– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

Designers need to be founders. We need

to have folks that are designers step

into the founder role and start

companies. It feels intuitively like

we're in the MS DOS era of AI right now.

If you look back 10 years from now,

everyone's going to go, can you believe

that we just had this chat box?

[Music]

Awesome. Well, um, want to welcome

Dylan. Um, I'm curious what the makeup

of the audience is here. How many people

um have used Figma before?

Wow. All right.

Awesome.

How many people consider themselves to

be designers?

Okay. All right.

Many of us.

Yes. Our people. And uh how many are

currently founders?

Awesome.

Cool. Okay. That's a a good mix of

people in the audience. So, we'll hear

the Figma story. Then we'll talk about

um advice around AI and design. Um and

then we'll get some advice on uh just

being a founder from Dylan too. So I'm

excited to jump in. Um maybe to start uh

give us kind of a snapshot on where

Figma is today and then you know we can

kind of go back to the uh the beginning

days.

Yeah. Uh today we are uh many different

places. We're hybrid uh 1,700 people now

which is wild. I have to pinch myself on

that number. We have eight products now.

We just doubled our product lineup at

our last config. So um very excited to

hear feedback if you got any on things

like Figma make sites draw uh buzz. Um

but it's been a very exciting time. Uh

lots of work we're doing as we explore

all the things that we can do to help

our audience.

And now take us back to uh maybe

19year-old Dylan uh getting started with

the the kernel of the idea that

eventually became Figma, but it wasn't a

straight line getting there. Tell us

about the early days and kind of how you

and Evan got started. Yeah. So, in the

early days of Figma, well, I guess

before it was even Figma, Evan and I

were at Brown together, uh, he was my TA

and we were asking ourselves the

question of why now? Like what's

changing the world and the two answers

that we came up with that we also felt

deep conviction in, one was drones uh,

and quadcopters. Other one was WebGL.

And uh Evan after about a month or so

said hey like not into drones uh for all

sorts of various reasons. That was kind

of the one I was pushing for more at the

time also except WebGL of course. And

then uh I was like great WebGL it is.

And so WebGL I think everybody probably

here knows but is a way to use the GPU

in your computer and the browser. Uh web

GPU is its successor. And yeah, we uh

started going really deep on like what

are all the things that we can build and

two main paths were games or tools

pretty fast. We said okay not games

let's go tools and then it was a deep

exploration with many twists and turns

as we explored all sorts of tools that

we could build and uh you know it took

uh we really started in earnest August

2012 uh whereas we started talking about

it more December of uh 2011 so it took a

while to get to the point where we

started and then from there I would say

it was at least June or July of 2013

before we went all in on okay let's

build Figma as it is today and even then

there was still a bit of a narrowing

path to get to the product that exists

now.

And when you first started, were you

thinking about this as a startup and a

company that you wanted to build or were

you thinking about it more as like a

project that you wanted to do with your

friend?

No, it was definitely the hope was

startup uh and startup that could scale

at the same time. My downside case was I

get to work with Evan who I considered

then consider now to be a hero. He's

like the smartest guy I know. Uh if you

have any doubt about this statement,

just look up his GitHub. Uh he he's an

amazing man and an absolute genius. And

I figured worst case scenario, I spent a

few years working with Evan. I learn a

lot. Then I go back to school, same

place I'm at now, can't hurt. Uh upside

case, we go build a cool company. All

the problems that we were thinking about

working on were very very interesting to

me. And so I didn't really see any like

risk to the scenario. And also it helped

that I had the Teal Fellowship. Uh, I

would have done it without it, but like

having 100K over two years, I know now,

you know, inflation, etc. probably

sounds like less than it was then, but

yeah, I mean to have actual cash and not

have to dig into savings or go into

debt, huge deal. Not just because of the

cash element, but also because it gives

you time. Uh, if we had stopped six

months in and that was our point where

we made a call, Figma would not be here

today. And so I think if you're a

founder already going or you're thinking

about founding, you got to give yourself

time somehow. That's really important.

Yeah. You spent a couple years trying

to, you know, do all the twists and

turns and the thing that eventually

became what Figma um is today.

Yeah.

Um what kept you going in that time? A

lot of times, you know, founders will

get into this like pivot hell of jumping

from idea to idea and motivation just

keeps declining. And how did you keep

yourselves motivated during that time

and feel like you were on to something

and you were on the right track? Well, I

mean, first of all, just working with

Evan was super fun. You know, we're kind

of thinking through ideas by building

them. It felt every week like we're kind

of inventing the future in some way. At

some point, I kind of went, "Memes are

going to go to the moon." And I

convinced Evan, hey, let's go build a

meme generator. And this is, you know,

2012 time frame. And we built a great

[ __ ] meme generator. I think it was

for sure would have been the best one in

the market. Uh, and my thesis was right,

by the way. Look at the exponential

curve of memes since 2012. Yeah. uh we

would have made some money there. At the

same time, after a week of that, I think

both of us were ready to quit. I was

asking myself like, why'd I drop out of

Brown for this? That was probably like a

pretty low point at the start. But other

than that, there's the constant

existential nature of asking yourself

like, what are we doing? What's the big

goal here? when you're in that phase of

really trying to discover what to work

on. But I think if you've got a

co-founder, you got a collaborator,

you're not just alone, you know,

hopefully your highs and their highs,

your lows, their highs cancel out

somehow and you can kind of feed off

each other to keep each other going.

That really helps.

That's cool. Once you kind of came up

with uh the idea for Figma, how did you

get your first users?

Yeah. Um really the first users of Figma

uh a lot of it was cold emailing and uh

people in network so folks that I had

either interned with for example I

entered at Flipboard, LinkedIn uh

O'Reilly Media and from that there were

people I could reach out to. They could

tell me others to talk with but also I

just looked online like who are the

designers that I think could be really

helpful to us and I respect their work.

you know, if they answer my email and

they let me buy them a coffee, like

it'll just be like a personal moment for

me because they're my hero. And a lot of

them replied. Like, it's kind of wild

that people reply to cold emails, but

they do. And so, uh, yeah, I I went

there and then it turns out designers

give great feedback. So, it wasn't just

like meeting them and them saying,

"Yeah, your product sucks." They'd be

like, "Here's exactly why it's not

great, and here's what you can do

better. Here's what it would take for me

to use this." And uh the more that I

engaged and we worked through that, the

better the product got. I'd follow up

with them and eventually they started

converting. Some of them took a while

before a lot of them converted. Later on

we kind of went on tour. I met at this

point we had venture investment the

venture firms that invest in us. They

invested in other companies too. I had

them make introductions to the

companies. You know for an entire summer

I basically met with I don't know five,

six, seven companies a week at least.

um sitting down with them, sometimes

several a day, saying, "Hey, here's a

demo. Will you use it? If not, why not?"

And uh

very low conversion rate. I think like

in that entire summer, maybe two of them

went in for it and actually started

using Figma. Uh one was Notion, the

other was the company that became Kota,

then called Krypton. and uh kind of

interesting they're both you know these

cloud-based document tools with very

similar philosophies to us but you know

you then launch it and people start

using it more there's a lot of folks out

there that resonate with the message so

it was a it was a slow arc over time but

the the constant was feedback getting

feedback to the team making sure we

understood what problems we need to

solve

that's interesting because you know

everyone tells you to launch early and

the reason to launch early is to get

that feedback

and from the outside it looks like you

took a long time to launch but behind

the scenes you were actually talking to

tons of users and potential customers

and getting feedback constantly like how

did you think about when was the right

time to actually launch the product?

First of all I like definitely echo the

point of launch as soon as you can. If

you take anything away from this it's

don't do what I did. Uh you know get

your product out faster and charge money

faster for the product to see if you

actually can make money. Uh, unless you

have some genius galaxy brain consumer

thing you're doing, in which case figure

it out yourself. I I don't know what to

tell you. I think that the feedback is

essential and uh you should launch as

quickly as you can. For me, the feedback

was very clear. It's not ready and that

made it so we didn't feel comfortable

launching yet. But looking back, we did

have the capital. I should have scaled

the team faster so we could move faster

and get it out quicker. That was

something that I now looking back have

learned. And when a team at Figma comes

to me with a epic road map that they

think is perfection, the first question

I always ask is how do we slim slim that

down? How do we make it more bite-sized

and test this earlier with our users?

So, it's it's absolutely the case that I

try to push people internally towards,

you know, a one month or three month

cadence uh at most. You know, if someone

comes to me with a 9 month, a 12 month,

two-year cadence, it's like, what the

[ __ ] are you doing, man? Yeah, that's

such an important point, especially for

small teams, which is a lot of times

people are like, well, I have all this

stuff I have to build, so I need to go

hire a bunch of people to be able to do

it. But it seems like usually the right

answer is like, how can you scope it

down and do fewer things really well?

Like it sounds like is that part of your

culture as you're building things? Yeah,

it's constraints can actually really

help. But I also think the startup

equation

or not equation, but the cycle that

you're always in is something along the

lines of if you're the leader of a

startup, you need to be identifying what

you're doing the most of. Uh figuring

out how to get someone else to help you

with do that or maybe in the future it's

AI, who knows? But then from there,

okay, how do you like go find that

person? And if you don't have enough

resources, how do you get the resources?

Right? Right. That's a cycle that you're

always in. It just turns out that

actually having constraints, it breeds

creativity. It breeds interesting ways

to solve problems. And so, yeah, I think

they're useful.

What was the inflection point? I don't

know. Was it shortly after you launched?

Was it years later? Was it a few weeks

ago when you actually believed this was

going to be a huge company?

Oh man. I think uh the point at which I

started to believe that actually this

might be real was way later than our

users did. People were telling me, "This

is amazing. I'm really excited. Here's

my 12-page doc on all the things that I

want you to do for Figma." Uh, I should

have known then, even though our product

was really bad, that there was something

there. But in reality, it took until

Microsoft told us, "Hey, this is

spreading like wildfire, and we're

asking ourselves, should we shut it down

or uh, you know, should we keep going?"

And the reason we're asking ourselves

that is because you're not charging us.

Maybe you should actually charge for the

product.

That was the moment that I was like,

"Oh, I think something might be working.

We should probably charge people." And

that was like five years in. So, yeah,

don't do that. Um, and also listen for

when people are uh pulling the product

out of you. Like, I think everyone talks

about product market fit, but product

market pull is really important. And

you'll see signs of it when people are

highly engaged, when they are obsessive

about what you're doing, when they see

the future of the vision that you're

planting, uh that is a sign that you

should really double down and in

whatever way you can. And so many people

interpreted instead as, oh man, if only

we had all these things that they're

asking for, then we might have product

market fit. Guess we got to grind for a

long time and who knows if it'll work.

the right mindset is, oh my god, they

actually care enough to give us this

feedback. This is huge. Uh, and I think

that people misinterpret that too much.

It seems even your feedback seeking

early on in the early days, I think a

lot of people are nervous to do that

because they don't want to hear that

it's not good enough and, you know, they

don't want to hear the thing that they

poured so much time and energy into um,

is not good yet and I would not use it

and I would not pay you for it and so

you want to just hide from that. How did

you shift your perspective to actually

want to seek that? I

I think maybe it's just like childhood

for me. When I was growing up, I was a

child actor. Uh not like a a child actor

that got into like anything really cool

that you know about like commercials and

some TV and stuff. But as part of that,

you audition constantly. Uh and

basically you constantly get rejected.

Uh for me that was not a big deal. Like

I was used to rejection and I had fun

with the process of it. So yeah, I think

for me it's just maybe a different

mental equation than others. But yeah,

if you're not there yet, like seek

rejection, it's got interesting data in

it. Don't you want to know the data?

Switch gears. Talk about design for a

little bit. It's been a really great

month for design. It feels like

been pretty wild.

Yeah. I mean, we've had some popular

redesigns from Airbnb and Netflix. Yep.

We've had um Apple's new liquid glass

UI, which seems to be somewhat

controversial. I'm sure there are

opinions out here. at least there was

opinions on X or Twitter or whatever.

You guys had some incredible launches um

at um at config recently and you know at

YC we have kind of a call for more

design founders and then maybe the most

um surprising and impressive thing was

uh OpenAI acquiring Johnny Ivan his

company for more than $6 billion which

is pretty crazy. So I I'm curious like

why now? Like what is happening in this

moment where it seems like design is is

really a part of uh the conversation in

a lot of the tech world.

Yeah. I mean I first of all I think that

in some ways it's new, in some ways it's

not new. Design has I think been growing

in importance exponentially over the

past decade. At Figma we see it up close

every day. Uh more designers being

hired. design going from, you know,

lipstick on a pig, make it pretty at the

end of the process to let's deeply think

about how it works every step along the

way. That's been a mindset shift that's

been ongoing. But now, I think in this

age of AI, if you really believe that

development gets easier and it's more

simple to create software, it's faster

to create software. Then like what is

your differentiator? It's design, it's

craft, it's attention to detail, it's

point of view. What we're seeing is

recognition of that. I mean, Airbnb,

they literally said our differentiator

is design. Yeah,

I think Brian said that. I believe that,

you know, there's lots of takes on Open

AI and uh this more than $6 billion

transaction. Uh some people are like

this is the stupidest thing in the

world. Other people are hailing it as

like absolute genius. I guess my mental

model is there are some people out there

who when they do something you don't

understand

uh it's easy to go into an attack mode

and just dismiss it. But over enough

time, sometimes you see patterns and

you're like, "Okay, I've consistently

not understood what this person's saying

over the course of like years." And

uh you know, years later, I go back to

it and I'm like, "Oh, what I said in

response to what they did was just

wrong." And then you kind of do this

mental flip of, okay, assume that

there's something to learn from whatever

they're doing. assume you're missing

something. And I think that I look at

something like OpenAI and some part of I

understand. Design is differentiator.

Some parts I don't understand. Like

that's a really big transaction. Uh but

Sam is one of those people that, you

know, he's he's right about a lot of

stuff. So I I would encourage you if you

just dismissed it outright to ask

yourself what you might be missing. And

you guys launched some uh really cool AI

focused products at uh your conference

config about a month ago which has been

really cool to see the reception there.

Um really positive from a lot of your

users and the design community. Um I'm

curious if you can share more about

those and and your motivation for

building some of those.

If you look historically at the products

we've launched for Figma, the pattern is

we notice behavior happening in Figma

Design. We take it out of Figma Design

and make it its own product. And

therefore, Figma design is able to be

what Figma design wants to be, a product

design tool. And you know, whether it's

Fig Jam or whiteboarding brainstorming

tool, the first new product we launched

that we can make a dedicated space for

and make it be everything it needs to be

or it's slides where we saw, okay, 5% of

files created uh in Figma Design or

slides. So great, pull that out, make a

slide tool because there's all the stuff

you need for slides that if you put it

in Figma design now you've got a

complicated UI and oneplus 1 is not

equal to three is more equal to like

1.5. A lot of the things you saw launch

at configure in that category. So uh

draw for example which is a way to do

more uh vector tasks we made a separate

mode for uh so that users can go deeper

because again if you believe the craft

is differentiator more people want to be

more expressive. How do we enable our

customers and designers everywhere to do

that on the Figma platform buzz same

thing you have all these people that

want to create uh mass exports and

figure out ways to create production

graphics. So, if you got a brand team

and they've created templates, uh, how

do you make it so that you're able to

then empower a marketing team to go use

those templates and do mass creation of

assets? That's like a core workflow we

see all the time. But we didn't want to

uh make Figma design more complicated or

dumb it down. And so, instead, you make

a new surface. Uh, sites, we see people

designing websites all the time in Figma

Design, but they have to go somewhere

else to actually build the site and get

it out there. So, how do we get that so

that they can actually ship it? And then

make, uh, we're so excited about make.

This is a tool that lets you go from

prompt to app. And it's already changed

a lot of how we do work at Figma in

terms of quickly prototyping and being

able to get to the point where you throw

ideas away faster. And with Figma make,

there's so much more that we want to

explore and are really excited to

explore there. So, yeah, stay tuned on

that one.

Cool. Yeah, I mean you just touched on

it there, but it feels like a lot of the

line between design and development is

getting blurred

and they used to be very distinct phases

in a product development process or

parts of an iterative cycle and now it

feels like you know they're almost being

combined into one. How do you think

about that with the tools that you're

making and and I'm also curious um maybe

how that process has changed like how

your own development process has changed

within Figma?

I'll start with Figma. Uh, I think that

for us it's all about speed of

iteration, speed of testing ideas and

tools like make really help with that.

It helps to have ways to rapidly

prototype and to figure out what's going

to work and what's not going to work and

make that as low cost cost as possible.

And then there's tools I can't talk

about and things we're developing that

uh have been pretty instrumental to how

our development process is changing. Um,

so yeah, can't wait to talk about you

with them, but not today sadly. Yeah,

when you go back to just the way that

design and development are blurring

more, um I think it there's a lot of

stuff going on there. I think product is

also blurring with design and

development and potentially even parts

of research. All this is becoming less

distinct and uh it's all kind of coming

together more. I think this is happening

before AI, but it's happening even more

with AI. There's something about AI that

empowers generalist behavior. I will say

that I think that the models today are

better at

the earlier phases of development than

they are at like late stage code bases.

Um, so if you have an established

codebase, I think you're going to get

less out of uh AI development tools as

they currently exist than if you're at

the very start. So I think that

everything's better suited for

prototyping and sort of like zero to one

than it is from one to 100 uh at this

current moment. But you know, in a week

this could change. Yeah, it changes so

fast.

Yes.

Um I mean related to that, how do you

expect user interfaces to change uh over

the next couple years? And feels like

chat has kind of become a lot of the

dominant uh interface paradigm, but I

don't know, it feels like there's got to

be something better that comes along,

right?

Yeah. I think that it feels intuitively

like we're in the MS DOS era.

Yeah.

Uh of AI right now. and that you know if

you look back 10 years from now

everyone's going to go can you believe

that we just had this chat box and yet I

think the problem of how do you show

users all the things that are possible

to do with these models is a very hard

challenge and um there's something about

the experiments that have worked there

that's very interesting so for example

look at midjourney you know they started

off in discord where you can rapidly see

all the other things that people are

doing and that was in many ways is a way

to show people what's possible or even

Meta's new AI app. Uh there's been a lot

of press cycle and whatnot about the

public aspect of people sharing

accidentally things that are quite

private. But the flip side of that is

you actually learn what you can do and

so I think that's been underexplored uh

in the media. So I I I think that

there's this problem that people have

not solved of like how do you expose

capabilities of of these models and

there's so much that needs to be

developed and worked through there.

Yeah, I think it there's a lot to come.

On top of that, everything will be more

contextual uh AI as you blend it in to

different applications. That's a really

interesting layer to think about and on

top that we're going to have so many new

surfaces as well. the surfaces that will

exist are not going to be just like your

phone and your laptop and your tablet

and the thing you know it's going to be

glasses uh we're going to see much more

um in terms of uh different types

displays that exist throughout your life

so the surfaces are going to multiply AI

will have context all of it will be a

layer you have to intersperse and that

is a a really interesting challenge for

design of how do you reconcile all that

keep it consistent and actually be able

to navigate that whole broad spectrum

that people expect you to show up on.

YC's Next Batch is now taking

applications. Got a startup in you?

Apply at y combinator.com/apply.

It's never too early. And filling out

the app will level up your idea. Okay,

back to the video.

How many of you um consider yourselves

to be researchers or have done research

work?

Yeah, it's a it's a lot of people in

this audience here. And I know you've

done this internally, you know, at Figma

and and building your own models. Um,

what is the role of design um in in

research and the research work that

you've done? Um, and you know, what are

some of the design decisions that go

into actually like making them better

and and making them work really well? I

mean I think that a lot of researchers

uh are sort of trained in an academic

environment and come at problems as

abstractions and they try to think very

generally and I I think if in some

research like if you're doing pure math

like keep going that is definitely the

way to approach it if you're doing more

research that's applied uh for example

in AI I I really do think that thinking

like a designer can be helpful and

working with designers can be helpful We

found for example that embedding

designers into our research teams

because obviously we're doing a lot of

work on how do we make better AI tools

for designers uh is been critical

because researchers need that intuition

of how designers think and without

actually having that close collaboration

it really doesn't work. Now you might

say in response well yeah that's nice

but you're building for designers. My

maybe response back would be well uh

it's it's the case that designers have

this mindset of you're building for an

audience. Maybe it's a general audience.

Maybe it's a specific audience. That

audience has a problem or a set of

problems they're trying to solve. And

that sort of thinking I think is very

useful to bring into the research

context. And also qualitative research

needs to pair with uh more deep AI

research as well. the more that you can

actually surface through qualitative

methods what people are actually trying

to do and how they perceive and think,

the more uh you can advance. So yeah, I

guess my push for anyone who's coming

from more of a research background would

be go get in the field, go talk to

people because you'll learn from it and

it'll actually make you go faster and

some of the ways that designers have

learned and some of the tools that

designers have are likely useful for

you. Yeah, it's it's like that Steve

Jobs quote that, you know, design isn't

just how it looks, it's how it works.

Yep.

Um it feels like, you know, when you're

building models and doing research,

you're trying to make a thing like that

is the how it works. You know, you're

trying to define that and that is the

core function of a designer that may not

be obvious to how people view them from

the outside.

I'm curious what you think the role of

designer looks like over the next

decade. It seems like it's shifting a

lot and you know design and development

seems to be you know drawing closer

together and there's all this research

where design can be involved. How do you

think that role changes?

I'm really excited about how this will

evolve. I think that designers uh will

have far more leverage in the future and

the value of design will only continue

to go up. I mean your RFP uh request for

proposal for designer founders I think

embodied this. You said uh designers

need to be founders. We need to have

folks that are designers step into the

founder role and start companies. I know

that it's been uh looking back you know

you got Brian Chesy, you got Ki at

linear. We have so many designer

founders that you can point to now and

say wow uh these folks are really

successful and are are killing it. But I

think that the number of designer

founders will multiply. I think the

number of designers that are leading

large areas and sort of GMs will grow as

well. And in general, uh designers will

be looked to as experts inside of

companies that in sort of the same way

that you might have a writer today who

is the expert and like the best writer

in the company or the best editor uh but

everyone has a word processor and can

write. You'll have a designer who might

be the best at problem solving and

thinking through how do I actually craft

a solution and explore this idea maze

and figure out which direction to go

create a system around it. But I think

most everyone in the company will be

contributing to that process of design

and so there will be a lot of curation

involved and a lot of leadership will be

needed from designers. So they have to

step up.

I'm curious what are some of the most

interesting ways you guys are using uh

AI internally at Figma? Yeah, I mean

can't talk about it all like I said uh

since some of it is like products that

we'll be releasing. But maybe one thing

I'll say is on the designer embedded in

the research side point uh it's been

fascinating to see just how important it

is for designers to uh contribute on

evals. So if you think about it uh as

you're you know doing a developing a

model or you're developing research

ideas you have to have good evals and

usually the researchers are the ones

building those and I think that's kind

of just the wrong model for us at least

designers my point of view is that they

should be contributing to eval product

people they should be contributing to

evals it's not something that you need

your engineers and your researchers to

do because they probably have less

understanding of the end user less

contact with end user than your

designers do your product people do. So,

uh, as you design these models, I think

eval has become more important, too.

And I guess if you were in your 20s

today, um, what are some of the skills

or tools that you would focus on

becoming great at in this, you know, to

be successful in this new AI world?

The setup of the question is that it's

like you should kind of do different

things than you did in the past. And

that's probably true. But I guess I'd

start by saying that I think that the

stuff that you know folks have done

historically in order to get really good

at thinking and work through problems

with critical thought uh and learn

broadly so they can make mental

connections, those are still important.

So, I think learning about as many

different areas as you're curious about

deeply, uh, and trying to experience the

world, uh, making sure you're still

relating to people, like those are

pretty core things that you should still

do. One thing that I'm worried about is,

you know, I I think, uh, a lot of people

in their 20s these days, uh, apparently,

according to the stats, are dating less.

Maybe that's true, maybe it's not true.

Y'all can tell me later. Uh, but if you

think about the future, it'd be so easy

to just go talk to your AI model all

day. Maybe that gives you a sense of

social connection. Like, I would highly

advise you don't do that. Uh, I would

highly advise that y'all date uh if

you're in that cohort. Um, and I even go

so far as to say this is less a comment

about the products that are in this

category of the past, but more about

what the future could hold. Um I I think

AI boyfriends and girlfriends if

developed and allowed to exist uh is a

societal self-own. I I think it's like

actively poisonous to society if um this

becomes the primary a a primary mode of

relationship. There's a lot of things

that we need to talk about there and

have a pretty broad society level

discussion about.

Well, I don't want to leave it on that

before we open up to questions. But

maybe um you know before uh we can open

up some questions here as people kind of

line up. I'm curious um what was the

most fun period in the history of

building Figma for you?

Uh you know maybe is like the answer

everyone's expecting but it's true. It's

right now. Uh we have like so many

things we can do the most brilliant

people around to do them with. I love my

team. I love the problem set that we

have. Uh some companies they go uh

forward and they kind of tap out and

they don't have any more ideas. Like the

number of ideas that we have right now

has grown so much. There's so much we

can do and there's so much people are

asking of us and it's more about okay

how do we make sure we do the right

things and that's a fascinating and

really fun place to be.

Cool. Let's open up some questions. I'm

a founder, product engineer, solo

engineer, everything solo entrepreneur

at the same times and recently I have

started using cursi to handle both

coding and design even like down to

pixel level details. So what do you

think about cursi? Is this cursi can

become your one of your competitors and

at the same times uh I just recently

discover a tools called penpod or giving

like developers more control through

open source uh self-hosted options. What

do you think Figma should uh move

towards being more open and developer

friendly to catch up with the trend of

many so engineer become product engineer

in the future and more and more solo

entrepreneur using cursi to create

product in the future.

Yeah, I think it's a great question. Um

and actually just was uh able to run

into Michael backstage that was good to

see him. Uh I think that when it comes

to AI generation, you know, if you take

a step forward from okay, I generated

something, the next question is okay,

how to make it good? And you know,

there's different ways to do that. Uh

you can be writing code and going into

your browser and kind of having that

loop. That's a very structural way to

think. Um other people prefer to think

in a more free form way. uh with make

we're trying to enable that uh in a way

that's visual first rather than code

first. You can still get to the code. Um

but I really don't think of cursor as a

competitor. Uh I think of them as

someone that we we just launched our MCP

server to explicitly make it so that you

can get your designs into cursor and

windsurf and all these other NVS code

you know all these great tools faster.

So I think there's just going to be new

workflows that are established and like

I said if the differentiator is design

then your first generation your oneshot

is probably not the thing that's going

to win. So I'd encourage you to think a

little bit further than that. In terms

of open source we actually just

announced today uh the acquisition of

payload uh CMS which is an open source

uh project and uh I'm really excited

about what we can do there and how we

can support open source more.

Thank you. Hi Dylan. Um my name is

Charlie Fearborn. Uh, I'm a game

designer here at a startup in San

Francisco. Um, and I graduated last year

from USC in computer science and game

design. Best major ever. So, it's cool

to hear about the games roots of Figma.

Yeah, we cut it off early. But Evan is

also like really was really deep in game

design and it's a hard hard industry,

but

it's a hard industry. Yeah.

It's awesome that you're doing it.

Um, I have kind of a more personal

question for you. Um, uh, what is the

meaning of life? um mean of life I think

uh you know seek

out how to explore consciousness, learn

as much as you can uh uh share love with

others and make sure that um you feel

fulfilled and the other people around

you uh are fulfilled and happy um at the

end of the day. And I think that uh that

can be something you do on a micro level

in your local community, a macro level

at scale, doesn't matter. Uh as long as

you're living true to your internal

values, I think that uh you're leading a

fulfilling life.

Hey Dylan, thank you so much. Um I was

wondering as a designer, are there any

specific design principles that you love

and use which you think a lot of like

builders or companies get wrong or like

sometimes even completely ignore? I

think the biggest one that I repeat all

the time at Figma, uh, which is not my

own. It's, you know, has existed for

decades is keep the simple things simple

and make the complex things possible.

Uh, there's always a wide range of

things that you want to be able to

enable. But if you try to do all of them

and that's the expense of your product

not being approachable uh, and not being

obvious or intuitive how to use, you're

you're kind of messing up. So, I think

you have to figure out how to do both,

but you start with making the simple

things simple.

Thank you.

I'm Michael. I study HCI and computer

science at Colombia. Um, say there's a

founder you really respect and you

finally landed an enterprise contract

and have a decent amount of traction on

the project that you've been building

with a bunch of friends. What would be

the most polite way to show them the

product and ask them to be an angel

investor? I would send them a a Loom

over email. Um, so that way, you know,

it's got an async component since time

is sometimes hard to find. Uh, they can

watch it. Um, and if you want to really

peique their interest, mutual

connections help. Uh, but like I said

earlier, cold emails work, too.

Expect a cold email. Thank you.

Okay, I'm looking forward to it. And

honored, too.

Hey, Dylan. Um, I love your shoes, first

of all, but um,

thank you.

Of course. Um, but you said you noticed

behaviors when deciding what to

productize. And I can very clearly see

that. I was using slides for classes. I

using Figma for slides for classes

before you guys dropped slides made it

easier. Using lock layers for social

media graphics for my Fred and then Buzz

made that so much easier. So I guess my

question is how do you watch how people

repurpose the tools and what kind of

structure do you use for these emerging

use cases?

It's always a mix of signals, right? You

have to do everything from like watching

support requests to qualitative

interviews, sitting with people and

watching how they work, looking at the

data and you know actually doing data

science analysis on it, you know,

looking at what people are saying on

social media and more. But it's kind of

you digest all those signals and you

build some intuition around it and

hypotheses you can test. So yeah, it's

kind of art plus science but you have to

combine a lot of methods I think.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Uh thanks very much for the talk. Um

so right now you're helping designers in

a huge breath of industries. When you

just started with the cold emailing etc.

How did you go about with defining rise?

Was it very broad as today or did you

start focused on one industry?

No, we really started focused on product

design and uh for digital products

uh where and I think even more narrowly

where people cared about design uh if

I'm going to be totally honest rather

than like you know the broad world. uh

it seemed like it'd be an easier cell.

But yeah, I think it required um a lot

of sort of slimming down of our ambition

to be able to state that clearly. You

know, I started off saying we're going

to do everything and thankfully the team

pushed back and so it got us to here

with the ambition of later on doing

everything, but I'm glad we started more

narrowly.

Hi. Um, so my background besides being

like a CS major and whatnot is also in

traditional art.

Cool.

Um, where perhaps AI is not necessarily

as popular as the moment. Um, so I guess

my question is just how is Figma

navigating like ethical challenges of AI

and design and like incorporating AI

into the products that you are you have

available. Yeah, there's so many

different ethical challenges you could

consider, you know, everything from, uh,

okay, you're doing some inference, is it

heating up the planet, uh, to the

questions of, um, okay, are these models

regurgitating something they've seen

elsewhere, uh, and beyond. And so I

think you have to be very clear about

like what you're trying to solve for.

But yeah, it's a maybe a

sort of escape answer. right now a lot

of the work we're doing uh is actually

with thirdparty models and so that's

something that we have less control over

um as we do more things in house I think

these questions are very relevant and

things that we'll have to wrestle with

like the art world has Dylan uh I'm an

HCI researcher and a design founder and

as we've been kind of like thinking

about interfaces and how we talk to AI

it seems that we tend to

anthropomorphize things it tends to be

that these are probabilistic and we

can't design explicitly how we did with

like previous hardware. Do you think of

AI human interaction as necessarily a

tool or how do you kind of like build a

mental model around this?

I think that there's uh sort of where

things are at now, where they're going

and you have to kind of consider both. I

think that uh there's an interesting

split maybe between people that come

from a materialist worldview and by that

I don't mean like they're going and

buying stuff all the I mean the

worldview of materialism is one of uh

consciousness arises from matter and

then on the opposite side of the

spectrum is like religious mindsets

where people go of course that's wrong

like there's god god is great everyone

has a soul doesn't have a soul obviously

it's like a computer um and so those are

like fundamentally at odds and uh my

prediction is that we'll probably see an

increase in people projecting

consciousness onto AI whether or not

that's the right uh thing that you know

you agree with or don't agree with. I

think that the number of people that'll

do that will increase. Um and I think it

leads to some uh very hard to wrestle

with territories. And so yeah, I've been

thinking a lot about that. And then in

terms of what that means for HCI or uh

whatever you want to call it, I I think

that that's a very underexplored

question and I'm excited to see what you

do with it. I think we're at time sadly.

Um, but I just want to thank everybody

for coming and uh wish you all the best

of luck with whatever path you pursue.

Thank you, Dylan.

[Music]

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
founder /ˈfaʊndər/ B1	noun - a person who establishes an organization or business
design /dɪˈzaɪn/ A2	noun - a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function of an object before it is made verb - to create a plan or drawing for something
AI /ˌeɪˈaɪ/ B2	noun - Artificial Intelligence, the simulation of human intelligence in machines
product /ˈprɒdʌkt/ A2	noun - an item that is made or grown to be sold
feedback /ˈfiːdbæk/ B1	noun - information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc.
prototype /ˈproʊtətaɪp/ B2	noun - a first or preliminary version of a device or vehicle from which other forms are developed
iteration /ˌɪtəˈreɪʃən/ C1	noun - the repetition of a process to generate a sequence of outcomes
workflow /ˈwɜːrkfloʊ/ B2	noun - the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion
intuitive /ɪnˈtuɪtɪv/ B2	adjective - using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning
scale /skeɪl/ B1	verb - to make something larger in size, amount, or importance
constraint /kənˈstreɪnt/ C1	noun - a limitation or restriction
launch /lɔːntʃ/ A2	verb - to introduce something new to the public
convert /kənˈvɜːrt/ B1	verb - to change something into a different form or use
investor /ɪnˈvɛstər/ B1	noun - a person or organization that invests money in something
interface /ˈɪntərfeɪs/ B2	noun - a point where two systems, subjects, organizations, etc. meet and interact
ethic /ˈɛθɪk/ C1	noun - moral principles that govern the behavior of a person or group
anthropomorphize /ænˈθrɒpəˌmɔːrfaɪz/ C2	verb - to attribute human characteristics or behavior to an animal, object, or god