Figma CEO Dylan Field on the future of design and AI

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I've told the team before, even during, literally on the day of IPO after, it's like number goes up, number goes down, and we don't control that number. We control the inputs, and we have to educate the market. The market isn't kind of the gate, understanding Figma. So it's our job to make sure they understand our business, and that's going to take time. Welcome to Access from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I am Ellis Hamburger, and I'm here today with my lovely co-host, Alex Heath, say hi, Alex. Hey, Ellis. We're on week two, man. We made it. We got through it. We did, and today we have a special one for you. We have Figma CEO Dylan Field in his very first podcast interview since the IPO, and we know the podcast interviews are what matter most. This is one of the biggest, uh, IPOs, the year in the world of tech. So we're going to get to the interview shortly. We talk about how it feels to IPO, the future of design, hashtag design, and of course, the acronym of the year MCP, which Alex already has, it buys up tattoo of. I do, uh, I can't show it on camera because it's still pretty raw, but it's there. I also, I'm just feeling good after week one, you know, launching a new thing is tough, and um, it was, it was a sprint to get episode one out. Um, we did it in like record time, I think, for a new pod, uh, and yeah, how are you feeling? I'm good, man. I'm just looking at you just like what the heck is up with that guy. You launched a newsletter, you were in Menlo Park three different days on three different flights from Burbank, trying out gadgets, also doing the podcast. Yeah. You have dogs to take care of, um, I don't know how you survived, what type of supplements are you on? Is that some AG one? Bullshit. What are we talking about? No supplements. I probably need them, uh, yeah, I do have two dogs, but you have two, uh, little girls. So I think, I think you beat me in that, um, yes, my DA use, uh, the, the launch was awesome, not just to the pod, but of, uh, yeah, sources, sources, dot news, please check it out. Um, and, who named sources, uh, I did, I did, um, I thought I named it. Did you name it? Well, I think I came up with sourced. And so do I get to retain, do I get to add to my portfolio if you try to drop the D? It's cleaner. It's cleaner. I just in temper like your ass. I also just want to shout out the love we got for the first episode, um, those who clipped us and credited and those who didn't, you know what, I'll give you equal love, um, seem, people seem to have really, uh, dialed in on sucks comments about, uh, how he may lose a couple hundred billion, but, you know, whatever, if super intelligence is on the other side, um, the interviews gotten some pickup, I think we might be the only new podcast Ellis to have its first episode, getting a play by play on TBPN and a link in the New York Times. So I would say congrats to us on that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, getting a quote with a couple hundred billion from the Zuck is going to do well, right? I mean, how many people in earth history have ever been able to say that sentence, right? Yeah. Um, to be able to say that is a thing. Yeah. I didn't even think about that. Um, yeah. That's, it's pretty wild. But, uh, yeah, we, we had a nice toast over the weekend at your, at your house, um, with our wives who have also been a huge support and, uh, let us do this crazy thing, um, and shout out to them and shout out to them, uh, shout out to my dogs and shout out to your daughters in, uh, no particular order. But yeah, man, um, Figma, what to say about Figma, uh, biggest tech IPO of the years you said, um, and I think just a lot of attention on them, especially in the age of AI and, um, how they're going to compete with all these vibe coding, no code tools that are popping up, um, just before we recorded with Dylan, actually, weren't you saying you, you met with a company that is wants to be a Figma killer, basically? Yeah, it's very funny to be doing what I do and then be interviewing the big tech founders. I kind of represent the startups on this show. Yeah. And they all get to say, Oh, I want to kill that company. I want to seek and destroy. And then I get to interview the founder of that same company in the same, I feel like I'm seeing, seeing the matrix, uh, at this point. But I mean, it, it is funny. I mean, these people are all wrong all the time. I'm just so fascinated by all the personalities behind it and I just try and like help these people sharpen their thesis about what it is that they're doing, why they're unique, why you are likely to beat this to that company. If that's the type of trash talk you want to do. And, uh, you know, in this industry, it's all bets, right? I think like we talked a little bit to Dylan about his investment and I feel like he just kind of eyeballs it. He's like a vibe guy. He's like, yeah, that, that founder seems really smart and Dylan is clearly very smart and well read and, uh, bit of a polymath. And so I, I bet you that's just kind of the rubric for him. And he's like, yeah, play some bets and, uh, seems like a lot of them are paying off for him. Gosh. Yeah. I mean, we get into it towards the end. Yeah. But man, he's, he's one of the best AI seed investors of all time, like no question. I mean, you talk to people who are in the industry and he comes up constantly and is running a public company as well, uh, and, uh, has, has the deal flow. So, um, you know, that's, that's the power of Zoink at Zoink, which we also demystify. I don't want to spoil too much. But, uh, um, you actually, Ellis, you went to config, uh, Figma's big conference this year, right? Yes. Uh, config is a lot of fun. It's up in San Francisco at Moscone should be familiar to, uh, most of the people listening to this show. I mean, they just kind of have a cult these days, like they've got toats, they've got pins, they've got hats, like the swag is just, you know, probably some of the top startups that is symbol. I mean, it's funny. People show up to the conference and like, they don't line up for the keynote speaker. They line up for like the swag booth, like down, down the block. Like, I need that, I need that Figma crew neck. But it is cool. I mean, they partnered with some, some, you know, big and small designers to kind of flex their brand. And they also just like in a sea of semi black, gray, blue minimalism and Silicon Valley, like they're one of the more colorful ones. Yeah. Which I think speaks well to what they are about and sticks out. I mean, I think people are training themselves to think that like minimalism is somehow always better. I mean, it's just one way. It's just a polar swing from, you know, when things get too complicated, they get simple. Maybe on bundle, we bundle, we all know that story. So yeah, they seem never good thing going. Yeah. When I went to config a couple of years ago, I left and I think I called it the Coachella for designers. And I'm not sure if I was the first one to say that. But for some reason, I think it's like, it's stuck after that. And it did feel like that when you're there. I mean, I'm sure you, like, it's, they're, they have this unique spot in the culture I think right now. And it's interesting to be this, they're a tool. I mean, they're, they're a design platform, but they're essentially a tool, but they also have this kind of cultural footprint, which is super unique. Yeah. I mean, Coachella is a good reference. I don't know how accurate it is because it's a bunch of art school kids. Yeah. Not quite as rowdy as Coachella, though I kind of wish it was. And I mean, one of the things that Dylan talks about on this pod is as designers get empowered. The way companies look is probably going to get different, right? As AI, I think, helps with a lot of these traditional hard skills and research and things that, you know, you had to know as a founder to be an operator. Until now, I mean, I think the idea is that is that theoretically we should see a lot more design founders or product founders these days. The biggest thing that stood out to me in the interview was talking about competition. There's a lot of questions, not just on Wall Street, but I think just people looking at Figma going, what it was lovable frame are all these companies that are popping up and kind of abstracting away design into a prompt. How's that going to unseat Figma or not? And hearing Dylan's response to that and also how it relates to their AI strategy and MCP and all of that, I thought was really interesting and something I hadn't heard him say in that way before. Ellis, should we get into the convo with Dylan at Zoink? Let's kick it to Dylan. is brought to you by Accenture. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Learn more at Accenture.com/spotify. That's new. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability, very 16-plus. Dylan, this is your first podcast chat since the IPO. How is it feeling? How are you doing? Good. It's been intense before the IPO intense afterwards. I mean, think it's an entire team. It's just die on the prize. We're pushing hard, but it's a lot of fun right now. There's a lot to do. A lot of studying things that we can bring to customers and overall, the energy has just been very high. Here's the real question, though. How often are you checking the stock price? Do you have a lock screen widget, notifications? What are we talking here? Sometimes I go day or two and I forget to check. I'm pretty focused on Figma. So legitimately the answer. Tell that to your sales team because they're struggling right now is what I will tell you. Having gone through the Snapchat IPO, those guys are sitting there with that stock ticker in the corner of their screen. Like, oh my God, Barclay has just downgraded us. How am I going to explain this to my customers? Yeah. I mean, look, it's not something that's been a lot of time thinking about. I told the team before, even during, literally on the day of IPO after, it's like, number goes up, number goes down, and we don't control that number. The market doesn't kind of the gate, understanding Figma. So it's our job to make sure that they understand our business, and that's going to take time. Well, fortunately, you don't have to explain to the market that you were a camera company. I would not advise that. But yeah, I remember reading in your founder letter around the IPO, Dylan, that you wanted to really set yourself up with the long-term vision, thinking about years or even decades down the line. I think we all know how fickle Wall Street can be, and how short-term, short-sighted. I mean, how do you actually operationalize that? Yeah, I mean, look, I think that the first thing is just grounding, what is the long-term vision, and in the founder's letter, but also with the company all the time, we talked about it, which is how do you get from imagination to reality, and that's a vague idea, so then you have to make it concrete. And for us, that means digital products. How do I go from an idea in my head all the way to a digital product is shipped, and there's a lot of steps along the way, and how do we serve those on our platform? If you want to come in with whether it be an idea on a whiteboard, you need to make a diagram, you're doing that with your team, you're doing it with a student by yourself, or you're making slides to align your team, you're going to figment design to create designs for your next digital product, and bringing others into align on that, or bringing them to developers, or even if you want to just go from idea and a prompt all the way to a working application with figment make, we're trying to make it so that you can do all that in one place, and it all interoperates seamlessly across our platform. It's a lot, and certainly we don't complete that entire workflow today. It's opportunities for us to go build, to buy, to partner, and we're going to, you'll see a lot more partnerships with us in the years ahead. We are not trying to do everything. That's a recipe for failure, and so we're always trying to figure out how do we make it so that we're able to work seamlessly with ecosystem around us, but also build up our ecosystem. And it's, yeah, it's a really interesting time with AI, to think about how far you can go there, and what you can do for your users. I was just going to say it's funny speaking of imagination to reality. I mean, did you first write that in like 2012 or something like that around that time? Literally, like 2012, and I was thinking about like BCIs, and we were working on stuff, it's kind of wild, but we're working on stuff in 2012 that, you know, you get like 85% of the way there, but it's not until recently you get to 100%. So for example, take a 2D image and turn into a 3D scene. That was one of the first things we built. And with my co-founder doing very clever, conventional photography work, and some complex geometric stuff, we could actually get pretty far. And it was wild at the time. No one has seen anything like that, but then you kind of got stuck, and it wasn't enough. Now you've got the newest models where you're able to have basically world models that are consistent. It's incredible what you can do. One other example is just some of the photo editing stuff we explored before we went into Figma and really explored UI design. Things like face-wapping or making it so that you're able to really easily do Photoshop-like effects on images. It was so fascinating to explore, but it just wasn't ready yet, and you couldn't make it a platform. And I think it's really cool to see now just how much is possible. But there's talk about imagination reality. There's so many different ways and so many different domains. You can do that in. We're starting with product design, making it so you can make the best digital products as a team, and trying to complete that workflow. But there's so many more workflows that we could explore in the future. Yeah, it's funny. I think even with that phrasing, I'm very much a word person, and I work with startups on how they express themselves. And you were definitely ahead of the game there. I think with the imagination of reality, if I had a nickel for every single startup in the last two years, that's like, bring your creativity to life. Imagine a new reality. It's literally dozens of them. Have you noticed that? I've seen it pick up a lot more recently. I'm like, interesting. Before I had to really push for that, and even at some point, we stopped talking about those words because people found them so abstract that it's hard to recruit people. And so I was saying, you know, more around democratizing design, make designing accessible to all. Still something we care very much about. And at the same time, it's like, no, I really do think in the eye era, back to the founding vision. This is the broader vision that we've always had. And now I don't think I need to be a shy about it. If we can stay on the IPO for a second, so many founders and entrepreneurs, it's like their dream, right, to go public. It's like you either get sold or you go public. Those are the two outcomes. And I'm curious, like, having gone through it now, were there things about it that surprised you that you didn't expect? And was there anything in the process that you really loved? Or was it kind of a thing that, in hindsight, you're like, man, like, so glad I got that out of the way. Well, first of all, I mean, I never woke up one day and was like, I gotta go IPO a company. That's my mission in life. You know, it's a step along the way, but in a big step for an achievement for the people that have contributed to Figma in the past and the present. And I'm really proud of their work and how it's kind of aggregate up to a moment like that. But this is the start of Figma still. Like we got decades and decades ahead of work to do. And I couldn't be more excited about it. I think in terms of surprises, one of the biggest ones is that basically nothing's really changed since we've IPO'd. Yeah, you got to spend a little more time prepping for earnings, stuff like that. But otherwise, we've really been focused on the long term. And the hope is that that will continue. And we'll continue to create environment where we can do that. And that's why I want to make sure that investors understood with our founder letter that that's going to be our intention. During the process itself, I mean, I think that you know, there are parts that are very enjoyable because you get to talk with all these really, really smart investors. And I'm not saying every mean was a joy. Some of the means were like the same questions again and again, but there are some means that just blew my mind. And once in a while, you're mean somebody, whether you knew about them or didn't know about them before. And they're asking some really insightful, interesting questions. And you know, whether it's about the world or your business. And that's very fun to engage and go back and forth with them. Jamie, darling, what sticks out? Yeah, yeah. I won't name individuals here, but you know, were questions, but it was in that part of it, it was a fun process. One thing we did differently was we had demos that we made kind of everyone watch before we come in and talk about the business. And apparently this is unique. To me, it was just obvious. We'll make sure people understand what they're investing in. But yeah, one person came out of a meeting and he pulled me aside. What I wanted was, like, "How do I transition to design?" And so that was definitely a top moment from the road show. Gotta figure out how to get them into design now, but if I convert one investor to be a designer, that's a win, right? - That's awesome. - It is a funny thing trying to communicate with such a different audience with different levels of literacy about what it is you're building. Like being a writer, I am professionally scared of Figma, even though I'm in Figma all day, and then it's like being an investor is like a whole step different than that. I mean, how do you explain it to them? When you're on the earnings call and dude asks you about market headwinds and how is your guidance and you're like trying to explain how you are compatible or incompatible with what's happening in the world. Like how do you explain why this stuff is important? - Yeah. I mean, I think that really what people want to understand is okay, the greater context right now is that there's a lot going on in the AI. So how does Figma fit into that? And again, with going from my data product, going and able to make an idea or a prompt and go all the way to working application, we see just a ton of possibility there. And Figma make is a big part of what we're working on as well as improvements with AI to the Figma platform in general. We just teased a video a few days ago last week where we showed how you will be able to soon make edits in Figma based on prompting as well. And in one sense, I think that we're so early, it's a point in time where I've got like the MS-DOS era of AI. I think we're all gonna look back at this time and go, wow, we were prompting everything and there was such an opportunity to go further. And have other interfaces, other ways to explore late in space. But on the other hand, there's so much you can do with the technology that's out there today. And actually, you don't take full advantage of it and really figure out how to engineer products that let you go and shape your vision and iterate and explore. It's a big task and one that we've been, I think definitely building all sorts of muscles around internally. It's a different thing than your typical deterministic software engineering. But bigger picture, to me, as value moves of the stack, design is a differentiator. And this is a thesis we've held for over a decade now. And just I think the sort of reasons keep stacking of why this is true. You know, I can articulate it when we started working on Figma, but looking back, it's kind of obvious. You know, you went from managed servers to cloud. You went from box software to app stores. You know, and development tools were getting better. So of course, where does value start to accrue more to? Well, to design to the top. And I think now in a world where there's exponentially more software, and we can argue about how steep that exponential is, but it's an exponential, either way. And in that world, how do you differentiate your product? Well, it's design. It's great user experience. It's great branding. It's great visual design. It's the point of view. It's your marketing. And all that, I think, gliders up to design. And if we can help support people winning through design, and making it so that more designers become leaders, more designers have more impact, but also more people across the company, whether they call themselves a designer or not, can participate in the design process. That's a win. I feel like so many of my favorite people to work with in my practice are product design founders. Are you seeing more or less like, what do they need to do to take the reins these days as a new founder, CEO? Yeah, it's so interesting because I think that designers have all the skills that are really needed to go start companies. And if you look back, it's less than you would expect that have started companies, but I see the number growing all the time. And I'm really excited that we have, I think, just more and more role models out there now for designers to go, okay, this is a path I should consider. And I think that if you look at the future designer leaders inside of companies in the C-suite, but as well as designer founders and CEOs, I suspect that's where it's headed. And I also am just seeing some real talent or dynamics heat up for design. I'm not saying it's at the AI scale. Let's be real. We're not seeing headlines yet about the crazy 10 billion whatever it is pay package for a designer yet, but the talent wars are heating up. And I think they're begging for a zero to one design founders right now. Yeah, you see it's like needed. Every founding team knows that need a designer to stand out. And if they don't know it yet, it might be a flag if you're investing. I'm not saying that every area requires it. If you're some deep infrastructure, science company, and you barely have a website, perhaps you don't need to have a designer and your founding team in the first five people. But if you're building software and it's gonna be user-facing, that's something you should be considering deeply. I feel like there's a temptation as a design founder for better or for worse to redesign the whole company from HR to sales. We're gonna do a flat structure. We're gonna do a vertical structure. We're gonna do siloed and I love that mindset, but I feel like it can also be distracting as a designer who sees problems and wants to fix them. Have you experienced that? It's like if you think about a brand and the journey a user goes on with a brand, you kind of think about a timeline and there's all these different brand touch points. It's like what's the equivalent for a company? In some of those touch points, you know, feel really good for the user of Figma internally and employee. But what are the touch points that we can make like 10x better, 100x better? I think there's still a lot. And I really wanna do that as well. So yeah. - Do you still spend time designing? Are you like cranking away and Figma yourself still? - I would say my design contributions in comparison to the team are very low. But I think that my feedback is very large. I usually try to do pattern where I am voicing feedback through customer voice. So the reality is if you're operating a platform at any scale, you can find people saying things that really represent any opinion about the product and they'll conflict. But when I can find that this features the best, here's a twine that it's the worst. - Yeah, exactly. - And our customers are amazing. Designers are incredible. They'll actually give very detailed feedback as you might imagine. And so the chance to be able to funnel that towards our team is quite great. What do you feel like you've had to kind of pivot on in the last couple of years in terms of the feedback you've heard once you launched something? - I think the biggest thing that I wanted to pivot, it was more just like it took time to build out was we had our first launch around AI which I think was there are many things to reflect on for us. But basically what we did is we had a feature internally called first draft. And this was a very basic AI feature in that it was essentially an LM assembly and Lego pieces. And what happened with that was we shipped it as a feature called make design. And make design, we did not in the rush to launch do a full QA process on everything that were all those Lego pieces. And there were some situations or at least one situation where people could recreate UIs that shouldn't have been able to be recreated with Lego pieces that we had made. - Like the Apple weather app, I think was an example. - Yeah, exactly. And so someone posted that and I think if I hadn't felt it was a QA failure, if I felt it was a natural result of a system, I might have acted differently and then fix the system. But because it was a QA failure and because I felt like it didn't sort of match up to my personal ethics of how I wanna be operating this, we pulled it back and re-readers it later. And to me, that was kind of a no-brainer. I think other people made a big deal about it. But then it also, I think, just started our track on, okay, how do we go build the system for real? And whether it be through frontier models, through first party models, how do we make it so that we're able to do great work with our user, get them to design generation, whether it's zero to one or with a design system, make it so that they can create edits, they can create new effects that are, should be interesting to eventually get to a working application, not just something in Figma design, that's a stopping point, but go. all the way, putting that out there gave us the insights we needed that led to Figma make, that led to us and the work that we're about to start shipping in Figma design. And yeah, it's been a big learning experience overall to figure out how to work effectively with the AI systems, but one that I'm really proud of the team for navigating. I think that also raises an interesting question about what the models actually include. And when there is so much out there that is kind of like the OS style, I feel like I'm hearing lots of fears that like as much as we all prize design and craft that a lot of the generations of AI tend to be generic, do you worry about that for like the future of software design? I think that's our opportunity when you're generating things and you're getting this average result, that's not what people want. I think that we're in a world where with AI, you know, good enough is not enough. Good enough is now mediocre. So if you really want to stand out, you have to be great. How can Figma help make you great? And what we're trying to do is allow you to, whether it's in make or in Figma design, iterate, explore, and really push the bounds of what's possible, both with AI and also through the human touch, and explore that entire option space of what's possible with design faster. Because that's to me the design process is you're looking and you're kind of seeing around corners and you're seeing here all the paths I could go down. Well, can you identify the paths that are most promising faster? And can everybody from your team do that too? Can you make it so that more people can contribute ideas at the start? And then as a designer, you can guide the process and you can keep pushing further to make it so that what the end result is is very differentiated. Do you feel like designers are so worried about losing their jobs though right now? It's interesting. I was at an event last night here in Hollywood and it was more Hollywood people, but people on the production side and just there's so much fear in the room about the tools and what they're doing and enabling. I'm not a designer and I'm not in the world like you and Ellis, but I have to imagine there's a lot of fear and consternation among a lot of Figma users that my job's going to go away because of this stuff. Yeah. I can't speak to the Hollywood side, but we actually did a survey around this recently and put out a report on it. And it was, I'm looking at the numbers right now, it was 17% of our respondents that said developments in tech tools and AI are a threat to my role. So that was the actual number that we got from the survey. Now you could argue is 17% high is it low, but I certainly don't think it's like everyone's going, oh my gosh, what's going to happen here? And I think this because designers kind of intuitively know this is an opportunity for us. So Figma's point of view is going to lower the floor, make it so more people can get into the process, but also raise the ceiling and make it so that you're able to do even more with AI. And I think the more we can remove the drudgery of repetitive tasks, things that maybe are easy to conceptualize or describe, but right now they're tedious to execute. That's something that AI can help with. For example, when feature we shipped super early on was rename layers, very basic feature. It just, you press the button and it looks at all your layers and it gives them a name. And you might go, okay, well, what's the big deal? Well, designers can take hours to rename the layers right now in a complex file. And if you're someone who likes to have the clean desk and be very structured, you might really care about your layers having all the perfect names. And so this is something that saved countless hours of time for designers already. I can now think forward into what else you can do that for and how else you can remove TDM and get people to the point where they're able to actually explore ideas further explore more ideas. That's the promise to me. Have you made anything good lately? I've made some like internal tools for myself. I experiment with a lot, you know, I try to do a bunch of like very random experiments that are kind of like a little bit more RC. Some of the things that I've seen others make that are far more impressive than when I've created myself, you know, I've saw some really cool typography tools recently that just blew my mind as part of our make hackathon. I saw some people that made like some pretty cool interactive experiences, games, and you know, even like things like complex synthesizers, you know, poetry explorations. And not all of these are products per se, but just the creativity of our community is kind of like always amazing to see. And sometimes they also went outside the field of software, you know, there's some users that were exploring ways to understand biology better and DNA RNA sequences. So yeah, it's pretty exciting to me to see what you can do when you start to hook up these data workflows and make a set you can really visually explore data in that way too. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Check responses set up require compatibility and availability. Very 16 plus. MCP is fascinating to me for people who don't know. I think it's what model context protocol is that right? You guys have this pretty hilarious video for your server that you put out this week that people should check out. Definitely everyone should watch this. I am, dude. Oh my god. Awesome. But because it also explains it in a way that I think is more digestible because MCP is like a very heavy thing to understand, even if you're in detect, like you have to be in it to get it at as high as level. I think of it as like how apps use LLMs to talk to each other and to share data between each other. And it's in the like pre-netscape era. There's not even like a browser to see all these servers, right? But like you have one bunch of other companies that are embracing I have embracing I have them. And I'm curious because you know, when we were prepping for this, obviously a big concern with Figma, it's like what is competition in AI and all these companies that are popping up going to do to Figma and like prompting and all this stuff. And I'm curious actually to back into that question, like the way you all are embracing MCP and working with other companies and really opening Figma up, what does that say about where you see Figma fitting in the value stack so to speak of like the AI world? Because there's this huge conversation obviously about like, are you just an app? Are you a foundational model provider? Are you trying to do both? Where did the app sit? And it seems like you have a POV on that and you're articulating it already with the MCP strategy. So I'd love for you to maybe like dive into that with us. Yeah, I mean, without going too much into all the strategy and future ed map, I think that first of all the physics of the AI space are sort of a gravitational pull towards being more open. And I think it's important to recognize that and to follow it. I also think that the goal is to get you from my data product. And yes, we want to give you all the best tools that you could possibly have in the Figma platform. But if for every reason you want to go elsewhere, how do we make it so that you can bring your context from Figma to other applications? And also in the future, how do you come back? And how do we have a great loop? And again, I think that there's so much partnership we can do with ecosystem here. And I think there's actually quite a lot of win wins, even with tools that people think are our competitors. And so it's been nice to have just very open and friendly conversations with many of the tools in the space in order to make it so that we're able to figure out what can that foundation be, so that your users can have a better experience. And also they can go iterate and get to the point where they are in a high craft place beyond what you might be able to do in another tool in Figma afterwards. And so lots to come, but ICS is a really core part of our strategy and what we're doing in the future. So theoretically, like, lovable, I think is a good example. of a company that I think people from the outside or Figma investors would go, "The rise of Lovable may be suggests Figma has some competition to worry about." Are you suggesting that maybe you would partner with Lovable and you could bring Figma assets into something like Lovable? Maybe we don't have to say Lovable as a specific example, but the rise of these no-code vibe coding tools like them. Like, you actually see a way to partner with them, is that what you're saying? Exactly, yeah. I think like we need to have remote MCP that with the right conditions, of course, but if you've got a partner who is excited to work with you, then you're able to open that up to them and that they are able to use it to create better experiences for their users. And also, I think that can be beneficial to us. Again, it's like context is created in a lot of places. And how do you take that context as well, and then use it to help them in Figma? And I think that in FigmaMake, it's, I guess the bigger question is, how much do we believe in FigmaMake? And our belief in FigmaMake is very high. We think that what you can do in the Figma platform and connect it away, and what we can offer users that are very differentiated and where we're headed, we're very excited about that, and we're just very high conviction. And so I think that also, as a contributor to that whole strategy of being more open, is that conviction. I know a lot of companies get disrupted at the moment when they start expanding to different verticals and this and that. When you think about slides and buzz and make and all this other stuff, do you think of it as kind of serving the whole team in a way or serving some fundamental use case as you see it? Yeah, so basically from the start, what we've done when we introduce new products is we look at FigmaDesign and go, OK, what is a use case that we are seeing in FigmaDesign over and over again at scale, but it's underserved? And with that use case, we can either dive into it and make FigmaDesign much more complex or we could create a new surface. And sometimes with, for example, Fig Jam, that ends up being not just a way to create a simpler experience for people to engage in whiteboarding, brainstorming, diagramming. Like we saw that spike as a need during COVID, along with this need of, I want to be in the same place with my teammates. And when I open up conversation and make it so that we're all a little to contribute to that conversation more. And by making Fig Jam its own space, we're able to not only prevent complexity from occurring to FigmaDesign, but also it became a space where we're able to explore new concepts like how do you just make it really fun? And it was actually kind of an interesting story because about a month ahead of Fig Jam launching, we had this very涉及 conversation kind of serious, ironically. And the conversation with my board and with the team was like, okay, which way do we want to differentiate for Fig Jam? And my push and what we ultimately ended up doing was, what's how the difference should be fun. And the board was like, all right, let's go. The team boards love fun between my board likes fun. And my team, I think, was a little surprised. Like, this is our strategy, okay. Let's see how this goes. We did a design sprint like one day. And out of that day, I think 20 ideas came up, many of which made it into the product as fundamental features of Fig Jam. And many of which have spread other places as well. Like cursor chat came out of that day. And so then as we go and expand the platform even further, just like slides or buzz, these are examples of, okay, people are already doing Figma design. We want to make it so that if you're in a product process, if you're in a product team, how do we give you one connected experience across all Figma? And how do you go further through the workflows that you're already doing? And these are opportunities for us to really support those workflows, those personas with these products. Consider this a formal feature request to add a hamburger sticker in Fig Jam. Please send that one to the team. I think you can find already, but note it, I'll see if we can make it more prominent. - Really? - Oh. - Okay, I'm gonna jump in there. - We have a Fig Jam feedback channel on Slack. I'll be put in there right after this. - At the very least, you can-- - That's the ultimate advantage of having a podcast, right? You get to ask for features. - I mean, at the very least, you can generate one. - So you've been talking about building for the kind of latent demands for product builders. I know when I was at config, I don't know what percent of the people were like illustrators, graphic designers, brand designers. I feel like those needs are kind of diverging, right? The vector people versus the product and code people know. You're shaking your head. - I think that, yeah, I have a point of view here. I think that you look back to the flash era. And the web was a more dynamic, more wild place. I'm not saying the quality was always as high as it could be. - It was a place that crashed your browser as well. - And maybe there was some browser crashing. But also sort of the range of what was explored, the dynamism and the visual styles that people were going for, it was wide-ranging in a way that we don't see today as much. Because there was a wild swingback, first to skew more fism, and then eventually to really Swiss minimalism. We've kind of stayed there for a while. And for a few years now, it's felt like, okay, I think we're about to swing the opposite direction again as a reaction. And I think now, if you think about AI and this kind of like average output that you get and the need to differentiate through design, through craft, I actually think that's something like illustration. That's one example of a way to do that. And there's many more. But I actually think that the illustration needs for brand, for product, they're only going up right now. - This is my favorite conversation because Silicon Valley is not usually known for its fashion sense. I don't know if you've put together your, I can't explain. - I'm going to put the big day, okay. So yeah, I also have my like ultra blingy config badge here today. I don't know if the investors approve this much bling. But yeah, Silicon Valley not usually known for its fashion. - For the board conversation. - Yeah, there we go. And you know, a lot of times you see people on Twitter like, oh my God, scumorphism is back. It's like, wait, no, it's flat design. And it's like guys, it's just like fashion. It's going to be cyclical. That's how it works. There's minimalism, maximumism, seraphons, no more serifs. - I mean, first of all, I have to talk about swag. You can find us to swag store online to search for Figma swag store. - Look at it. - But, and I think honestly our brand team is exceptional and has made amazing, amazing stuff. So definitely check it out. But yeah, I think that right now we're in a world where there's sort of more micro communities and more micro sort of expressions of culture than before. And this is sort of a perhaps result of the for you algo feed experiences that we're seeing in social media right now. Because you get to these little filter bubbles and the way that people then engage with them and kind of develop in group memes and whatnot. I think it ends up creating sort of paralyzed fashion rather than there's one mainstream. And everyone in New York is wearing this brand this month but next month you wear it like you're kind of like not hip anymore, sorry. Instead it's more like okay, well do you know what's happening in this corner of the internet right now? And if not, where were you? And so I think, yeah, I suspect that in terms of visual style, we're gonna see a range of expression. And just in general people are gonna be trying to explore a lot of different things and I think that's super cool. Especially coming out of this era of Swiss minimalism where not as much as it was explored. - So Dylan, we know you're an avid investor. You just talked about finding these little niches online. What are you seeing that's exciting you most right now? - I think there's just so much exciting stuff happening in the world right now. And yeah, I think it's really important for me to keep focused on Figma of course. And so I mean not 150% to 100% of my time is Figma. But yeah, I'm too curious to not always be trying to learn. And so I do invest as well, but I try to keep it pretty focused at this point. - Dylan, I think most full-time VCs I know would give their left arm for about 5% of your deal flow. So the fact that you're doing this part time is like amazing. There was actually a moment a few weeks ago where browser company Ellis's former employer sold to Atlassian and-- - Congrats, goodnight. - You said it'd be pretty good. - It's our recording but congrats again. - Yeah, congrats Ellis. And then OpenAI bought Statsig as well. And you were like a seed investor in both. And I was-- seeing jokes on X of like man finally that poor Dylan guy finally he like catches a break. And I'm hearing about you in interesting I start up all the time like I'll frequently meet with a founder and I'll be like who did your your seed and it was like either Dylan or Sam Alvin. And you're actually you led the A for one of our sponsors of the show Warp really. It was amazing. Yeah, it's incredible platform. And obviously you are running Figma. That's your full time job. But to me that suggests you are very keen to see around the corner and see what's coming at the early stage. And I imagine as the founder of a now public company that gives you kind of a unique edge of where especially AI is headed. And so I'm curious like when you're doing this investing I imagine it actually accrues to Figma as well in terms of like your ability to see ahead. So I'm curious like how does that yeah how does that impact how you run Figma, the bets you make. And is that a thing that's just kind of naturally happened or was that a strategy? Oh no I mean it's a natural result of I think my curiosity and just the amazing friends I've gotten to meet along the way as well as folks I'm getting to meet now. But yeah I think that maybe it's two categories that help value accrued to Figma. One is not looking ahead but almost reminding me of lessons that have already been learned. You know there's a lot of times where I'm talking with a company and I'm giving advice and I'm reminded of a lesson that we've already learned at Figma and then something clicks and I'm like wait a second why am I not applying this to this problem that we have today. You know so it's kind of wild but whether it's that or it's like literally learning from you know live case studies that are going on in companies that are very different from Figma those are very helpful for me and then I think that the category of for Figma how to think about around corners and understand what's happening. I mean there are patterns to the challenges that AI companies have and the ways that they are pushing forward and trying to solve problems that are hard for everyone and I think that definitely as I talk with founders that's helpful to understand but also some general you know I just think about AI right now and I think about design and it's so early like we're all kind of hyping it up like this is you know it's the future of everything and that's not to say it's not but I think if you think about the future of interfaces you think about what interfaces will look like and what the distribution of activity will be between humans and agents and how agents will show up in interfaces like I'm a big believer that it'll be more of the model where you're working alongside agents collaboratively and you're understanding what they're doing because the trust is not there around with the current models at least and I think even models that are in the future they're going to execute sort of your desire perfectly and also humans for better or for worse we hold AI to a higher standard than we do other humans and so you actually really want to see and audit what an agent's doing and I think that whether it's you know the sort of like how do I understand what this agent did behind the scenes or it's watching agent real-time work or it's you know you had in your last episode in Marcon talking about the new glasses and the Earl band I chance to see those before a launch a few times and I mean just the design challenges these new services have are so exciting and I think it's it unlocks like so much creativity and possibility and I have a lot of respect for that team for taking that huge bet and executing against it for so many years but then you go to auto sector and the way that we're just going to see innovation there because everyone's trying to push forward on digital and how that shows up in auto it's all to me just extremely exciting about what the role of a designer is and how you create context and systems across all these different environments that are consistent and are understandable to a user. I think we're almost out of time we have to deliver you back to your company but a couple final questions one very short and stupid one more thoughtful first one I'm big believer that you got to treat yourself a little bit you know to mark a milestone when you get a win did you treat yourself after the IPO at all what colors the Lambo what can you tell us what did you get yourself a good night just some fro you good night sleep good that's fair enough last question um everybody and their mom now wants a line as good as design as everyone's business what you did for the IPO so thanks so much for that uh how did how did you all come up with that where did that come from I mean I think it's really been our core message all along you know whether it's idea to reality make designs has put all um this idea that we can lower the floor raise the ceiling like these are ideas around how do you get more people in the design process and how do you also elevate the role of design and I think that in this world where design is the differential how you win or lose like design is everyone's business and I also was really honored with the IPO I think this is a thing that stood out the most of me this opportunity and privilege to I don't want to say represent but to show up as part of the design community and have a moment where design was going public I mean I I think back to the start of Figma where you know we're looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data and so there was like 250k designers and the conversation design community was like does design have a see the table how do we get a design a see the table it's like okay I think we're we're at a place now we're not universally but in a lot of places design has that seat and we need to elevate the voice design more we need to show companies how they can win or lose with design because they don't lean in they will lose and so if you're working on a company as a designer like your job is to speak up and if you're working on a company that is in value design either find another company or figure out how to make that change but to be there and to you know be able to advocate for design that was really meaningful to me I know Ellis said that was the last question this is actually the last question you're I see how it is you're you're Twitter handle we we meant to ask this what does Zoink mean is that how you say it Zoink Zoink what does that mean what how did you come up with that uh so I tried to start um or create a product in university it's kind of like uh I'd say discord-y somewhat but not like with a video game aspect some blend between discord or slack it probably didn't have like clear enough product point of view and uh that was the name for that product and then that didn't really go anywhere uh and said that I just co-opted it and that became a Twitter handle Zoink follow Zoink Zoink thank you so much for having me yeah thank you for joining us this was so much fun my first time hanging with Zoink one of the only Twitter handles that truly competes with mine and aren't many you can find all my other work at sources.news and Ellis people find you on Twitter right at hamburger you can find me at hamburger and at meaning dot company though my email is on there only sent high quality pitches please i'm back in media but i don't want to overwhelmed in box thank you a reminder that we are a new show so please follow like subscribe wherever you get your podcasts we could really use your reviews on apple and Spotify we are in video also on youtube so please subscribe there that will help to show a lot uh and if you like this please just share it with a friend or a colleague and let them know about access and what we're doing uh we're excited to keep building this with uh with everyone. 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