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Will Griffith had only been two months in his job as a venture investor for Iconiq when he met a 19-year-old college dropout named Dylan Field. This would lead to one of his signature seed investments, in a startup called Figma.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Figma went public with the stock popping<\/a> from the $33 IPO opening price to close at $115.50 and a $47 billion market cap. And Griffith could not be more effusive in his praise for the company.<\/p>\n \u201cYou go to one of these user conferences and you\u2019re like, there\u2019s 15,000 people here and 5,000 have Figma tattoos,\u201d Griffith smiled. From the earliest days, the founders of this company that offers software for designers had \u201ca fervent desire to win and deliver and redefine this ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet in 2013 at that first meeting, co-founders Dylan Field and Evan Wallace were untested. And at that point, so was Iconiq. It was known then as the very secretive wealth management firm for many of Silicon Valley\u2019s richest tech moguls, like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.<\/p>\n Figma, however, already had a champion: Field had been an intern at LinkedIn under its then CEO Jeff Weiner. Weiner was an angel investor (and bought more stock at later rounds<\/a>, too) and introduced Field to Griffith.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got connected to Figma before we had an early fund, before we had any venture fund,\u201d Griffith told TechCrunch. The investor remembers trekking out to meet the founders. \u201cIt was like two guys and the dog in an apartment in Palo Alto, and they were working on these newfangled graphics and design capability in a browser.\u201d<\/p>\n The demo showed how light could be manipulated when editing a photo in a browser. At the time, browser-based design software, based on WebGL, was revolutionary. Tech giant Adobe had the graphics design market locked up with its desktop software. \u201cI thought it was insane,\u201d Griffith\u00a0recalled.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> The idea was so unproven Alexis Ohanian, who was investing out of his then firm Initialized, passed on Figma when he saw the product years later in 2016, he noted in a tweet this week<\/a>. Ohanian called Figma a member of his \u201cembarrassing miss-list.\u201d<\/p>\n But Griffith wrote a check. Seed shares, by the way, were priced at $0.0878 each, Figma disclosed<\/a> in its S-1A. And Griffith wrote more checks as Figma raised additional rounds. The company raised a total of about $332 million in venture funding through 2024, PitchBook estimates.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe invested in the seed. We invested in the Series A. We invested further. We did some secondary and we also invested more meaningfully a year ago,\u201d Griffith said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Iconiq did not wind up owning at least 5% of the company, a bar that would require Figma to publicly disclose the size of its stake. But it owns enough that the IPO will be celebrated at the Iconiq offices.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the ways that we celebrate is we guess what the closing day stock price is going to be on the first day. It\u2019s a prediction contest around the firm,\u201d Griffith said. \u201cThere are some good prizes and rewards.\u201d If someone nails that number, they could wind up with a healthy cash bonus or even something like a trip to Hawaii.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for the odd part of this IPO, Griffith has some insight. Most of the stock sold was from investors\u2019 stakes<\/a>, including Field\u2019s<\/a>, rather than new shares issued by the company, the company said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s very generous that existing investors are willing to sell as much to create enough supply for this IPO,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n