Figma's Dylan Field on the Future of Design | Ep. 31

1. 0:00 – 0:37

   Intro

   1. DFDylan Field0:00

      We're gonna get to a world, we're already kind of there, where good enough is not enough. Good enough is gonna be mediocre.

   2. JAJack Altman0:08

      Mm.

   3. DFDylan Field0:09

      And you're gonna need to differentiate through design, through craft, through point of view, through brand, through storytelling, and marketing. And I think, uh, the people that internalize that now, they're gonna be winners.

   4. JAJack Altman0:21

      Yep.

   5. DFDylan Field0:21

      That's my point of view, is that this is what's gonna matter, the stuff at the top of the stack. And if you don't internalize it now, like, you got an issue. [upbeat music]

   6. JAJack Altman0:33

      Dylan, it's a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for doing this.

   7. DFDylan Field0:35

      Jack, thank you.

   8. JAJack Altman0:36

      Okay,

2. 0:37 – 5:14

   The first 5 years of Figma

   1. JAJack Altman0:37

      I wanna start by teeing up a contrast between Figma in the early days, which was, like, a multi-year-long build before you kind of got things going, and then the state of the world today, where, like, AI startups are racing out of the gates, and there's tons of competition, and-

   2. DFDylan Field0:54

      Yeah

   3. JAJack Altman0:55

      ... everything's frenetic.

   4. DFDylan Field0:56

      13 years in, uh-

   5. JAJack Altman0:57

      13 years for you.

   6. DFDylan Field0:58

      And, uh, it's, it's a little different now, isn't it?

   7. JAJack Altman1:01

      Yeah. So you started in 2012?

   8. DFDylan Field1:02

      Mm-hmm. August 2012 was our official start.

   9. JAJack Altman1:05

      And then you got really kind of off to the races when? Like, four or five years later?

   10. DFDylan Field1:08

       Closed beta was launched December 2015. Uh, GA, October 2016. Didn't start charging until summer 2017.

   11. JAJack Altman1:16

       Geez.

   12. DFDylan Field1:17

       Same day as our CFO, now CFO, started. Fun fact.

   13. JAJack Altman1:20

       CFO started the day you started charging?

   14. DFDylan Field1:22

       Yeah, he was, like, a biz ops guy then-

   15. JAJack Altman1:23

       Yeah

   16. DFDylan Field1:23

       ... but now he's CFO.

   17. JAJack Altman1:24

       Okay, so you had this five-year period.

   18. DFDylan Field1:26

       Mm-hmm.

   19. JAJack Altman1:27

       And I guess when you look back on it, you could, you could either sort of, I imagine, feel like that was a little too long. We should have launched-

   20. DFDylan Field1:35

       Definitely too long

   21. JAJack Altman1:35

       ... We should have launched earlier.

   22. DFDylan Field1:36

       If you're watching, don't do that.

   23. JAJack Altman1:38

       But on the other hand, you built some hard stuff. Like, you put, like, you know, an- a design product in the browser when people had never done it.

   24. DFDylan Field1:45

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JAJack Altman1:46

       You'd made, like, collaboration, which, you know, I've read is very- was a very difficult task, and that had advantages, too. So how do you sort of make sense looking back now in sort of the fullness of time on that five-year period?

   26. DFDylan Field1:58

       Yeah, I think definitely there were ways we could have speed run it. Uh, hiring faster, noticing that we had product market pull, and that folks were, like, literally begging us to go do things. You know, when we got very long docs from people saying, "I was so inspired by our last night together," when we went through this very long user test where the... Everything was not performant, and it was-

   27. JAJack Altman2:21

       Mm

   28. DFDylan Field2:21

       ... you know, uh, the tool was in terrible shape. Then they followed up the next morning with, like, you know, a 13, 14-page doc, and it was like, "Here's all the stuff that I want you to build." I probably should have known that maybe people, like, cared and wanted this thing. Um, but, you know, I was also nervous. I kind of took the roadmap feedback, and I was like, "Oh, man, it's gonna take forever to do all this stuff." In reality, I should have hired faster. Uh, I think we had the resources to do it. I was just a little trepidatious. But beyond that, I think, um, yeah, there was a lot of stuff to build, and there were certain things we could have not done that we, like, later pulled out.

   29. JAJack Altman2:57

       Mm-hmm.

   30. DFDylan Field2:57

       You know, we had Evan, my co-founder, um, well, I was sort of thinking about cross-platform stuff, compilation, and, uh, general program language theory, and so he made, like, a way to do cross-platform targeting, uh, to not just web, but also as a backup in case something didn't work out, you know, desktop. And at some point it was like, "Yeah, this is all stuff we can rip out. We can move way faster without doing this."
3. 5:14 – 13:01

   Slow build vs AI gold rush

   1. JAJack Altman5:14

      When you think about that sort of experience, and then you look around at AI tools now, and, you know, there was, like, a bit going around recently of an investor talking about how you got to get to, you know, a couple million of ARR in no time. And, you know, it's like a bit that you hear a lot, and a lot of, I think, founders feel self-conscious-

   2. DFDylan Field5:32

      Mm

   3. JAJack Altman5:32

      ... if they're not going one to ten.

   4. DFDylan Field5:34

      Zero to ten million in, like, a month or something?

   5. JAJack Altman5:36

      Yeah.

   6. DFDylan Field5:37

      Yeah.

   7. JAJack Altman5:37

      And there's, like, a lot of that. And I think then, you know, investors, I think, are, you know, kind of helping probably perpetuate it because the next, you know, round of investors are gonna think about the same thing. And, you know, it's, like, very, very different than the way Figma got started.

   8. DFDylan Field5:52

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JAJack Altman5:52

      And I'm just curious how you make sense of seeing that around you since you came up through one of the, like, slow build-

   10. DFDylan Field5:58

       [chuckles]

   11. JAJack Altman5:58

       ... type of startups.

   12. DFDylan Field5:59

       Yeah. And again, don't recommend slow build either, but I think-... first of all, if we had today's tools, like, if I had Figma Make today or a prompt, a app tool-

   13. JAJack Altman6:09

       To build a lot faster.

   14. DFDylan Field6:10

       Yeah, probably could build a lot faster. Um, but I also think that, um, maybe my hot take here is that, uh, there's a lot of really awesome companies right now that are not, like, really AI companies. And so first of all, I think if you're looking at only AI stuff, you're just missing a lot. It's like, actually, there's some gems there. For example, recently, you know, did investments in, uh, companies like Ambrook. Ambrook's an amazing company trying to help farmers with their financial situation and, like, figure out how to make it so that they can do taxes better and deal with all the compliance and forms that come along with it. Um, and I think that they have a real opportunity, uh, in front of them. Another company I invested in, uh, Laura Deming, her, uh, company is called Until Labs, and they're a whole-body reversible cryogenics company. Uh, that's their moonshot goal, but along the way, you know, there's a real problem to solve, uh, where organs, you might have an organ become available, but you have a very limited time window to get it to a recipient. And if you're able to, uh, basically use that same tech to be able to vitrify the organ and then, uh, rewarm it at destination, then you have a longer period of time to go make that match, and that could save a ton of lives, uh, especially combined with new, new emergent technologies. And, uh, you know, it's like, yeah, neither of them are really AI companies, but, like, they're great businesses, and I am strongly convicted in them. [clapping]

   15. JAJack Altman7:52

       It's interesting when you have these, like, um, trends as strong as AI now, maybe crypto some number of years ago, you know-

   16. DFDylan Field7:59

       Yep

   17. JAJack Altman7:59

       ... obviously, there's others. There's probably a dynamic where there becomes such a strong gold rush to that thing, that the people who are not working on that thing are missionaries at a much higher rate also. And that's probably also the flip side trap is in the gold rush, there's a lot of people who are gonna be, you know, very missionary about it, but there's also a lot of people who are, "Hey, I can go zero to ten next month," so.

   18. DFDylan Field8:21

       Well, I think the other thing that's interesting is that AI closes gaps, and so, um, because it closes gaps and makes it so you can do things that might otherwise take, like, a very long time in a short amount of time, uh, it also expands markets, and so I think that's pro- probably implicit to the assumptions here-

   19. JAJack Altman8:41

       Yep

   20. DFDylan Field8:42

       ... is that, uh, there's a little hanging fruit all over.

   21. JAJack Altman8:44

       Yep.

   22. DFDylan Field8:45

       If we're able to identify these companies-

   23. JAJack Altman8:46

       Yes

   24. DFDylan Field8:46

       ... that are growing so fast, we're also identifying the big markets people haven't tapped yet.

   25. JAJack Altman8:50

       Yep.

   26. DFDylan Field8:50

       And I, I think that, um, that might be true. It's certainly gonna be true for some companies, but also there's, you know, uh, a dynamic where, yeah, probably some of the companies that go straight up, go straight down.

   27. JAJack Altman9:03

       Yep.

   28. DFDylan Field9:04

       Uh, and it's a question of when, and then there'll be some amazing winners. I mean, you know-

   29. JAJack Altman9:08

       Of course.

   30. DFDylan Field9:08

       Uh, but also, it's just, like, this default of, yeah, okay, if the why now is AI, uh, you know, it's the same why now as kind of like everyone else's why now.
4. 13:01 – 18:55

   The role of the human designer

   1. JAJack Altman13:01

      one of the topics I wanted to ask you about, is as far as you can see, I don't even know how many years that is today, but as far as you can see, do you think that the role of the human designer will flip somehow from maker to editor or something different like that? Or does it become, you know, only focus, you know, people on the most creative, most pivotal flourishes or, you know, most important integral parts of the pro- Like, where does this go, you know, if you look out as far as you're able to look out?

   2. DFDylan Field13:33

      I think, um, first of all, I think it's... I, I've been kind of in this place of, uh, maybe the roles are all merging together, and I was saying that before even AI was the topic.

   3. JAJack Altman13:48

      Yeah, you were.

   4. DFDylan Field13:49

      Uh, you know, even 10 years ago, five years ago, it's been something I've been kind of noticing, just slow progression towards. Uh, and now I feel like everyone-

   5. JAJack Altman13:57

      The roles being sort of-

   6. DFDylan Field13:58

      Uh, oh, PM, engineer, designer, researcher-

   7. JAJack Altman14:02

      Mm-hmm

   8. DFDylan Field14:02

      ... you know, the sort of-

   9. JAJack Altman14:03

      All parts of-

   10. DFDylan Field14:03

       typical roles you find in the product design-

   11. JAJack Altman14:05

       Product development

   12. DFDylan Field14:05

       ... development process. And I, I think that, um, if you look at sort of like the general pull of AI, it makes everyone feel like they should be more generalist to keep up.

   13. JAJack Altman14:17

       Mm-hmm.

   14. DFDylan Field14:18

       And then also, if you look at the way that things are actually playing out, I think it's less roles merging, 'cause the roles are still there, but it's the responsibilities, it's the things that people are doing every day, those are starting to get more murky. It's like everyone has their specialization, but then they also have a increased ability to have impact elsewhere outside their specialization. So now it's like, okay, as a designer, like, I'll go commit some code, or as a product manager, I should go actually make a prototype of my idea rather than just a PRD.

   15. JAJack Altman14:48

       Yeah, I mean, obviously you've always had, like, full stack product builders at, like, a startup.

   16. DFDylan Field14:53

       Yes.

   17. JAJack Altman14:53

       And, like, a, you know, the co-founder CTO has always done all of that for-

   18. DFDylan Field14:57

       Mm-hmm

   19. JAJack Altman14:57

       ... since as long as software's been going.

   20. DFDylan Field14:59

       Well, but oftentimes they go work with a product manager or designer-

   21. JAJack Altman15:03

       Yeah

   22. DFDylan Field15:03

       ... and all of them just, uh, are doing it all.

   23. JAJack Altman15:06

       Totally.

   24. DFDylan Field15:06

       And I think, though, that now we're in a place where you should be hiring a designer right away. Getting back to your question around what's the future of the designer role, uh, I think design is, like, kind of everything going forward. If you think of that as the top of the value stack, and you think about all the things that can impact design and all the things you're trying to pull in, you're thinking about the business logic, you're thinking about the user problems-

   25. JAJack Altman15:29

       Mm-hmm

   26. DFDylan Field15:30

       ... uh, you're trying to get to the hard user problems, like, what is it they really want? Um, you're trying to think about the system and how it shows up in all these different places.

   27. JAJack Altman15:38

       Yep.

   28. DFDylan Field15:38

       The brand, the way that you're able to incorporate culture, the affordances you wanna use, the style that you wanna go with, but also the structure. And all these decisions, um, are at the root of how you'll win or lose the business.

   29. JAJack Altman15:52

       Yeah, and there, there's good AI tooling around a lot of what you just said. I mean, even, like, getting user feedback-

   30. DFDylan Field15:58

       Mm-hmm
5. 18:55 – 21:28

   Small companies with $1B in revenue

   1. JAJack Altman18:55

      Do you buy the argument that we'll have, like, lots of small companies with a billion of revenue, or do you think that, um, instead what'll happen is the level of competition's just gonna rise and companies will be about the same size, but the software's just gonna be, like, way sicker?

   2. DFDylan Field19:11

      You know, I, I think that there's already companies that are smaller than you would expect with large runs of revenue, and then the question is, how much will they scale before they just totally break? And I think we're gonna find out. Uh, I'm sure that you and I both have mutual friends that are, are in this situation, and, you know, I, I, uh, talk to these founders, and they're proud of, like, how much they've accomplished with so few people. It's like, "Oh, my God, I got to this revenue milestone that's, like, quite huge, and I've got, like, 10 people." "It's amazing. Wow," and they get all this positive reinforcement. But then they also say, if you talk to them a little bit longer, "I'm really trying to hire. You got any referrals for me?" [chuckles]

   3. JAJack Altman19:51

      Yeah.

   4. DFDylan Field19:52

      'Cause, like, they are desperate for more people to go help with all the problems they now have at scale.

   5. JAJack Altman19:57

      Yeah.

   6. DFDylan Field19:57

      And so I, I, I don't know, um, if it's true that, like, team sizes will decrease a lot. Uh, there's a lot of problems to deal with. You know, yes, AI makes some roles more efficient, not all roles.

   7. JAJack Altman20:09

      Yeah.

   8. DFDylan Field20:10

      And, uh, as AI improves, we'll get more efficiencies, but also there's just more work to be done.

   9. JAJack Altman20:15

      Totally. I mean, to that point, it's like if the engineers get much more productive because of code gen, it's like, well, you're gonna start building a lot more product.

   10. DFDylan Field20:23

       Yeah.

   11. JAJack Altman20:23

       You're gonna need-

   12. DFDylan Field20:24

       And testing a lot more product, too.

   13. JAJack Altman20:25

       Probably need more designers.

   14. DFDylan Field20:26

       Yeah.

   15. JAJack Altman20:26

       So I do think it all kind of plays that way.

   16. DFDylan Field20:29

       And I think the competition aspect is, uh, really important. If you have more software in the world-

   17. JAJack Altman20:33

       Yeah

   18. DFDylan Field20:33

       ... and we've had this exponential curve so far-

   19. JAJack Altman20:35

       That's the part I've never understood. It's like company A is, like, doing the same with less now.

   20. DFDylan Field20:40

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JAJack Altman20:40

       And then company B's like, "Well, I'll just do more with the same and we'll win."

   22. DFDylan Field20:44

       I see it as, uh, for Figma, I mean, we just went through headcount planning. You know, i- it didn't really cross my mind to go, "Hey, let's reduce headcount," or, "Let's keep headcount flat." It's like, we got so much we wanna do. We have so many ideas. Let's increase headcount, let's go hire people that are great, and let's go do a lot of stuff-

   23. JAJack Altman21:04

       Yeah

   24. DFDylan Field21:04

       ... a lot of amazing stuff for our users.

   25. JAJack Altman21:05

       Yeah.

   26. DFDylan Field21:06

       And I think just, like, that's the mindset I think more companies will find themselves in is, "Oh, my gosh," like, "there's more possibility. I can do more, and I need more people for it."

   27. JAJack Altman21:15

       Yeah.

   28. DFDylan Field21:16

       And then some companies will go, "Oh, maybe I can get more efficient," but I think that might be a recipe for long-term, uh, you know, sort of... They might not be as effective as the companies that are trying to grow with this technology.

6. 21:28 – 27:49

   Expanding a sleepy market

   1. JAJack Altman21:28

      On this competition point, uh, one of the things I wanted to ask you about that might come off as, you know, ignorant or annoying, so sorry in advance, but, um-

   2. DFDylan Field21:37

      It's a good lead on

   3. JAJack Altman21:38

      ... I always read Figma as having somewhat low competition relative to being such a big market.

   4. DFDylan Field21:45

      Mm.

   5. JAJack Altman21:45

      And, um, obviously, you had, you know, other products that you were competing with, and there was Adobe, and there was Sketch. Um, and that's not to minimize any of it, uh, but it seemed to me like the market didn't catch on around you as fast as I thought it might have, versus in other markets that seem smaller, there's many, many more companies working on it. Is that right, or am I misreading it?

   6. DFDylan Field22:09

      I think it's changed over different periods of time. I mean, in the beginning of Figma, when we first started, I remember looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics because I wanted to know the market size, like you should know if you're reading any business book. And the answer was 250,000 designers. There's 250,000 designers in the United States. I'm like, "Shit," like, "that, that's not the market that we can use to go get VC funding." So my pitch was basically, like, "We'll start with design. We're gonna broaden out." And then, uh, what I think was actually happening, it's my intuition, but I couldn't articulate it very well at the time, was everything else was getting easier. Like, you didn't have to host servers anymore, you could just use the cloud. You didn't have to go make box software, you could go use app stores. Dev tools were getting better. And as all these things were changing, where does value accrue? Top of the stack, to designs. And people are, whether they're able to articulate that or not, they're hiring more designers. And the ramp we saw in terms of number of designers in the world over the first decade of Figma was tremendous.

   7. JAJack Altman23:15

      Mm.

   8. DFDylan Field23:15

      That market got so much bigger. So yeah, when we started off, I mean, Adobe had just killed Fireworks because they thought it was not, uh... You know, it was kind of a mess, I think, maybe on the code side, and acquired through Macromedia, and they thought, "Okay, this is not where we should put our efforts right now." That's my sense. And, um, basically, then people switched to Sketch, and our main competitor was Sketch and then InVision as a combination.

   9. JAJack Altman23:40

      Mm-hmm.

   10. DFDylan Field23:40

       Uh, there are other tools that started to appear, like Abstract. Uh, all these companies founded by really amazing, impressive people-

   11. JAJack Altman23:47

       Yeah

   12. DFDylan Field23:48

       ... with really cool, uh, you know, strategies in marketing and tech.

   13. JAJack Altman23:52

       Yeah.

   14. DFDylan Field23:52

       And, uh, some of the people that, you know, have worked at these companies are at Figma, some are not. But, uh, you know, Sketch was really the competitor-

   15. JAJack Altman24:00

       Yeah

   16. DFDylan Field24:01

       ... and is today still a competitor. They keep going on, and they're, um, a really, really cool company. The InVision, uh, aspect was fascinating because I remember their marketing was just so good.

   17. JAJack Altman24:14

       I remember.

   18. DFDylan Field24:14

       And at some point, uh-... they put out basically a teaser of their next product, Vision Studio. I was trying to raise the time, and I remember, uh, there were VCs that, you know, told me, "Hey, like, I just cannot reconcile your position with Vision. Pass." I'm like, "But they haven't even launched the thing yet. Like, are you sure?" [chuckles] You know, i- i- as a founder, you're like, "Come on!"

   19. JAJack Altman24:37

       Yeah, of course.

   20. DFDylan Field24:38

       Uh, but I also, I think because, you know, it was teams that were distributed in, like, weird ways across time zones, and they were always racing for the next milestone. They just had so much tech debt-

   21. JAJack Altman24:50

       Mm-hmm.

   22. DFDylan Field24:50

       - and it really slowed them down.

   23. JAJack Altman24:52

       Mm.

   24. DFDylan Field24:52

       Um, which I also think is a potential issue for all the companies that are moving so fast right now and doing so in a way that's not, like, well thought out.

   25. JAJack Altman25:00

       Yes.

   26. DFDylan Field25:01

       So anyway, I, I think that the, the competition felt very real then. Then Adobe XD came along. We were really worried about it, and then it kind of faded away. They, uh, put it into, like, a sunset mode, uh, and just kind of went, "Hey, this is not working." Uh, and, and then, you know, you compare that to now.

   27. JAJack Altman25:19

       Yeah.

   28. DFDylan Field25:20

       And I think this is the most exciting time ever. I mean, the reason we got into the space-

   29. JAJack Altman25:23

       Yes

   30. DFDylan Field25:24

       ... was that we could create more tools for people building products. And now I think we've validated that there's a market there. People are excited about that, and there's a lot of people that are trying all these cool different approaches, and I think it's awesome. Like, so much for people to try and learn from. Like, the option space is going to be fully explored of how we build products-
7. 27:49 – 32:51

   Leading with empathy as CEO

   1. JAJack Altman27:49

      I want to talk about the way that you show up as a CEO, because I think there's a somewhat widely held opinion, which might have grains of truth, but maybe not, which is that to be an unbelievable founder, unbelievable CEO, you kind of got to be rough, and you got to be aggressive, and you kind of got to be sharky and out for, you know, your company and yourself and all these other things. And obviously, there are people who do it that way and who are very successful, and that's fine, but, um, you, to me, are an example of doing it the other way, where it doesn't come from a place of, like, you know, hate and revenge or winning or all these things, which again, there's nothing negative about building in those ways, but there is this other way to do it. And I'm just curious if you have reflected on this, because I'm guessing you also see that in yourself, and you see this in other people, and I'd just be curious to sort of, like, hear your musings on this topic of, like, to be a world-class founder, CEO, do you have to be a certain way here?

   2. DFDylan Field28:50

      Well, first of all, I think there's just, like, a bajillion ways to start a company. You know, you don't have to take VC funding at all. You can bootstrap it. You can take the VC funding. There's expectations attached to that. You can, uh, you know, do it on your own. You can do it with a team. Uh, and all personalities can shine. If you look at the founders that are in Silicon Valley right now that are scaling, I mean, you can find every personality, uh, every kind of makeup of a founder that you can imagine-

   3. JAJack Altman29:17

      Yep

   4. DFDylan Field29:17

      ... which is awesome.

   5. JAJack Altman29:18

      Yep.

   6. DFDylan Field29:18

      Uh, I think that, you know, some investors have this thesis of, like, they got to have a chip on their shoulder. It's got to be, like, some, like, mega trauma.

   7. JAJack Altman29:27

      Yeah.

   8. DFDylan Field29:28

      Um, I had a pretty amazing childhood. I'm very thankful to my parents. Like, you know, I do like to win. I'll say that. Uh, I hate losing. But otherwise, eh, it's not like a-

   9. JAJack Altman29:39

      Yeah

   10. DFDylan Field29:40

       ... big chip on the shoulder-

   11. JAJack Altman29:41

       Right

   12. DFDylan Field29:41

       ... that, you know, I got to go prove myself every day. Um, it's more that I really enjoy building what I'm building. I think I found this amazing group of people to do that with, and, you know, uh, it's really fun.

   13. JAJack Altman29:54

       That's what's interesting, is you are extremely driven and motivated, but it doesn't seem to come from any of that stuff that you'd often hear from a VC on a podcast about a chip on a shoulder or something that, you know, happened wrong in their life or somebody wronged them. It seems like you just love what you do.

   14. DFDylan Field30:12

       I mean, I get to do the most awesome stuff ever, which is, like, build tools for designers, creative people, uh, and then go see what they make in the world. Like, I can't imagine something more interesting or exciting to work on.

   15. JAJack Altman30:24

       ... Do you think this is, like, an uncommon source of this type of motivation, or do you think, like- like, in other words, do you think that this conception that a lot of investors meet, founders, a lot of people have, do you think it's off base-

   16. DFDylan Field30:39

       Um

   17. JAJack Altman30:39

       ... or do you think it is, in fact, the more common source that drives people?

   18. DFDylan Field30:43

       I don't know. I think, uh, I probably get, like, a, a sample that's maybe not representative, because I have a lot of friends that also-

   19. JAJack Altman30:50

       You attract people like you.

   20. DFDylan Field30:51

       You know, uh, are, are, are just really driven by mission. Um, some of them have chips on their shoulder, some of them don't. But I guess the bigger thing is maybe just, like, don't get so attached to the chip on your shoulder that you don't work through it. Like, uh, i- if you're excited about what you're doing and you, like, heal a bit, that's okay. Trust me.

   21. JAJack Altman31:12

       [chuckles]

   22. DFDylan Field31:12

       Uh, I've seen friends go through that journey, and they show up to their company the next day, and... or week or month or year, 10 years, however long it takes them to work through it, and yeah-

   23. JAJack Altman31:22

       Yeah

   24. DFDylan Field31:22

       ... they're kicking ass.

   25. JAJack Altman31:23

       Yeah.

   26. DFDylan Field31:23

       So, like, I, I don't think it's this thing where-

   27. JAJack Altman31:26

       [inhales]

   28. DFDylan Field31:26

       ... you know, you should stigmatize something like therapy or-

   29. JAJack Altman31:30

       Yeah

   30. DFDylan Field31:30

       ... introspection, uh, because you're trying to feed the sort of VC capitalism machine.
8. 32:51 – 41:37

   Connecting with young people

   1. JAJack Altman32:51

      Yeah. Well, changing gears to another topic, um, you and I, I think, first got to know each other... M- this wasn't how, but, uh, around the time we got to know each other, um, when we were younger, we had this group of other friends and people, I think even younger than us, who were, like, smart engineers. We called it Toad Chat, for whatever reason.

   2. DFDylan Field33:10

      You called it Toad Chat.

   3. JAJack Altman33:10

      I called it Toad Chat.

   4. DFDylan Field33:11

      You made the group-

   5. JAJack Altman33:12

      I-

   6. DFDylan Field33:12

      ... just be clear.

   7. JAJack Altman33:12

      I made the group.

   8. DFDylan Field33:13

      But you let me join as an honorary toad.

   9. JAJack Altman33:15

      You were an honorary toad.

   10. DFDylan Field33:15

       Which I was very-

   11. JAJack Altman33:16

       Yeah

   12. DFDylan Field33:16

       ... like-

   13. JAJack Altman33:16

       You were like, "I'm not a toad, but I'm here to be... I'm here to- I'm here to be honored."

   14. DFDylan Field33:19

       I was honored to be there.

   15. JAJack Altman33:21

       And, um, looking back, there were, like, a lot of people in that group. Uh, you know, there was you, Alex Wang, um, Ari and Conrad-

   16. DFDylan Field33:28

       Yeah

   17. JAJack Altman33:28

       ... like, there was-

   18. DFDylan Field33:29

       And many others.

   19. JAJack Altman33:30

       Many others. Yeah, it was awesome. And I look back at that, and I, I don't know, we must have been mid or late 20s, or, you know, people in their early-

   20. DFDylan Field33:37

       Yeah, they were early 20s.

   21. JAJack Altman33:38

       Early 20s.

   22. DFDylan Field33:39

       Yeah.

   23. JAJack Altman33:39

       And I often think about that as, like- [coughs] um, the importance of being connected to young people as a founder-

   24. DFDylan Field33:47

       Mm

   25. JAJack Altman33:47

       ... as an investor, as just anybody in tech. 'Cause I do think there's so much just raw, sort of, um, effort, understanding. You're at the front of so much stuff there. And, um, you know, I think about this now as we're, like, in- getting into, like, mid-30s, and, um, you know, like, how does that change over time? And I don't know, I'm just curious your own experience, 'cause you're somebody who yourself started as a young person, you started-

   26. DFDylan Field34:12

       Yeah

   27. JAJack Altman34:12

       ... a company as a young person. You've been connected to young people throughout. You still are, of course, but, like, how has that journey changed for you?

   28. DFDylan Field34:18

       Yeah, I fear sometimes I'm not as connected to the youth as I once was. Uh, and I think that when you're young, me, me starting Figma, Evan as well, we'd grown up, like, you know, playing World of Warcraft, multiplayer games, using Google Docs at school. So it just gave us a mindset because of the tech stack we'd grown up in, the culture we'd grown up in, that seemed to us obvious, native. And then I would go talk to an investor and be like, "Oh, yeah, like Google Docs." And they're like: "Wait, like, you use Google Docs?" I'm like, "It's 2012. It's 2013. Like, who doesn't use Google Docs?" They're like, "Oh, we're on Word and Outlook here, uh, and sometimes collaboration, I'm not sure I've ever experienced it." I'm like, "What?" Like, "This is my life." [chuckles]

   29. JAJack Altman35:02

       Yeah. Totally.

   30. DFDylan Field35:02

       Yeah, so the generational divides can sometimes be very real. And, um, yeah, I always try to educate myself by, like, understanding what it is that people are surrounded by. Uh, I think that social media can be one way to do that, but it's hard to reconstruct an algo-feed world, same context now. Uh, I think just talking to people and, like, understanding their frame is always important, and also just making friends, uh, across age groups. I've got friends that are younger than me, older than me. You know, I've got friends that are 80. The other day, I was talking to this incredibly precocious, amazing 16-year-old, who, like, I got off the call, and I was just like: "Oh, my God, how do I hire you? Is that legal?" [chuckles]
9. 41:37 – 48:43

   Getting stronger despite Adobe

   1. JAJack Altman41:37

      One of the things that I thought was very impressive am- among many on the Figma journey is, um, the company seemed to get stronger through the Adobe acquisition and, you know, sort of it falling apart, and I would imagine that would be the kind of thing that could, like, spiritually break a lot of companies culturally, a lot of founders who are like, "Oh, man, I was like, right there, and now I got to do this whole, like, emotional and cultural reset." So, like, um, how did you, how did you navigate that, I guess, starting with your own psychology?

   2. DFDylan Field42:11

      Yeah. Um, that was probably the hardest on my own psychology, uh, because, and everything else is downstream to that, and if you're not, like, right in your own head, then how can you lead?

   3. JAJack Altman42:23

      Yep.

   4. DFDylan Field42:23

      Uh, or make good decisions even. And for me, I think, um, you know, the start, it was kind of like, oh, 95% certainty it'll go through, no worries, and just kind of every time we checked in-... the certainty went down. [chuckles] Uh, and eventually, you know, at the end, it's like, oh, there's maybe a 5% chance, [chuckles] you know, and in that arc-

   5. JAJack Altman42:42

      Yeah.

   6. DFDylan Field42:42

      You know, at some point, very quickly, we were just like, "Okay, this is not a sure thing. Keep the foot on the gas, keep building. Um, that's the best outcome, whether we join Adobe or we're independent." And, you know, it's like you can't be in this constant state of we're, you know, we're so back, it's so over-

   7. JAJack Altman43:00

      Uh-huh.

   8. DFDylan Field43:00

      And it's just rapid cycling through that. Like, it's just, your brain falls apart and turns to mush, in my opinion. At least for me. And so the word of the year for me then was, like, equanimity. I think I said equanimity more times that year, uh, than I ever will say the rest of my life, probably. But it's just like, "Okay, how do you find peace in every option and know that everything's gonna be okay? We're building a great company for amazing customers, and we have a lot of stuff to do. Let's go do it. And, uh, whatever happens, we're gonna put our best foot forward. It's the contract we signed with Adobe, and we're gonna make sure that we do everything we can to close this. If it doesn't work out, we'll have a great independent path." And then, you know, you get to the end of it, and, uh, I think the relief the team felt at knowing an answer and having just, like, this, you know, supervisional state collapse into, "Okay, we know we're gonna be independent," like, that was real relief.

   9. JAJack Altman44:00

      I bet.

   10. DFDylan Field44:01

       Um, it was the end of the year. You know, we found out, uh, I- as I was about to fly out to visit my in-laws, and I think I was, like, hashing through all the details of how to communicate with the team on, like, a Saturday night and a Sunday. Then Monday, we announced-

   11. JAJack Altman44:20

       Mm

   12. DFDylan Field44:20

       ... that it was not going through. And it, and people had already gone on break starting on that Friday. Sent a message to this team on Slack, like, @channel, you know, [chuckles] "FYI, press release," um, and details about, like, what it meant for them. And, uh, and said, "Hey, if you want... No pressure. If you wanna join, though, here's a Zoom call, and we'll be talking about this then." And, you know, just the relief on the Zoom call was, like, palpable-

   13. JAJack Altman44:46

       Mm

   14. DFDylan Field44:46

       ... over Zoom, [chuckles] which was pretty wild.

   15. JAJack Altman44:49

       I believe it.

   16. DFDylan Field44:49

       Just the chat was-

   17. JAJack Altman44:50

       It makes sense, though.

   18. DFDylan Field44:51

       It was, like, a big relief to know. And then, you know, the break is going, and I'm like, "Okay, not everyone is in that place." And so we made a program called Detach, which is a Figma pun. You can detach a component. It's, like, something that some people frown on, uh, but, like, it's also a necessary task sometimes. And the idea was just, "Hey, look, if you don't wanna be at Figma, we don't wanna trap you. Here's three months of pay. If you decide to leave, leave, and, uh, you're still, like, cool with us, we're cool with you. Everything's fine. And if you decide to reapply, you can't reapply for six months, but then you're welcome to reapply after that. And, uh, yeah, you're... Like, there's no issue if you decide to take this, and if you don't, like, FYI, we are a hard-charging startup. It's gonna be intense. We got a lot to do."

   19. JAJack Altman45:45

       Mm-hmm.

   20. DFDylan Field45:46

       Um, and so we rolled this out. You know, kind of a nervous few weeks as people made their calls, and then, uh, a little over 4% of people took us up on it.

   21. JAJack Altman45:53

       What year was that again?

   22. DFDylan Field45:54

       Uh, that would've been, um, I think 2023.

   23. JAJack Altman45:58

       Mm-hmm.

   24. DFDylan Field45:58

       I have to double-check that.

   25. JAJack Altman45:59

       Mm.

   26. DFDylan Field45:59

       Uh, I get the dates all confused sometimes.

   27. JAJack Altman46:01

       Was there any element coinciding there, too, of like there was, like, something in the water in tech at that time, where, like, a cultural reset was happening at a lot of companies? And did that play in in any way? Did it help in any way that that was going on in other places, or did it just have nothing to do with it?

   28. DFDylan Field46:18

       I, I don't think it factored in. Just to be clear, I think it was end of 2023 that, uh, we communicated for the first time, but, like, early 2024 that it was the detach-

   29. JAJack Altman46:26

       Yep

   30. DFDylan Field46:26

       ... program, um, if I'm accurate there.
10. 48:43 – 52:02

    AI impacting Figma’s roadmap

    1. JAJack Altman48:43

       Okay, on that note, I wanna go to sort of like the final area, which is how you're thinking about just AI impacting sort of your roadmap and your product. And maybe you could just even talk about, like, the things that you've been working on over the last six or 12 months that, you know, AI-related, that I think are sort of most important for Figma.

    2. DFDylan Field49:01

       So much. Um, I think that first of all, you know, it's not just designers in the process, although they're the heart of it. Uh, they're working with developers, they're working with product managers, uh, and more researchers, marketers. And, uh, I think that if you can give developers a good way through MCP to pull context from design, so they can be able to make things faster-

    3. JAJack Altman49:25

       Mm.

    4. DFDylan Field49:25

       -it's a win. So we introduced dev mode MCP, and, uh, folks are able to use that with well-structured design files to go build the front-end experience so much faster. I mean, it's really wild to see how this works when you actually experience it live. Uh, you know, you get a lot of the front-end built for you by the AI that can interpret what we send over and, uh, do inference, and it can be just extraordinarily fast. Um, we're also thinking a lot about, of course, how do we make sure that you're able to have great prompting experiences in, uh, both Figma Make, but also Figma Design? In Figma Design, we've teased it, but it's not out yet, but we're really excited about that. Um, in general, I'd say, like, it feels like we're kind of in this MS-DOS era of AI, where we're gonna look back in some number of years and go: "It's kind of wild that we're just, like, typing text all the time." There will be some amount of dimensionality collapse into interfaces.

    5. JAJack Altman50:21

       Mm.

    6. DFDylan Field50:22

       And, you know, it's also the case, I think, for any AI company, the strategic question you have to be positive on is, as models get better, do we get better? And the answer has to be yes. If it's no, in some way, you've got to readjust strategy. In late October, as you know, we announced Weavie, uh, now Figma Weave, and this is an acquisition we've made that I think really me- meets these attributes, and I am so excited about. Basically, it makes it so you can use all these different generative models for image, video, but also to transform across modalities like image to 3D, for example. And you can then connect them in a node-based workflow, use it to creatively explore or also create a pipeline, uh, make a process. And the things we're seeing people do with it are just so cool and wild and expressive. And I guess, like, overall, it's also made me reflect a lot because a lot of people call the output of these models slop. It's almost like a derogatory term. And, you know, without making any comment on slop versus not slop, I mean, some things I see as output, I'm like: "Wow, it's amazing!" But I think the more important point is, like, whatever you start with, it's a starting point, and you can use that in a workflow to get to something amazing-

    7. JAJack Altman51:40

       Yeah

    8. DFDylan Field51:40

       ... for your own craft.

    9. JAJack Altman51:41

       Yeah.

    10. DFDylan Field51:41

        And I think with Weave, that's what we're seeing, is just this incredible way that artists and creatives can go and create all sorts of different types of multimedia generation, um, and then also use it across the Figma platform. And so I'm really, really excited what we're doing there and, uh, just the fact that they trusted us to join up and what we can do in the future.

11. 52:02 – 56:39

    Final bastion of human designers

    1. JAJack Altman52:02

       As you add more and more AI into the product, what do you th- what do you think is like the final bastion of, like, human designers? Will it be taste, coordination? What will the set of things be that you're most confident in, like, will always be just, like, human tasks?

    2. DFDylan Field52:19

       I mean, I think that, um, we are so far away from AI replacing designers. Uh, and if you actually look at the designs generated, I think it's very easy to tell that. But even if the design generation from an aesthetic standpoint gets better, like, it's not considering the entire system, it's not considering all the constraints, you're not exploring the full option space, you're not thinking about, like, the context culturally, you're not thinking about, uh, the business problems you have to solve or the greater system that connects, uh, everything. That's all these different targets across all these different experiences you're trying to create. You're not thinking about the emotional qualities you're trying to create and the brand and how that gets pulled in. I, I- it's just so much, and the best designers are able to take all these different inputs and then be able to explore out very dense and, uh, deep trees of possibility to figure out what is the best approach systematically, and then go build on it.

    3. JAJack Altman53:22

       Mm.

    4. DFDylan Field53:22

       And I, I don't know, it's like, um... One example I go through a lot that resonates with the Gen Z people, but not the millennials or, uh, folks that are older always-

    5. JAJack Altman53:32

       Mm

    6. DFDylan Field53:32

       ... is Brat Summer.

    7. JAJack Altman53:33

       Hmm.

    8. DFDylan Field53:33

       You, you know Brat Summer, right?

    9. JAJack Altman53:35

       No.

    10. DFDylan Field53:35

        Oh, gosh.

    11. JAJack Altman53:36

        Oh, Brat Summer!

    12. DFDylan Field53:36

        Yes-

    13. JAJack Altman53:37

        Yeah

    14. DFDylan Field53:37

        ... Brat Summer.

    15. JAJack Altman53:38

        Brat Summer, of course.

    16. DFDylan Field53:38

        See?

    17. JAJack Altman53:39

        Yeah.

    18. DFDylan Field53:39

        You, you got it.

    19. JAJack Altman53:40

        It's Brad Summer. I was like, "Who's Brad Summer?"

    20. DFDylan Field53:41

        Yeah, no.

    21. JAJack Altman53:42

        Brad.

    22. DFDylan Field53:42

        Yeah, we can talk about Brad Summer later. [chuckles]

    23. JAJack Altman53:43

        Yeah, Brad Summer's cool.

    24. DFDylan Field53:44

        Anyway, Brat Summer.

    25. JAJack Altman53:46

        Yeah.

    26. DFDylan Field53:46

        And, uh, you know, I use Brat Summer as an example a lot because... Well, think about it, right? Like, the album cover, obviously, not just the album cover, but as a design artifact, lime green square, I think it was, what, Comic Sans or something that-

    27. JAJack Altman54:00

        Yeah

    28. DFDylan Field54:00

        ... that was written in?

    29. JAJack Altman54:01

        Yeah.

    30. DFDylan Field54:02

        What ASI, uh, you know, uh, designer would create Brat Summer?

Episode duration: 56:39