Playing it safe with marketing is the riskiest thing you can do | Sheila Joglekar Vashee (Figma CMO)

Sheila Joglekar Vashee frames marketing as the function that must connect what’s being built, who it’s for, why it matters, how it drives growth and revenue, and whether it resonates authentically with users and community. She says the job is harder in 2026 because everything moves at “insane warp speed,” but the core responsibility remains coherence across touchpoints.

Using pipeline as an example, she argues it’s tempting to assign different teams goals for different stages, but that creates friction and “adverse outcomes.” Her recommendation is to align everyone on the same end goal while clarifying which inputs each team most influences.

Sheila describes a major push to broaden Figma’s audience by expanding the definition of “design,” noting that two-thirds of people who build in Figma are non-designers (like engineers and marketers). She says the challenge was bringing in new audiences while staying committed to the design community, and that campaigns, events, thought leadership, and “moments with people on the ground” helped it feel authentic.

Sheila describes the CMO role as hiring leaders who are better than her in each marketing discipline, then focusing her own work on load-balancing resources and judging trade-offs across the whole “engine.” She also emphasizes spending disproportionate energy on big bets—creative or growth “moonshots”—but managing them as a portfolio so the business still hits its numbers if some bets fail.

Sheila says growth tactics can clash with brand, citing attention-grabbing, “spammy” ad patterns that may work short-term but erode long-term perception. She positions marketing as both science (ROI, modeling, spend allocation) and art (message, breakthrough, funnel-wide storytelling), and says top talent is defined by bringing art into the system.