The Exchanges

Q Basically, you're moving from a human-to-human collaboration company to a human-to-AI collaboration company over time in some sense, because, you know, what you're describing seems like a really interesting way to have co-pilots augment humanity or augment creativity. Are there other ways that you've thought about the substantiation of that sort of creativity augmentation or how AI really interacts with human creative potential?

A Well, and these are just examples of things that I have seen or, or thought about that I think could be cool in the creative space because you asked about, but I think in the design context, um, one thing that really matters a lot is the iterative loop and being able to keep going back and forth, uh, to an agent and give more instructions over time. If you just kind of like go to first principles here, there's so much that you're not able to communicate via a prompt. Like, if you think about great design, it often captures something about the culture, the ethos of the moment. It captures, uh, something about the temporal aspect of the sequence of interaction someone's having or the, the context they will have mentally. Something about affordances, what people are used to in terms of the language of design, uh, which is sometimes similar and dependent on the platform, you know, but oftentimes there's something about emotional state too. Uh, there's, you know, videos that the designers probably watched or, or in-person research interviews they've conducted. And so I, I think like fitting all that plus the product requirements, um, plus visual style into a prompt that's hard. Even if you could just get unblocked by an AI helping you brainstorm and thinking through problems, you know, that's your first sort of draft. And from there you can keep iterating from there. You can Keep ev…

AI assessment note: “in the design context, um, one thing that really matters a lot is the iterative loop”

Q cool. Yeah. Basically you're moving from a human to human collaboration company to a human to AI collaboration company over time in some sense. Cause you know, what you're describing seems like a really interesting way to Have co-pilots, um, augment humanity or augment creativity. Are there other ways that you've thought about the substantiation of that sort of creativity augmentation or how AI really interacts with human creative potential?

A Well, and these are just examples of things that I have seen or, or thought about that I think could be cool in the creative space because you asked about, but I think in the design context, um, one thing that really matters a lot is the iterative loop and being able to keep going back and forth, uh, to an agent and give more instructions over time. If you just kind of like go to first principles here, there's so much that you're not able to communicate via a prompt. Like if you think about great design, it often captures something about the culture, the ethos of the moment. It captures, uh, something about the temporal aspect of the sequence of interaction someone's having or the, the context they will have mentally. Something about affordances, what people are used to in terms of the language of design, uh, which is sometimes a similar and dependent on the platform, you know, but oftentimes there's something about emotional state too. Uh, there's, you know, videos that the designers probably watched or, or in-person research interviews they've conducted. And so I, I think like fitting all that plus the product requirements, um, plus visual style into a prompt that's hard. Even if you could just get unblocked by an AI helping you brainstorm and thinking through problems, you know, that's your first sort of draft, and from there you can keep iterating, from there you can keep e…

AI assessment note: “in the design context, um, one thing that really matters a lot is the iterative loop”

Q Uh, new step forward. Uh, when you think about the company at this scale and with the clarity of, you know, being independent, investing for, for your future, does that, like, how did, how do you feel like you've changed as a, as a leader in terms of the culture you're trying to build and what that looked at like year one at Figma, year five at Figma versus now?

A Well, I, I've certainly evolved a lot as a leader. I mean, I didn't know how to manage or lead people when I started Figma and I, I hope I've learned something over the years. Uh, I definitely have learned something over the years, um, uh, that, that said, I'm still learning. And I think that each stage of the company, uh, it forces you to continue to, to grow your skillset, to grow your frameworks, uh, and to be able to understand, you know, how do you lead it at a greater scale and do so Uh, in a way that empowers, but it's also efficient and streamlined. And those are sometimes, they can seem like two sides of the same coin, but, uh, you know, they also are two poles. Um, and I think that in terms of Figma's culture, that's the thing that maybe hasn't changed as much. Like, I think different values and parts of Figma have been more emphasized over time or less emphasized over time. Like, You know, a big part of our culture and values that is play, for example. And I'll be, I'll be honest, like right now in these few months, we are sprinting fucking hard, not as much of a moment of play. It will return. Like we have so much to create, so much to innovate on. Um, right now though, the thing that we're talking a lot about is the value run with it. Uh, you know, and, and how do you make sure that as we scale, That if you see something to be done, that you just do it rather than …

AI assessment note: “different values and parts of Figma have been more emphasized over time”

Q for more, like, more than a day or so, and then you're like, okay, I don't know about a lot. I, I didn't see that much of you for about a year and a half. I know some of that was regulatory, but you all kept pushing pretty hard, which seems smart now, but what was, what was behind that and sort of, you know, trying to lead that way?

A Well, partially there's travel for regulatory, of course, but I think that, yes, I mean, we were, we're all really heads down and, and focused, and we knew exactly what we needed to do, um, in terms of improving the platform. Uh, and really, if you think about Figma's platform today, there's sort of three different areas. There's FigJam, which is ideation, brainstorming, imagination, uh, and diagramming, and then there's the design element with Figma design, and there's dev mode. Where you try to turn designs into actual working code. Um, and so much more we can do as we kind of think about that software value chain. But, you know, if you go back to when the acquisition agreement was signed, like dev mode wasn't even announced even. Um, and the platform, there was like very key parts of the platform that were not there yet over the past, you know, 1617 months. There's just been so much that we've sprinted at, uh, in order to kind of create the right foundations and get them in place. And now, uh, as we think about the roadmap ahead, yeah, there's so much exciting stuff that we can do. Um, whether it's thinking about how do you use AI to go across this abstraction boundaries from idea to design to code, uh, or it's thinking about what we can do to better serve developers, which are almost a third of our users. And I think that there's still so much more we can do for them. Uh, d…

AI assessment note: “we're all really heads down and, and focused, and we knew exactly what we needed to do”

Q like the movement of hair or things like that. And so it's been interesting to watch the evolution of that prior generation of technology, which I now think is 30 years old or something like that. Do you have a prediction on when we'll start to see actual Content either from Sora or from other models that will be professionally produced and sort of part of the broader media genre?

A That's a good question. I, I don't have a prediction on the exact timeline, but, but one thing related to this I'm really interested in is what things other than like traditional films people might use this for. I do think that, yeah, maybe over the next couple of years, we'll see people starting to make like more and more films, but I think people will also find Completely new ways to use these models that are just different from the current media that we're used to. Cause it's a very different paradigm when you can tell these models kind of what you want them to see and they can respond in a way. And maybe they're just like new modes of interacting with content that like really creative artists will come up with. So I'm actually like most excited for what totally new things people will be doing. That's just different from what we currently have.

AI assessment note: “I do think that, yeah, maybe over the next couple of years”