The Exchanges

Q get the talent in the door bluntly to manage the scaling as well, and it's really interesting comparisons that a lot of your investors made, they were like, Figma, it's now like Stripe, In terms of the level of talent that it's consistently hiring. Talk to Dylan about that. So what have been your biggest lessons in terms of what it takes to hire some of the very, very best?

A Well, first of all, it's very kind because I'm a huge fan of Stripe. One thing that people don't usually realize when they're hiring talent is that it's a very long-term game, and it's based in relationships. So some of the most important hires we've made have been hires that we have focused on for such a long time. Our director of design, Noah, I think it took us like two or three years to get him in the door. Sometimes People will recruit them, they'll go to a different job, they'll leave that job for a different job, and then they'll come to Figma. It's just, it can take so many years sometimes, that's okay, because different people have different profiles of risk, and your company's gonna keep growing, and eventually, hopefully, you can get them to come. And for the best folks, it's worth building those relationships with.

AI assessment note: “when they're hiring talent is that it's a very long-term game”

Q Can I ask, is there anything that you've done internally in terms of like culture maintenance, really, to encourage that spontaneity, encourage that more casual warmth within the team?

A We're trying a lot of things. One thing I'm trying is just more breakfast and more ways to connect with people and spend time with folks on the team. We're trying things like Donut, which is a Slack app you can use to basically pair people across the team randomly, and that way you're making these connections across team. I think one of the things where the weeks where we tried the most was actually last week. What's the name of one person that you met during Maker Week that you didn't know before? And almost everyone had an answer for that, which I thought was really special. And a lot of people were able to forge in new connections and even work on entirely new teams for their projects that were all within their house. One of the things that was also really cool was just like the collaborative creation we saw across houses. So for example, one of the challenges was make something with your team. And that was it. Like I said, there's one constraint, which is you had to be able to see as a viewer how many people participate in it to verify the number of points, because you got a dynamic number of points depending on how many people collaborated. We had people Do these synchronous dances in Figma. We had just all sorts of cool projects come out of that. We also had people do, like, collaborative art projects, and we also had, like, a giant capture the flag game where people lear…

AI assessment note: “We're trying things like Donut, which is a Slack app you can use”

Q No, I absolutely agree. Can I ask, what are your thoughts on move fast and break things? It's too tempting to ask.

A Well, I think it's the, like I said, for sort of that fruit fly mentality, that's totally the right approach, right? If you're doing something more consumer, we're going to have to test a lot of things to see what resonates. Yeah, I think it's absolutely the right way to think about it. Like, we just started a growth team at Figma. And I hope that they have that mentality. I also hope that the tool team that's working on the editor at Figma, where we're supporting designers who have to put food on the table, and eight percent of our users are international, and many of them are living in third-world countries. This is bringing them real revenue and might be the reason that they're able to feed their family or not. I would hope that we don't move fast and break things. I don't want people to have a broken product and then not be able to fulfill their commitments. I think that we have a deep sense of responsibility around that.

AI assessment note: “I would hope that we don't move fast and break things.”

Q Can I ask Andrew Reid at Sequoia, especially asked this in terms of kind of hiring that top A-star talent. Have there been any big learnings for you in terms of you actually bringing that on board at Figma and really scaling that kind of exec team?

A I think a few things I've learned. One is that these hires rarely happen outside of a dedicated process to go find somebody. That's sort of the conventional wisdom, and yet sometimes you can buck that wisdom completely, and it still works. So for example, our VP of Engineering, Chris Rasmussen, He was someone that started as a contractor and just, he wowed us so much, even as an individual engineer, that we decided to become VP of engineering. And at the time my board was like, are you sure about this? This is like completely not the way that this is done. You know, and we believe in you, we believe in your ability to assess that talent, but are you sure? And, uh, I just said, yes, of course, like, uh, this guy's amazing. We're all stupid if we don't hire him. And, you know, several years later, it's clear that that was one where I was right. I think in contrast, sometimes it is worthwhile to run a search. And when you do run a search and you really dedicate yourself to it, I think you just have to push yourself to find the best people and be uncompromising. I think that there's sort of this myth of, well, you know, we'll see who we can get, who would be interested in the startup given the revenue stage, et cetera. And I think you just have to kind of push recruiters that you work with to identify and then seek out the best talent possible. And I think those are different thing…

AI assessment note: “I think a few things I've learned. One is that these hires rarely happen”

Q So I have to ask then, you mentioned there the element of very nicely having maybe more choice than most in terms of investor selection. How do you approach investor selection, and what's your advice for founders who, maybe you're in the same situation, are choosing the investors that they work with?

A Yeah, and to be clear, we've been different stages of demand at different times, but I think we've always been very steadfast about making sure that we bring the best people on board, and so I think somehow it's been very obvious in past rounds for our C, A, and B, It's been pretty clear about how we should make a decision here. So, for example, our seed round, both our own favorite partner in Danny Reimer, but also economics aligned quite well. For the A round, it was actually pretty opportunistic, and it was another situation where we weren't looking to raise, but I had met John Lillian, the seed, and he turned us down, actually. But he said, hey, look, like, if you want to keep talking, I'm down. And I, of course, wanted to keep talking because John is a legend. He's the guy that was CEO of Mozilla, deeply technical, deeply product-oriented, and just An incredibly good person with super high integrity. And so we just kept talking and, uh, eventually he said, Hey, like, I think if you ever want to raise, let's do this. So I talked to a few other investors that time, but really I just wanted to work with him. And I think even if the other investors had been super interested, which, you know, we hadn't made signals from them, I might've turned them down anyway, just because I really wanted to work with John for that round. And then for our B round, you know, there's another sit…

AI assessment note: “important thing is to recognize that it's a long-term marriage”

Q Final one, and it's from Andrew Reid. Andrew Reid asks, what if everything goes right? What does Figma look like in, like, 20, 30?

A I think that there's an opportunity for us to totally own and support the design process and life cycle. So everything from idea to mock-up to research and consolidation to prototyping all the way production. How do we support an entire life cycle of design? And I also think that, just like we've talked about over the course of this conversation, as the world moves from physical spaces to digital spaces, we're going to see more and more software out there as a big part of the global economy. So how to make it so that anyone in the world can be a designer and can go through that process to bring their ideas to life and also have access to that economic opportunity that that shift is going to create.

AI assessment note: “opportunity for us to totally own and support the design process and life cycle”

Q and work there, and the kind of transition to the third place for design. In terms of what COVID's done, I spoke to Peter Levine at Andreessen before the show, and he was like, you have to ask Dylan about the internal and external impacts of COVID on Figma. If you were to break them down, what do you think of the top one or two, internal and then external?

A Well, let's start with external, because I think it's, if we go macro, it gets really interesting. I think that what we've seen over decades now, not just the Is a shift from physical to digital spaces. And of course, twenty-twenty is that inflection point where there's a rapid shift, the moment where all of us transitioned all at once. But this is not like, this is like a long-term thing. So, Google Docs, for example, that launched 15 years ago as rightly. I think Mark Andreessen, Peter's boss, he penned his famous software as eating the world essay almost 10 years ago now. Figma, we launched in the browser five years ago this week. And so, what I see is that there's a transition over time that's been happening. And twenty-twenty is that inflection point, that sort of big rush into digital spaces. Now we're adapting to them. And so what's unique about digital spaces? Well, one is that digital spaces have no walls. They're inherently accessible. They're collaborative and transparent. And as more organizations, I think, shift into these new spaces, I think a lot of our work culture and our values are changing. I also think that they bring new challenges too, because in digital spaces, it's really hard to be spontaneous. Where's that spontaneous interaction between people? Like you have in a physical space where you randomly bump into folks in the way of the bathroom or something…

AI assessment note: “Well, let's start with external... For Figma, internally, pre-COVID, we were entirely in person”

Q you know it's right. Can I ask, on the flip side, like advising me who sits on boards, two amazing founders, hopefully like you, what can I do to be the very best board member that I can be? And also, how can I create that environment of safety where you feel you can come to the board with anything and this is not a board where you report to?

A I think it's important to reward and to praise people when they come to you with information about mistakes. And it's something for what it's worth that I'm still learning to do better at Figma. But I remember recently when I came to one of my board members with a big mistake. I won't say what it is, but it was a pretty meaningful one in terms of revenue, and totally preventable. I came to them and said, hey, FYI, like, this happened, it's going to show up in our numbers this month, and here's what we learned from, and here's what we're doing differently. And I said, oh man, thank you so much for letting me know, I really appreciate it. That was their first response, and I was just like, wow, that's amazing, like, I know my first call is going to be next time I make this mistake, or a different mistake like this. And it's so easy to have a reaction of like, what the fuck are you doing? Or, what were you thinking, right? Like, that's such an easy default reaction to have. So to default have the reaction the other way around, that's huge.

AI assessment note: “I think it's important to reward and to praise people when they come to you”

Q How do you think about that? Because that's one thing that's so fascinating, which is that you do have just the most incredible product of Angelus for Figma, and the depth Effective requests that I've seen in terms of for the Figma product is insane. How do you think about meeting the demands of the absolute evangelist with the everyday designer who's much more moderate and tempered?

A Yeah, I mean, there's a quote in design where it's keep the simple things simple and make the complex things possible, and I think it's really important to do both. You do have to make those complex power eater cases possible. You don't necessarily have to do it today, but you have to get there over time, otherwise people will look for their product solutions, and of course there is a question too of do you do that in the same product or a different product, but you can't do it at the expense of keeping the simple things simple. And so it's, it seems like it might be a conflict because as you introduce power, you're also sometimes raising complexity, but I think the best solutions are ones that manage to accomplish both at the same time. Those are the home runs.

AI assessment note: “keep the simple things simple and make the complex things possible”

Q and work there, and the kind of transition to the third place for design. In terms of what COVID's done, I spoke to Peter Levine at Andreessen before the show, and he was like, you have to ask Dylan about the internal and external impacts of COVID on Figma. If you were to break them down, what do you think of the top one or two, internal and then external?

A Well, let's start with external, because I think it's, if we go macro, it gets really interesting. I think that what we've seen over decades now, not just the Is a shift from physical to digital spaces. And of course, twenty-twenty is that inflection point where there's a rapid shift, the moment where all of us transitioned all at once. But this is not like, this is like a long-term thing. So, Google Docs, for example, that launched 15 years ago as rightly. I think Mark Andreessen, Peter's boss, he penned his famous software as eating the world essay almost 10 years ago now. Figma, we launched in the browser five years ago this week. And so, what I see is that there's a transition over time that's been happening. And twenty-twenty is that inflection point, that sort of big rush into digital spaces. Now we're adapting to them. And so what's unique about digital spaces? Well, one is that digital spaces have no walls. They're inherently accessible. They're collaborative and transparent. And as more organizations, I think, shift into these new spaces, I think a lot of our work culture and our values are changing. I also think that they bring new challenges too, because in digital spaces, it's really hard to be spontaneous. Where's that spontaneous interaction between people? Like you have in a physical space where you randomly bump into folks in the way of the bathroom or something…

AI assessment note: “Well, let's start with external, because I think it's, if we go macro”

Q So I have to ask then, you mentioned there the element of very nicely having maybe more choice than most in terms of investor selection. How do you approach investor selection, and what's your advice for founders who, maybe you're in the same situation, are choosing the investors that they work with?

A Yeah, and to be clear, we've been different stages of demand at different times, but I think we've always been very steadfast about making sure that we bring the best people on board, and so I think somehow it's been very obvious in past rounds for our C, A, and B, It's been pretty clear about how we should make a decision here. So, for example, our seed round, both our own favorite partner in Danny Reimer, but also economics aligned quite well. For the A round, it was actually pretty opportunistic, and it was another situation where we weren't looking to raise, but I had met John Lillian, the seed, and he turned us down, actually. But he said, hey, look, like, if you want to keep talking, I'm down. And I, of course, wanted to keep talking because John is a legend. He's the guy that was CEO of Mozilla, deeply technical, deeply product-oriented, and just An incredibly good person with super high integrity. And so we just kept talking and, uh, eventually he said, Hey, like, I think if you ever want to raise, let's do this. So I talked to a few other investors that time, but really I just wanted to work with him. And I think even if the other investors had been super interested, which, you know, we hadn't made signals from them, I might've turned them down anyway, just because I really wanted to work with John for that round. And then for our B round, you know, there's another sit…

AI assessment note: “important thing is to recognize that it's a long-term marriage and, you know, you have to really reference”

Q No, I absolutely agree. Can I ask, what are your thoughts on move fast and break things? It's too tempting to ask.

A Well, I think it's the, like I said, for sort of that fruit fly mentality, that's totally the right approach, right? If you're doing something more consumer, we're going to have to test a lot of things to see what resonates. Yeah, I think it's absolutely the right way to think about it. Like, we just started a growth team at Figma. And I hope that they have that mentality. I also hope that the tool team that's working on the editor at Figma, where we're supporting designers who have to put food on the table, and eight percent of our users are international, and many of them are living in third-world countries. This is bringing them real revenue and might be the reason that they're able to feed their family or not. I would hope that we don't move fast and break things. I don't want people to have a broken product and then not be able to fulfill their commitments. I think that we have a deep sense of responsibility around that.

AI assessment note: “I would hope that we don't move fast and break things.”

Q Do you think we'll see a diminished actual role for the kind of the primary designer, given the democratization that design tools allow, allowing kind of almost everyone to have a say in the design process? Will we see the rise of the mass This is in the design process and kind of a reduction of the primary all omniscient, powerful single designer. Is that what we're going to see?

A I don't think that way at all. I think first of all, like everyone, more people giving feedback or being involved and sort of being part of testing design is not diminishing the power of the designer now. In fact, I think it actually strengthens the designers position because there's a quarterback of like how we're going to design a product and how we're going to solve this business need. And then I think in the future, if more people are able to contribute to the design process, It actually elevates the role of the designer to a more strategic role. You know, I think, uh, yes, there, there's sort of different ways to think about design as well, right? There's the more of the pixels, but there's also how is the product built? How should it work? And I think that designers are already doing a combination of all those things. They'll continue that. And the more they can use design systems to make it so that other people can participate and give ideas visually rather than through text, the better. I think it's incredibly taxing on a designer to get feedback that's written. Sometimes, and to say, you know, to have a debate where they're trying to translate the intent from somebody who's giving written feedback, and I think instead, if somebody's able to then instead communicate visually, that actually moves the conversation along quite nicely.

AI assessment note: “I don't think that way at all.”

Q Don't worry, I'll be emailing you that advice, but we spoke about, we spoke about the VC dollars there, and also the high times, and we just recently saw your Series C, led by Sequoia. Huge congratulations for that, and let's start with this, because I did want some inside baseball here, Dylan. How did the round come together? What did the process look like?

A Yeah, so we didn't really need to raise this time. We were starting to talk about maybe we should just, in order to be heads down, we should do an inside round. We're in the fortunate position of a lot of investors being very interested in Figma. And I knew this because people were sending us like their diligence and saying all the interviews we've done with your customers and wow, everyone is really liking the product, et cetera. And I was kind of not talking to them and pushing them out and trying to further those conversations to later. And so I was saying, okay, like, thank you so much for saying this. This is really cool, but maybe like we can talk in March or something. And then, um, at a board meeting we had in December, we started talking, maybe we should do it instead of around like we shouldn't. And I thought, okay, well, it'd be good to test the markets and just kind of talk to firms that have been emailing us in the first week of January when we come back. And that way I can have a better sense of like, when are we going to raise money? What's the interest like? And just kind of take it from there and just rather than constantly be raising or be having all these conversations all the time, just do a sprint and then kind of turn off everybody for a while. And what happened was I found that there was so much interest that I thought, you know what, like we could probab…

AI assessment note: “rather than constantly be raising... just do a sprint and then kind of turn off everybody”

Q Can I jump in and ask, why are they so hard and what are the challenges of building these tool based businesses and getting that initial traction?

A Yeah, so there's just a long tail of use cases that people have for these tools. I look back and over the past few years alone, we've, we were now at the point where we're, we're on par. We're a parody with a lot of the competitive tools, you know, even over the past few years, like we just last December, we just added PDF exports, for example. And every time you add one of these things, more people come in and are able to convert to using your software. It's almost like you can kind of imagine is like, they come to the door and they say, okay, well, do you have a kitchen? Yes. You have a bathroom. Oh, well, no, not yet.

AI assessment note: “there's just a long tail of use cases that people have for these tools”

Q Do you think we'll see a diminished actual role for the kind of the primary designer, given the democratization that design tools allow, allowing kind of almost everyone to have a say in the design process? Will we see the rise of the mass This is in the design process and kind of a reduction of the primary all omniscient, powerful single designer. Is that what we're going to see?

A I don't think that way at all. I think first of all, like everyone, more people giving feedback or being involved and sort of being part of testing design is not diminishing the power of the designer now. In fact, I think it actually strengthens the designers position because there's a quarterback of like how we're going to design a product and how we're going to solve this business need. And then I think in the future, if more people are able to contribute to the design process, It actually elevates the role of the designer to a more strategic role. You know, I think, uh, yes, there, there's sort of different ways to think about design as well, right? There's the more of the pixels, but there's also how is the product built? How should it work? And I think that designers are already doing a combination of all those things. They'll continue that. And the more they can use design systems to make it so that other people can participate and give ideas visually rather than through text, the better. I think it's incredibly taxing on a designer to get feedback that's written. Sometimes, and to say, you know, to have a debate where they're trying to translate the intent from somebody who's giving written feedback, and I think instead, if somebody's able to then instead communicate visually, that actually moves the conversation along quite nicely.

AI assessment note: “In fact, I think it actually strengthens the designers position because there's a quarterback”

Q It's so good to see you again, but I do want to start on, for those that maybe missed our first episode, how did you make your way into the world of startups, and how did you come to found the game changer that is Figma?

A So, I started off as an intern, and my first internship was at O'Reilly Media. O'Reilly, if you don't know it, is a, started off as a textbook publisher, but they also do events, they do online learning, and all sorts of other things, and they're headquartered in Sebastopol, California, which is about half an hour away from where I grew up. Which is near Petaluma, California, Penn Grove, if you know where that is. And O'Reilly was amazing to me. I mean, I started off as sort of a marketing, online content intern. They let me do design, development, all sorts of things. And I also got to spend time at FooCamp, which stands for Friends of O'Reilly, but it's kind of a pun. And the pun refers to the Foo and Bar variables people use in programming, which are kind of like placeholders. And through that, I got to meet a lot of the tech community and got really inspired about entrepreneurship and startups. And then from there, I got to work at a startup a summer after high school. I went to then I got to work at Microsoft Research as a research assistant to Dana Boyd, which was a really cool experience. She's one of the most smartest, most thoughtful people I've ever met. Got to work as an intern at LinkedIn on the data science team there, and that was actually one of my first real exposures to design. I've been interested in design for a long time, but a designer named Micah Alpern ac…

AI assessment note: “So, I started off as an intern, and my first internship was at O'Reilly Media.”

Q my at handle? Remind me. Um, yeah, no, I, I do want to ask, before we move into Figma as a product, I spoke to quite a few of your investors before, and they said, you know, Dylan's fascinating when it comes to education and the future of education. How do you think about the future of education, especially given the Teal Fellowship experience and all that you have there?

A Well, first of all, the Teal Fellowship, for those who know it, is a really neat program. It's a non-dilutive grant. It's a hundred K over two years, dispensed monthly because it's for people that are usually under the age of 20, or people that haven't graduated college at least, and those people don't always spend money in those effective ways, so it's better for it to be something where you over a period of time rather than all at once. It's an amazing network. It's basically 20 people a year who are working on just world-changing products and projects. And when I reflect back on some of the people I've learned most from, the people that came from the Teal Fellowship. And so I've got a very weird experience here and a point of view that most people don't have. I'd say that for the Teal Fellowship, it's extraordinary to see how much different young people have been able to achieve in such a short period of time. And so it's really, along with my experiences through Figma, it's made me question the belief that you need a ton of experience in order to go do something that's at sort of the world scale. And just to give some examples, You've got Laura Deming, who has created one of the most amazing VC funds in biotech. You got, like, Vitalik, who created Ethereum. You have, just this week, Luminar went public via SPAC. They're doing something to try to help change the future of se…

AI assessment note: “made me question the belief that you need a ton of experience”

Q So favorite book and why? What must I be reading?

A Well, you asked me this last time, and I think I tried to dodge the question by saying I don't have a favorite book, and it's still true. But a recent book that I read, again, this is a reread for me, which I really appreciate even more in twenty-twenty, because I think it's like the quintessential twenty-twenty book is Snow Crash. And one of the things it talks about is this idea of the metaverse, which is very, uh, I think consistent with our conversation today of how you have this sort of like online space, it's permanent, that builds on itself, that people can interact in. And it also, I think, the other thing that's very twenty-twenty about Snow Crash is sort of this idea of a mind virus that can infect people. And if you think about QAnon and the way that's spreading right now, I think that it's kind of Crazy how much snow crash is related to that.

AI assessment note: “a recent book that I read, again, this is a reread for me... is Snow Crash.”

Q bluntly, something that always, not troubled me, but it's always very much on my mind is kind of the insecurity and vulnerability that does come with that. I'm really intrigued when you think about kind of being the very, very young leader that you are and were, especially in the early days, how do you think about kind of insecurity Self-awareness as a young leader today and when you were?

A Well, first of all, I think that I didn't fully recognize at the time, but management and leadership are skills. I think that it's really easy to forget that, especially all my internships and various ways. I had some sort of leadership position, maybe not all of them, some of them at least. And I think that it's really easy to fool yourself and think, oh yeah, I've got some leadership experience. So like the startup thing, no big deal. The reality is that management's hard and you really have to learn it just like a skill and craft like everything else. And that's something that it took me a while to figure out. I didn't get it instantly. And maybe it took a year or two, and also learning from people that I hired to figure out how to manage people effectively. And I think that, like you said, there is some insecurity there. Once you realize that you don't know everything, and once you are sort of sufficiently self-aware, if you're not like a sociopath, hopefully you are going, oh gosh, there are a lot of things to learn, and I really have to figure out how to better support my people. And so I was lucky to have mentors and advisors and investors from previous places I'd interned at that all came on to Figma and support us in our seed round. I could turn to you and ask for help, but honestly, even with all the best help in the world, you still just got to put the reps in. So no…

AI assessment note: “there is some insecurity there. Once you realize that you don't know everything”

Q This one's from the previously mentioned John Lilly. Uh, how have you built your set of mentors?

A Uh, mostly just relationships. I think, um, the best mentorship from people is from folks that you're able to have a deep relationship with and that they have context on the business. Otherwise it's hard without context to be able to give timely or apt advice. And so I think, you know, giving people a reason to, you know, both, uh, emotionally in terms of like having a deep relationship with them, but also financially and economically by giving them a stake in Figma and, you know, making it so that they are tied to our success in some way and they benefit from it. That's one approach I've taken, but also just, you know, really seeking out people that I think can be best of class mentors for Figment, and sometimes it's just, uh, I think you just kind of figure it out as you go, and some people you jive with, and some others you don't.

AI assessment note: “financially and economically by giving them a stake in Figma”

Q I couldn't agree more in terms of the priorities there. I do have to ask. This is one that I have no idea how to answer, so I'm hoping that you will help me here. How do you determine what to say yes to and what to say no to?

A I think it's super hard, and I don't know if there's any patterns. I think it's important to know your own biases here. Some people are more biased towards do less. Some are more biased towards us do more. My bias is always like doing everything. And so I have to really reign that in and focus becomes important. So I try to challenge myself to think through like, what are the things that if we don't do, we die and start there. And then from there, kind of like build out. But I also try to do, uh, one approach I have for this is that I try to surround myself with people who are very good at prioritizing and, uh, working through these questions. And then I try to encourage a lot of debate internally. I think some people see debate as a sign that there's not mutual respect or people aren't calling direction or something. I couldn't disagree more. I think debate is a sign that a healthy culture internally, that people are bringing their entire selves to work and able to push back and they care enough for the business and they're engaged enough and they want to see the best outcome possible. And so I think what's sort of a truism and a cliche, but making sure that everyone's able to have that conversation about prioritization and And strategy, but then also even if they disagree at the end, we all agree to disagree and we move forward together. You know, that's an important thing to…

AI assessment note: “what are the things that if we don't do, we die and start there”

Q anyone listening, if you haven't, amazing. I think the most interesting thing is, like, when we think about, like, Figma transitioning from application to platform, and when we think about that challenge, I actually spoke to Howie at Airtable about it quite recently, but my question to you, first off, is, like, high level, what do you think are the biggest challenges in making that transition from application to platform?

A I think Some companies start with a really innate sense of how to build a platform. So for example, I think of Coda as a great example of this. I remember the early days of Coda and talking with Shishir, and I would ask him about like, hey, like what specific user journey are you trying to solve for here? And he'd be like, well, the platform thinking is. And I was always like, man, like that seems really tough to take that approach to market. Like why not take a specific use case? And the reality is you can go both ways. I think it might take a little bit longer to go platform route, but then you have this sort of opportunity to back into scale it faster. And then you can also, of course, do the Figma thing, which is Go for the use case, then go to platform over time. But I think either way, you have to eventually figure out how to think in a more platform focused way. And that's something that we're still figuring out. I think we did a good job of creating sort of the V zero or V one or whatever of our platform in terms of plugins, but there's so much ahead of us still in terms of where we can take the Figma platform. And I'm really excited to make that happen. But I think that there's a lot of challenges there and it's going to take a lot of effort on our team to continue to evolve it over time and to make sure that we're supporting developers in the best way.

AI assessment note: “you have to eventually figure out how to think in a more platform focused way”

Q Can I ask your advice? How do you handle moments where when goals aren't met and milestones aren't hit, You really insert your point and really let people know how you feel in your frustration and disappointment, but then also you don't create a culture of disappointment and denigration and sadness. How do you put that point across without really lowering the tone of the culture almost?

A I think that first of all, there's a cultural decision to make, which is, are you a culture where you're always improving or not? And to me, the answer is an obvious yes, you always want to be improving. If you're not always improving, then what are you doing? That's on all of us to always improve, and that's not just Me telling people that are below me, it's people telling people that are above them too, and it goes both ways. I think that there's always the challenge of unpacking why. Why do I think this? You're not going to go into a meeting and say, hey, this is shit. You're going to say, hey, I don't think this is the right decision. Here's why I believe that. And I think it's really important to be able to unpack and be able to tell people why. And I think that as we're all moving so fast, which is if your day is chunked into half hour bits, there's so much pressure to constantly be giving people the answer or telling people, no, this way. And the thing that I'm trying to challenge myself to do more and more is just to really step back and say, here's why. Here's why I think this.

AI assessment note: “You're not going to go into a meeting and say, hey, this is shit.”

Q Can I jump in and ask, why are they so hard and what are the challenges of building these tool based businesses and getting that initial traction?

A Yeah, so there's just a long tail of use cases that people have for these tools. I look back and over the past few years alone, we've, we were now at the point where we're, we're on par. We're a parody with a lot of the competitive tools, you know, even over the past few years, like we just last December, we just added PDF exports, for example. And every time you add one of these things, more people come in and are able to convert to using your software. It's almost like you can kind of imagine is like, they come to the door and they say, okay, well, do you have a kitchen? Yes. You have a bathroom. Oh, well, no, not yet.

AI assessment note: “there's just a long tail of use cases that people have for these tools”

Q Can I ask your advice? How do you handle moments where when goals aren't met and milestones aren't hit, You really insert your point and really let people know how you feel in your frustration and disappointment, but then also you don't create a culture of disappointment and denigration and sadness. How do you put that point across without really lowering the tone of the culture almost?

A I think that first of all, there's a cultural decision to make, which is, are you a culture where you're always improving or not? And to me, the answer is an obvious yes, you always want to be improving. If you're not always improving, then what are you doing? That's on all of us to always improve, and that's not just Me telling people that are below me, it's people telling people that are above them too, and it goes both ways. I think that there's always the challenge of unpacking why. Why do I think this? You're not going to go into a meeting and say, hey, this is shit. You're going to say, hey, I don't think this is the right decision. Here's why I believe that. And I think it's really important to be able to unpack and be able to tell people why. And I think that as we're all moving so fast, which is if your day is chunked into half hour bits, there's so much pressure to constantly be giving people the answer or telling people, no, this way. And the thing that I'm trying to challenge myself to do more and more is just to really step back and say, here's why. Here's why I think this.

AI assessment note: “You're going to say, hey, I don't think this is the right decision.”

Q Can I ask in terms of like rollouts and product rollouts and product dev, How do you think about doing it fast enough, but not too fast that suddenly you have four or five new, and it's too much too fast? What's the right kind of cadence in terms of rollouts, do you think?

A Well, there's a lot of ways to look at that, right? So there's the user experience, but there's also the marketing aspect. From a marketing standpoint, what we've found is that people really want Figma to always be improving. And of course, we want it that way too. But I think also it is possible to go too fast and to not consider things fully enough. And so it's important to make sure that You keep things simple, and I think that especially later in your product life cycle, the requests you get are dominated by power users sometimes, and they're asking for more power, more power. You can't forget that the reason that became a power user in the first place is because they were able to use the platform, and if you're ever introducing power user functionality that is at the expense of the basic user experience, you're probably going a little bit too fast.

AI assessment note: “introducing power user functionality that is at the expense of the basic user experience”

Q I couldn't agree more in terms of the priorities there. I do have to ask. This is one that I have no idea how to answer, so I'm hoping that you will help me here. How do you determine what to say yes to and what to say no to?

A I think it's super hard, and I don't know if there's any patterns. I think it's important to know your own biases here. Some people are more biased towards do less. Some are more biased towards us do more. My bias is always like doing everything. And so I have to really reign that in and focus becomes important. So I try to challenge myself to think through like, what are the things that if we don't do, we die and start there. And then from there, kind of like build out. But I also try to do, uh, one approach I have for this is that I try to surround myself with people who are very good at prioritizing and, uh, working through these questions. And then I try to encourage a lot of debate internally. I think some people see debate as a sign that there's not mutual respect or people aren't calling direction or something. I couldn't disagree more. I think debate is a sign that a healthy culture internally, that people are bringing their entire selves to work and able to push back and they care enough for the business and they're engaged enough and they want to see the best outcome possible. And so I think what's sort of a truism and a cliche, but making sure that everyone's able to have that conversation about prioritization and And strategy, but then also even if they disagree at the end, we all agree to disagree and we move forward together. You know, that's an important thing to…

AI assessment note: “what are the things that if we don't do, we die and start there.”

Q Can I ask you a question? I've made the mistake before in the media company of looking at someone's CV, seeing great logos, and going, great, don't need to do the trial runs, or the test mock-ups, or whatever. They worked at the BBC. Great. Like, that's my mistake. When you look at ones that haven't worked out, what have been your takeaways or learnings from those experiences?

A I think it's like any role, you can't make a hire unless you have total conviction, and so it's a balance, right, because you want the team to feel a lot of pressure to hire, and especially as you scale, it's not just about you hiring anymore, it's about making sure that everyone has this point of view, that it's important to hire, but also that you want to be slow and thoughtful about it, but if you're trying to double a team in a year, you can't be too slow, and people feel very much like they wake up in the morning, and the first thing they think about is hiring, and they realize is, like, the thing that, one of the things I measured on is if I can make these hires, And so, it's sort of holding both those thoughts in your head simultaneously of, you have to grow fast, but you have to go right, and you can't just, like, make hires, and you have to be a little bit conservative on these decisions.

AI assessment note: “you can't make a hire unless you have total conviction”

Q anyone listening, if you haven't, amazing. I think the most interesting thing is, like, when we think about, like, Figma transitioning from application to platform, and when we think about that challenge, I actually spoke to Howie at Airtable about it quite recently, but my question to you, first off, is, like, high level, what do you think are the biggest challenges in making that transition from application to platform?

A I think Some companies start with a really innate sense of how to build a platform. So for example, I think of Coda as a great example of this. I remember the early days of Coda and talking with Shishir, and I would ask him about like, hey, like what specific user journey are you trying to solve for here? And he'd be like, well, the platform thinking is. And I was always like, man, like that seems really tough to take that approach to market. Like why not take a specific use case? And the reality is you can go both ways. I think it might take a little bit longer to go platform route, but then you have this sort of opportunity to back into scale it faster. And then you can also, of course, do the Figma thing, which is Go for the use case, then go to platform over time. But I think either way, you have to eventually figure out how to think in a more platform focused way. And that's something that we're still figuring out. I think we did a good job of creating sort of the V zero or V one or whatever of our platform in terms of plugins, but there's so much ahead of us still in terms of where we can take the Figma platform. And I'm really excited to make that happen. But I think that there's a lot of challenges there and it's going to take a lot of effort on our team to continue to evolve it over time and to make sure that we're supporting developers in the best way.

AI assessment note: “figure out how to think in a more platform focused way.”