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First Round Capital

Figma’s CFO on going public, AI, and working alongside Dylan Field | Praveer Melwani

In this latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Praveer Melwani, CFO at Figma.

Brett BersonhostPraveer Melwaniguest

May 14, 202643mWatch on YouTube

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Chapter summaries

From early IC to CFO: luck, candor about gaps, and constant learning
Brett Berson asks why Praveer Melwani was able to grow from an early individual contributor into the top finance role instead of being replaced by a more experienced hire. Praveer emphasizes timing, leaders willing to bet on him, being candid about what he did and didn’t know, and continuously learning by asking questions and finding advocates.
- •Credits timing, choosing the right company, and having leadership support—especially from Dylan Field—as key to his growth
- •Says being explicit about shortcomings created permission to learn and “go figure it out”
- •Describes building a habit of asking the right questions and surrounding himself with people who could advocate for him
- •Frames strong leadership as first-principles thinking rather than being constrained by precedent
- •Explains that seeking answers (rather than always having them) helped him keep scaling in the role
Career path to Figma: banking, Dropbox scale-up, NerdWallet, then “go early”
Praveer walks through how he moved from investment banking to Dropbox, then briefly to NerdWallet, before intentionally pursuing much earlier-stage companies. He describes wanting decision-making ownership and landing at Figma when it was still pre-monetization and building out the org.
- •Left investment banking after about a year and a half and joined Dropbox in late 2013
- •At Dropbox, saw growth from roughly 400 people to around 1,600–1,700 people and wanted to “do it over”
- •Joined NerdWallet and was struck by the business economics, but realized he wanted to be empowered to make decisions
- •Advised by friends to talk to many Series A-scale companies; met Figma during that search
- •Joined Figma when it had just hired a COO and wasn’t charging yet, expecting to contribute broadly as a “sponge”
COO departure as a turning point: stepping into broader ops ownership
Praveer describes the first major step-function in his growth at Figma: the COO leaving about a year after he joined. The departure created a void across operations, and he raised his hand to take on unfamiliar areas while reporting directly to Dylan.
- •Before the COO left, he focused on finance/accounting basics, early monetization cohorts, and planning
- •Worked on evolving the product from purely self-serve toward incorporating a sales-led motion, including pricing and packaging collaboration
- •After the COO departure, identified missing operational functions like legal, security/compliance, and sales operations
- •Viewed the gap as an exciting opportunity rather than a risk
- •Moved to reporting to Dylan and was encouraged to hire where necessary
Hiring leaders in functions he didn’t understand—and learning to influence
Taking on new operational areas forced Praveer to hire senior leaders in domains where he didn’t yet know what “great” looked like. He also learned that aligning an executive team requires understanding motivations and influencing beyond spreadsheets.
- •Describes the challenge of hiring great leaders in unfamiliar functions by meeting many candidates and learning the underlying problems to solve
- •Notes that the legal leader hired in 2018/2019 became Figma’s current general counsel, Brendan Mulligan
- •Focused on enabling hires to succeed by removing blockers rather than micromanaging
- •Realized alignment isn’t achieved by simply showing analysis; it requires empathy for peers’ motivations
- •Identifies managing and influencing as two core skills he had to develop to keep scaling
Shifting pricing to AI consumption: building alignment and moving fast with feedback
Praveer shares a current example of influencing across leadership: moving from seat-based pricing toward consumption overlays for AI products. He explains the complexity of building a new financial model, balancing cost structure and user choice, learning from betas, and distinguishing reversible from irreversible decisions.
- •Describes the move from a seat-driven model to consumption pricing for AI products as an “entirely different financial model”
- •Highlights tradeoffs: cost structure, user choice, and creating a new unit of value/currency
- •Used external market analysis, scenario-based financial modeling, and end-user behavior from betas to build shared understanding
- •Emphasizes openness to feedback and willingness to adjust decisions
- •Uses a “two-way door vs one-way door” framing to decide when to move quickly
How his approach evolved: deeper user empathy, community-led growth, and product constraints
Comparing today to seven years ago, Praveer says he places much more weight on end users and Figma’s community dynamics. He also describes learning to balance finance-led creativity in pricing with product team concerns about complexity and speed.
- •Says he now has greater appreciation for end users and community than earlier in his tenure
- •Describes learning what community-led growth and marketing mean in practice at Figma
- •Notes Figma cares not only about top companies but also freelancers and learners
- •Admits he previously might have questioned community investment based on immediate P&L linkage
- •Highlights tension between creative pricing strategies and product team concerns about complexity and execution speed
Learning systems and tools: Claude Code, experts, and experimentation
Praveer explains his approach to learning new domains, noting that AI tools are changing how he starts problems. He describes seeking experts, building a framework for the problem, and using experimentation while carefully identifying decisions that are hard to reverse.
- •Says his learning method is changing due to new tools; describes a teammate building an “external brain” in Claude Code
- •Explains that better context and stronger first drafts are possible now compared to even months earlier
- •Prefers seeking out experts and people who have faced similar challenges before
- •Builds frameworks via spreadsheets or internal questioning to clarify the problem
- •Advocates experimentation and speed while protecting “holy” decisions that are difficult to unwind
Creating an internal peer board: translating outside advice into company-specific decisions
Praveer outlines how he uses other CFOs and leaders as thought partners while avoiding copy-paste solutions. He emphasizes asking sharp questions, deeply understanding the business context, and building ongoing relationships that function like a personal advisory board.
- •Says translating advice depends on clarifying which questions you’re answering and which problems you’re solving
- •Stresses the need for a deep understanding of your own business to interpret peers’ input
- •Uses relationships as active thought-partnerships by providing context and riffing on options
- •Describes building an informal “peer group” or internal board he can return to repeatedly
- •Mentions returning the favor and the discipline required in how you bring people in and ask questions
What the CFO role looks like at Figma: stewardship, guardrails, operational depth, and IR
Praveer describes how the CFO job changes by industry and company stage, then defines what matters in his role at Figma. He focuses on stewardship for long-term durability, enabling speed with guardrails, meeting compliance needs, going deep operationally, and developing investor storytelling while protecting the CEO’s time.
- •Argues there’s no one-size-fits-all CFO; the role varies with margins, operational complexity, and company stage
- •Defines his primary goal as being a steward of the business and making durable long-term decisions
- •Wants planning and finance guardrails that enable speed rather than constrain it, while maintaining high compliance standards
- •Emphasizes operational depth and intellectual curiosity—understanding the “guts” of how things work
- •Describes learning IR and storytelling over time and taking on evangelism to keep Dylan focused on product and the business
From good to world-class CFO: second- and third-order thinking and driver-level depth
Praveer explains that extraordinary CFO performance comes from deep curiosity and understanding the business drivers behind financial statements. He describes recurring deep-dive meetings, dashboard habits, and using finance as a strategic arm rather than a “traffic cop.”
- •Says world-class CFOs ask second- and third-order questions instead of stopping at P&L-level views
- •Critiques “traffic cop” finance behavior and argues finance should be a strategic arm driving long-term investment decisions
- •Mentions weekly self-serve deep dives into funnel indicators and experiments to spot unfavorable trends and drive action
- •Describes similar depth on sales and acquired businesses to understand what’s happening inside them
- •Maintains personal dashboards to stay informed and push conversations beyond surface-level analysis
Capital allocation and risk after ChatGPT: bigger opportunity, new cost structure, and efficiency gains
Praveer describes how AI-driven software creation expands the opportunity and changes investment posture. He explains relaxing constraints to invest in AI product servicing, thinking long-term about margins, and using tools to remove operational toil and increase organizational effectiveness.
- •Says coding agents make software creation easier, expanding who participates and making design/craft more important
- •Frames the environment as expansive for Figma and expects it to shape the next 5–10 years
- •Describes relaxing prior constraints, including investing in AI servicing that reduced gross margin by about five points to 86% in a reported quarter
- •Emphasizes creating “bright lines” while keeping “foot on the gas” due to multiplied opportunity
- •Notes AI tools can increase efficiency beyond engineering, including operational teams, by removing manual toil while still valuing domain experts
Taking more bets without “spaghetti”: quality, velocity, and product expansion
Praveer says he wants Figma to take more bets, but with leadership rigor and user-intent clarity. He points to faster build cycles, portfolio growth, and rapid iteration from beta to GA as evidence of increasing velocity.
- •Wants more bets as build costs drop, but emphasizes quality, craft, and thoughtful resourcing
- •Says the bottleneck is not ideas but leadership rigor and clarity on end-user intent
- •Highlights the advantage of a large active user base for experimenting with new products
- •States Figma doubled its product portfolio from four to eight products in a year
- •Describes building “Figma Make” quickly and moving from beta to GA rapidly, with substantial weekly usage among large customers by the end of a reported quarter
How AI is reshaping the CFO craft: workflows, forecasting, and new modeling approaches
Praveer argues CFOs who don’t integrate AI tools risk falling behind. He notes changes in workflow, the need for faster iteration and higher risk tolerance, and suggests forecasting should evolve beyond spreadsheet-only approaches, referencing a multi-method forecasting concept he heard from another CFO.
- •Says his workflow is changing and warns that not leveraging new tools can leave leaders behind
- •Links success to risk tolerance, speed, learning from failure, and setting constraints appropriately
- •Believes some existing forecasting methodologies are “breaking” and can be improved with new tools
- •Critiques relying solely on spreadsheets and points to techniques like historical regressions and model testing
- •References a conference talk describing three concurrent forecasting methods: outside-in agent-based, an internal analyst model, and a detailed driver model used together
Nine years with Dylan Field: trust, autonomy, and shared context
Praveer describes the benefits of a long working relationship with the CEO, including deep trust, speed of understanding, and candid feedback. He explains trust as confidence in competence and process, plus increased autonomy to run his organization while pulling Dylan in when needed.
- •Says long tenure builds trust and faster mutual understanding of perspective and tendencies
- •Describes assuming good intent and being able to give candid feedback to each other
- •Explains trust as not requiring Dylan to audit the details (e.g., not living in spreadsheets), while still asking sharp questions
- •Notes the relationship reduces directive management and increases collaborative context-building
- •Emphasizes the value of shared context and institutional memory in becoming an effective leader
How deep in details a CFO should be: judgment on what matters, and building an accelerator org
Praveer explains he lives in details, shaped by growing up in the org, but aims to focus depth where impact is highest. He also defines success for his broader organization—finance plus adjacent teams—as being seen as business accelerants and creating career- and network-building environments through strong hiring and transparency.
- •Says Figma leaders commonly zoom between high-level and detailed views, reflecting shared standards and internal growth paths
- •In forecast reviews, focuses on methodologies and key assumptions, poking at what matters rather than chasing perfection everywhere
- •Frames good judgment as knowing where to dive deep based on decision impact
- •Wants finance, corp dev, BD, biz ops, and accounting viewed as problem solvers—not gatekeepers
- •Describes learning from Dropbox that building strong teams relies heavily on hiring intellectually curious people and creating experiences that help them become well-rounded leaders
Hiring and developing leaders, becoming public-ready, and what changes when you’re public
Praveer details what he looks for in VPs (first-principles thinking, detail orientation, community-building, team-first mindset) and discusses promote-vs-hire tradeoffs, especially in a remote-friendly context. He then walks through how Figma became public-ready starting in early 2022, why the timing mattered, the operational cadence they adopted, and subtle benefits of being public; he closes with what he wants his reputation to be as a finance leader.
- •Looks for VP-level leaders who are first-principles thinkers, detail-capable (not just managers of managers), and committed to building community and team-first behavior
- •Prefers promoting from within when possible but stresses acting quickly when someone can’t keep pace with company growth
- •Says external hiring is harder in remote-friendly environments unless candidates build real context; emphasizes transparency about “skeletons” during hiring
- •Describes becoming public-ready when going public felt inevitable in early 2022, starting with key hires (IR, controller, tax) and later adding practices like mock earnings calls
- •Explains a benefit of being public is greater flexibility in hard times—especially around equity compensation and talent retention—and ends by stating he wants to be known as prepared, asking good questions, not slowing others down, and bridging perspectives

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