Before it was Flash, it was a vector drawing tool called FutureSplash.. in the early 90s i worked at fractal design corp (creators of what's now corel painter) and the Futuresplash folks were interested in selling it to us.. that was before it had an animation timeline or scripting features. I was kind of an in-house artist and the founders really wanted my opinion on whether or not it would be appealing to our customers, like how i as an artist felt about it.
My feedback was that was kind of cumbersome compared to our other tools, and didn't see the potential appeal to our user base and recommended against it, and we declined the offer.
Ultimately I'm glad Macromedia did acquire it because adding scripting and animation appealed to the already diminishing Director/Shockwave platform.
I do wonder how things might have been different had we decided otherwise and acquired Futuresplash-- there'd have been no Flash as we know it!
It's amazing how little decisions we make in the past can project out over time and have larger repercussions.
https://tumult.com/hype/