No Priors Ep. 55 | With Figma CEO Dylan Field

1. 0:00 – 2:01

   Introduction

   1. SGSarah Guo0:00

      (techno music) Hi, listeners, and welcome to another episode of No Priors. Today, we're in for a treat, talking with a longtime friend and business partner to both me and Elade, Dylan Field. Dylan is the founder and CEO of Figma, the beloved and dominant design collaboration tool. Figma's been working on making it possible to design and build digital products on a single multiplayer canvas, and we're excited to talk about the world after Adobe, FigJam, Dev Mode, and their first AI products. Welcome, Dylan.

   2. DFDylan Field0:33

      Thank you. Glad to finally be on No Priors. We've been trying to make this happen, and I'm stoked. Let's do it.

   3. SGSarah Guo0:39

      Dylan, you've now been working on Figma for more than 10, 11 years. What was the original vision?

   4. DFDylan Field0:46

      Well, it's actually even longer. It's, like, coming up on 12 years, uh, which is totally wild. Um, but yeah, original vision was, uh, to eliminate the gap between imagination and reality. And back in August 2012, 2013 timeframe, uh, when I tried pitching people that, uh, they were pretty confused and thought it was very vague. We had a lot of, uh, uh, challenges recruiting people. And so we thought, okay, how about a North Star, like, make design accessible to all? And we've tried to make this tool that's very powerful but also, uh, is one where you can easily learn it. And that said, I think that the idea of what design is, is growing beyond just pixels and software, and at the same time, now you see all these amazing demos and ideas put forth of how you can actually, actually eliminate the gap between imagination and reality like we would originally set out to do. And so I feel like those two kind of visions are converging. It's an interesting moment.

   5. SGSarah Guo1:55

      I wanna come back to AI a- and, like, new opportunities for creative expression in a bit.

2. 2:01 – 4:20

   No more Adobe acquisition

   1. SGSarah Guo2:01

      Uh, we have to talk about what's been in the news, and I think what has been preoccupying at least part of Figma for a while. You guys were on track to be, uh, acquired by Adobe, but the merger was recently called off due to regulatory scrutiny.

   2. DFDylan Field2:15

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SGSarah Guo2:16

      You're coming out the other end of that with independence and a billion dollars. Like, tell us about it. How'd you manage that process emotionally in terms of decision-making?

   4. DFDylan Field2:25

      The original decision to, uh, say let's go do this with Adobe, um, it wa- it was obviously one that we thought very deeply about, and, uh, at the time seemed like a one-way door (laughs) . You know, there's the classic meme of there's one-way doors and two-way doors in a, in business, and really think deeply about the one-way doors. Turns out sometimes one-way doors can be two-way doors too. But we thought really deeply about it, and we thought this is a way to just accelerate our vision and be able to, uh, do what we wanna do just so much faster if we're at Adobe. And, uh, I thought that the team there, I'd learn a lot from as well. I mean, it's an incredible group of people over there. Uh, unfortunately, regulators were not fans. And, uh, 16 months later, we kind of, at some point said, "Okay, we gotta call it." And, uh, that was late December. Um, talked to my team about that. It was actually the first day of break that I called, uh, the team back, and I was like, "Hey, it's not going through. Here's this means for us immediately, and here's sort of the timeline from here and what we gotta think about next." Um, we had, you know, communicated along the way, "Hey, this is looking harder. The path is narrowing. The path is narrow." Uh, but still, I think something a lot of people were, were excited about, of course. And that said, I'm just so thankful to start the year with clarity.

   5. EGElad Gil3:51

      Yeah, it's kinda interesting 'cause, um, if you look, uh, historically in the '90s, Microsoft tried to buy Intuit for, I think it was a billion or one and a half billion dollars, and that got blocked from a regulatory perspective. And now Intuit's a $178 billion company as of today, I just looked it up. And, uh, you know, when you hear stories of that time period, it sounded like it was a similar journey where you get kinda wrapped up in all the regulatory stuff, and it's, it's, um, uncertain and it's stressful and all the rest. And I feel like in recent conversations,

3. 4:20 – 7:16

   What’s next for Figma

   1. EGElad Gil4:20

      you've been really re-energized. Like, when I talk to you, I feel the energy and the excitement in terms of building Figma and building future products and roadmaps. And it, you know, it really feels like you're in it in a really strong way. I'm just a little bit curious, like, what are some of the things you're excited about from a roadmap perspective and sort of looking ahead with the company?

   2. DFDylan Field4:35

      Yeah, so much. I don't think the excitement ever waned, uh, you know, but it's, it is definitely draining to be part, uh, of a regulatory process like that for such a long period of time and to not have that clarity. But I, I'm very thankful because, you know, all the work we did as a team, it set us up for where we're at now. Uh, and I think we're in a really good place, and you know, we kinda just kept our foot on the gas and kept moving quickly.

   3. SGSarah Guo5:00

      One of the things that I, I guess I was a little bit surprised by is, uh, after the Adobe deal was announced, I expected you to be celebrating for more, like, more than a day or so. And then you're like, "Okay." I don't know about Elade, 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?

   4. DFDylan Field5:27

      Well, partially there was travel for regulatory, of course. But I think that yes, I mean, we were, we were 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 DevMode 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, 16, 17 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 as 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, DevMode is just the start as it is today, and I think that, that, there's a lot to evolve there, but also a lot more we can offer. Um, or just going back to the basics. How do you make Figma even simpler? Uh, again, if that goal is to, you know, democratize design, how do you make it so that you're able to bring more people in the design process, uh, and also make it so that it's less intimidating?

4. 7:16 – 10:50

   FigJam, digital collaboration, and expanding beyond design

   1. DFDylan Field7:16

   2. SGSarah Guo7:16

      After building for designers for so long, like, what triggered the decision to expand to brainstorming and diagramming, which is, like, broader teams and, and then expanding focus to developers with DevMode?

   3. DFDylan Field7:27

      So I think we have a pattern of just sort of following the use cases that are already happening in Figma. Uh, Figma design is just this wonderfully broad platform, and so many people do so many different things in it. And with brainstorming, ideation, uh, whiteboarding, diagramming, those were all use cases we saw in Figma, uh, basically since it started. It's hard to put exact numbers on it, but I do know that, that qualitatively, it seemed like there was a big increase in how much that was happening as the pandemic occurred. More teams were going from in person to hybrid or remote and trying to figure out how do we still communicate, collaborate in that time period. It's actually a tool for whiteboarding that I think is useful whatever your work context is. But I think people kind of had the aha moment of, "We need something to bring us together, some space to go ideate in, uh, during that time." And so we started going, okay, we have to make some easier version of Figma, uh, some version that's more scoped towards this use case, and really just pushed super hard to get that built. Uh, we did it in record time from the start of the project to shipping a beta. I mean, it was, like, six to eight months, something like that. It was really fast. Um, and the differentiator is fun. And at the time, I, I think that the team was a little skeptical of that. Like, "Really? Are differentiators gonna be fun? Like, are we sure that enterprises care about that?" But it turns out that that's a really important part of that ideation process is this feeling of safety, of play. And if you can make people feel more at home, uh, even through silly things sometimes, like stickers or emoji reactions or, uh, waving your cursor around and high-fiving people. Cursor chat is another good one that people love. Um, little things like this make it so that more people feel like they can speak up in a, in a team meeting and they're energized to give their opinion. And if you can get more of those thoughts, uh, then hopefully you can get to a better outcome.

   4. SGSarah Guo9:35

      Yeah. As, uh, someone who has never been a designer, but was still a very early handful of Figma users person, I, I, I'd always used it for visual thinking. And then, you know, we, we hired new folks, uh, during the pandemic like most others did. And one of the biggest concerns I had was, "How is this person going to feel like they are part of the team?" And, uh, two of the big things for me was I was gonna go on a weekly walk with my hires and also using FigJam and, um, getting people to, like, do something that actually did feel more fun was huge.

   5. DFDylan Field10:09

      It's interesting 'cause over time people sort of evolve their use cases of how they use FigJam too, and at least inside of Figma, one of the things that we see is it, it kind of evolves into a better way to, like, run a meeting, and it's not just a brainstorm. A lot of times they're decision-making meetings and, you know, we have a lot of things that are laid out almost like a document or, uh, you know, a knowledge base inside of FigJam. It's in a more visual way. It solicits input, but it also drives towards an outcome. And, uh, that's a big part of the AI strategy for FigJam, is how do we help people set those things up faster?

   6. EGElad Gil10:49

      Amongst the

5. 10:50 – 13:06

   Figma DevMode

   1. EGElad Gil10:50

      different products that you've rolled out recently, one of them is DevMode. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

   2. DFDylan Field10:54

      Absolutely. DevMode, uh, is a way for developers to better consume designs in Figma. We have almost a third of our users in the Figma platform that are engaged on a weekly basis, almost a third are developers. And going back a few years, we realized that we were just not creating enough value for these users. Um, as we surveyed them, they were often lower NPS. Uh, they were not as happy. And then you dug into the reasons why, and we did a lot of research around this and spent a lot of time. We actually acquired a company called Vizzlie, and they helped, uh, work through this and it was really a bunch of pivots along the way. But some of the core problems, um, were things like, uh, you know, "I just build the wrong things." Uh, or, "I don't know how to w- work in Figma." Or, "I don't know how to navigate Figma in the proper way." And then we started digging in deeper, um, around code-gen, around what are the other things that developers want to use alongside Figma, uh, via plug-ins, and also, uh, how do you want to actually map design systems, uh, from design to code and keep things consistent? And...... as we kind of explore all these areas, that's where dev mode came from. Uh, and so it's a great way to know exactly what you should build but also get the relevant information, uh, via notations, via, uh, properties that are exposed in the right way. Um, but it also helps you keep track of changes, understand what's going on, and you can bring everything around the development process into dev mode with you. And so if you have certain plugins you want to use, for example Jira or custom plugins, uh, you can bring those in as well, and we have a lot more thinking ahead around how do we enable even better workflow as well as map better to design systems and looking forward to sharing that with the world.

   3. EGElad Gil12:49

      Yeah, the extensibility of Figma I think is one of the key things about it. I mean, I've also used it effectively for slides or for, you know, visual display of information or things like that, so it seems like there's a lot of directions it can go. And to your point, one other really interesting and exciting areas is really how do you adapt AI in the context of Figma and really

6. 13:06 – 15:03

   Incorporating AI at Figma

   1. EGElad Gil13:06

      start using it in deep ways, and so I'm a little bit curious about, uh, how... when you first started thinking about this wave of generative AI and then how you're starting to think about incorporating it into different aspects of what Figma does.

   2. DFDylan Field13:16

      Yeah, absolutely. Was fortunate to, uh, be surrounded by futurist thinkers like yourself at the onset of this era, um, and as even it was kind of coming up, you know, um, everyone else was talking about crypto and, and folks like Elad were, uh, and Sarah were saying, "Hey have you, have you seen the scaling laws that are happening right now? It's pretty wild. Uh, something might be happening here." And of course with diffusion models, uh, improving, you know, I think we all had the aha moment, um, but, uh, I, I think it's, it's interesting to kind of ask the question of w- when do you want, like, sort of an LM versus diffusion model, uh, solution for something? And design is... maybe you can define it as, like, art applied to problem solving? Uh, there's many different def- definitions of design. Uh, but-

   3. EGElad Gil14:11

      I love that one.

   4. DFDylan Field14:13

      It, it's, it's one that I've been thinking a lot about recently because it's like, okay well, you know, if diffusion models go map to art but like LM is mapped to problem solving, uh, you know, it kind of highlights how a hybrid might be important here. Um-

   5. EGElad Gil14:26

      It sounds like a good, like, 10-page Zen book or something.

   6. DFDylan Field14:29

      (laughs)

   7. EGElad Gil14:29

      Like, I'm serious. You should do, like, a slim volume, it would be really neat.

   8. DFDylan Field14:32

      There you go. I'll, I'll have, uh, you know, GPT-4, uh, help me out to take my one sentence and, and sort of, uh, make it ten pages. But, uh, there is a lot we can do in terms of generation of designs, and I'll be honest, like, we've, um, really tried to take our time and make sure that we're shipping something that's excellent here, uh, or at least useful. Maybe we shouldn't hold the bar at excellent but we should at least hold the bar at useful, and I think we're on track to deliver that and, uh, uh, excited

7. 15:03 – 19:19

   How AI will change design

   1. DFDylan Field15:03

      to, to share more in the future about it.

   2. EGElad Gil15:05

      Are there any aspects of design that you think are gonna be most impacted holistically by, um, AI? Is it more about changing the role of the designer or is it changing the skill sets? Is it experience set? I'm, I... Because you look at, for example, something like Midjourney and it's, you know, uh, mainly sort of a image generation tool but, you know, it's used pretty broadly in terms of different aspects of, um, images used for all sorts of purposes and in some cases professional use cases, in some cases individual, but the main thing it's done is it allowed a large class of people to suddenly become creators. And in the context of Figma you have the, the sort of UI generation, there's the brand assets, there's actually writing the code, there, there's so many different things that could occur, I'm just sort of curious about which aspects you're most excited about or how you're thinking about things holistically.

   3. DFDylan Field15:52

      Yeah. I, I think that there's a, a ton you can do in terms of lowering the floor and making it so that more people can start to do design work, and if we can make that happen, I think it'll be really important for the industry and allow more people to be part of that conversation. But I also think there's more you can do in terms of making it so that designers can be more efficient. Uh, there's so many repetitive tasks that you do as a designer, and if you can make it so that you don't have to do as many of those and you have, uh, a great way to interface the tool via AI, that could be very powerful. Um, and yeah, of course we're thinking about, again, all those transition states between idea to design, design to code, and I think there's a lot more you can do there too, whether it's on the platform made by us or through partnerships. One thing that's underexplored when it comes to AI is how much are agents going to be crossing boundaries in, in different data, uh, areas. I think that, you know, we're all kind of just trying to figure that out right now but it's still very early.

   4. EGElad Gil16:50

      Are there any aspects of an- AI in design that have surprised you? I'll give you an example of something I thought that was kind of neat was, like, the first time I saw Krea, and as you're typing things it literally will, uh, change the generation of the, the image, right? A sort of real-time adaptation to a prompt or other, uh, inputs. Uh, is there anything that you've seen where you're just like, "Whoa, that's really cool. It may not be quite ready for primetime but it's kind of a glimpse of the future"?

   5. DFDylan Field17:14

      When you see tools that leverage direct manipulation like that, uh, it's something that you can viscerally, you know, touch, change a, change something around, change a prompt and get a response back, and I think that's very powerful and creates a great loop with the user. Um, I, I think that there's some things that are coming out in a 3D space, for example, that are, uh, letting designs be defined more parametrically, which I think are sort of similar. Like if you could generate a 3D design and, um, have some of the variables that define that design be parametric, uh, and then be able to use the, uh, a slider, for example, to, to change that input and thus change the actual, uh, generated form. That's another example of something that's direct manipulation, AI generated, and I think is really cool. Um, but I think it is that loop between the human and the, the agent or AI or whatever you want to call it, the model, uh, that ends up really mattering, and the faster you can make that loop happen, the better.Um, and I think there's so much more to explore there in terms of different interfaces to let people, um, just kind of wade their way through latent space. Like, I mean, there's no way that having to remember all these different sort of like magical phrases, uh, to summon the right image via diffusion model is the end state, right? And yeah, maybe there's something where you draw some shapes and you add a prompt, but like, that still seems so primitive to p- compared to where we're gonna get to. Uh, and I, I just think it's like, if you think about any vector, for example, what if you could say, okay, there's a, sort of a, a vector on one side, it's optimistic, and the other side is pessimistic, um, and somehow you can define what that means that, uh, a traversal space for an image, and you can nudge something more towards optimism or pessimism or, you know, pick your polarities. You know, they're, they're, that's another example of like, what can you do if you can start to nudge images in a certain way

8. 19:19 – 22:44

   Creativity augmentation and the iterative loop

   1. DFDylan Field19:19

      or outputs in a certain way.

   2. EGElad Gil19:20

      That's really 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 copilots, 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?

   3. DFDylan Field19:47

      Well, a- 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 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 interactions 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, uh, similar and, uh, 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 evolving things. I think that could be very, very interesting as a, as a first step.

   4. SGSarah Guo21:14

      What's your response to people who worry that, um, AI like in every role are gonna, you know, eliminate the need for designers?

   5. DFDylan Field21:24

      For all the reasons I just mentioned around, you know, emotions, uh, user context, uh, knowing how flows go, um, having that history of interactions and whatnot, I, I think it's unlikely that that's like the world we're seeing in the short term. I think no one knows what's happening in the long term. Uh, you know, if we have, you know, superhuman intelligence, like, I don't know what it means for any of us in this, on this call or podcast, uh, (laughs) or any of our, anyone listening. If we don't try to ask about what that case it looks like and instead ask about, okay, if we assume that there's, uh, uh, continued improvement, uh, what does it mean for design? I think design is actually in a really good place. Probably before you see potential replacement of any part of the design role, you instead see augmentation and you see access. Uh, you see efficiency so that designers can get more done, and I think probably a lot of engineers do more of their, put more of their time towards design than they put towards what we consider coding tasks today, and the abstraction level of coding changes. There's probably still a human loop for engineering, but I think that it's not, not clear to me that humans are gonna write like every line of code in a year, three years, five years. I mean, o- obviously already we have Copilot, but I think that

9. 22:44 – 25:35

   Automating repetitive design tasks

   1. DFDylan Field22:44

      you could go even further than that and, and a lot of companies are trying to do that.

   2. SGSarah Guo22:47

      I mean, I can't make multi-year bets in the current environment, but my expectation would be that we, um, maybe it's because I'm an optimist, but I think we're just gonna get better and more software, um, and better designed software versus fewer, fewer designers or engineers.

   3. DFDylan Field23:05

      Yeah, I definitely think that as a metric, like number of pieces of software that will be created will go up tremendously, um, and it, and it's interesting, like there's, there's some visions out there of the future where, uh, people interpret the capabilities of AI to mean that you won't, like, have any interface at all. I think it's really cool to see this explore, like the rabbit we've talked about, Sarah. I haven't used AI, I think you did. Is that right? But-

   4. SGSarah Guo23:31

      Yeah.

   5. DFDylan Field23:31

      ... I think it's a really cool vision, and I think that there will be so much more software in a year, two years, or five years from now than there is today. Like, both could be true that there's demand for that and there's just way more software.

   6. EGElad Gil23:45

      So I guess one of the repetitive tasks that, um, designers often complain about is interacting with product managers.

   7. DFDylan Field23:51

      (laughs)

   8. EGElad Gil23:52

      So I don't know if you've considered automating that away or, you know, creating a bot for each designer to respond to PM pings or things like that, but I'm just throwing it out there as an idea. You can use it if you want.

   9. DFDylan Field24:04

      Okay. Uh, uh, I'll take it back to the team.

   10. EGElad Gil24:06

       (laughs)

   11. DFDylan Field24:07

       (laughs) You know, it's so funny, we had at the last config, uh, Chesky from Airbnb, um...... you know, he was, he was talking, I think, really about sort of their unique structure and set-up at Airbnb and how they have more of a program management function, kind of like Apple. Uh, but he kind of had this throwaway line of, like, "We don't have product managers." If you look at the capability of product managers, I don't think it's even true, but in any case, uh, you know, it kind of got misinterpreted and, and all the designers were like, "Yeah! No product managers."

   12. EGElad Gil24:37

       (laughs)

   13. SGSarah Guo24:38

       (laughs) There was real attachment to that claim.

   14. EGElad Gil24:40

       Yeah, that- that- that's usually the, uh, reaction. I, I actually worked as a PM for much of my career, and so... Before becoming a startup CEO. So I- I- I definitely mean it tongue in cheek.

   15. DFDylan Field24:50

       I- Well, it... You know, it's funny, 'cause product is such a, uh, hard role to define and I think that's why you get these jokes. But, uh, the reality is if you have people who are deeply in tune with user needs, who are really strategic, um, and are able to understand technical requirements but also dive into the design details, like, that's a very powerful role to have on the team. And I mean, I'm so lucky we have a amazing chief product officer at Fig- at Figma, Yuhki, um, and he's just, like, incredibly design oriented and an amazing dot partner on all the things. I mean, I talk to him so much. Uh, I, uh, I'll try to stop Slacking you late at night, Yuhki, but anyway. (laughs)

   16. EGElad Gil25:31

       Should make you key GPT, you can just, uh, create an embedding and

10. 25:35 – 29:44

    The future of AI UI

    1. EGElad Gil25:35

       just start chatting with him. Speaking of chat, how do you think about the shift in UI in general that's gonna come with AI? A lot of things are kinda collapsing in the short run into chat interfaces, there's a lot of people talking about a future agentic world which does away with most UI altogether, and it's just all programmatic stuff happening in the background. Um, how do you think about where UI is, is going in general right now?

    2. DFDylan Field25:56

       I mean, I kind of even think this kind of comes back to the rabbit point I was making earlier. Yes, there's a lot of, uh, innovation happening in terms of agents, but I think, like, in terms of the way that we use UI to interact with agents, we're just the beginning. And I think that the interfaces will get more sophisticated, um, but also even if they don't, I suspect that it's just like any new media type. When it's introduced, it's not like the old media types go away. Right? Just 'cause you have TikTok doesn't mean that you, uh, you no longer watch YouTube. Even if it's true that, uh, a new form of interaction is via chat interfaces, which I'm, I'm not even sure I believe, but if it, even if we take that as a prior, on the No Priors podcast, then I- I think that you still have, uh, UI. And actually, I think you have more UI and more software than before.

    3. EGElad Gil26:50

       Do you have any predictions in terms of multimodality? Like, do you think there's more need for voice? Like, so, uh, you know, a lot of the debates people have is like, when are you gonna use voice versus text, uh, versus other types of interfaces? And, uh, y- you know, you could imagine arguments in all sorts of directions in terms of, you know, when do you use what? And things like that. And a lot of people are, or not a lot, some people are suggesting because of the rise of mo- multimodal models, you'll have, like, more voice input or more things like that because you'll be able to do real time, sort of smart, uh, contextual semantic understanding of, like, a conversation. And so you have more of a verbal conversational UI versus a tech space UI or... And so it kind of changes how you think about design. So I was just curious if, if you have any thoughts on that, that sort of future looking stuff.

    4. DFDylan Field27:35

       There's all sorts of contexts where a voice UI is really important, and I think that, uh, uh, it might be that we find that voice UIs start to map to more traditional UIs, um, because it's something that, like, you could obviously do, uh, in a more generalized way. But yeah, I mean, personally, I don't want to navigate the information spaces that I interact with every day, all day, uh, via voice. I also don't wanna do it in Minority Report style on the Vision Pro exactly either. Uh, maybe with a keyboard and mouse and, like, an amazing Vision Pro monitor set-up or Oculus, like, that could be cool, but I don't wanna do the Minority Report thing. And so it's, it's interesting 'cause I think that we get these new glimpses at interaction patterns that are really cool, and the natural inclination is to extrapolate and say they're gonna be useful for everything, and I think that they have, like, sort of their role. And, um, it doesn't mean that they're gonna be ubiquitous across every interaction we have, uh, but that's a natural cycle to be in, and I think it's good. Uh, it's healthy to have sort of that almost mania around what can it do, because if you don't have that then you don't get to find out, and so I- I- I'm supportive of, uh, people exploring as much as possible, uh, 'cause that's how you kind of progress on HCI and, and figuring out how to use computers and to their fullest potential that that can be possible.

    5. SGSarah Guo29:08

       One of the things I am really bullish on is... I mean, may- you just think of it as an input mode or a peripheral, but, um, it's really hard for people to describe things visually. And so the idea of intelligent cameras, even in the, like, most basic sense...

    6. DFDylan Field29:25

       Oh, it worked. (laughs)

    7. SGSarah Guo29:25

       Yeah, I, I... It worked. I think that's actually a really fun space to be, as you said, like, exploring, um, because I, I actually think that will be useful, and, um, it's something that every user is capable of, right? Taking pictures, capturing video, and so I- I think that'll be... I'm pretty bullish on that. Dylan, I talked to a few

11. 29:44 – 31:28

    Investing philosophy

    1. SGSarah Guo29:44

       of our friends in common, um, and one thing that I was kind of struck by was Danny and John both, like... They both admired, um, one... I mean, I'm sure they admire many things about you, but they admired one thing in common about you, which was, like, your breadth of interests and, like, ability to invest, think about other parts of technology and entrepreneurship and in AI. I think they were both sort of, of the belief that that was really good for you in, um, your job as founder and CEO of Figma. Can you talk about how you think about, like, investing and paying attention to the rest of the ecosystem and talking to founders? Because you have so much energy for that, in a way, um, that I think a lot of, uh, founders of important growing at scale platform companies don't necessarily.

    2. DFDylan Field30:31

       Yeah, I mean, I just find it really fun.

    3. SGSarah Guo30:34

       I mean, I get that, yeah. (laughs)

    4. DFDylan Field30:35

       Yeah, uh, you're both investors as well, so I think we, we share a passion around this. And to me, just helping people and seeing them bring something to life, uh, it just gives me so much energy. That's energy I can, I can pour into all sorts of stuff as well. You know, Elad and I, I remember going on walks, uh, where he would say, like, "So, so why, why are you doing this" again, you know, in a nicer way 'cause he's a, he's a super sweet guy. And I, like, didn't have a very good answer then and I don't have a perfect answer now, except that I really like it and I, I like kinda helping people and, and it's fun and I like learning. So yeah. It's, it's kinda greedy in that way, um, but hopefully helpful to others too.

    5. EGElad Gil31:16

       Hopefully I phrased that, uh, in a more positive way. "It's amazing you're doing this right now."

    6. SGSarah Guo31:20

       (laughs)

    7. DFDylan Field31:20

       (laughs)

    8. EGElad Gil31:20

       So, you know, maybe the, the tone came off wrong or something.

    9. DFDylan Field31:23

       No, no. It, uh, you're always nice.

    10. EGElad Gil31:25

        (laughs)

    11. SGSarah Guo31:27

        Okay.

12. 31:28 – 36:30

    Leadership evolution

    1. SGSarah Guo31:28

       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 do, 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?

    2. DFDylan Field31:53

       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. (laughs) 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 we eat it at a greater scale, and do so, uh, in a way that empowers but it's also efficient and, 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 is play, for example. And I'll be re- I'll be honest. Like right now, in these few months, we are sprinting fucking hard.

    3. EGElad Gil32:56

       (laughs)

    4. DFDylan Field32:56

       Not as much of a moment of play. It'll 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 needs to be done, that you just do it rather than, like, wait for someone else to come along or, you know, who has the responsibility for this or who owns this thing? It's so easy to get trapped in that, uh, as you scale. At other times, I think, um, things like building community or craftsmanship or, or, or employee growth have been really important values that we've leaned on. I think that it's kinda wild that some of our early Figmates who, you know, departed and came back and boomeranged, a lot of them ha- made comments about how Figma feels very similar. And I think it starts with the fact that based on what we're doing, um, and this kind of vision that we're... and this quest that we're on, it attracts people that are, are really creative, really maker oriented, uh, and I think also very thoughtful. And I, I'm thankful that we have a culture that's quite humble as well, and I think that the combination of those things ends up being very special, uh, ends up being very collaborative, be- also partially due to the products that we build, uh, and it, it's a really unique environment that, that I think a lot of people, uh, are, are really grateful to be in, and, and I'm grateful for the team we have. It's, it's an incredible team.

    5. SGSarah Guo34:27

       When you think about the ambition you have for Figma, you said, like, "Hey, we, we did FigJam because we were following user stories that we already saw in the product and supporting them, and, and Dev Mode is the same." Like, what's been the feedback on those products, and if Figma originally was, you know, compressing that distance between creativity and, um, that, that implementation in the real world, like, is that still the same mission and, and, like, still the same user base you focus on?

    6. DFDylan Field34:56

       Yeah, that's definitely the way I think about it still, is how do you eliminate that gap between imagination and reality, and I think that there's so much opportunity still to help people navigate that process. Uh, one way we talk about it internally is this idea maze that you're always trying to explore, and how do you proactively see which branches of that idea maze are worth prioritizing, worth going deep on? Um, if you can figure that out quickly, then you're able to pick the right branches to go down, and that's the stuff that you might go and work with, through with a team. So I, I think that's, that's pretty exciting if you can bring things to life quickly. But yeah, more broadly, Figma was never meant to just be a design tool, and the more that we can expand out as a platform, uh, the more we can think about an entire value chain of how software's created, uh, everything from that first idea but also through to alignment, to not just design and, and coding but how do you ship it, how do you measure it, how do you experiment, how do you keep going from there? Um, I do- I just think there's such opportunity.

    7. SGSarah Guo36:04

       Dylan, this was a great conversation. Thanks so much for finally joining us.

    8. EGElad Gil36:08

       Yeah, thanks for joining us.

    9. DFDylan Field36:09

       Thank you for having me.

    10. SGSarah Guo36:12

        Find us on Twitter @nopriorspod. Subscribe to our YouTube channel if you wanna see our faces. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That way, you get a new episode every week. And sign up for emails or find transcripts for every episode at no-priors.com.

Episode duration: 36:30