Dylan Field: Is AI Replacing Designers?, Design is the New Code & Democratizing Creativity

(0:00) Dylan Field joins the show: Figma's origin story and mission (3:16) Adobe's $20B deal blocked: inside the antitrust fight (12:29) Is AI killing SaaS? Frontier Companies vs. Figma, the "SaaS apocalypse" (18:52) Creativity in the AI era: why taste and boldness win (36:02) Human agency, AI's promise, and what comes next Thanks to our partners for making this possible! As wealth grows, complexity compounds. Between investments, tax strategy and estate planning, coordinating it all can feel like a full-time job. Creative Planning can help with the heavy lifting. Learn more at: https://CreativePlanning.com/AllIn With over nine million acres protected across all fifty states, The Conservation Fund secures the irreplaceable lands we love. Learn more at http://conservationfund.org Follow Dylan: https://x.com/zoink Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@allin Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect #allin #tech #news

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Friedberg?

  Dylan Field, welcome to the All In interview.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 0:04David Friedberg?

  We are here in beautiful Napa, Yanville, California.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're three drinks in.

• 0:08David Friedberg?

  We're a couple of drinks in and we decided to go on camera.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not?

• 0:13David Friedberg?

  Why not? Well, what are you doing here?

• 0:20David Friedberg?

  As your wealth grows, have you noticed how much more complex things get? Between investments, tax strategy and estate planning, managing it all is a full-time job you didn't ask for. Creative Planning can help. Their coordinated team of investment managers, CPAs and affiliated estate attorneys can do much of the heavy lifting, so you don't have to. Creative Planning, where wealth works together. Go to creativeplanning.com/allin.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  I was for this event that you're going to be at tomorrow as well.

• 0:50David Friedberg?

  I'm at an event tomorrow.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Same event and we were basically talking about design, product development. I snuck in a little bit of security, thought that'd be nice. But overall, a lot about just like how product development is evolving. And in my point of view, the thing you'd expect me to say too, is that design is the new code. And what's happening right now is as coding models get better, I'm not saying that you don't need engineers. We definitely need engineers at Figma. We love our engineers. But also the nature of programming is changing. And as it changes, the value is rising in terms of differentiation to the top.

• 1:31David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  That's design, that's brand, it's marketing, it's point of view, it's being bold. And it's like the emotional reaction you're able to list it. And I think that a lot of people are missing that. We also talked a lot about like AI and just kind of like.

• 1:46David Friedberg?

  Okay, so you did a thing on stage today. You talked with Nikesh.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry, I was recapping the interview here.

• 1:50David Friedberg?

  Yeah, no, it's great. Like, it's good. Like, we can fast forward. But I want to back up. You're the CEO of Figma, publicly traded. Maybe you can just give the quick elevator pitch on Figma and when did you start the business?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we started Figma back in August 2012. And the quick pitch is this is where we want to make it so that the best teams in the world can design and create and build the world's best software. We're also used for all sorts of stuff, so marketing, advertising, slides, whiteboarding, diagramming. You know, you name it. Like, if it's visual at all, someone's probably doing it in Figma, even if it's not meant for that.

• 2:30David Friedberg?

  People call it a design software. Is that a fair characterization? Or does it not capture the full spectrum of what the service is?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  No, I think that design is really our center and our core. And like when I'm in a product review and talking with the team, we talk about designers, we talk about what they want. Design is also a term that's like so interesting because there's like 100 definitions of design.

• 2:55David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  I think about a lot of, a lot about the definition of like, it's maybe creativity meets problem solving. But there's like so many others you can find. And then also, design can refer to everything from interior to industrial to product design to brand design and so on. And so people think about a lot of things, they think about design.

• 3:16David Friedberg?

  Just to get caught up on the history of the business, you started in 2012, you raised some venture money, the business takes off, you're selling enterprise software, you're doing really well. And then Adobe offers to buy the business for $20 billion?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. Quite the fast forward.

• 3:32David Friedberg?

  What year was that?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  It was a few years back now.

• 3:35David Friedberg?

  Right, so I'm skipping through literally building the business.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're like, you know, 10, 11 years in, but the, no, I mean, we have always respected Adobe, still do. And I mean, a generational incredible company that like started everything from printing to making Photoshop what it is and like the entire graphic design revolution.

• 3:55David Friedberg?

  By the way, I was on Adobe Photoshop since 1990. I did graphic design.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Wow, so you're pre-layers?

• 4:03David Friedberg?

  Actually, you and I haven't talked about this.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Were you pre-layers?

• 4:04David Friedberg?

  Yes. So I did graphic design pre-layers as a kid on computers. And I did it as like a service for like people in the neighborhood and small businesses and stuff.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  So cool. Wait, so how'd you get access to it?

• 4:16David Friedberg?

  I was like at my school and then I, well, I was on a Macintosh. I got the first Mac original in 1984. And I was always fascinated with graphic design. It was like something I loved doing as a, literally a hobby. You and I actually never talked about this. And then I used like Bryce 3D and all these early 3D tools. And then when Kai's Power Tools came out.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Kai's Power Tools is really cool.

• 4:36David Friedberg?

  It reinvented Adobe Photoshop. And for me, it was like this incredible like expansion of creative potential and what you could do with Photoshop. So I've been a big Photoshop fan since the earliest days and a big user as a personal hobby. And like I made money on the side doing graphic design and stuff.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  That's awesome, man.

• 4:54David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, Photoshop, of course, is like a product that is very mature and maybe beyond mature too. In that it has so many different parts of it that have been added over the years, which I think is the nature of a lot of software. It gets more bloated over time if you're not careful. But there's just so much that's possible with it. And, you know, Adobe as a company has been very inventive. So I've always had respect since I was a kid too.

• 5:22David Friedberg?

  Totally.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  And it felt like it was a time when, you know, we could join and not be totally absorbed.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  If we were smaller, I felt like maybe we would just kind of dissipate. And yeah, we signed the agreement, we said yes. And then various world governments decided that they didn't like it.

• 5:40David Friedberg?

  Right. And like antitrust got involved and they blocked the deal.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, antitrust is kind of like a broad way to refer to it. But you have the United States, European Union, CMA. And, you know, it's a very different vibe and a few years ago than today.

• 5:57David Friedberg?

  Adobe would be taking out a big competitor.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  They said a lot of things, but the, I think, most important part for us was that we just kept putting our foot on the gas. I mean, I thought it would be like, sort of, we would just go right through. And as soon as a month or two in, it was clear that was not the case.

• 6:15David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  It kind of became, okay, like, we got to like really power through as an organization here. And ship and build like the next stuff.

• 6:23David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Because if we don't power through and keep our foot on the gas, you know, what's on the other side? We don't know what's on the other side. We got to make sure everything's fine no matter what.

• 6:31David Friedberg?

  So this is 2023. How many employees did you have?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  I want to say it was about 1,100, 1,200 after double check.

• 6:40David Friedberg?

  Okay, so when I heard this story, I was fascinated by, and I think I saw you in 2024, March of 24. I don't know if you remember, I mentioned this to you. But for me, the story of telling 1,200 employees of a startup, we have one of the most incredible exits in history. $20 billion exit of this company and it's not going to happen. What was the all hands like when you get in front of everyone and you tell everyone, guys, this isn't going to happen? And how do you get everyone to realign on building a business and continuing forward? When it feels like the floor, for some people may have felt like the floor fell out from under them?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Well, I think you have to remember the length of the regulatory review, which definitely needs to be fixed somehow because it's, you know, if you're in a situation where it's actually anti-competitive, which I don't, I still don't believe the Adobe thing was for what it's worth. A lot of people, you know, on the internet probably would say it is, like, or at least they did back then. But I thought their arguments were poor and they were fighting past battles, not looking at the future and what this all would become. But the, and I say that not because I'm not, like, I'm stoked to be independent too. I'm stoked to be running Figma. That was the plan for Adobe, was just run Figma. Either way, running Figma, I'm happy.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Independently, we do move fast. I'm grateful for that. But going back to your question, it's like, we had 16 months of regulatory review. 16 months of regulatory review for any company is punishing. And in an actual anti-competitive situation, that could be like very destructive for one of the parties.

• 8:24David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Or both. And I think Roomba is a great example, actually. Roomba was going to be acquired.

• 8:31David Friedberg?

  Small deal.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't like a crazy deal, but they wanted to punish Amazon. And so they did not let it go through. And because of that, Roomba went bankrupt and the entire market at the time basically went to China. So from the United States standpoint, it made no sense.

• 8:47David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Anyway, I go on tangent, but I do think it's an important point. And there's some policy stuff here that's like, when you go for the ideals, idealism, it doesn't always practically like help America.

• 8:57David Friedberg?

  But it's also an important point, which is almost all markets now are more expansive than they have been historically. And nearly anything that looks like, oh, it's the market. That's not actually the market. The market is AI, it turns out.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, exactly.

• 9:14David Friedberg?

  The market is this massive market and this deal is 1% and 0.2% of the market.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, do you define the market looking back at the history? Which is like the only logical way you do it as a regulator? Or do you do it as a technologist looking forward? And that could be very different in terms of how you think about markets, about sizes. But in any case, the all hands. It was actually the first day of a winter break, which is pretty funny. So we had told everybody, okay, you know, enjoy the holidays. We actually have way less traffic during the holidays because we're a work product. And that was a Friday. And then realized sort of over the weekend, okay, this is going to come to a conclusion.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  And on Monday morning, sent a message to everybody saying, hey, all hands at noon. And dial in if you like, and here's what's going on. And here's like the full sort of details. And so, first of all, so much of the company showed up. That was awesome just to see the turnout, you know, first day of break really. And secondly, I'd say just like the mood was relief. Because it wasn't about relief of not Adobe, it was relief of not having ambiguity. To have ambiguity that long is really intense. And people have to kind of have two worlds in their head. They're not exactly sure the future holds. So that was the immediate mood. It was just kind of like lighter. And then from there, yeah, I think that the question you asked is right.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  How do you make sure everyone's all in? And the way that we did it was we said, look, I just kind of put a video out into the company Slack and emailed everybody and said, hey, if you're.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Tired after working really hard if you're someone who joined during this period thinking you're gonna go work at Adobe and actually the startup thing is not for you. Like, please know, we're gonna be working very hard, hustling hard. And no shame, like, we're still on good terms. If you want to leave, here is a few months' pay. Uh, and you're welcome to just let us know, we'll make it super easy. And from there, uh, you know, six months before you can reapply. That's the only condition. Uh, after six months, you can reapply and we'll, uh, re-interview you. And it was a pretty small percentage of people that took us up on that.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  But overall, it was healthy and some people actually ended up doing total career pivots, like, in wild ways, uh, went on different life paths. Like, I, I think it was healthy for everyone.

• 11:59David Friedberg?

  You continue to build the business, it grows, you go public. And I just want to fast forward to the earlier this year. You guys announced a partnership with Anthropic, Claude Design.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Oh, we, not quite, we, we had been working with Anthropic as a partner.

• 12:15David Friedberg?

  It was a connector.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Uh, separately announced Claude Design, yes.

• 12:19David Friedberg?

  Oh, sorry, yeah, that's right, but you had a connector with them that you announced earlier in the year.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have an MCP, we are partnered with many companies, but yeah.

• 12:26David Friedberg?

  Then they announced Claude Design. Was that surprising to you when they did that? And how worried were you when they came out with Claude Design relative to what you guys were offering? Cause the market looked at it and said, oh my God, Figma's dead, Claude is gonna crush Figma.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  I mean, the nature of online discourse right now is, uh, we're so back, it's so over. And it's just a, a cycle, right? I mean, how many times have you been all over, uh, in the last, like, month?

• 12:55David Friedberg?

  Yes.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Probably, you know, a bunch of times I don't even know about.

• 12:58David Friedberg?

  Yes.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  And I think I was kind of used to that, at that point.

• 13:03David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Cause, you know, you, when, when you kind of die, uh, so many times and then you're actually like not dead.

• 13:10David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  You kind of realize at some point, maybe, maybe this is like not the truth. Social media is actually like, not reality. But, um, yeah, I, I, uh, was overall surprised at the way that kind of communication happened. Uh, I think that, you know, look, everybody wants to do good, usually. I mean, there's some exceptions, but for the most part, that's, that's what I assume for people, they want to win, they want to do good. And I think that organizations scaling really fast, Anthropic, like, are there any examples of organizations scaling that fast ever?

• 13:49David Friedberg?

  Never.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Can get very confused and, um, mixed up internally. And due to that, weird stuff can happen. And I think that it's just the case that, yeah, we're on the other side of kind of like a weird bout of, uh, communication there.

• 14:07David Friedberg?

  Did it, did it affect your business?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Oh, no, uh, like, not that, not any degree that was like, you know, significant.

• 14:16David Friedberg?

  Cause I read your quarterly report after that announcement, you guys grew 48% year over year. And the business basically accelerated its growth. So I'm looking at that and I'm, you know, this was when everyone had the SaaS apocalypse thesis in general, and I was a big subscriber to SaaS apocalypse. But I do think that there's a bunch of ways to distinguish SaaS companies, one of which I think is founder-led. And I think that there's user experience that matters a lot, embedded user experience, and the ability to kind of build from there, especially if you know how to use AI to accelerate and reinvent your business as a founder particularly, but your business accelerated.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yep, um, no, it's been, continued to do well. And I think that, look, the hard part about model companies and product is like, what is the product? Is it the model? Is it the UI on top? Is it some hybrid of both? If it's a hybrid, how is it weighted? And, uh, in any case.

• 15:18David Friedberg?

  You're talking about like an Anthropic and OpenAI?

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 15:21David Friedberg?

  Gemini.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Like whether it's a harness for coding or it's a, uh, product like Claude Design that you just mentioned. I, I think it's easy to mistake model progress for product progress.

• 15:32David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  The reality is a tool like Figma, you know, has taken a very long time to build, uh, and a very long time to make sure that we get the workflows right for our users. And we still have work to do. Our users will tell you that. Uh, and I, and we're always trying to make it better. So I think that, like, it's, it's sort of, um, not surprising that it wasn't an instant hit or something, when there's actually quite a lot of work on the just core user journey workflow side that you have to do to meet the needs of professionals. Now, they're, uh, they've made Claude Design into a product that is, is broad. So it's trying to do a lot of things, like you'll see like posters and stuff as well, like graphic design scenarios, I believe, when you go to their homepage and, and like,

• 16:17Speaker 01

  maybe they'll do well in some areas and not others. Like, I'm not bullish or bearish on the product, I think it's just like, hard to make good design tools for professionals.

• 16:25David Friedberg?

  Yeah, there's a lot of things to design.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  And, yeah, and also.

• 16:29David Friedberg?

  Lot of categories of design.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  The feel of it is like an instrument. You have to get the feel right, you have to get the mechanics right.

• 16:34David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  And we've stressed every detail of that and have had a lot of feedback over the years about what people like and don't like, it depends on where they're coming from, it depends on, uh, their task and sort of like what they're trying to overall do. And there's so many scenarios. But overall, uh, you know, I think that, um, there are more modes for software than are implied by the SaaS apocalypse. And it's not like software as a category is binary, good or bad.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  There are plenty of other ways that you can, um, make sure that you're able to sustain yourself long-term and you have a growing business long-term as a software company or app layer company. Uh, and you, part of it is, yes, if you're as specialized as possible on a target audience and you know your audience and you're building for them, that is something that matters.

• 17:29David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Uh, and I think a great example of this is Cursor. Um, Cursor, like, by all means, should not have grown the way they did. You've got all these frontier labs that are chasing them with their own models before Cursor had a model of any kind. But yet Cursor really obsessed over the user, they saw our own corners, they strategized, they made sure they're doing the right thing for the customer, and they've had an incredible success.

• 17:57David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  And I, I think it's amazing and I think it's an example that will be repeated, uh, across many different types of companies.

• 18:05David Friedberg?

  SaaS is not dead.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think that it's not true that all SaaS companies are fine.

• 18:10David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  And it's also not true that all SaaS companies are dead.

• 18:13David Friedberg?

  Fair enough.

• 18:21David Friedberg?

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• 18:52David Friedberg?

  In a world of AI, agentic AI, I have this capacity to prompt as a human and say, I want to make something that looks like, feels like, and does X.

• 19:09David Friedberg?

  And this magical technology takes off and does it. And I end up with a product. Sometimes the product is great, sometimes the product sucks, but it's improving the ability for these tools to do that. Historically, I would have needed a product manager, a designer, a bunch of engineers to do the actual building of the product, whether it's a software product or a hardware product.

• 19:36David Friedberg?

  Increasingly though, it seems like AI is doing more and more of those tools. Can you just give me your view on the future of human creativity in this era? This future era that we're waltzing into, the singularity we're falling into? Where does human creativity play a role? And where do the gaps still need to be filled for taking human creativity to the realization moment?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  It's the case, I think, that, uh, we're lowering the floor with AI, making it so that all of the production, whether it's code or it's, uh, motion, video, design, whatever, you name it, uh, if it's digital, you're lowering the floor to make it happen.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Everyone can be part of that and it's more democratized.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Ironically, and I I used to believe, uh, even a few years ago, I said it, our annual user conference config, I said, "The ceiling will be raised by AI. You'll be able to do greater things before." That was wrong. Uh, the ceiling has stayed the same. AI is not raising the ceiling. Humans are raising the ceiling, though. Uh, the creatives, the designers out there, when they choose to focus, invest their time, and to be bold and try to do something that no one else has ever done before, that's when we see the ceiling raised. And at that point, uh, it's a question of, do you care about being in the center distribution?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Do you care about like a mean or average result? Uh, is that sufficient for your task? Or do you need something that shows that you care, that you took the time to actually like go make this thing? Do you need to go and be beyond, uh, what is the minimum bar? And in the world of software design and product, I mean, we're seeing exponentially more software than ever before. It's exactly what you predict. The exponential continues. Uh, you'll get App Store, uh, numbers. The App Store numbers are exactly that same exponential. And we're seeing that the usage and utilization of apps flat.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  So people are using just the same amount of apps, but the amount of apps that you can get, it's like bigger than ever and growing. And I think it just speaks to, okay, there's a need to differentiate yourself if you're building any kind of software. Well, how do you do that? It's not code, because anyone can create code now. That's not the hard part anymore. So my view is design is the new code. It's the layer above. You have to make it so that your design is differentiated, and you have to have a point of view and a good brand and marketing. And the point of view, I think, is the part that is probably missed the most.

• 22:31David Friedberg?

  That's the human part.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  It's not just the human part. It's also the part that humans are uncomfortable having. Uh, I think that folks are scared to say something that's not consensus.

• 22:43David Friedberg?

  It's so true. I mean, this is what the greatest artists, the greatest business leaders, the greatest politicians have always demonstrated is the willingness to be brave, to say and do the things that no one else would say or do. And that's what changes the world.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And I would also add comedians to the mix, too.

• 23:01David Friedberg?

  And comedians.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Comedians are underappreciated.

• 23:03David Friedberg?

  I had Tony Hinchcliffe at our thing last year, because he's like one of the few guys that is willing to say and do things nowadays, in the cancel culture era.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  But comedians often like speak truth in a way that people otherwise couldn't hear.

• 23:13David Friedberg?

  Willing to say things.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  And, uh, it's not about political correctness. It's about, do you have a message that can rise above the noise and do so in a sustained way? Because look at social media right now. Like, every unique point of view, everything interesting, it gets diffused into like the ether of social media instantly. And so unless you've got, uh, something that allows you to kind of keep generating content and a message that is really, uh, evergreen, because it's so outside of the over 10 window, you're not going to be able to actually break through and have any attention. And the attention economy is ruthless.

• 23:53David Friedberg?

  Is this also what human creativity is? If you're not doing something that's never been done before, you're not creating something, you're mimicking something, you're copying something, you're Xeroxing something. But to do something new is to create. And newness requires doing things that have never been done before.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  By definition.

• 24:15David Friedberg?

  By definition.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  And, uh, therefore, you are operating outside of this distribution of training. It's not even about operating outside the mean of the distribution, which is where you start. If you're just prompting without any like, any kind of advanced scaffolding around it. Uh, but you're actually doing something that is breaking through, and it's unique. And I do think that will be rewarded by the market. Everyone's gonna see it. I think it's even rewarded by the attention market of organizations. I'm already hearing from so many, like, "Oh, I got another deck made by AI today."

• 24:51David Friedberg?

  Totally.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  And I don't even know if the person who made it, I like don't know if they read it. Do they even know what's in their deck? And at Figma, we actually made it so that, uh, it was just a simple thing, but we said, hey, if you are, uh, using AI in your writing of any kind, just put at the top, written with AI.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Very simple, very easy to follow. Uh, and, you know, people made jokes about it internally, but people do it. And it makes it so that we can all trust that when we see something, we know that it's been cared for enough that it's like worth your time to process. And I, uh, I think that we're gonna see some bifurcation here around trust. Uh, and one way to get trust is to do something with your hands. The other point that's important is if you have a vision or if you have a point of, uh, view in your head of how something should be designed or look aesthetically or from an experiential standpoint,

• 25:50Speaker 01

  you're, I, I think it's great to start with building with AI. It gives you something to get past like the blank page, blank canvas problem. You can then react to it and say, here are all the things I don't like. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go fix these things. I'm gonna change them up. Because it's really helpful to have a back and forth. But if you don't, if you have your own vision and you're trusting AI to implement it, you're doing it through the lens of AI. And like, AI has kind of like its own distribution.

• 26:21David Friedberg?

  Model fit by it, yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so you're not gonna get exactly what you want. Now, if you're able to do both, and that's what we're trying to enable in Figma, make code a material on the canvas, make it so that you can go start by building. You can build to think if you like. Uh, but also, when you want to think and work with your hands, you can do that, too.

• 26:41David Friedberg?

  Right.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  And go back and forth rapidly.

• 26:42David Friedberg?

  Right. I remember the early days of Photoshop, just having been a user, avid user from the early days. People freaked out when layers happened, and then they freaked out when all the filters came out, and when Kai's power tools came out. And everyone was like, what's the role of the photographer anymore? It's like you're destroying the art of photography, the creativity of photography. But it unleashed a new era of creativity, because now these new artists emerged that could use these filters and use these layering tools and capabilities to reimagine what's possible on a canvas. And it was basically a new toolkit. It doesn't mean that the old creatives mapped perfectly to the new creative system and tools.

• 27:27David Friedberg?

  But there was an explosion in creativity and human potential that arose from this. And we pushed boundaries in all sorts of ways. It feels like we might be entering that era again.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I'm a big believer in that, and I think that part of it is what I described about market dynamics. In order to get attention, in order to get engagement, in order to get people to care, you have to do something new. Uh, you have to actually be daring and try things that are bold. The resistance to change is real, and there's a great thing you can Google, actually, for your point. Look up the mailing list for when Layers was introduced. And it's like, people going, "This is the worst thing ever." Uh, and you can find it. If you Google, it's like on a, a mailing list that's publicly available, and you can see all the reactions.

• 28:14David Friedberg?

  Totally.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Um, but obviously, it became the future. And I think that, uh, there's also still photographers in the world who are doing incredible work. But the bigger disruption, if we're gonna be real, it was the camera phone. Uh, that was what made it so that people stopped buying cameras that were dedicated to the task of photography, because the best camera is the one that's on you. And started treating photography in a different way with Instagram and their camera phone. Uh, so it transformed for a lot of people. And I can't tell you if it's better or worse as a result, uh, but there was change.

• 28:50David Friedberg?

  There's one view on human creativity that human creativity is basically connecting dots in the unconscious that you've had, seen, or experienced all of these things in your life or in your set of inputs, sensory inputs. And from those inputs, you connect dots, and then you extrapolate a forward view of things that hasn't perhaps been seen in the world before. Do you agree with that view on creativity? And is it distinct from actually what AI does? And again, I want to go back to the uniqueness of the human in an AI era.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think that, um,

• 29:30Speaker 01

  One thing that happens with humans is they're always seeking novelty. Like our reward function is different than like an AI's, also our loss function. Like if I were to open this bottle of water and splash it all over you and you got mad at me, like you bet I'm not gonna do that again. But an AI like, you know, with RL, like really tell it a bunch of times. Uh, that, no, you don't do that.

• 29:56David Friedberg?

  Robots, stop kicking me.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, maybe that'll change with architectures over time, but like, overall, the brain is different than the current systems that we've made with AI. And I, I think that it's unknown. We don't know much about neuroscience. Overall, I'd love to get to the point where like we all know more about neuroscience, but something is fundamentally different there when it comes to creativity. And I also think design is different than creativity. It's not just creativity. It's also problem solving, like I mentioned earlier. And the combination of the two is I, I just find it fascinating because you have a user, you're trying to solve their needs, you're trying to do so in a way that stands out as creative and it connects with them.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  And also, like, you have to connect to wider systems. The marketing brand, the culture, the business problems and so on. And, and like holding all that in your head at different levels of abstraction, while trying to like deliver a screen or a flow that like from a search base standpoint can be a commutational explosion is just pretty cool. It's pretty fascinating.

• 31:08David Friedberg?

  I'm actually personally really excited about the idea of reinventing existing art form and media where AI can enable more dynamic generation, where the creator steps up a level, sets a bunch of parameters, but doesn't actually necessarily render the final product. But the final product, sort of like in a video game, is rendered on the fly with the user in front of it. But the creator, the creative team behind a video game, for example, is building all of the object. They're building the storyline. They're building the narrative flow. And the realization of that is much more dynamic. But I feel like it's gonna find its way. It's gonna leach its way into many more different media.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  We have products around that too. Like in Figma design, you can have now generative tools and shaders where you can do very much that. Or we have a product called Weave. And Weave is basically a node based system. You can connect model outputs into other inputs and such. And the whole idea is like, it's not bad to generate with AI, but you need a way to craft that clay. You need a way to mold it. And with Weave, people do like the most amazing video and photo work. And overall, just like the, the outcomes that are achievable with it are incredible.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  So yeah, I think that if you've got the intention, if you actually care to do the work, you can always get to a better result. And people, you know, new model drops. There's like this AI psychosis moment that people are in for a few days. And it's like, I think also aided by algo feeds. The best results rise to the top. Everyone's like, this model is everything. And then a few days later, it's, it's okay, okay. I know the kind of like main tropes of the model. And you adapt fast. Like the novelty is gone. It no longer is a thing that's, that's kind of like rewarding you or firing off your dopamine system or whatever. And instead you're like, okay, well, yeah, it always does that thing.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  How do I move past it? And that seems to be the continued loop we're in, uh, which is sort of fascinating because models keep getting so good when it comes to these formal domains, math, cybersecurity. Like IQ points just stack and stack and stack. And then for creativity and for design, it's very incremental progress overall.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Maybe that will change at some point, but I think the fact that these are non-verifiable domains has something to do with it.

• 33:42David Friedberg?

  And it's probably the fact that maybe that is the human role in the AI toolkit, which is conceive, create, design, and let the AI do more of the work, but it gives you the ability to do much more work. Any art or media that you're particularly excited about or interested in that's kind of emerging right now?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  You know, I, I find it fascinating when people do sort of like new AI experiments. For example, uh, it puts in the media category. There was a designer artist type that made a webpage the other day. And it was like a letter to Figma, actually. So it caught my attention because I was, you know, getting the Figma hit on the algo feed. And every time you moved away from it and came back, it got slightly more degraded and it was basically a comment on attention. But that was really cool.

• 34:45David Friedberg?

  Oh, cool. That was a piece of art.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  I thought so. It was web page. But like, I thought that the technique and the way that they went about it was really neat and like, not something that many others have done. I've seen a few other things like that, but overall I thought it was a very cool way to do it. It is also just a very well-written letter. I liked the letter too. But I, yeah, I see stuff like this. And, you know, back in the day, I remember seeing people do like NFT art with AI when NFTs were a thing, you know? So there's like 2019 or something like that, but the way they did it sometimes was really remarkable. I mean, Holly Herndon's work

• 35:29Speaker 01

  around taking her voice and making it so that her voice was something that people could use in an almost open source way. That was quite incredible and ahead of its time. And I think this like sort of play between what is me, what is the collective? And what is it that is unique and ownable versus what is not? Is, is quite fascinating. I've always been fascinated by that intersection.

• 36:00David Friedberg?

  Yeah, that's cool. Just as we wrap up, a lot of the commentary on AI that's negative is that it takes away human agency, human potential gets capped out. Can you just talk a little bit about your view on the, the potential of every human to be a creative, to be a designer and how AI might perhaps magnify every, every person, not just the quote creatives, where they're in some elite class of artists in some special building, but the ability for every human to create and the ability for every human to design and produce things in the world? And where you sit with that right now?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  I, I think it's even broader. I think it's, it's as a human in general, pre-AI, post-AI, you have a choice. Do you want to consume or create? Do you want to take the easy path or do you want to like climb the mountain? And what I'm seeing happen right now a lot is people are letting AI think for them.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Less at Figma, but like more just like in my interactions with the world. I just see a lot of this at the moment. And that's one path you can take. But the other one is actually use AI to further your understanding of the world, to learn, to do things you never would have dared to do before because they were, would have taken so much time to learn or it's so hard. And to really expand like the potential ways that you can like live as a human. That to me, the latter is the interesting part. The former, like, why would I want something else to think for me? Like my entire life has been about like figuring out how to think.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  And I don't know, I just hope that people use AI to create good and to like go be a force for it, rather than just kind of like joining the hive mind.

• 37:52David Friedberg?

  Everyone can be a maker.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Everyone can be a maker. Everyone can go do bold things. It's about willpower and it's about curiosity. And if you're curious and you're willing to do the work.

• 38:06David Friedberg?

  Be brave and speak your truth.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And then I think that you can go do incredible things. We will probably see a vastly different setup in the future where things that we can't imagine are possible and things we take for granted are no longer in sort of the realm of what humans do every day. How exactly that will look, I don't think either of us can tell. But it is the case that both were under the prospect of great change. And nothing hit home for me more than the math drop last night from OpenAI of 700 plus papers on all sorts of very famous problems.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  That, that was a show of something. I had a lot of emotions. I don't, I don't know how to process it.

• 38:55David Friedberg?

  I thought it was the greatest day of discovery in human history.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, factually, yes. And also like something about it was like brilliant and exciting and something about it was kind of sad. And I, I don't know how to articulate the sadness, but it felt like we lost something and gained something at the same time.

• 39:14David Friedberg?

  I don't know. I lift my head up and I look at the next frontier and I think that the frontiers are brighter and wider and more accessible than they've ever been. So I'm pretty excited.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm excited too. And I think that the world will look amazing and I'm an optimist. I think there's gonna be a lot of challenges and we'll figure them out.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  How exactly and what the challenges will be in their full form, we have yet to see. But yeah, I do think that like math is something that somehow has a quality of mystery to it, like an unsolved problem.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Is it, you know, is this conjecture true or false? How? Why? Grappling with that mystery is something that is special. And I, I'm both excited for the progress and like all the things it'll make possible. And also like, I don't think it's wrong to like mourn the loss of a little mystery.

• 40:07David Friedberg?

  Fair enough. Dylan, this has been a great chat. Should we go have another drink?

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 40:10David Friedberg?

  Let's do it.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 40:12David Friedberg?

  Thanks.