When Dylan Field His face was filled with dizziness and fatigue popping up on my zoom screen. After his whirlwind trip back to New York City, he returned to work, where he opened his Figma on the New York Stock Exchange, which kept billions of dollars startups private. Even in the obvious case, this is probably the craziest public launch in years, the app’s fan world (the app’s fans), employees (called Lady Fig) and investors have turned Wall Street into a barrier party, distributing swags, offering free pizza, and blowing shaky caves from DJs. But the sweetest music was played on the big board as the opening $33 stock soared to $142 before settling down at $90 comfort.
By the time the field flew back to California, he was worth more than $5 billion. But he doesn’t want to talk about this. In his opinion, this story is not about the company’s public, but about the IPO of the design itself. “What I care most about is what our products will be in five and ten years,” he said. “Are we improving design?”
Not focusing on money can be a good idea. On the day we were talking, Figma’s stock price fell 27%, reducing its valuation from about $60 billion to more than $40 billion. This is still higher than anyone expected. While Figma’s IPO celebrates design, it’s not the only company looking to revolutionize the field. AI will launch a new era of design. Like competitors, figs will be defined by how it handles the technology. Ultimately, it is unclear whether AI will help its business or blow it up.
On-site work
Every time I talk to Field, something huge seems to happen, a company he co-founded with 19-year-old Thiel Fellow and a Brown University dropout. From the beginning, FIGMA’s browser-based app allows people to collaborate and brainstorm online. It grew a loyal following, threatening the giant of design tools, Adobe. At the first meeting in 2022, I put a game on the field between David and Goliath Trope, whether he can pull an Instagram and sell it out to a larger company. Field talks sublimely about his long-term performance. In fact, he has a secret that he can’t share: Adobe just gave his company $20 billion and he will accept it. News came out a few weeks after we talked. He apologized when I met him in face-to-face at a wired conference in San Francisco last December. “I feel very sad about it,” he told me.
The next time we talk in December 2023, the deal just collapsed as former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department said it would oppose the merger. Field was obviously shaken, but determined to continue his original plan to build a way that would change the way people create apps, websites, documents and decks. It’s not easy, as months of momentum have been wasted preparing for a merger with the big company.
Over the next two years, Figma expanded its products and continued to win. Its 13 million users only suggest that it is everywhere: the work generated on its app is seen by billions of people. Among Fortune 500 companies, 95% use the product. Figs make money. After the IPO, the company is worth more than twice as much as Adobe has to pay for it even after the stock upgrade.
Still, I feel a little confused because these days startups can feel the need to conduct an IPO when they reach stratosphere valuations without the liability accidents that become a public company. Field cites the advantages of community ownership, corporate hygiene that follows reporting rules, and how options to buy fig stocks will give people a better understanding of their business. Ultimately, he said, “If you end up being open, why not now?”
Design or loss
As the habit of many openly publicly-public technology leaders, Field wrote a letter from the founder in his prospectus, who promised more value than profit. (These vows often haunt their authors, as clumsy entrepreneurs turn into pursuing the profits of yachts.) In essence, the letter is an argument that design now has a central position in the lives of people. This is not only an important factor in how people make products and express themselves: this factor. He wrote, “Design is bigger than design.” When I asked him what he meant, it wasn’t easy for him to open Koan. “It can mean a lot of things,” he said. “It’s the rise of design, from pixel-level craftsmanship to more general problem solving, to how you win or lose.”
He explained that in the early 2000s, design was about making things beautiful. By the 2010s, people were imitating Steve Jobs’ philosophy that design is related to function. The site said that now, design is not only two things, but also how we communicate – who you are, the brand’s representative, the way you interact with the public. Field says our world is built on software and the more software is created, the more design becomes the core difference. This is our new language and Feima wants to be duolingo for those who are struggling to master it.
