paid upfront to do powerful things, but now the general trend, with examples like Figma, Notion, Lightroom CC, the model is free or inexpensive to use, but without any control over your data. The way I think of these products is that the business model has started to bleed into the product. E.g., Lightroom CC does not allow offline photos, not because that would be difficult to implement, and not because people aren't asking for it (because boy are they ever!), but because the whole justification for the existence of this product is that it's a gateway to charge cloud storage for someone's photos effectively forever. For me at least, this makes many new developments in the creative apps space taste like ash, because I want my creative products to be powerful and flexible. I don't want to see business model decisions showing up in the product.
I can't help much on the perspective on startups, because that's not my area of interest. My area of interest is what I call "the big creative apps": The Photoshops, the Logic Pros, the IDEs. But I think there's enough overlap with this space and general "tools for transformative thought" to make some interesting observations.
First lets elaborate on what happened with Sketch and Adobe. The argument that Sketch emerging was a product failure on Adobe's part hinges on three things:
1. The community was asking for exactly this type of product.
2. With Fireworks, Adobe already had exactly the type of product people were asking for, they just weren't investing resources in it.
3. They discontinued Fireworks "citing the increasing overlap in functionality"[0]. Then Sketch emerges proving there was indeed a separate category of app there.
I think it's hard to look at those three points and not see a product direction failure on Adobe's part. Compare that with what happened with Ableton Live, e.g., Apple's Logic Pro team was also well-positioned to take advantage of that opportunity, but I wouldn't call them not doing so a product failure because: the community was not asking for a version of Logic Pro focused on live performance, and Apple did not already own an existing product that filled that need that they shutdown.
Like you mentioned, the reason the distinction is important about why Sketch emerged, is that I disagree with the comment that companies that invest R&D in developing these types of products haven't been able to create moats around them. I actually think they've been able to do so rather effectively, e.g., consider Adobe's other product lines: After Effects, Lightroom, Premiere, and even Photoshop itself for everything except UI design, are all the most popular apps in their categories[1]. Even Microsoft Office is still more popular (and more well-liked) than Google Docs[2].
In fact, I can only think of two situations where an entrenched player has completely lost a market, the aforementioned Adobe losing the UI design market to Sketch, and QuarkXPress losing it to Adobe InDesign (another situation which involved a failure to read the market with Quark betting against OS X[3]). It seems that the general pattern is an entrenched player only loses the market when they make a grave strategic error.
I'll also just quickly point out that both Lightroom and InDesign both illustrate that big companies can in fact use their advantages to extend themselves into new peripheral product categories.
So now we arrive at the real question: If these companies are able to make moats around new creative apps, why don't companies invest in making more of these types of products? This is where things start to get interesting. There is some evidence that they still do, e.g., VS Code and Atom are both major new creative apps from big companies. Framer and Quartz Composer also come to mind. But somehow none of these are as satisfying as a Photoshop, Illustrator, or an Ableton Live. I'd chalk this up to three things:
1. On the desktop-space, with file-centric workflows, most of the big creative apps are based around a file type, e.g., image editor, 3D editor, audio editor. So the most obvious way for a new one to emerge is for there to be a new file type that needs an editor, and there just isn't very much we can't already represent with our existing file types.
2. The next problem I'd put squarely on Apple. Another angle for creative apps to go in, is less about more power in editing existing file types, and more about collaborative editing. But collaborative editing goes hand-in-hand with supporting mobile (collaboration is a similar problem as cross-device support, and the simplicity that comes from designing for mobile also benefits collaboration). But Apple simply doesn't allow sustainable software businesses on their mobile platforms, so you're not going to see much development in this space because the ROI is too small.
3. Finally, and this may just be me, but the business models have changed. These products used to be expensive paid upfront to do powerful things, but now the general trend, with examples like Figma, Notion, Lightroom CC, the model is free or inexpensive to use, but without any control over your data. The way I think of these products is that the business model has started to bleed into the product. E.g., Lightroom CC does not allow offline photos, not because that would be difficult to implement, and not because people aren't asking for it (because boy are they ever!), but because the whole justification for the existence of this product is that it's a gateway to charge cloud storage for someone's photos effectively forever. For me at least, this makes many new developments in the creative apps space taste like ash, because I want my creative products to be powerful and flexible. I don't want to see business model decisions showing up in the product.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Fireworks
[1]: https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/08/07/apples-app-stores-ha...
[2]: https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/08/31/office-suite-market-...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuarkXPress