The Exchanges

Q You joined Figma in the early days. You were the first salesperson, sales leader, and I'd be really interested to hear about what the first few months looked like and would love you to sort of share in as much detail, even if it feels mundane or boring in terms of what are the things that you did when you showed up for the first day?

A When I joined the company, it just raised our series B a few months earlier. I think there was about 40 to 45 employees, give or take. No sales team. We had this product that was in a beta. So when I joined, the first thing I wanted to do was, was meet customers, get closer to the product and understand like how people were using it. There wasn't any really formal documentation of notes. So Dylan and Claire, who was on your show in the past and a few other folks had been talking to customers and working with customers and converting customers over the years. So even though they didn't have a sales team, founder led sales, community led sales was kind of happening in some ways. But there was no documentation. I couldn't come in and read the notes on working with Microsoft and what that relationship looked like. So that was a challenge. I had very limited information on what was happening in the field. And the other thing that Dylan asked me actually to do in the first month of joining was to join the support team. He asked me to not do anything on the sales side, spend four months with the support team in the support queue, working on bugs, understanding the ins and outs of the product. And at first, You know, I was a little taken aback. I was just hired to help this team build their business, drive revenue, hire a sales team, and now I'm going to go hang out with the support te…

AI assessment note: “Dylan asked me actually to do in the first month of joining was to join”

Q there other rituals in the early days that you all did that were kind of interesting or unique? You talked about sales tales and you just talked about in the interview process, Each potential rep had to demo the product for you and Dylan and others. Are there other sort of unique little rituals or part of the operating rhythm of the sales team that might be interesting to explore?

A Yeah. I think one thing we thought about was that, Hey, we're trying to sell to an audience and we have some of the best people in this profession at the company. And in the early days we were all in San Francisco, you know, we, COVID had not happened. We were very much And office culture, and so we would actually go to design crits, design critiques, where designers and product managers would come in, and they would tear down things that people were building and shipping, and it was so interesting because we got to see all of the level of detail that they were tearing down these products, and you start to open up your mind, you know. I mean, I think of myself as a little bit creative, not a lot a bit creative, but when you spend time with creative, and you see what they see, it's like a whole different world, and so I think that curiosity and spending Time with people where they were like, yeah, totally. Bring your sales team in. So be myself, six other reps, and we'd come in and they'd even like, let us ask questions. We don't want to derail the meeting, but a design crit is a huge part of the development process and the design team getting together and kind of sharing ideas, critiquing them, of course, tearing them down, building them back up and coming out more aligned on, all right, what we're going to go do and what we're not going to go do and not going to go spend time …

AI assessment note: “we would actually go to design crits, design critiques”

Q For most of the 12 or 24 or 36 months after you joined for most of that time, was everything just inbound oriented, just engaging with customers who are already in the product, converting them over? Was there some outbound or more traditional enterprise orientation or sort of what did that look like?

A You know, we were fortunate to have probably 18 months to two years of a healthy inbound business. And even that we had plenty of inbound and opportunity just as the The platform and user based group. But at some point, I think you want your sale leader pushing that fine line of, okay, great. You've proved that you can convert in on interest. Cause that's kind of P zero. You want to come in and make sure that customers are excited. You're jumping on calls with them. You're working with them directly and they're converting to your business or enterprise tiers. Once we stepped up the team and you start giving people territories and we were segmenting and we brought in managers and frontline leaders. You have people that have territories, and we were basically saying, okay, we're going to round-robin leads, and that's one part of the business, but we're also going to give AEs books of business based on usage. So all the stuff we did early on working with Census, which is a reverse retail company, and that's what Pervere and I and a handful of other people kind of built early on. It really, you know, it's still alive today, but the first three years, that was our big bet, and it ended up paying off, because we were focusing on the companies where we were seeing We could actually put in who's most active in the Figma platform, and it would put in an email. Kyle at Figma. Who's paire…

AI assessment note: “we were fortunate to have probably 18 months to two years of a healthy inbound business.”

Q make this key first sales hire and share some of the specific things Figma's CEO Dylan Field did To set Kyle and his early team up for success. It's essential listening for anyone who touches GTM for product-led companies. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Kyle. What do you think a founder should have figured out on their own before they're willing to start to bring in sales folks?

A I've always believed, and I think in the last 12 months has been really top of mind, uh, for a lot of founders, and something that I'm seeing out in, uh, my network as well, is the founder needs to prove, you know, product market fit, I think is a nebulous thing, means different things to different people. What we've seen in 2023, and even part of 2022, is if it's software that's additive, the forward-looking road map is really promising, but not certain value today, and something that people are saying, hey, This either solves a massive problem I have. It helps consolidate a bunch of other products that may be using. Maybe it's in the new wave of AI, whatever it may be. If you don't have that conviction and you're just building something really cool and maybe the stickiness of the product or the usage that you're seeing under the hood is not there, it's going to be really hard to bring in a sales team because maybe you'll bring in a sales team and maybe it'll be great at conversion, but the long tail of the business is just not going to be sustainable. And I think this is something that everyone's facing in this day and age. You want to be business critical software, not something that's nice to have. Nice to have has been, you know, thrown out in the last couple quarters.

AI assessment note: “the founder needs to prove, you know, product market fit”

Q I assume the advice is, is it's not just, here's the seven question playbook founder. Now you're off to the races, but let's say you were forced to sort of come up with something like here's the five or 10 questions, or here's a little draft of the outline of the interview that I would recommend you consider doing. What are some of the things that would be in there?

A Yeah, I think one of the things that you can do is just almost have like a brainstorm. It's almost like bring them into your environment and let's just start jamming on ideas. What would you do next? How would you think about it? Here's the customers that we're focused on. We're going after the SMB segment. We're going after enterprise. Here's the kind of contracts that we're able to convert today. Here's the feedback we get when customers don't convert and just get their real time reactions and have a discussion. Of course, the founder has been thinking about this day and night building the product. Building the team. And so if you're not getting a good signal that, hey, this is someone that I can work with B they're intelligent and they can balance the strategic and the tactical, and then C they're actually, you know, a really, really strong candidate. You almost feel like you're getting feedback. This is a mentor. This is someone who can really guide strategy and someone who you want in your camp, because if they were to come on board, it's a small group of people that's thinking about the go to market side of the house. And I don't think it has to be formal. Here's these five or 10 questions. There are some good questions that you can ask. I think it's really like you want to get to the meat of the interview, and that in my mind is a discussion, a brainstorm, where you can …

AI assessment note: “one of the things that you can do is just almost have like a brainstorm”

Q Are there any stories that come to mind of those first couple of years that were critical moments for you as you were building out the go to market function that other people might find inspiration from or learn something that might be useful to their own journey?

A The reality is that when you're doing something like this, it can be all consuming. You've got to find the boundaries to protect yourself from burnout. I think that, um, The double-edged sword of momentum, success, hiring, more people, and moving fast is that it can kind of become your life. You're working at this amazing business, you're very fortunate, you're very lucky, but as an individual, as a, you know, a husband, a father, whatever it may be, you need to find that kind of balance. And so I think for me, a few years in, and it's still something I'm working on every day, every week, but it's just trying to find that balance and learning how to scale what I'm good at and what my superpowers are and There's always the things that I'll work to get better at, but I think that I've doubled down on really knowing what my strengths are, and spending the most time doing that, and influencing the team, influencing the business, and trying to take breaks, and also balance, you know, my time when I'm not working at Figma, because when you're at these startups, you're an early employee, it's all consuming, and that's so positive, and so fun, and I'm addicted to it. I'll, I'll be honest. I love it, but at the same time, you know that Being too into any one thing is probably not that healthy, so when you get to that point in your career and you're just thinking about how do I scale mys…

AI assessment note: “You've got to find the boundaries to protect yourself from burnout.”