Uncapped #31 | Dylan Field from Figma

Dylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma, a design software company that went public in July 2025. Founded in 2012, Figma transformed how people design, prototype, and build products together. After a $20 billion acquisition attempt by Adobe collapsed in 2022 because of regulators, Dylan helped Figma rebound stronger than ever. Just three years later, Figma listed its shares at nearly $20 billion and its stock price more than tripled on its first trading day. A few highlights: Expanding a sleepy market Merging of designers and product roles Counter-narrative to polarizing CEOs If models get better, we have to Remembering Brat Summer --- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:37) The first 5 years of Figma (5:14) Slow build vs AI gold rush (13:01) The role of the human designer (18:55) Small companies with $1B in revenue (21:28) Expanding a sleepy market (27:49) Leading with empathy as CEO (32:51) Connecting with young people (41:37) Getting stronger despite Adobe (48:43) AI impacting Figma’s roadmap (52:02) Final bastion of human designers --- More on Dylan: https://www.figma.com/ https://x.com/zoink More on Jack: https://www.altcap.com/ https://x.com/jaltma --- https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Email: [email protected]

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We're going to get to a world, we're already kind of there, where good enough is not enough. Good enough is going to be mediocre. And you're going to need to differentiate through design, through craft, through point of view, through brand, through storytelling, and marketing. And I think the people that internalize that now, they're going to be winners.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  That's my point of view, is that this is what's going to matter, it's up at the top of the stack. And if you don't internalize it now, like, you got an issue.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Dylan, it's a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for doing this.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Jack, thank you.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Okay, I want to start by teeing up a contrast between Figma in the early days, which was like a multi-year long build before you kind of got things going. And then the state of the world today, where like AI startups are racing out of the gates and there's tons of competition and everything's frenetic.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Thirteen years and...

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Thirteen years.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  And it's a little different now, isn't it?

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you started in 2012.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  August 2012 was our official start.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  And then you got really kind of off to the races when, like, four or five years later?

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Closed beta was launched December 2015. GA, October 2016, didn't start charging until summer 2017.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Jeez.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  Same day as our CFO, now CFO started, fun fact.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  CFO started the day you started charging?

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was like a biz ops guy then, but now he's CFO.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so you had this five-year period. And I guess when you look back on it, you could, you could either sort of, I imagine, feel like that was a little too long, we should have been launching...

• 1:35Speaker 00

  It's definitely too long. If you're watching, don't do that.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  But on the other hand, you built some hard stuff, like you put like, you know, a design product in the browser when people had never done it. You'd made like collaboration, which, you know, I've read is very, was a very difficult task. And that had advantages too. So how do you sort of make sense, looking back now, in sort of the fullness of time on that five-year period?

• 1:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think definitely there were ways we could have speedrun it, hiring faster. Noticing that we had product market pull and that folks were like literally begging us to go do things. You know, when we got very long docs from people saying, I was so inspired by our last night together. And we went through this very long user test where everything was not performant and it was, you know, the tool was in terrible shape. Then they followed up the next morning with like, you know, thirteen, fourteen page doc. And it was like, here's all the stuff that I want you to build. I probably should have known that maybe people like cared and wanted this thing. But, you know, I was also nervous. I kind of took the roadmap feedback and I was like, oh man, it's gonna take forever to do all this stuff. In reality, I should have hired faster.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  I think we had the resources to do it. I was just a little trepidatious. But beyond that, I think, um, yeah, there was a lot of stuff to build. And there were certain things we could have not done that we like later pulled out. You know, we had Evan, my co-founder, um, well, I was sort of thinking about cross-platform stuff, compilation and general programming language theory. And so he made like a way to do cross-platform targeting, uh, to not just web, but also as a backup in case something didn't work out, you know, desktop. And at some point it was like, yeah, this is all stuff we can rip out. We can move way faster without doing this.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  So there's things that we could have done to speed it up, but not that much.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there is this category of product. I think about like Air Tables may be another example where I think it's like a hard product to build. I think like email is classically just like, you can't, you just like can't ship a quick V1 that people will use. So maybe there's some element of that that you had.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think also it was like, even after we launched in GA, we kept adding new features. And every time we did, or almost every time, we would see just that retention would go up. And so, uh, it's also interesting, you know, there was folks in the beginning that were. Uh, very minimalist and they liked the minimalism of the tool. We started adding everything people needed for their workflows and they're like, can we have the old Figma back, please? Uh, so you always define that balance between adding and complexity and then simplicity of versatility, but also you gotta make sure it's powerful.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Did you have the sense when you were in those early innings that anything you built worked? In other words, like, were you like, all of our ideas that we seem to build, they all make the product better? Like, were you sort of like, um, were you having to make hard calls between A, B, and C? And one was gonna be good and one was gonna be bad? Or was it just all of these improvements were good because there was such strong product pull? And it was just like, the faster you built, the better?

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Once we got out and once we had people using it, uh, we kind of separated the work streams into two. So one was the blockers work stream, whereas like, these are things that are literally blocking people from adopting. We know this for a fact. What's the prioritization and rank order of, you know, which ones were removed first? And there was kind of like differentiators. We didn't call it that, but it was one project at a time mostly. These are things like design systems and the ability to share, uh, of components in a file across your entire team. You know, and, uh, we have to do both. We really had to go evolve the state of the world, but also make it so more people could try the thing.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. When you think about that sort of experience and then you look around at AI tools now and, you know, there was like a bit going around recently of an investor talking about how you gotta get to, you know, a couple million of ARR in no time. And, you know, it's like a bit that you hear a lot and a lot of, I think, founders feel self-conscious if they're not going one to ten.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Zero to ten million in like a month or something?

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  And there's like a lot of that. And I think then, you know, investors, I think are, you know, kind of helping probably perpetuate it because the next, you know, round of investors are gonna think about the same thing. And, you know, it's like very, very different than the way Figma got started.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  And I'm just curious how you make sense of seeing that around you since you came up through one of the like slow build type of startups.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. And again, don't recommend slow build either, but I think first of all, if we had today's tools, like if I had Figma made today or prompt a app tool.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  To build a lot faster.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably could build a lot faster. Um, but.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  I also think that maybe my hot take here is that there's a lot of really awesome companies right now that are not like really AI companies. And so first of all, I think if you're looking at only AI stuff, you're just missing a lot. It's like, actually, there's some gems there. For example, recently, you know, did investments in companies like Ambrook. Ambrook's amazing company trying to help farmers with their financial situation and like figure out how to make it so they can do taxes better and deal with all the compliance and forms that come along with it. And I think that they have a real opportunity in front of them.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Another company I invested in, Laura Demeen, her company is called Until Labs, and they're a whole body reversible cryogenics company. That's their moonshot goal. But along the way, you know, there's a real problem to solve where organs, you might have an organ come available, but you have a very limited time window to get it to a recipient. And if you're able to basically use that same tech to be able to vitrify the organ and then re-warm it at its destination, then you have a longer period of time to go make that match.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  And that can save a ton of lives, especially combined with new emergent technologies. And, you know, it's like, yeah, neither of them are really AI companies, but like they're great businesses and I am strongly committed.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  It's interesting when you have these like trends as strong as AI now, maybe crypto some number of years ago, you know, obviously there's others. There's probably a dynamic where there becomes such a strong gold rush to that thing that the people who are not working on that thing are missionaries at a much higher rate also. And that's probably also the flip side trap is in the gold rush. There's a lot of people who are going to be, you know, very missionary about it, but there's also a lot of people who are, hey, I can go zero to 10 next month, so.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Well, I think the other thing that's interesting is that. AI closes gaps. And so because it closes gaps and makes it so you can do things that might otherwise take like a very long time in a short amount of time. Uh, it also expands markets. And so I think that's probably implicit to the assumptions here.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Is that uh, there's a little hanging fruit all over.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  If we're able to identify these companies that are growing so fast, we're also identifying the big markets people haven't tapped yet.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  And I, I think that um, that might be true. It's certainly gonna be true for some companies, but also there's, you know, uh, a dynamic where yeah, probably some of the companies that go straight up, go straight down.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Uh, it's a question of when. And then there'll be some amazing winners, I mean, you know.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Uh, but also it's, it's just like this default of, yeah, okay. If the why now is AI, uh, you know, it's the same why now is kind of like everyone else's why now.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  And, you know, if your pure strategy is like, it's a gold rush, I'm gonna get there fastest. Then you have to be charging incredibly hard.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  And you have to be strategic. And I think, uh, you know, first of all, you have to know that you got that in you.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Uh, cause not everyone does.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  You know, nine nine, uh, six, nine nine seven, whatever it is.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  That people need to sign up for.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Um.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  It's also besides the hours, it's also a set of business decisions.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  They look a certain way. They look very different than the way you built Sigma, for example.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  For sure. And uh, I think also it's, it's like, okay, um, is this something that you think is long-term defensible? Like, is there any reason for you to believe that? But also at the same time, if you get there first, it's often the case that you can just kind of go all sorts of interesting places. So it's, it's, uh, you know, all these companies, it's very hard to puzzle through what will happen. And I think that's like leading to the climate we're in where. Uh, folks are just racing towards opportunities and then

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  They get there and uh, people are lining up to go back them at very large valuations.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Where we're seeing these mega C deals before people even launch anything and that's not a judgment on whatever is going on right now because some of them will be amazing companies. It's just a description of where we're at.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Do you ever, I'm curious, do you ever think about um, like imagining building a company sort of like in the opposite ethos of the way you built Figma? And think about it and say like, ah, that actually sounds kind of fun. Like, does it sound fun to you or tiring to you to do like? A very hard charging, you know, just like go for a really aggressive raise a ton, hire a ton, burn a ton, take a market. Which is very different than, you know, you've obviously built this like super profitable, you know, high sort of, you know, focused company.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  I mean, basically, uh, the first part of that, the hard charging part um, is what we are doing at Figma. Uh, I think that the team is working incredibly hard right now, myself included. And uh, we see massive opportunity in front of us. Figma Make is one example. Um, that's an industry where, you know, if there's a lot of different players, we think we have a differentiated approach. Where you can go from Figma Design, pull context in, into Figma Make, use that to create a better designed application. Uh, and then also go back to Figma Design, tweak, and eventually it'll be, you know, hopefully a round trip, two sides of the same coin.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  And you'll be able to uh, do, we've talked about this a little bit publicly, but be able to do more workflows, assistant. Uh, type things in Figma Design where you can prompt there too.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Uh, and just in general, like so excited about making it so that more people can create these designs that are consistent. With their overall brand, language, their design system, um, and get their ideas out there. Because if like you scribble something on napkin, it will not be treated seriously as if it looks, you know, the same as your usual UI.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Doesn't mean you don't need a designer. Uh. We're gonna get to a world, we're already kind of there, where good enough is not enough. Good enough is gonna be mediocre.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  And you're gonna need to differentiate through design, through craft, through point of view, through brand, through storytelling, and marketing. And I think the people that internalize that now, they're gonna be winners.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  That's my point of view, is that this is what's gonna matter, stuff that top the stack. And if you don't internalize it now, like, you got an issue.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  This is one of the topics I wanted to ask you about, is, as far as you can see, I don't even know how many years that is today, but as far as you can see, do you think that the role of the human designer will flip somehow from maker to editor, or something different like that? Or does it become, you know, only focus, you know, people on the most creative, most pivotal flourishes, or, you know, most important integral parts of the product? Like, where does this go? You know, if you look out as far as you're able to look out?

• 13:33Speaker 00

  I think, um, first of all,

• 13:38Speaker 00

  I think it's, I I've been kind of in this place of, uh, maybe the roles are all merging together. And I was saying that before even AI was the topic.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you were.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Uh, you know, even ten years ago, five years ago, it's been something I've been kind of noticing, just slow progression towards. Uh, and now I feel like.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  The roles being sort of.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  Uh, oh, PM, engineer, designer, researcher, you know, the sort of typical roles you find in the product design development process. And I I think that, um, if you look at sort of like the general pull of AI, it makes everyone feel like they should be more generalist to keep up.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  And then also, if you look at the way that things are actually playing out, I think it's those roles merging, because the roles are still there. But it's the responsibilities, it's the things that people are doing every day. Those are starting to get more murky. It's like everyone has their specialization. But then they also have a increased ability to have impact elsewhere outside their specialization. So now it's like, okay, as a designer, like, I'll go commit some code. Or as a product manager, I should go actually make a prototype from idea rather than just a PRD.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, you've always had like full stack product builders at like a startup. And like, uh, you know, the co-founder CTO has always done all of that for since as long as software's been going.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Well, but oftentimes they go work with a product manager, designer.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  And all of them just, uh, are doing it all.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  And I think, though, that now we're in a place where you should be hiring a designer right away. Came back to your question around what's the future of the designer role. Uh, I think design is like kind of everything going forward. If you think of that as the top of the value stack and you think about all the things that can impact design and all the things you're trying to pull in. You're thinking about the business logic, you're thinking about the user problems, uh, you're trying to get to the hard user problems, like, what is it they really want? Um, trying to think about the system and how it shows up in all these different places.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  The brand, the way that you're able to incorporate culture, the affordances you want to use, the style that you want to go with, but also the structure. And all these decisions, um, are at the root of how you'll win or lose the business.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there there's good AI tooling around a lot of what you just said. I mean, even like getting user feedback. You know, used to be, and you know, to some extent still is, but it used to be like the way you had to do it was like, go schedule a hundred thirty minute calls. And now you can do it other ways.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And so it's like you think about a designer and they're able to get feedback scalably. They're probably able to like make at least good enough versions of designs that they can start playing with. They could probably start to get something into production, like all from sort of like a cockpit.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not saying that like in the next year or two years. That designer will then be able to scale the company as one person.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  I actually think engineers are more needed than ever to be able to architect systems properly, to think through what is the right way to go and figure out how you should structure everything. Because if you just let these agents run right now.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  You're gonna have a mess. And that's where we see security vulnerabilities and we see hacks going on and user data leaking. And we see, you know, companies that start to scale and they break.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Do you think this is like a moment in time issue or do you think that this is like a perpetual issue?

• 17:04Speaker 00

  Um, I think it's for sure the issue right now and I would expect it's an issue for a while longer. And I think the developer will still be in that outer loop.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  Even as these models improve, as will researchers. Like, it's kind of an interesting question for math as well. Like, I think math is probably underappreciated as one of the most deterministic areas where RL should shine the most, like even more so than code. And it should be the case that like, I don't know how much it costs, but we have a ASI mathematician. Does that mean that mathematicians are out of a job? No, I don't think so. I think that the mathematicians will be prompting and reasoning through things and working with that ASI and they're kind of gonna be almost fishermen trying to fish for the theorems, the proofs.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Do you think that we are, I think what you're describing is there's a future where we have potentially even more designers and engineers than we have now, but they're just much more productive.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  I think much more productive, but let's be clear about productivity. In the engineering context, productivity is building something well.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  In the design context, it might be that it is just further exploration of the options space sometimes. Because I think right now, oftentimes you're constrained by timeline. You can only explore so much. You might not be getting to the best solution. If you explore even further, look at more options.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  And figure out how those actually will work out in the decision tree. Then from there, you can figure out, okay, here's the option I want to go with and then go even deeper. And you can actually go and apply even more craft to that option. And I think that design is inherently not deterministic, unlike math. And so the role of AI and how it shows up in design will be very different than the more deterministic loops like code and math.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Do you buy the argument that we'll have like lots of small companies with a billion of revenue? Or do you think that instead what will happen is the level of competition is just going to rise? And companies will be about the same size, but the software is just going to be like way sicker.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  You know, I, I think that there's already companies that are smaller than you would expect with large amounts of revenue. And then the question is, how much will they scale before they just totally break? And I think we're going to find out. Uh, I'm sure that you and I both have mutual friends that are, are in this situation. And, you know, I, I talked to these founders and they're proud of like how much they've accomplished with so few people. It's like, oh my God, I got to this revenue milestone. It's like quite huge and I've got like 10 people. It's amazing. Wow. And they get all this positive reinforcement, but then they also say, if you talk to them a little bit longer, I'm really trying to hire. You got any referrals for me?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Cause like they are desperate for more people to go help with all the problems they now have at scale.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  And so I, I, I don't know, um, if it's true that like team sizes will decrease a lot. Uh, there's a lot of problems to deal with, you know? Yes, AI makes some rules more efficient, not all rules.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  And, uh, as AI improves, we'll get more efficiencies, but also it's just more work done.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, to that point, it's like, if the engineers get much more productive because of code gen, it's like, well, you're going to start building a lot more product.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  You need a lot.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  And testing a lot more product too.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Probably need more designers.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  So I do think it all kind of plays that way.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  And I think the competition aspect is, uh, really important. If you have more software in the world, and we've had this exponential curve so far.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  That's the part I've never understood. It's like company A is like doing the same with less now. And then company B is like, well, I'll just do more with the same and we'll win.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  I see it as, uh, for Figma, I mean, we just went through headcount planning, you know? It didn't really cross my mind to go, hey, let's reduce headcount or let's keep headcount flat. It's like, we got so much we want to do. We have so many ideas. Let's increase headcount. Let's go hire people that are great and let's go do all that stuff, amazing stuff for our users. And I think just like, that's the mindset I think more companies will find themselves in is, oh, my gosh, like, there's more possibility. I can do more and I need more people for it.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  And then some companies will go, oh, maybe I can get more efficient. But I think that might be a recipe for long-term, you know, sort of, they might not be as effective as the companies that are trying to grow with this technology.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  On this competition point, one of the things I wanted to ask you about that might come off as, you know, ignorant or annoying, so sorry in advance, but.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  It's a good we done.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  I always read Figma as having somewhat low competition relative to being such a big market. And obviously, you had, you know, other products that you were competing with. There was Adobe and there was Sketch. And that's not to minimize any of it. But it seemed to me like the market didn't catch on around you as fast as I thought it might have versus in other markets that seem smaller, there's many, many more companies working on it. Is that right? Or am I misreading it?

• 22:09Speaker 00

  I think it's changed over different periods of time. I mean, in the beginning of Figma, when we first started, I remember looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics because I wanted to know the market size. Like, you should know if you're reading any business book. And the answer was 250,000 designers. There's 250,000 designers in the United States. I'm like, shit. Like, that, that's not the market that we can use to go get VC funding. So my pitch was basically like, we'll start with design, we're going to broaden out. And then, uh, what I think was actually happening is my intuition, but I can't articulate it very well all the time. Was everything else was getting easier. Like you didn't have to host servers anymore.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  You could just use the cloud. You didn't have to go make box software. You could go use app stores. Dev tools are getting better. And as all these things were changing, whereas value accrue topped the stack to designs and people are, whether they're able to articulate that or not, they're hiring more designers. And the ramp we saw in terms of the number of designers in the world over the first decade of Figma was tremendous. That market got so much bigger. So yeah, when we started off, I mean, Adobe had just killed fireworks. Because they thought it was not, uh, you know, it's kind of a mess, I think maybe on the code side and acquired through Mac Media. And they thought, okay, this is not worth our efforts right now. That's my sense. And, um.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Basically then people switched to Sketch and our main competitor was Sketch and then Envision as a combination. Uh, there are other tools that started to appear like Abstract, uh, all these companies founded by really amazing impressive people. Yep. With really cool, uh, you know, strategies and marketing and tech. And, uh, some of the people that, you know, have worked at these companies are at Figma, some are not. But, uh, you know, Sketch was really the competitor. Yeah. And is today still a competitor. They keep going on and they're, um, a really, really cool company. The Envision, uh, aspect was fascinating because I remember their marketing was just so good. I remember.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  At some point, uh, they put out basically a teaser of their next product, Envision Studio. I was trying to raise the time and I remember, uh, there are VCs that, you know, told me, hey, like, I just cannot reconcile your positioning with Envision. Pass. I'm like, but they haven't even launched the thing yet. Like, are you sure? You know, a- a- a- as a founder, you're like, come on.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Uh, but I also, I think because, you know, it was teams that were distributed in like weird ways across time zones. And they were always racing for the next milestone. They just had so much tech debt.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  And it really slowed them down.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Um, which I also think is a potential issue for all the companies that are moving so fast right now. And doing so in a way that's not like well thought out.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  So anyway, I, I think that the, the conversation felt very real then. And Adobe XD came along. We were really worried about it. And then it kind of faded away. They, uh, put it into like a sunset mode, uh, and just kind of went, hey, this is not working. Uh, and, and then, you know, you compare that to now.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  And I think this is the most exciting time ever. I mean, the reason we got into the space.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Was that we could create more tools for people building products. And now I think we've validated that there's a market there. People are excited about that. And there's a lot of people that are trying all these cool, different approaches. And I think it's awesome, like so much for people to try and learn from, like the option spaces can be fully explored. Of how we build products.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  And software. And I think it's great.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  I think what I heard in there, um, is besides the fact that there was competition, maybe one of the like learnable things for founders is. You started and it was not the market size that it is right now.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  And so, you know, you started in a thing that was two hundred and fifty thousand users. Maybe people thought you could charge twenty bucks a month. Some VCs probably sitting there thinking, well, like, geez, that's not like a ton of revenue possible. You're not gonna get the whole thing. So you probably had a lot of people passing over market size. And so one of the flip sides of being in a sort of illegible market is you might get a little bit more time to build and grow.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Definitely true in the past. Uh, you know, it's true today, maybe. I think.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Is the thing that would be different today because there's just so much more of everything?

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think the amount of software, again, going back to exponential graph. It's like, it's been exponential since Marc Andreessen wrote that essay. Was it twenty eleven of like, you know, software's in the world? You look back to that time and it's like the exponential increase has been real. Now it's like vertical.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  But I also think there's an opportunity uh that is underappreciated to go build in boring spaces. It's like, as long as you're passionate about it, don't do something you're not passionate about. If you're a founder and you're waking up in ten years and going, why the heck am I working on this? Like, let's be real, you didn't even make it ten years. You probably made it a few. And you burnt out and you like either tried to flip it, it didn't work or did work. And you're stuck with this thing if you didn't.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  And uh if you're taking on VC money, then you know, you gotta keep going.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  It's like our friend Adam Gil, building owner, you and I both obviously invest in, are friends with him and.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Well, he's very passionate.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  He's very passionate and he's building in a space that I think has been overlooked by tons of entrepreneurs.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he thinks it's the most interesting thing in the possible in the world. And a lot of other folks are uh of the opinion that this is like very boring.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  And I think it's an advantage to work in a space that other people consider boring.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yes, but to your point, you can't go just like fake that.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Nope.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Cause you gotta work on the thing for ten years.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Uh maybe twenty, maybe thirty. Like if you're lucky, you'll work on it forever.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  That's what I'm hoping for, Figma.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you will. I want to talk about the way that you show up as a CEO because I think there is a somewhat widely held opinion, which might have grains of truth, but maybe not. Which is that to be an unbelievable founder, unbelievable CEO, you kinda gotta be rough and you gotta be aggressive and you kinda gotta be sharky and out for, you know, your company and yourself and all these other things. And obviously there are people who do it that way and who are very successful and that's fine. But um you to me are an example of doing it the other way, where it doesn't come from a place of like, you know, hate and revenge or winning or all these things, which again, there's nothing negative about building in those ways. But there is this other way to do it.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  And I'm just curious if you have reflected on this because I'm guessing you also see that in yourself and you see this in other people. And I'd just be curious to sort of like hear your musings on this topic of like to be a world-class founder CEO. Do you have to be a certain way here?

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, I think there's just like a bajillion ways to start a company. You know, you don't have to take VC funding at all. You can bootstrap it. You could take the VC funding. There's expectations attached to that. You can, uh, you know, do it on your own. You can do it with a team. Uh, and all personalities can shine. If the founders that are in Silicon Valley right now that are scaling, I mean, you can find every personality, uh, every kind of makeup of a founder that you can imagine, which is awesome.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  Uh, I think that, you know, some investors have this thesis of like, they gotta have a chip on their shoulder. It's gotta be like some like mega trauma.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Um, I had a pretty amazing childhood. I'm very thankful to my parents. Like, you know, I do like to win. I'll say that. Uh, I hate losing, but otherwise, it's not like a

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 00

  big chip on the shoulder that, you know, I gotta go prove myself every day. Um, it's more that I really enjoy building what I'm building. I think I found this amazing group of people to do that with and, you know, uh, it's really fun.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  That's what's interesting is you are extremely driven and motivated, but it doesn't seem to come from any of that stuff that you'd often hear from a VC on a podcast about a chip on a shoulder or something that, you know, happened wrong in their life or somebody wronged them. It seems like you just love what you do.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  I mean, I get to do the most awesome stuff ever, which is like build tools for designers, creative people, uh, and then go see what they make in the world. Like, I can't imagine something more interesting or exciting to work on.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Do you think this is like an uncommon source of this type of motivation? Or do you think like, like in other words, do you think that this conception that a lot of investors, founders, a lot of people have, do you think it's off base? Or do you think it is in fact at the more common source that drives people?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  I don't know. I think, uh, I probably get like a a sample that's maybe not representative because I have a lot of friends that also

• 30:50Speaker 01

  You attract people like you.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Uh, are, are, are just really driven by mission. Um, some of them have chips on their shoulders, some of them don't. But I guess the bigger thing is maybe just like, Don't get so attached to the chip on your shoulder that you don't work through it. Like, uh, i- i- if you're excited about what you're doing and you like heal a bit, that's okay, trust me. Uh, I've seen friends go through that journey and they show up to their company the next day and or a week, or a month, or a year, or ten years, however long it takes them to work through it. And yeah, they're kicking ass. So like, I- I don't think it's this thing where, you know, you should stigmatize something like therapy or intersection uh, because you're trying to feed the sort of VC capitalist machine.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Like, you can still feed the machine and you can like work on your shit.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  It is funny. I don't know if you experienced this way, but I experienced building a company. A form of therapy is probably too strong of a word, but it is a form of understanding yourself and working through a lot of stuff. It's something.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, and uh, well, don't get me wrong, like, uh, I hope I'm not an asshole, but I definitely am intense in m- many meetings and oftentimes I reflect afterwards and go, oh, man, I should shut up, but they're better. Right? Uh, but yeah, you show up a certain way. People will tell you if you've got a good culture of communication and then you improve.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. It also just forces so many like weird psychological situations and then you have to reflect on those and you know, sometimes you do realize that like, ah, behaving a way that I'm not, you know, the most proud of was effective. And now how do I deal with that? You know, like I had a lot of those kinds of things too where I was just like, wow, you're just put in these situations that force a lot of reflection and personal growth, I think, which is good. But um, but yeah, anyway, I just thought this was interesting because like you're often cited as like an example is in the counter to this thing. Um, and I just like want there to be more of that in the world. Um, so, okay.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, changing gears to another topic, um. You and I, I think, first got to know each other, this wasn't how, but around the time we got to know each other. When we were younger, we had this group of other friends and people, I think even younger than us, who were like smart engineers. We called it Toad Chat for whatever reason.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  You called it Toad Chat. You made the group, just to be clear.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  I made the group.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  But you let me join as an honorary toad.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  You were an honorary toad.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Which I was very like-

• 33:16Speaker 01

  You were like, "I'm not a toad, but I'm here to be, I'm here to, I'm here to..."

• 33:19Speaker 00

  I was honored to be there.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  And looking back, there were like a lot of people in that group. You know, there was you, Alex Wang, Ari and Conrad, like there was-

• 33:29Speaker 00

  And many others.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Many others, yeah, it was awesome. And I look back at that, and I don't know, we must have been mid or late twenties, you know, people in their early-

• 33:37Speaker 00

  They were early twenties.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Early twenties. And I often think about that as like,

• 33:43Speaker 01

  the importance of being connected to young people, as a founder, as an investor, as just anybody in tech. Because I do think there's so much just raw, sort of, effort, understanding, you're at the front of so much stuff there. And, you know, I think about this now as we're like, and getting into like mid thirties and, you know, like, how does that change over time? And, I don't know, I'm just curious your own experience, because you're somebody who, yourself, started as a young person, you started the company as a young person, you've been connected to young people throughout, you still are, of course, but like, how has that journey changed for you?

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I fear sometimes I'm not as connected to the youth as I once was. And I think that when you're young, me starting Figma, Evan as well, we'd grown up like, you know, playing World of Warcraft, multiplayer games, using Google Docs at school. It just gave us a mindset, because of the tech stack we'd grown up in, the culture we'd grown up in, that seemed to us obvious, native. And then I would go talk to an investor and be like, "Oh yeah, like Google Docs?" And they're like, "Wait, like, you use Google Docs?" Like, it's 2012, it's 2013, like, who doesn't use Google Docs? They're like, "Oh, we're on Word and Outlook here." And sometimes collaboration, I'm not sure I've ever experienced it, I'm like, "What? Like, this is my life."

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  You know, so the generational divides can sometimes be very real. And- Yeah, I always try to educate myself by like, understanding what it is that people are surrounded by. Uh, I think that social media can be one way to do that, but it's hard to reconstruct in an algo feed world, same context now. Uh, I think just talking to people, like, understanding their frame is always important and also just making friends uh, across age groups. I've got friends that are younger than me, older than me, you know, I've got friends that are eighty. The other day I was talking to this incredibly precocious, amazing sixteen year old who, like, I got off the call and was like, oh my god, how do I hire you? Is that legal? Uh, like, please come work at Figma.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Isn't it amazing when you talk to somebody who's like those ages and you're just like, I can't believe it?

• 35:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you know, talking to this person, uh, I was just like, you're more mature than a lot of thirty year olds I know.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  And it's just incredible.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  I had this experience, yeah, I was talking to a founder that I would have guessed, just by the way he was talking, I would have guessed was thirty, and he was twenty, and I was just like, man, I was not, I was not like that when I was twenty.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  I, but I think that, you know, the generational divide and the notion of generations is real. Like millennials, uh, have one outlook and, you know, we're, uh, raised in a time where, I mean, who are the most famous millennials? Taylor Swift?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Mark Zuckerberg?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Um, I don't actually know who the famous, famous people in Gen Z are, I mean, you do.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Like, who are the role models?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  I don't know who the role models are. I mean, I could probably.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  But then there's like the shift of the philosophy too. I mean, for Gen Z, I think there's a very different view and framework through which people that are in that generation roughly, not saying for everyone, but for a lot of them, they look through the world and, and see the world. And, um, for folks that went through COVID and had to be locked up and antisocial and not see their humans for a few years.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Instead of going to school, I mean, what effect does that have on you? A lot of effect.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Also, imagine if you graduated, you know, and came into the workforce in twenty twenty, like, right as COVID is happening, right as, you know.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  We have plenty of people that did it at Figma.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, or, you know, and but, but then you, like, you know, you start Zerp. Or imagine coming in in twenty twenty-two and everything's tough. And then imagine coming in twenty twenty-five and everything's AI. It's just like, a few years make a big difference.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Huge.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  And I, I think the mindsets, uh, the also just approach, I mean, I think, um, there's a lot of emergence right now of nihilism.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Uh, I don't think it's like a permanent thing maybe, but if you look at it and you're like. Okay, well, if you're told that AI is gonna take all entry level jobs. I like a lot of media. And you're told that climate change is gonna fuck the world. And you believe that you have no economic prospect long term. You'll never own a house, um, you'll never be able to support kids in America, like. That'll change your outlook on things. And that's like the media narrative for a lot of people right now. I don't think it's quite right. Uh, I'm I'm more optimistic than that. But like.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Well, I think you get both. I'm optimistic too. I think there's a lot of people who don't succumb to that, but. I think you can also sort of empirically see it in. You know, I think there's great parts of crypto, but there's parts of crypto that reflect nihilism. There's great parts of sports card and collectibles and there's parts that are nihilism. You know, there's probably good parts of.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Well, I think often the arc is like, you know, for example, in crypto, I mean, I got excited about NFTs really early. Before they called it NFTs, we called them crypto collectibles, usually.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I remember on Clubhouse, you had that big, that that.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that was years later. But like, I went from this era where it was all idealism and all this energy around like this. Just kind of like tension of the. Like idea of digital scarcity. How can something digital be scarce? That's so cool.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Early crypto was this very like romantic missionary thing.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, and then there's early crypto and early Bitcoin, which was like, you know, libertarian philosophy and. Uh, hard money and people that really didn't believe in state. And, uh, thought it should all be debundled. That was a totally different mindset. I I was I was there because I thought. It's also digital scarcity and art was cool and like.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  And and as it picks up. A lot of crypto, uh, becomes degenerate gambling. And NFT space was no different. I think I missed the tradition at some point. Where it became that and I was still in the idealistic frame. And then the frame was just like, no, no, no, this is how you make like a lot of money really fast and get rich quick. And, uh, it's kind of interesting. Actually, I feel like right now with, um, vibe coding. There's been almost like that same arc of, you know, for me, um. I I think of, uh, things like if I'm gonna make and I'm like, okay, great. Like now everyone can go make prototypes and make production apps faster and ship them. It's so cool. Like you can just do all the stuff that used to take so long, so fast.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  And, uh, and you can improve it, you can iterate. I think a lot of people also see it as like, I can finally build a piece of software and get rich quick. And of course, there's stuff in the middle too.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  But I, I don't know. I mean, it takes a long time to go build a company. It's not like.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  It's just an overnight thing. And I, I think a lot of the folks that are just of this, like, I will spend an hour on uh, my app and I'll ship it.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Like, they're probably, you know, gonna eventually phase out and uh, I, I think that the folks that remain will be the ones that are using as a tool.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  I think it's interesting because I think this, this whole rise of apathy nihilism, whatever, is, is very real. And I feel like, uh, you sort of, you know, opened it up with this, but you can't blame people because it's like.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Homes, you know, you know, like, we're sitting here in San Francisco, like, homes seem like ridiculously unaffordable if you're twenty two and just getting started.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  There's just like all these reasons why it's like, well, I gotta do something, like, a little divergent to get something to happen. So like, why not gamble? Um, and I think a lot of the same sort of mindset applies and sort of just like, it's not just in the gamble, like, it's also in people building, you know, companies and doing venture and all of that. I think you get to see sort of the range of just like, going for it for, you know, sort of the, the long-term reasons versus like, what can I, what can I flip this year?

• 41:19Speaker 00

  And then there's a lot of people who are also, like, extremely long-term, have a thesis about the world.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  Optimistic.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  And they're trying to inflect the world for the better and they're mission-driven, not monetarily driven.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, hopefully more of those than ever. Like, as tech grows, hopefully it's more than ever.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Those are the folks that inspire me.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of the things that I thought was very impressive, um, among many on the Figma journey is, um, the company seemed to get stronger through the Adobe acquisition and, you know, sort of it falling apart. And I would imagine that'd be the kind of thing that could like spiritually break a lot of companies culturally, a lot of founders who are like, oh, man, I was like right there. And now I gotta do this whole like emotional and cultural reset. So like, um, how'd you, how did you navigate that? I guess, starting with your own psychology.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, that was probably the hardest amount of psychology. Uh, because, and everything else, it's downstream of that. And if you're not. Like right in your own head, then how can you lead? Yep. Uh, or make good decisions even. And for me, I think, um, you know, the start, it was kind of like, oh, ninety-five percent certainty you'll go through. No worries. And just kind of every time we checked in, the certainty went down. Uh, and eventually, you know, at the end, it's like, oh, there's maybe a five percent chance. You know, in that arc. Yeah. You know, at some point, very quickly, where it's like, okay, this is not a sure thing. Keep the foot on the gas, keep building. Um, that's the best outcome, whether we join Adobe or we're independent.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  And, you know, it's like, you can't be in this constant state of we're, you know, we're so back, it's so over. Uh huh. And just rapid cycling through that, like it's just, your brain falls apart and turns to mush. In my opinion, it's for me. And so the word of the year for me then was like equanimity. I think I said equanimity more times that year, uh, than I ever will say the rest of my life, probably. But it's just like, okay, how do you find peace in every option and know that everything's gonna be okay? We're building a great company for amazing customers and we have a lot of stuff to do. Let's go do it. And, uh, whatever happens, we're gonna put our best foot forward. It's the contract we signed with Adobe.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  And we're gonna make sure that we do everything we can to close this. If it doesn't work out, we'll have a great independent path. And then, you know, you get to the end of it. And, uh, I think the relief the team felt at knowing an answer. And having just like this, you know, supervisory state collapse into, okay, we know we're gonna be independent. Like that was real relief. I bet. Um, it was the end of the year. You know, we found out, uh, as I was about to fly out to visit my in-laws. And I think I was like hashing through all the details of how to communicate with the team on like a Saturday night. And a Sunday, then Monday, we announced. Hmm. That I was not going through.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  And and people had already gone break starting on that Friday. Sent a message to this team on Slack, like at channel, you know, FYI, press release. Um, and details about like what meant for them. And, uh, and said, hey, if you want, no pressure, if you want to join, though, here's a Zoom call. And we'll be talking about this then. And, you know, just the relief on the Zoom call was palpable over Zoom. Uh, which was pretty wild. Just the chat was.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  It makes sense, though.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  It was like a big relief to know. And then, you know, the break is going and I'm like, okay, not everyone is in that place. And so we made a program called Detach, which is a Figma pun. You can detach a component. It's like something that some people frown on. Uh, but like, it's also a necessary task sometimes. And the idea was just, hey, look, if you don't want to be at Figma, we don't want to trap you. Here's three months of pay. If you decide to leave, leave. And, uh, you're still like, cool with us, we're cool with you. Everything's fine. And if you decide to reapply, you can't reapply for six months, but then you're welcome to reapply after that.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  And, uh, yeah, you're like, there's no issue if you decide to take this. And if you don't, like FYI, we are a hard charging startup. It's gonna be intense. We got a lot to do.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Um, and so we rolled this out, you know, kind of a nervous few weeks as people made their calls and then, uh, a little over four percent of people took us up on it.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  What year was that again?

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Uh, that would have been, um, I think twenty twenty three.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  I have to double check that. Uh, I get the dates all confused sometimes.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Was there any element coinciding there too of like, there was like something in the water in tech at that time where like, uh, cultural reset was happening at a lot of companies? And did that play in any way? Did it help in any way that that was going on in other places? Or did it just have?

• 46:18Speaker 00

  I don't think it factored in. Just to be clear, I think it was end of twenty twenty three that, uh, we communicated for the first time, but like early twenty twenty four that it was the Detach program. Um, if I'm accurate there.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  And. I think that um really what we looked at what people were doing, why they decided. I mean, a lot of it was just like, you know, I'm tired, need a break.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  And uh I want a lot of people making career changes. Like it was really interesting, like early stage, or sorry, uh early career. Sales reps moving over to uh like politics, stuff like that.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  It's also.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  Just like total domain hopping.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I bet you for a lot of people, it's you know, when you like flip a coin. And you don't know what you want, you like flip a coin, you get tails and then you're like sad and you wish it was heads or vice versa. There's probably also some people going through that experience.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. I was actually really hoping that we could put a bow on this because I was ready for my next thing.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, or people got attached to the idea and. Yeah, there's definitely a few people who were, you know, amazing and. Of course, you go talk to the folks that you're like, okay, I know you said this, but like, are you sure?

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  And their headspace was one of, okay, like, I get it, you're done. Um, at least for now, some people boomerang back.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  It's a really great move, though, because basically you just like. Took the situation like on the front foot and rather than just being like, oh, let's just see how we do, you're like, hey. If you want this, like, you gotta sign up.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just feel like it's best in general to deal with things and move on. And so we try to be direct my communication with people, make sure I'm sending clear invitations.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  You know, for friends, like, you know, like, give very clear feedback.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  You're always telling me bad stuff.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, that's not true. Uh, it's not much, not much to critique, uh, but the um. But yeah, I mean, then from there, it was like, because we had put our foot in the gas the entire time. We were able to launch a bunch of product. I mean, we doubled our product offering uh at config recently.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Due to the work we did in that period of time, we, right after the deal was dissolved, launched uh in GA dev mode. Um, and that was, was really, really exciting to watch that take off.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Uh, as well as just like countless other product updates. The velocity only increased, the momentum was real.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  I think lean into it and just acknowledging it and starting that conversation was part of it.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yep. Okay. On that note, I want to go to sort of like the final area, which is how you're thinking about just AI impacting sort of your roadmap and your product. And maybe you could just even talk about like the things that you've been working on over the last six or 12 months that, you know, AI related that I think are sort of most important for Figma.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  So much. Um, I think that first of all, you know, it's not just designers in the process, although they're the heart of it. Uh, they're working with developers, they're working with product managers, uh, and more researchers, marketers. And, uh, I think that if you can give developers a good way through MCP to pull context from design, so they can be able to make things faster, it's a win. So we introduced Dev Mode MCP. And, uh, folks are able to use that with well-structured design files to go build a front-end experience so much faster. I mean, it's really wild to see how this works when you actually experience it live. Uh, you know, you get a lot of the front-end built for you by the AI that can interpret what we send over

• 49:46Speaker 00

  and do inference, and it can be just extraordinarily fast. Um, we're also thinking a lot about, of course, how do we make sure that you're able to have great prompting experiences in uh, both Figma make, but also Figma design. And Figma design, we've teased it, but it's not out yet, but we're really excited about that. Um, in general, I'd say like, it feels like we're kind of in this MS-DOS era of AI, where we're going to look back in some number of years and go, it's kind of wild that we're just like typing text all the time. There will be some amount of dimensionality collapse into interfaces.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  And, you know, it's also the case, I think, for any AI company, the strategic question you have to be positive on is as malls get better, do we get better? And their answer has to be yes. If it's no, in some way, you got to readjust strategy. In late October, as you know, we announced Webee. Now Figma Weave. And this is an acquisition we've made that I think really meets these attributes and I am so excited about. Basically, it makes sense you can use all these different generative models for image, video, but also to transform across modalities like image to 3D, for example. And you can then connect them in a node-based workflow, use it to creatively explore, or also create a pipeline, make a process.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  And the things we're seeing people do with it are just so cool and wild and expressive. And I guess like, overall, it's also maybe reflect a lot because a lot of people call the output of these models slop. It's almost like a derogatory term. And, you know, without making any comment on slop versus not slop, I mean, some things I see as output, I'm like, wow, it's amazing. But I think the more important point is like, whatever you start with, it's a starting point. And you can use that in a workflow to get to something amazing for your own craft.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  And I think with Weave, that's what we're seeing is just this incredible way that artists and creatives can go and create all sorts of different types of multimedia generation. And then also use it across the Figma platform. And so I'm really, really excited what we're doing there and just the fact that they trusted us to join up and what we can do in the future.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  As you add more and more AI into the product, what do you, what do you think is like the final bastion of like human designers? Will it be taste, coordination? What will the set of things be that you're most confident in, like will always be just like human tasks?

• 52:18Speaker 00

  I mean, I think that we are so far away from AI replacing designers. And if you actually look at the designs generated, I think it's very easy to tell that. But even if the design generation from aesthetic standpoint is better. Like, it's not considering the entire system. It's not considering all the constraints. You're not exploring the full option space. You're not thinking about like, the context culturally. You're not thinking about uh, the business problems you have to solve, or the greater system that connects uh, everything that's all these different targets across all these different experiences you're trying to create.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  You're not thinking about the emotional qualities you're trying to create, and the brand, and how that gets pulled in. I, I, it's just so much, and the best designers are able to take all these different inputs, and then be able to explore out very dense and uh, deep trees of possibility, to figure out what is the best approach systematically, and then go build on it. And, I, I don't know, it's like um, one example I go through a lot that resonates with the Gen Z people, but not the millennials, or uh, folks that are older always, is Brat Summer.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  You, you know Brat Summer, right?

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Oh, Brat Summer.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  Yes, Brat Summer.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Brat Summer, of course.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  See, you're, you got it.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Brad Summer, I was like, who's Brad Summer?

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, no.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Brad.

• 53:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, we can talk about Brad Summer later.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, Brad Summer's cool.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  Anyway, Brat Summer, and uh, you know, I use Brat Summer as an example a lot, because, well, think about it, right? Like, the album cover, obviously not just the album cover, but as a design artifact. Lime green square, I think it was what, Comic Sans or something that Brad was written in?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  What ASI uh, you know, uh, designer would create Brat Summer?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, or if they did, it would be one out of a hundred thousand, and no weight would be thrown behind it. Cause I think that's the other piece of design, is it's not just the artifact, it's knowing, this is good, and, you know, we're gonna put the right sort of message behind it.

• 54:24Speaker 00

  And so for aesthetic, I mean, the ability to go, think of all the possibilities in the world, and end up on that album cover. Like you put me in a room for a hundred years. I don't think I would have come up with that.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Well, I definitely wouldn't, yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  And on the other hand of it, the other extreme, it's like, okay, what about usability? What about hierarchy? What about the ability to think about the different permutations of the way you take a data model? Express it through UI.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  And allow people to actually control an interface. And what affordances to use and which ones to get rid of and innovate on? And go find new ways to do something that are out of distribution.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Like, I think that the role of a designer is going to be one where AI makes it so that they are able to get rid of the drudgery. They won't have to engage with repetitive tasks anymore. Instead, they'll be able to be like really thinking more holistically, thinking further and going going to beyond. And I think it'll lead to an explosion of creativity, explosion of really interesting, amazing outputs.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  And I'm pretty excited for it.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  You know, I think the same thing that you just described is true with music. Where obviously AI music sounds pretty good, but I still think like these albums that like take over a summer. Or just like a song that captured everybody like I just, there's something like more like soulful that has to be captured. That I just don't think we're there yet.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  Well, I also think it's possible that like on the music side. AI generated music can inspire an artist to go and riff on that. And inspiration can come from anywhere.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Like, I think AI is a great inspiration tool. It's also a great tool to figure out what do you not want to do? Like, I never use AI for writing personally. I find it doesn't capture voice. But I love asking AI, what are the ten cliche ways to say this? So I can go like push beyond it and figure out the actual new way to say the thing that I'm trying to say.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  And I don't know, I think that just like we're, the more we capture the distribution that exists today. The more we can think outside of it. And that's human creativity.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it. Dylan, this is super fun.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  Great to see you as always.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  You too.