The more we built with WebGL, the more confident we were that this could be a technology we could use to go build a professional-grade interface design tool. But like you said, no one believed us. I kept trying to recruit people, and I found that if I didn\u2019t show up and immediately open my laptop to show them the tool working, they just wouldn\u2019t believe me. I couldn\u2019t even get them to wait around in a meeting. They would do it, because they were polite, but people form their first impression quite quickly. If I waited until the end of the meeting to show the candidates the tool versus showing them the tool in the first two minutes, it was a way different conversion probability of whether they were interested in the next step. If you\u2019re sitting there with me for an hour, you\u2019re just like, \u201cThis guy is full of it,\u201d versus, \u201cWow, this is maybe legit.\u201d It was a very different proposition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
So people didn\u2019t believe that you could run desktop-class design in a browser using WebGL.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Not at all, no. I think there had been too many examples of prior art, and not just in creative tools, but also in folks trying to build really good web applications. Outside of things like Google Docs and G Suite, there weren\u2019t a lot of good examples yet. Some people in the know were seeing that things like Onshape were starting to come out. I think Aviary was a predecessor to Figma in some ways. It did good work, but in Flash, so it was kind of the wrong technology at the wrong time. It\u2019s amazing how just a few years can make that difference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
I actually want to get into the web and WebGL and what that means for Figma as a company.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I think it\u2019s really important but under-recognized. Figma is a web standards company in a very important way. But let\u2019s come back to that. Let\u2019s do the Decoder <\/em>questions first. I think of these as the basic questions. How many people are at Figma right now after 10 years?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Have you scaled at a linear rate? Have you added 100 people a year for 10 years, or have there been peaks and valleys?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I would say we have roughly doubled year over year, most years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Where do you double? How is Figma structured?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
This last year we probably doubled across the org, with perhaps a bit more growth in sales.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Yes, in sales and go-to-market in general. We see the customer demand there, and we\u2019re trying to scale to reach it. Most years we have doubled pretty much across the board, though there are little variations here and there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
What does sales look like at Figma? Do you have people cold-calling giant companies and being like, \u201cHave you thought about designing on the web?\u201d Or is it inbound, where you are answering questions and designing licenses? What does the sales process actually look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
It is mostly inbound and outbound. The go-to-market is very influenced by bottoms-up. I think in general, enterprise companies are not rocket science. You have to find customers somehow. Maybe it\u2019s through marketing, maybe it\u2019s through sales development representatives that are, like you said, cold-calling or cold-emailing, or maybe it\u2019s through your product qualified leads.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
A lot of it is product qualified for us. People that are using Figma say, \u201cOkay, wait a second. My needs are evolving. I\u2019m trying to get more of my company on Figma.\u201d They are raising their hands, saying, \u201cHow can I do that?\u201d We are trying to help, so we try to make it very consultative, to make it so that people are able to have us as a trusted partner. Then we\u2019re able to work with them to figure out the right way to expand that Figma usage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Just to be clear, the bottoms-up sale is when people at a company just start using a tool without telling anyone, which is how I do everything. That\u2019s the bottoms-up. You get the users because they are using a good tool, and the company is sort of forced to buy the tool for everybody. The other way around is to sell the product directly to the Chief Information Officer (CIO).\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Well, you work with the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Right, you work with the company.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Usually there is some combination of people saying, \u201cHey, this is interesting,\u201d and us trying to get the conversation going early enough so no one feels weird about it. We build that relationship and try to make it so people understand what Figma is. Why could it be valuable? How could it work uniquely with your company? So you work together with a design leader, core product leader, or IT \u2014 the champions in the organization who want to see this become the standard \u2014 and together you bring it into the organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
I think Datadog has a really cool history of serving developers. It has some similarities, not entirely one-to-one, but somewhat similar to designers. They have a very heavy motion of expansion. Over time the account grows, and they have managed to figure out how to add more value through new products. How we build new products and new services for our customers is something that we care about too.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
As CEO you have a lot of people reporting to you. Where are most of the people reporting from? Is it on the product side? Is it the sales side? Do you just have a lot of accountants?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Engineering product development and sales are probably the biggest areas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Is that where all the recruiting focus is?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
It\u2019s across the board. You want to make sure that people have a great experience coming to Figma regardless. What I tell people is that it\u2019s every manager\u2019s responsibility to recruit. You can\u2019t really depend on dedicated recruiters. Though hopefully, a recruiter will make it a lot easier and will make sure the experience is really good. Then it is HR\u2019s responsibility to make sure once people are in the building, they have a really great experience of being a Figmate \u2014 that they are learning and developing, have great career options and good mentorship, and if they need feedback, they\u2019re getting it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
The cumulative sum of all that is that our culture is the best it\u2019s ever been, because we have invested and focused so much on that over the past few years. We\u2019ve had days where our culture was not as good, mostly in the early days. So I have a comparator point there and feel really good about how Figma works. Hearing feedback from newer hires that Figma matches what they were sold has been great to hear. But there are always ways to improve too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Actually, let me ask you about those early days a little bit. You have been very open in other interviews and talks that you\u2019ve done that you had to learn how to be a leader on the job at Figma. You received some pretty hard feedback along the way. As you mentioned, your only other job before this was as an intern. So here is the Decoder <\/em>question. You are 10 years on this journey and you just made a gigantic decision to sell this company. How do you make decisions?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Depends on the decision, always. I think if it comes to product engineering, design, and roadmap, there is always a tension in wanting to give people some guidance on how to be top-down in terms of the strategy. Where is the company going in broad strokes? What are the top three things we are doing that everyone needs to know? But it also needs to be empowering. You need to make sure at all times that people across the organization are able to understand, be on the ground, talking with users, and be really deep in the details and technical specifics of what is possible or what is changing locally for their product area.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
You want to meet somewhere in the middle of, \u201cHere is the local feedback and the ideas that we have,\u201d and the top-down, \u201cHere is a point of view on strategy and where we should take the company.\u201d Somehow those have to meet, and you need to be able to resolve tensions and work through any conflicts that arise. Education and context-building are areas that can really help with these things.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
When it comes to making decisions in general, especially when you don\u2019t have enough data, it\u2019s not like there is one framework that is the magic framework. People talk about regret minimization, where you imagine yourself in the future and ask yourself which path you would regret less. That\u2019s a really good framework, but it turns out it\u2019s not the only one. You can come up with all sorts of frameworks for any decision you are trying to make.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
An example is when we were deciding, \u201cOkay, do we sell the company or not?\u201d First of all, I was very lucky to have people around me, like my board, and once we eventually got to a certain point in the process, I was able to be more open to my exec team and talk with them as well. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it is my decision. I own the decision. I tried a multitude of frameworks, and each one led me to say, \u201cThis is a good call.\u201d I won\u2019t go into the details of all those frameworks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
What were the top two frameworks?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I won\u2019t go into the details on all of them right now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
I didn\u2019t ask for all them, I asked for two. What were the top two?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
But I think what\u2019s interesting is\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
No, wait. What were the top two?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\u201cObviously monetary is a framework, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Well, I mean obviously monetary is a framework, right? But it\u2019s not the only one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
I knew it was the first one.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Impact. Impact is a framework. Will this lead to us having less impact? I think regret minimization is one that you could certainly think about. Anyway, I can list off 10 more, but again, I don\u2019t want to go into the details there. Making sure that we were able to continue building a really important culture was definitely a consideration, so was attracting the type of people that we had been attracting. I think it would\u2019ve been spooky to me if we didn\u2019t think that was the case. I built a lot of conviction that it was. Thinking through all these different frameworks, not only did it highlight where the gaps were in my thinking and what things I had to figure out, it also highlighted important conversations I needed to have with the Adobe team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
The more I went into those conversations and brought up my concerns, the more I gained conviction that this was a really good decision for not just the company, but for our users and our community. It also built our trust and our relationship with the team. There was never a moment where I was like, \u201cOh, I have this framework that I\u2019m trying,\u201d that led me to a decision of, \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t do this.\u201d That was a sign. I think if you do get to a point where you have different frameworks that lead to different answers, you have to find some meta frameworks or a way to sort through all of them, which is maybe a little tougher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
All right. Let me give you a framework where it doesn\u2019t work out so well. It\u2019s shocking to me that you are out doing media in the middle of this acquisition. Here is a framework that the government is going to use: The Federal Trade Commission or European regulators are going to say Adobe is a gigantic corporation with dominant market share amongst designers in the world. Figma represented real and meaningful competition to Adobe, and was taking share away from Adobe in a variety of contexts. Adobe buying Figma reduces competition in the market. I have heard this from people who do not care about antitrust law, \u201cCrap, this thing that was competing with Adobe that I was excited about is going to get swallowed by the board.\u201d I have heard this from regulators who care a lot about competition from the market, and I have heard it from your local podcast hosts who think that tech companies need a lot more competition, especially big tech companies.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
That is the framework that I think comes out as a \u201cno,\u201d right? You just listed off a lot of people you obviously care about, who are on your team and in control of the destiny of this company. You are going to cede some of their control over the future of Figma to a very large company with its own needs and aspirations, and might snuff out the thing that makes Figma such a good competitor. Whether or not you think that is the right policy choice, the right financial choice, or whatever, the thing that is exciting about tech is that there is always a disruptive challenger that shows up and knocks these giants off their pedestals. Figma is that thing. Isn\u2019t that the framework that says, \u201cNo, you shouldn\u2019t do this. You should see if you can actually knock Adobe off the map?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I think for the user community, that was a critical component of the decision. That was probably the first audience that I thought of as we were thinking through it. As I thought through that decision and what we could do for the community, it actually led me to becoming more convinced that we should do this versus less so. Part of that is because there are a lot of things we don\u2019t do in Figma today that are needed in the product development process.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
If you think about product development, it\u2019s not just pixels on the screen. You have a range of media types you are going to bring into the product development process in today\u2019s world. Think about the Verge<\/em> redesign for example. It\u2019s not like you just use static imagery; you use video, and in the future you might use 3D content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
But those tools exist. We can pay for those tools too. Why does Figma need to be a part of those tools? It\u2019s not like JPEGs and MP4s are difficult to move around.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I think that there are really good advantages that you can have as someone using a set of tools if the tools actually connect really well in one process. It\u2019s like what we were talking about before. Figma is going from idea to design to production, and we are really trying to make the product development process as good as possible. What else can we do if we are able to bring more mediums into that? I think there are a lot of things that become possible there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Name a thing. Name a specific thing. Adobe is a vast company. I think most people listening to this do not know that Adobe has a gigantic ads business. Many, many things can plug into whatever Figma is doing. Give me a concrete example of why being owned by Adobe is better than a partnership with Adobe.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Photo editing is a great example of something that I think we could do a much better job of in the product design process. There are a lot of times where you are using Figma plus other tools for photo editing, many of which might be owned by Adobe right now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Why does the ownership of the tools matter?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
It is extremely helpful to be able to go seamlessly into your workflow with a new modality, versus bringing assets and doing a complex import-export process into another tool. At the end of the day, our vision for Figma is to make design accessible to all, to make it so you are able to get things out of your head and onto the canvas faster. How do you do that while making it so that you are able to transition across these modalities quicker?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
So you\u2019re saying you\u2019re opening Figma? I am just trying to be very concrete about this. You are opening Figma, you have designed some interface, you have a photo element in it, you click on it, and you get the full set of Photoshop tools right there in front of you, instead of having to open Photoshop and create a file.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I think there is a huge opportunity to bring these capabilities from Adobe Creative Suite and Creative Cloud into Figma and utilize them more, and to make it so that you are able to go and somehow transition across these different creative modalities to have a more seamless way of working.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
By the way, we aren\u2019t just talking about product design at the end of the day. I think that there is an opportunity to scale the impact of Figma much more broadly. We can start to make it so that you take the web-based tech, the different methods of collaboration, and the platform we have developed, and apply that to many other creative areas as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Finally, there is a huge opportunity to think about how creativity and productivity come together here. Like I mentioned at the start of our conversation, FigJam is not just a tool for designers. Isn\u2019t this being used across the entire organization? It turns out that visual canvases are actually really helpful for tons of people to use. It\u2019s a way for teams to come together, and it\u2019s a way for people to run meetings. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
A lot of people are trying to get into the creative productivity game. It\u2019s heating up in competition a lot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
We are in a world where a lot of people are trying to get into the creative productivity game. It\u2019s an area that is heating up in competition a lot. For example, Microsoft Designer just came out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
I mean, I\u2019m rolling my eyes because another thing that just happened is that Adobe announced it was going to be purchasing Figma, and that it was going to sunset Adobe XD, which is the competitor to Figma.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I don\u2019t think they announced that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
You can add and you can subtract from the market, and it is net zero that Microsoft is going to bundle some more stuff into the Office Suite. At the end of the day, Adobe\u2019s competitor to Figma is going to go away because the company is going to own Figma. I hear you, in that there are ways to make things more seamless, but I\u2019m still not clear on why Adobe has to own Figma to make these things happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I\u2019m trying to highlight that there are a lot of things we can do here to make the customer experience of using Figma way better as a result of this. It\u2019s really good for our community, really good for our user base, and really good for the designers in the Verge<\/em> team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
We did our redesign on Figma. It was fun to use.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
There is stuff in this structure that is really interesting to me. Everyone has been very clear that Figma will be an independent division inside of Adobe when this is all said and done \u2014 not a subsidiary, but a division of Adobe into itself. You\u2019re going to report to an Adobe executive. Who are you going to report to?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
What is his role at Adobe?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
He\u2019s the chief business officer of Creative Cloud and Digital Media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
This is just a really small question. Did you get to pick? I have never been acquired. Did you look at a sheet with your kitchen cabinet of people and say, \u201cAll right, I\u2019m going to report to this person,\u201d or did they tell you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I mean, look, I have had a great relationship with Scott [Belsky, Adobe\u2019s chief product officer] <\/strong>since the start of Figma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I think he reports to the same person, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Yes. I actually tried to convince Scott to be an investor early on. Turns out he was getting acquired, so I didn\u2019t get him as an investor. We have continued to be friends and build that relationship over the last decade. In this case, it was David who was really bringing Figma in, and so I just assumed that was the structure the entire way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
So there was never a conversation. You never said, \u201cI actually want to report to the CEO of Adobe\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
How much do you stand to personally make from this deal?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Depends on the stock price on any given day. Look, that has not been my focus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
You\u2019ve done the math. What\u2019s the low and what\u2019s the high?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u00a0I don\u2019t have the spreadsheets in front of me. It becomes very complex.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Are you going to be rich when it\u2019s done? Like private jet rich?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I feel very well-off already. I have nothing to complain about, and I feel super blessed and lucky. I couldn\u2019t be more thankful to be where I am at 30, regardless of this deal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
How much will your employees get?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I assure you, every one of your employees who has equity in this company has done the math. Is it significant? Are you going to mint a bunch of millionaires?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
I hope that we\u2019re able to make it so the team is able to do whatever they want to do, and to move on if they want to. Hopefully they will stay at Figma a long time, but they can also go make a great impact in whatever community they\u2019re in. I think we have an incredible, super creative group of people at Figma. I\u2019m really excited to see them be even more empowered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
The reason I ask all those questions in that way is because I think you are going to stay at Figma. My feeling is that you are very committed to this thing you started when you were a very young man. But when people get the \u201cfuck you\u201d money, they might leave. They don\u2019t have to stay after the deal closes. You have to retain great talent that is going to enter the Adobe ecosystem, be able to leave, and even just do things inside of Adobe. It has to come into a much larger corporate structure that is going to have all the attendant Byzantine problems that come with it, as well as the resources. I don\u2019t want to say there are no pros to that, but there are some cons.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
The reason people join startups like Figma is the promise of this exit payday, which you will not be able to offer folks anymore. Have you thought about that life cycle? \u201cOkay, I\u2019m going to graduate out a bunch of people who are going to get the money \u2014 they\u2019re going to get the bag and walk. Then my recruiting pipeline is going to dramatically change because the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will be gone.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
This is wild, you don\u2019t have to believe me if you don\u2019t want to, but the number of people that started to apply to Figma after we announced this went up tremendously. Which is counterintuitive, because a lot of people have that mental model you just described. That is just the fact. I don\u2019t know exactly what the percentage lift was and how sustained it was. I mean, it probably went down after the acquisition announcement a bit, but we have been getting people that are really excited about doing this at the combined company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Well, the deal hasn\u2019t closed yet, right? If you get a job at Figma today, you still get Figma equity that might get paid out.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
It\u2019s pinned to Adobe equity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
If it ends up going through, then it becomes Adobe equity. If not, it\u2019s Figma equity. I think that the chance of going and building this context is something that people are actually really excited about. Just looking at our team, we very deliberately tried to hire people that are super missionary throughout the company\u2019s life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
We haven\u2019t always been the highest-paying company. And you can always find a way to stretch a band and not be fair in your compensation, but we have been very deliberate about making sure that our compensation bands are fair and equitable. Through that, I think we have a lot of people who really believe in what we\u2019re doing, not just people who are trying to make the most money.\u00a0 It turns out that this has become a good outcome and people are going to do really well in aggregate, which I\u2019m super happy about. Our employees are in it because they really love creativity, design, and building things, and they love doing it for other designers and creatives. I think they\u2019re stoked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
I think you probably know this, but Tony Fadell is a friend of the show and a friend of The Verge<\/em>, and he was <\/strong>on Decoder <\/em>recently<\/strong><\/a>. He has a book out called <\/strong>
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