Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, started the company when he was 20 years old when he had no idea if anyone would see the value in making design a multiplayer game let alone that his company become the Google Docs of design. He chats with Darrell and Jordan about how his leadership style has evolved, how he handles the changing company culture as Figma grows, and how the nature of design has rapidly changed into the collaborative work it is now.
Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, started the company when he was 20 years old when he had no idea if anyone would see the value in making design a multiplayer game let alone that his company become the Google Docs of design. He chats with Darrell and Jordan about how his leadership style has evolved, how he handles the changing company culture as Figma grows, and how the nature of design has rapidly changed into the collaborative work it is now.
Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND.
Connect with us:
Darrell Etherington 0:00
found live in 321. Hi, and welcome to found live. I'm your host, Darrell Etherington. And of course, I'm joined as always by the UX to my UI. Am I like that beloved co hosts?
Jordan Crook 0:15
Yeah, I am the user experience Jordan crook. I'm really excited to be here.
Darrell Etherington 0:20
I'm the UI, which is worse, which is a step down. A step below.
Jordan Crook 0:25
Don't think so. You get no UX without a UI. It doesn't exist.
Darrell Etherington 0:30
Because they're integral parts of one another.
Jordan Crook 0:32
That's yeah, they need one another just like you and I, just like, You're a man, just like you and UI. Did you see how that happened? A little bit. Yeah. Okay, so just quick intro before we get our amazing guest. And on the mix,
Darrell Etherington 0:51
I think you heard him but I just will keep
Jordan Crook 0:54
making in. He's sneaking in. Found his TechCrunch his podcast. We're Darrell and I talked to founders to get the stories behind the startups, which is very exciting. We go live with this. So not just recorded, but actually with you looking at you every other Thursday, don't miss next Thursday, when our sister podcast, the equity podcast will be coming online. So you can register for that as well. Also happening next week. It's a very special episode of TechCrunch live, we're going to do a City Spotlight on Austin burgeoning startup scene, and that will be on April 6, there's gonna be a couple great panels and a pitch off. It's going to be really awesome. So you can RSVP now we will drop a link in the chat with that I think we can get going right or Darrell, do you have more to add? On the housekeeping front?
Darrell Etherington 1:36
I'll just say we have a special episode of found for that Austin City Spotlight which you'll be able to listen to on Monday. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I'm not I'm not gonna say anymore. It's a surprise.
Jordan Crook 1:49
It's a super secret surprise, but are other surprises about to be revealed? We're joined today by figma, CEO and founder Dylan field. How you doing Dylan?
Dylan Field 1:59
Good. Glad to be here. So thanks for having me. Yeah, that's great.
Jordan Crook 2:02
Yeah, I feel like we'd be hard pressed to find someone in the audience who doesn't know what figma is. Yeah, I just feel like it's hit like, I don't know if there's like a mainstream for design tools, really. But like, if you work at a start up, or someone that I mean, maybe there is I don't know, but people know what figma is. But why don't you just like high level? It? Is?
Dylan Field 2:22
I think there are a lot of people I don't know yet. So I appreciate the opportunity. Although your reporting of it has definitely helped us raise the profile or people.
Jordan Crook 2:31
Yeah, you stroking my ego real quick, get started.
Dylan Field 2:36
Start, I'm coming for you started the interview. A figma is a design platform. You can use it anywhere from that along the journey of just trying to get an idea out there all the way from ideation and brainstorming with fig jam, to design and actually creating user interface with figma. And soon, you know, we're also working on ideas around design to production, how do you make it so that your developer can come in and really translate design all the way to code. And yeah, trying to support people all the way across the journey, I think it's pretty important that we're able to make design accessible to more people, because the world is just becoming increasingly digital. I think we've seen this, especially over the past few years with COVID. And as we're all online, more and more companies have to compete. And either they're going to be able to adapt and make great while designing products for their audiences. Or they will be disrupted by the products and the software and the companies that are able to innovate more on design and bring more great ideas to the table. And so we're trying to help every along in that way.
Darrell Etherington 3:29
Yeah, design is so important. It's like the differentiator in so many products, right? It's like what wins is the better design one in so many cases, even if the product is not necessarily better in terms of like end results or whatever. So then that's increasing,
Jordan Crook 3:41
or like the back end, like the data set, or the algorithm might not be as good, but like, it feels good to a user and they don't even know why, you know, it makes a difference.
Dylan Field 3:50
I think it's been a giant shift over the past few decades, honestly. I mean, you think about it, it's like a while back, the way that you get software out there is you'd have you'd literally Okay, cool, you wanna be the internet, go buy some Rackspace somewhere, take your manage servers, but in there, you know, and like hook up with the internet. Now we've got the cloud with AWS and whatnot. And okay, great. You want to like ship your software, and it's not in the web, okay? Like burn on the CDs and like put in boxes and make sure the boxes look ready. And like, you know, send to BestBuy. It's like, okay, great. Now I got app stores. You know, before it was like no one had examples in their mind of yours. Well, design software looks like now we've got tons of examples. And if you have to deal with the experience, whether it's you know, with your bank, or some weird enterprise software that you have to run databases to do your job people just don't tolerate anymore. Yeah, I think that's the shift that's happened over the last decade or so. And figma has kind of been around for that shift. And I've seen live as institutions that I never thought would be so design for before now saying like, we are a design company. Banks, for example, literally are realizing have realized over the past few years that they have to adapt, otherwise they will be disrupted. And that's why your user expects If you're paying like a lot better now, it's pretty cool.
Jordan Crook 5:03
Yeah, I definitely noticed that the most with the bank and the airlines, their their specific websites, because you go to like, even the startups, we report on that or precede, you go to their website and you're like, Wow, that's pretty, you know, like, that's a really nice thing. But like, when I named my bank, but when my bank updates its website, I'm like, holy, you know, it's just because they like had set such a low bar before. Yeah, you're like, wow, look at you, you know, and
Dylan Field 5:31
part of that is, is pretty, the amount of designers that are being hired and brought onto these teams is just increased so much, I really think it's kind of like we're seen as design arms race happen, where people are just, you know, there's a lack of designers that have experience in the market and before are really trying to attract them to their companies, they know, that's how they're gonna win the race user experience, too. We're trying to make a great experience across the board. And that goes to everything from not just how you use an app or website, but like, what's your call center experience? Right? Yeah, right. And furthermore, we're seeing internal tools be built, like industrial applications, when the places where my mind got blown the most was just seeing how you're just just kind of awakening around and people call it digital transformation, which is a little buzzy, but it's a real concept in terms of people are trying to build internal tools to help industrial companies be more efficient or processes and just smarter about the way they work. And so those ought to be designed somewhere. And we're seeing a lot of them. You design in figma. It's really cool.
Jordan Crook 6:28
Yeah. So one of the things that, I guess confused me the most about figma, early on that like you seem to tap into. And I don't think anybody else, it really clicked as much was the idea of multiplayer for actually designing, right? Because it's like one thing to be like cross functional or like that the rest of the organization knows, right, yeah. And like, Oh, this is cool, right? That's one thing, but like to have two designers in any sort of CO play or multiplayer space. And actually working on the same thing just didn't seem like a thing, right? Like you imagine a designer being like, don't open the door. I'm working. Right. Right. very isolated is the way that I saw a version versioning
Darrell Etherington 7:07
would be like locked version to you now. Okay, no, everyone else? Hands off. Lock version two, you hands up? Yeah.
Jordan Crook 7:14
And so like, I'm just curious where that even came from? Were you designing and struggling to design along people? Or were you watching like how Google Docs was being adopted? Or like, where did the actual twinkle in your eye come from? Where you were like, I bet designers would like to do this together?
Dylan Field 7:31
Well, first of all, my co founder, Devin and I, like we grew up in like a multiplayer world with Google Docs. So I think that there is something generational there around, we just in high school. That's what we were using versus word. And I think because of that, we had a different expectation for how software should work that said, do you notice we started figma, the first part of bringing to the web was about accessibility. We thought, Okay, if we bring it to the web, more people can access figma. And we thought it maybe there's something about this multiplayer collaboration thing. But you know, every designer we talked with would say what you just said, Georgia, they'd be like, I don't know about that. Because so much of the identity of designers was wrapped up in like being this kind of lone creative in the corner doing the big reveal. And that was because design teams just hadn't hit scale yet, I think and that also, I guess that design didn't have a seat at the table yet. And the power dynamics were such that oftentimes, there's one designer in the org, and they expect to kind of like put lipstick on the pig at the end of the process. Yeah, rather than being an integral part. And now it's like people, you know, once the design tables, that's a shift that we've seen, but I think that what happened was we started, we didn't want to make a big investment in multiplayer until we're sure. And so at first, we thought, okay, we'll just build it, we'll make it so it's not multiplayer when it's on the web. And then what happens is like, there's this native form factor of b on the internet, it's like some maybe it's like, medium is the message kind of stuff where like, I'm on a URL, you join, and you make an edit. And then it's like, Okay, now what? Well, okay, if it's not multiplayer enabled, my browser refreshes. And if your browser refresh, this was like, this sucks. Worst experience. And so it took like, five minutes for us to figure out once we had it built, this is not gonna work. And then it was okay, we have multiplayer. In the meantime, you know, we had talked a lot of people and I'll give credit where it's due like, you know, a few people have gotten it. So there's Tim Van Dam at Dropbox loss, Belinda Perino, there are two people that had said, Absolutely, we want this in the context they're coming from, which is one that I had seen before figma as well, is this context of pair design, where you're, you're sitting next to someone else, and you're working with them and kind of this like mentor mentee relationship, the person that for me that was was DDA Hill horse at Flipboard, who was my mentor and mentor, and now is a really important design leader and Uber. And I think when you're in that setting, and you're kind of going back and forth and collaborating, that's a really obvious point where yeah, of course will declare to be great. But I think it took a while for people to adapt it and it was interesting when we launched figma. And we had said, Yes, we're gonna have multiplayer we didn't have at that point, but we were Advertising seems like it will come soon. Because we're working on it. You know, there's very mixed reactions. Some people said, this is the future of design, I'm changing careers on their person in the comment section, I think on gender News said, a camel is a horse designed by committee, right? I mean, really attack this sort of self identity of the designer. And then as people saw over the past five, six years, hey, actually, it's okay to collaborate. This can lead to good ideas, who's not necessarily death by committee. Instead, there's a way for the best ideas to come forth. And you can actually get to simpler products and states through collaboration rather than like just more complexity, I think we've had to kind of prove it out. And people had to see it firsthand. But it's the same journey that so many other things have gone through, like think about code, write code started in a similar place. And as we reduce version control, as we reduce notions of collaboration, as engineers got more power in the organization, people care about what they're doing. Then code prominence rose, and people had West that image of their minds that like we are the solitary needs to corner engineering, and building greatness instead, like this is a team sport. And I think that design is going through a similar journey.
Darrell Etherington 11:04
Yeah, but that must be difficult for people in the same way it happens in writing to write like writing is another area where I speak from experience, you see a lot of ego, right? Like people are very, very protective of their stuff of the thing that
Jordan Crook 11:18
huge ego like
Darrell Etherington 11:21
me, specifically we're talking about, but it works so much better. I was a creative writing school. Is that one of your bingo things? Jordan?
Jordan Crook 11:30
Don't you just go ahead and do the other two real quick.
Darrell Etherington 11:33
From Canada, I'm Canadian, I worked at Shopify, okay, they're all out. There we go. Put them all out. But when I went to school for that everybody coming in was doing an MA, it was effectively an MFA, it was just technically an MA, but like, you know, people are coming in like, oh, like, I'm a poet, or I'm a novelist or whatever. And you're very to that point, I think everyone had generally been very insular. And probably we were kind of like weird as in high school, or whatever, right? Because you're like, I like this strange thing. And I'm gonna do it on my own. And there's not really any interaction with other people around this particular subject. And then you get there. And if you have a good instructor or a couple of classes, like they quickly bring you into these like workshops set and break you down to be like, Look, nothing is precious, and everyone should have input and feedback, and then you arrive at this final product that is much better than than the thing you would have built on your own right. But without that, you just continue on that path and sort of like ensconce yourself and it's very uncomfortable to shift if you haven't encountered that in like a formative stage. Right. So
Jordan Crook 12:36
yeah, I do think people have
Dylan Field 12:37
to kind of adapt after like a formative stage on that. Yeah. And I also think it's interesting question of the differences between like writing and design, you want to have an editor for writing? I think I did not me all things by
Darrell Etherington 12:48
don't. Okay. Draft one.
Dylan Field 12:54
I like it when people give me feedback much my writing, you know, there's this somewhere for design, both have this concept of voice both have a concept of point of view. What's interesting about design is that that concept of voice and point of view, there is a scale, not just for the little area you're working on, but across the entire system of software. Right? And so it's almost like if 10 People are writing 10 different distinct chapters for a book, but it's all has to feel the same and sound the same in terms of voice and tone. It's like, okay, great. How do you make that style guide? How do you formalize that assessment a design system is is some way to formalize that and kind of create that voice and tone that designers can tap into. But then I also think there's an interesting question there, which is like, to your point now that no one is in that one creative state where they can't find community, like everyone can find community, the internet map, right? And so how do you create and scale ways for people to like, enter and see critique and experience credit? And you know, get that feedback early on, in a productive setting? And not just in a way? It's like, the comments section on YouTube?
Darrell Etherington 13:54
Right? Yeah, we're very damaged. Uh, yeah, that's
Jordan Crook 13:56
how you get it most of the challenging question. So
Darrell Etherington 14:00
yeah, no, it is an early on this is maybe sharing too much. But like, I spent a lot of times in the Penny Arcade forums like when I was in high school, and I would just like draw, mostly I was doodling stuff or like writing comics, and then I put them in there. And then I have a small group of like minded individuals who would like for me crits, right, which is like a very proto thing of like, what is now available with Reddit and YouTube or whatever, but I think it was there at a scale that it was actually quite productive and fairly self regulating and healthy, but like now, it is not those things right, like now you need guardrails, or you need some kind of like intervention system in order to prevent it becoming for cheap.
Jordan Crook 14:40
You need some natural language processing and human moderators.
Dylan Field 14:45
Core, right, like there's a lot of places internet's a big place. I think there's some like really good behavior in some places.
Jordan Crook 14:52
Don't be optimistic about.
It That's all we're here for. I mean, while we're all here making our living on, Dylan, I wanted to can we like change tax a little bit? Because I know that evolution of design is fascinating, whatever, but we've talked about it so many times. So like, I want to talk about, okay, well join it, read an article that I've written, why don't you? I want to talk about you a little bit more, because maybe I'm wrong about this. But the internet says you were born in 1992. Correct. And you launched it? Well, you didn't launch it, but you founded figma. In 2012, which would have made you a 20 year old founder, you launched it like what, like three and a half years later, right? It's like 24. Yeah, I guess my question for you is like, obviously, you've scaled it into something huge and very successful, but like hiring and building out your first team. And I mean, it just seems like it'd be really hard to have the competence to be like the boss, the leader at that age, right. But also have the humility to be like, Hey, I'm figuring things out too. And like finding the right balance, and if you can go back to them, because now you're like, a Papa, and you've been doing it for so long. At this point. You know, if you can get yourself back in 23 year old Dylan's shoes, like, what was that? Like? And how did that feel?
Dylan Field 16:11
Totally. I started off with like, a lot of confidence, probably confidence that like, you can only find a 20 year old for being honest. And then yeah, but then as soon as you know, there are setbacks. And there always are, you know, it was a big boat. I mean, it was like, there's some very humbling moments, even before the first year of thinking that had passed. You know, it's like possible, I think we're startups to get some of those high highs and those low lows within like, hours or days of each other sometimes, which is just a wild roller coaster. But beyond in we talked this before Jordan, but like, I think that I definitely had leadership experience from just like activities, clubs, things I've done in the past, but like, I had no idea what it meant to manage anyone. Right? And yeah, and that was something that I was just worried in real time. You know, I was pretty honest and clear about that with people at figma. I always just had to kind of like, give me feedback anytime policy, and always be asking for feedback. But you know, as we're taking a long time to get to launch, as I was fighting tooth and nail about like little feature details, what I probably shouldn't have been, I didn't have a really good sense of like, what's the time where you have to really push in which what's the sense of time when it's just like, let someone put it out there and, and we can evolve, it's software, it's not gonna be like this thing, where it's always the same, we're gonna be able to iterate and keep changing it and have a sense for like, when to push hard, and when not to. And also, you know, I think I didn't hire perfectly, I hired people that were always really high skill, but not all of them were the right fit for the sort of culture and vibe that we're building in Finland, partially because we didn't know what it was, yeah. And all the people would be perfectly fine elsewhere, just like, you know, sometimes it wasn't the right fit for figma. And so all that together, it was definitely tough to kind of figure out how to evolve in the early days. And also, there's a point where before launch, we've been working so hard and pushing so hard, and I don't think it was clear to anyone that this was actually going to happen that this thing would actually get out. After that longer work. I mean, more, I was just really low, partially because of the fact that I was not the best manager, partially because we just been working on so long. And partially because it's like now, you know, we're talking about multiplayer design and collaboration stuff, like we just talked about, you know, it wasn't always clear that was gonna be a thing. There is some amount of Do people even want this thing? Like, are we building towards a goal that actually matters when you want to care. And then also, just like, I was not in the best state, my dad was dying, like, it was just like a really dark time for me personally. The team, really, they kind of were like, Hey, you should get some help. And, you know, I think that that was a tough moment for me. But also, the fact that it happened, the fact that I took a few days, just kind of like reset, and then I tried to really take it in and absorb what they're saying and get to launch and, and then kind of like build up post launch. I think it forced me into a better manager and leader, but it was definitely not like an easy time.
Darrell Etherington 18:53
Right? It sounds super difficult, because we've talked to a lot of people who seek out we talked to somebody the other day, Julia cheek from LA health, who said like she had a executive coach from day one, from day one from her experience as a founder, which like that's like super the other way extreme. Right? But like, did you ever seek that? Or like, how did you get to your maturation stage? Was it all trial by fire? Like, you've just had to make the mistakes and go through it? Or did you go and seek help? Or how did you figure that?
Jordan Crook 19:18
Yeah, what tools did you use? Yeah,
Dylan Field 19:21
I mean, I've, I've had so many great mentors and people around me. So whether it's just literally people that have invested in figma, they made a huge difference. I mean, and people like I have really just trusted relationships with them. And like, you know, we'll bounce ideas off them. Coaches, I've had various coaches that have made a big impact. And then also folks that are maybe like early investors, but for example, Jeff Weiner, he's somebody that's been someone who's been a close mentor, and we talk at least once a month, sometimes more. And he's someone that I can talk about kind of like anything around the come with, which I really appreciate. Also, just like my wife, now, she's a good gut check will say hey, x is happening. What do you think? And she's like, or I'll say something about like, what I'm going to do Just like why are you doing that? So many good people around you that just keep you honest and real.
Jordan Crook 20:06
Yeah, that part is curious. Because like you have your like, your personal life is actually like, changed so much more than your professional life. You've been the founder of figma for a decade now. And yet you like along the journey, gotten married, you know, have a kid? And like, how has that peace? I mean, you said your wife is a good gut check. But like, has that peace of just like having your own family? And that kind of responsibility? I guess, like, change the way you've been a manager and leader as well.
Dylan Field 20:36
Yeah, I'm gonna actually tweet about this recently, I was like, one effect of having a kid is that I've been more empowering. Like, maybe it's not a necessity, but it's definitely happening. But, ya know, I think like, I haven't quite internalized our kid was born late last year. And so I don't think I quite internalized all the changes that come with having a child and how it's gonna affect me and how it'll change my style and my identity and personality, but I suspect it is. And that process has already started and I'm just kind of catching up to it mentally. Yeah. But also, I think another thing has been interesting is just watching my wife's company grow, because she started a company, I think, three or four years ago now. And I'm actually wrapping this sweatshirt today. Ironfish Oh, nice. It's a private cryptocurrency company. And watching her go through that journey of starting up and encountering, you know, a bunch of the same challenges we encountered. She came from being an IC engineer at Airbnb. And crypto is even harder than SAS. Right? You're not just trying to figure out how to make a product that people will buy. You're trying to figure out sort of like, what's the economy? Like? Yeah, like,
Jordan Crook 21:39
how do I create, like a state of the industry? Yeah,
Dylan Field 21:42
she's making a layer one. It's like, how do I figure out like, what the mission curve should be? What's the regulatory changes that are gonna happen? How do you distribute equity and tokens and stuff like that, it's not all clear the basics. And so in addition to hardcore math, and cryptography, watching her journey, I think, has also been a sense of reflection for me, because it's really interesting to see someone else encountered the same challenges, and then also not always end up the same decision path, right, because she's building her own company, and she's gonna do it the way she's gonna do it. And sometimes that's better for her. And sometimes it's not as good, but like, it's different. And that's okay. And I've also seen that within General, I've had a few companies that I've gotten close to, through investing in them. And it's really inspiring and exciting to see it when people do things in a way that's totally different than figma. And I think my just macro observations, there's so many different ways to build a company, there's a lot of ways to start up. And so much of the way you build your company is going to be unique for your audience and for the thing that you're doing. So for design software, like Yeah, we gotta be intentional, we have to figma move fast and break things is probably not the right tagline for us, right? Because if we move fast and break things, like someone might not be able to put dinner on the table, because like they were freelancing, and the service went down, now they can't deliver work to a client. And literally, they can't feed their family. Right, right. And doesn't mean we should move slow and be glacial in our pace. But we also shouldn't stuff so much that it can impact the user experience. Yeah, it's this isn't some social app, right. Whereas other companies I've worked with, you know, they're able to iterate at a speed that's like, far greater than ours, and just throw stuff out and see if it works. And that's the right approach for them. And I'm like, oh, man, what about the quality? And they're like, yeah, we'll get there. And that's not a thing that's like maybe the right thing for them. Whereas it might not be the right thing for figma. And then also, there's times where for figma is the right thing to go and be really fast iterative in our approach, because they're not critical areas, the product, and we cannot invest more that way. And so just really understanding the constraints render, I think is important.
Darrell Etherington 23:35
Yeah. But is it difficult to like you're talking about clients, and in this particular industry, I feel like not only like things can be product breaking, but people are probably I imagine your customers are extra sensitive to changes in product, right? So things that may seem small to like people outside of the discipline are actually like, super, super important to people with it.
Dylan Field 23:55
Yeah, I mean, I love working with designers and building for designers, because first of all, they're very direct and very honest with their feedback. It sounds a little blunt, but like they get it to us, and they're very clear about it. And usually it's pretty constructive and tone to Yeah, but the feedback we get is extraordinary. And it's so like just the average feedback is so much better than I think most companies are coming from a design background, understanding the context of which we're building. And they're thinking consumer apps. It's like,
Darrell Etherington 24:21
oh, like this thing? And then people are like, well, I don't know, I hate it by.
Dylan Field 24:28
Like, I understand, like, what you're thinking through here, but I'm not trying to be with the results. Why? Just like very much more nuanced. But yeah, I think also, there are just fundamentally different ways that people can approach design. And we've seen this with our research from day one. So sometimes we can support multiple workflows for something, sometimes we have to choose one path in order to make it so that it's not all things to all people, which can sometimes lead to worse user experience for everyone. Yeah, it'd be deliberate about when we're making a choice versus not. And that's something that we've talked about with the team quite a bit and side effects.
Jordan Crook 24:59
So you've talked a lot about like your path. Did you ever feel like there was there's so many, like milestones for figma? You know, like you've launched a bunch of different products. Now you've hit all of these revenue goals, you've raised a ton of money. It's here, right? And it's a thing. Was there ever a moment where you felt like, Okay, we made it. I made it we did it, or is it just like, never want to say never enough? Because that makes you sound crazed. But like, can you ever get comic is always or? Yeah,
Dylan Field 25:27
I think it's the beautiful thing about startups is that there's always something happening, that's good. And there's always some fire. If you're not aware of the fires, it's because you're not looking close enough. But the same time, like you can't not appreciate the good. So you have to really celebrate those milestones when they happen. And yeah, I mean, just even, you know, the last few days seen fake jam starting to get really some amazing adoption with customers. And not just inside design. But company wide. That's been something that we've been celebrating, because we're really excited to see that that's what we wanted to see was going outside the design audience and going into the entire company with big jam. And then same time, we're like, man, fig jam, we got a lot of work to do ahead. We have so is the product has been launched almost a year now. We're not even a year old yet. And by the way, it was launched in beta. Yeah, right after we were working on it for like seven months. This is like still a very new product. And we have a lot of work to do. Like you can hold both those thoughts in your head simultaneously, both appreciation and also like, let's go do this and make this great for our customers.
Darrell Etherington 26:27
Yeah, I like that part about it, too. Like, I think that's the part that appeals to people who are truly cut out for work in a startup environment is, like you said, there's always some kind of crisis to be handled, but also big successes to be celebrated, but simultaneously, right. And it does take a certain kind of person to want that kind of environment. Right. But yeah, I think it's something that you should be ready for if you're embarking on their entrepreneurial career path.
Dylan Field 26:53
Yeah. And then also think, like, how do you create the systems and processes in place so that it's not like always a crisis? Yeah. Where it's like, you
Darrell Etherington 27:00
can be a fire. Yeah, but without being
Dylan Field 27:01
everyone going.
Darrell Etherington 27:05
Before I forget, I just want to call out that when you were talking about in high school, you're using word I was like, wait, what?
Jordan Crook 27:12
You said he was using doc docs, right? Not word,
Darrell Etherington 27:15
but I was docked instead of word. Yeah, I was like, I was using Word Perfect instead of word. It's just
Jordan Crook 27:24
in the middle. I was using Word. Perfect.
Dylan Field 27:29
I think it's an interesting point, though.
Jordan Crook 27:31
So now everyone knows how old we are.
Dylan Field 27:33
Here's the interesting point is like, there's generations of software. Right? Yeah. So like, what are the things that are going to be created by the teens right now using tick tock, you know, in four years, right, and when they're starting their companies, right to manage? Or any kind of collaboration? I mean, it's like, what are the things that people are gonna look back? Like, I think equally to Google Docs, no product that was hugely influential to me was Neopets. It's like a virtual world online website had virtual goods. So when nfts came along, I was like, Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And there's like, all these things that are happening online. Now today, that people are just, you know, this part of like, the gestalt of how they grow up that one day, there's going to be tech trends around that, you know, we won't see maybe, and we'll be like, scratching our heads going. That's weird. Yeah. What a weird behavior. Why are people do that, but people are gonna go Yeah, of
Darrell Etherington 28:20
course. Yeah. But do you? Do you build that in that kind of thinking into your product design or your product planning? Or do you kind of go like, it's impossible to divine, that kind of thing? Because lots of people have tried and lots of people have failed. So it does seem to some extent to be impossible to try to predict the wave. But at the same time, it seems like you'd be foolish not to. So how do you kind of approach
Jordan Crook 28:40
one, it also gets laughed at by the incumbent. Right? Like when the incumbent is like, hey, we know what you kids want. They're always like, no, though, like, maybe we want to, but not from you. Oh, wait till someone cool comes in.
Dylan Field 28:53
I think what's important is just to try things to like, identify with the spirit of the company is for us a big bar that's play, right. So I won't spoil it. But like, every year, we do something we call it April funding, because we want to prank anyone. It's not really right. During the last few years, especially now, no one's a prank, but to try to figure out a way to like, celebrate fun on April 1, like, that's pretty cool. And every year, the challenge we have for ourself has been, let's make something that people appreciate for one day, that's fun. And then from there, they will not want it in the project later on. They're not gonna like request this feature forever. And usually people go, Oh, no, like, we didn't want that. But we usually get some kind of feedback from some minority of customers around that. And so but it's kind of in perfect shape has been interesting to kind of test out concepts that maybe we wouldn't feel comfortable testing and figma for example, emoji reactions, and stamps on the canvas are things that we've kind of like leaned into for big jam, that I'm not saying that they're like, quite as far as we're looking, as we were just talking about, but I think it's nice to have the sandboxes where you can kind of push the back So thinking, internally, another example that is maker week for us. So we, every year, once or twice a year, we have a week, dedicated to just building stuff. And anyone at the company is allowed to do anything they want for that week, as long as it's benefiting figma in some way. And we see a lot of the product innovation that then later on, it gets baked into the software coming out of those weeks. And that's where we see a lot of far reaching ideas. And so I think it's almost like for us when I think about it at scale as a system. It's not about okay, how do we predict perfectly every trend, but rather, how do we make sure that we're bringing the right people into the organization that have the finger on the pulse of like what's going on in the world, and can bring that into figma, then make sure that we have the right environment because ideas to come and be fostered
Jordan Crook 30:44
for make leave, it'd be like the beach really inspired. So I'm going to at the beach and bring back a lot of inspiration.
Darrell Etherington 30:53
But I think that those have, we had a here's my second shot with I mentioned we had another we have that to pretty regularly like the same type of thing. And some of the projects were kind of questionable in terms of their actual utility or the seriousness behind it. I think some of my home, were probably along those lines, but it's fun to write. And that's part of it. Part of it is fun, and that you get the opportunity to
Dylan Field 31:14
I mean, honestly, I think it's okay to have projects that are not serious to me to something for example, like a maker week a few years ago, I made a plugin for figma is right before plugins were launched, where it basically turned figma into Windows XP. And on the canvas, you could like press star, you can go to like calculator, you know, there's like a flashcard app, because we had a lot of new employees, we'll make sure people knew how to like, be the names of the employees. Anyway, the time it was just like people saw the joke, but then years later, now we've got widgets and fig jam, right? We're not saying that it was directly inspired, but it's like when
Darrell Etherington 31:48
you should take all the credit. Later on
Jordan Crook 31:52
100% until and and now it's on the record.
Dylan Field 31:57
I was saying but other people then like took the idea, iterate on it more. And then those arrays came widgets, right. And like, it's that kind of CO evolving process of everyone trying new things and trying to inspire each other that I think leads to some really cool results, even when it's just for fun. Well,
Jordan Crook 32:15
we have a couple audience questions, right? Yeah, yeah, right in the vein, and you and I've talked about company culture so much that I like have heard it before, but they want to know. So Eric Braun and Casey Nulty had a similar question, which is essentially like, how much is the culture change during growth? How do you hold on to culture as you grow headcount? That whole thing? Like, how do you control the culture?
Darrell Etherington 32:38
And does it bother you? If it's changing significantly, as it should?
Dylan Field 32:43
I think you have to accept that the culture changes over time. I mean, every person you add to a company changes the culture, the question is how much and in which ways, in some cases, it's like you add somebody in, they are very similar to the people you already have, and personality or interest or way of work. And that reinforces the culture that you already have. Sometimes they have like a slightly different working style. And that can be really beneficial to the team for them to learn that working style or like adapt and get better. And sometimes it's like, it's still working rejection, and someone joins and like, a few weeks later, it's like, yep, you know, they quit, or a team made it clear that this isn't working. And when you have those times where it's really clear, really fast, I think it's actually a good thing. Because it means that the culture is so strong, that it's almost like it has antibodies, and it's not good for anyone to be in a culture environment where both parties are not mutually happy. I think that in terms of like, how to hold on to it, the more you can write down, the more you can show good examples and positive reinforcement of hey, this happened and like it was awesome. And let's go celebrate it. That's one way. I think being clear about your values and your vision, your mission. It's very old school, but I like it a lot. And I tried to talk about our big vision or values figma, quite often, and sometimes just being honest about when your values aren't living up to the culture. For example, we got a question at all hands recently, and one of our employees said, Hey, is it just me or things a little less fun recently? No, damn, I was like, that's a hard question. It's like, I thought about it for years, cuz I saw it coming.
Darrell Etherington 34:09
It's gonna hit tough.
Dylan Field 34:10
And, you know, I kind of reflected on it. I was like, you know, first of all, I've been going through a pandemic the past few years, not going to blame that, but that's one thing. Second of all, we've been sprint mode. So we've been working really hard. But third, like there is this element of play of fun and experimentation and guessing and thinking that is it fully captured by the values that we have. And we kind of had convinced ourselves that was captured by a value called build community. It's like, yeah, there's communities out there that aren't fun and aren't. Like, let's take that's not actually captured by that value. So we added I guess it's like, okay, unilaterally, I'm adding a new value, can you play. And so now we have a fifth value called play. And we're still defining as a team and working together to kind of figure out how that manifests and whatnot, but I think it's part of giving the team permission to be playful to find ways to inject play into our culture and our product. And to make it so that like, as we scale, we don't lose the soul of figma, we don't lose what it means to be figma. And we're able to really reinforce that aspect of our company. And I think that, you know, there's probably more stuff like that, that we'll have to do over time, things that we'll have to explicitly label that we didn't have before. Hopefully, they're there things like play, and not things like integrity or respect, my goal is not have to ever have to have a value. It's like, it's the integrity value. Because I hope that's assumed with everyone, we hire
Darrell Etherington 35:28
fundamental human values.
Dylan Field 35:31
But well, I actually, I do think that, you know, keeping things really human is important as you scale, you want to make sure that going back to tone and how you speak, it's really easy to be corporate in the way that you talk as a company. It's like, okay, how do we show up as humans, and make sure that we know, it's not less of like stigma as the Borg and more of, like, having to deal in high reality of it,
Jordan Crook 35:55
especially when you're hiring more seasoned folks, right? Like you're growing hypergrowth, it's tempting to like want to hire the guy from or the girl from, like, this company that's been around and in that corporate, like, my partner works for a giant pharmaceutical company, and was getting hired by a small biotech, and she, like, didn't know how to talk to the biotech people, right? She was like, so used to like everything, having a buzzword and being super formal. And so I think it's like, how do you get those folks to feel loose and comfortable, but you still want them? To tell someone? Yeah. And it's like PTSD, almost to like, try to work yourself down from that corporate language and way of being, you know, yeah, it's hard to go back
Dylan Field 36:39
about not hiring people from those environments, because like you said, there's so many people that can add so much, but rather about just having a general sense of authenticity and directness and openness in the culture, and being really clear about rewarding that. And then also, if it's not present in something labeling that, you know, in a one on one setting, not like on blast, but just being like, Hey, it's okay.
Darrell Etherington 37:02
Go to all your all channel and slack and be like, executive is No. No,
Jordan Crook 37:13
what I mean, it is true. And I'm glad of what you said about trying to not having like integrity. And some of those, I feel like there are startups out there that are like, our values are like honesty, and integrity. And it's like, yeah, but like, what are you telling the world? And what are you telling your team about the fact that they need to arm themselves with that coming in? You know, like, it just feels a little a little like someone told them to have values? Yeah. And they were like, Oh, I know, some good ones. These are like, golden rule is our number one mission. You know, it's like, yeah,
Dylan Field 37:45
but anyway, so I think it's like an evolving process to figure out how do you make sure that you maintain the culture? Getting back to the question, I think it's always going to change but how do you shepherd it is really important. And it's also I think, other thing is, the last thing I'll say is memes. Help. Like one meme. I didn't mean it for me, but it's starting to come meme is like, we have this one value called run with it. And I'll have a conversation now a lot of times and someone be like, such I just run with it. I'm like, Yeah, run with it. And you know, it sounds like a weird one. But it's true. It's a meme. And memes. Like, okay, great. If you someone says run with it, just don't worry about too much consensus building, just get this thing through. Yeah, and I think it's really important, especially as we scale and there's a temptation to build consensus so much.
Jordan Crook 38:26
Well, I think the retroactive feedback thing is really important to constantly shouting out like this something that Darrell and I have been talking about, too, for TechCrunch is if you're adjusting strategy in any way, or you're trying out something new, or you're just even like maintaining the status quo, the only way you can do that is to like look at someone's body work or team's body of work and be like, Hey, why did you do this? Or this was amazing. And like, every little piece of feedback reinforces this inner instinct.
Darrell Etherington 38:56
But the wider view, this has to be done with genuine curiosity and not malice, because it can sound like
Jordan Crook 39:02
I never do it with malice. I only come with that question with malice, to be honest. And I gotta figure that out. By asking you why did you do this, then? We're starting so probably,
Darrell Etherington 39:12
well, that's my but I think it's a good question to ask. And it's someone people should ask because it helps you understand the actual intent and thought process behind the action, as long as people treat it that way. And you keep kind of that tone casual and like light and uplifting. Like people. I feel like get a lot of value out of that. But it's definitely a tricky thing to thread because people are used to hearing that and having it be like, it's a setup kind of right. It's kind of Lucy with the football like, oh, okay, I'm gonna answer and you're gonna put Yankalilla and then I'm on my right. So
Jordan Crook 39:41
yeah, and then neither of us win, right? Because like, well, Lucy wins, I
Darrell Etherington 39:45
think in that setting, but no, not really.
Jordan Crook 39:47
Because like, if you come to it the way I come to it with Why did you do this coming from like, you probably shouldn't have because that's normally what I'm thinking. Right, right, right. And they come to it like, oh, I have to justify this rather than like I actually I'm going to tell you genuinely What I was thinking, right? The neither of us are winning achieves in interaction, right? Yeah, like because you still did it. And I don't really understand you any better. So I think that, you know, where are we the
Dylan Field 40:09
big thing that's important is context and context sharing, right. And so one thing that's been a positive effect of the pandemic for us on our cultures that we've gotten, I'm not saying where a plus of this, like we've gotten a lot more written as a culture and where that falls down, as we have to figure out how to like make sure it's all organized somewhere, or someplace that you can go find the thing. But like, a lot of times, we'll have some plan or something interesting that's going on in the question of like, why are we doing this? Or what's happening here? Or what's the context here? That just the question I'm asking, and it's so much easier to be like, Yeah, is there a doc around this that I can learn from? And then the usually is, and just I just haven't seen it yet, because it's a hard problem to find information and organization scaling and growing. And then I can look at the doc and be like, Oh, okay, cool. You had a framework, he had a set of assumptions. Maybe I disagree. This assumption was talking about it, but like, it's less, you know, oh, my God, what were you thinking?
Jordan Crook 41:01
Yeah, well, and you're not like repeating yourself all the time. It is hard, though to like, become a company that's got a record of everything. Right. Like, and there have been a bunch of startups that have tried to tackle that. And you want to record every it can become difficult. Yeah. But it's also good. Well, not. Not every
Dylan Field 41:18
me in terms of like you went down so much.
Jordan Crook 41:21
I know what you mean, Dylan, I'm just giving you a hard No,
Darrell Etherington 41:24
it's the process balance, right? Because process is like such a bad word. And then process equates to documentation in some cases, but like, there's a level of it that is very useful. And then there's a level of it that is sort of like a snake that's eating its own tail. Yeah, it exists for no reason other than to create crop for exactly.
Jordan Crook 41:40
I think the process the process of doing it not process in general. But the process of like making a doc for something that was a meeting is actually like super useful, or at least it has been to me, because I'm like, Oh, we just had a chat about it. And I talked about it for 10 minutes. And like it all made perfect sense, right. But then you go to write it down, and you're like, wait a minute. Yeah. That doesn't look right. And
Dylan Field 42:01
can really clarify thinking, right? I mean, yeah, times when I read stuff, and I'm going like you said it makes you spell out your assumptions based so you have to create a narrative and yeah, exposes your your gaps in logic sometimes do
Darrell Etherington 42:13
I want to ask before I escapes my brain, you've said something a little while back where you're talking about? Yes. And in terms of your culture, which is like from improv, right? Like that's the improv principles to Yes, it is that explicitly where you got from where can you talk a bit more about how that works kind of fatally? I
Jordan Crook 42:29
think of it a big improv fan.
Dylan Field 42:31
I don't watch a lot of improv right now. But I mean, I grew up acting, I was an actor as a kid, and until I hit puberty got awkward. And then then the computers came. But the but yeah, improv is a blast to do. And I think I mean, look, there's different phases of the design or creative process. And when you're in a generative phase, when you're trying to be more expansive in your thinking before you kind of converge and go, Okay, what's the thing we're going to do? It's really good and helpful to be intentional about labeling, hey, we're in a generative phase right now. And like, you don't have to necessarily label one way out like, okay, here are the ground rules only Yes, and thinking. But I think if you kind of have that culture and that vibe going on, it's really amazing. And for example, I think back to one of the design Sprint's we did for fig jam, just before we launched and we kind of had okay, this intention of okay, one of differentiators for fiction is going to be the fact that it's just fun to use, and writing, we have this idea of, okay, if you can make it so that it's fun, then more people will be in a state of flow when they're using the jam. And they'll be able to be in a more trusting relationships with each other. And better ideas will come forward because of it and says like, okay, great, that's a nice intention, nice marketing message. But like, really like rubber meets the road was the mean for the product. So we had a design sprint for a day, where it was just let's do what a tired day dedicated to like, what do we do to make your jam fun. And we had like, 30 ideas or something come out of that, that were like, excellent quality way to winnow it down, so we couldn't build them all. But just the amount of thinking that came out of that, yes, an environment was incredible. And we've done that so many, you know, InDesign credits, and you know, and we try to label credits and tell people what it's like, what type of credit is rationed with our language and sort of our framing of different conversations that we're having. And I think, also, it's really important as you build and scale an org to find the people that are naturally that way that are the, for lack of better word, they're kind of like the muses of the organization. They're people that are inspiring to others, they're gonna keep coming back and like helping people refine and iterate on creative thought. They're kind of like the starters. And that's important. Finishing is also important. I'm not trying to say that one versus the other, but I think it's important to have in your head, okay, here's some people that we're really going to care about retaining because they are going to be people that really help us get to that next version, or the next release or that new product idea. And I'm thankful because figma is such a creative company. So it attracts a lot of people like that. And a lot of our employees, they are very inspirational in that way.
Darrell Etherington 44:52
Yeah. When I think about that, I think about like, I guess my behavior means tends to be the finisher as you politely called it, which is like I'm like, No, can't do that. No, that's terrible. That's about it. But yeah, like setting it out front. Because that tends to be I think a lot of people's default stance when you go into meetings is like, Oh, I'll be the person who like has smart things to say about why such and such thing wouldn't work. Right. But if you have a whole meeting that doesn't have that it's going to be much more generative. Yeah. And a defined space, right,
Dylan Field 45:20
in some means our decision making meetings to right. decision making means that's fine to just be clear about it that way. No, one's like, shooting down my head. Yeah, man. It's like, well, because we have to, we have five ideas, we got to get to one,
Darrell Etherington 45:31
right. Yeah, no, I like that. I think we've also we talked a bunch about design systems. And I just, it's a concept that I didn't really even encounter until I went to work for Shopify, but it's very core right to a lot of
Unknown Speaker 45:46
thinking, what don't,
Darrell Etherington 45:50
I'm gonna like start paying you $5 or something so that it hurts. But what's funny there, and I don't know, I think that fig gym. And a lot of your approach overall gets around this was a lot of people saw it as something that was owned by UX over here. And that was an encumbrance to be avoided or defeated in some way. And I have to apologize to Cynthia svart, who is the VP of UX over there, because I was very often I was like,
Unknown Speaker 46:17
we don't, don't worry about it, don't worry about it, it's just between us, we're not going to use Polaris for this
Darrell Etherington 46:23
one. And like, avoid the design system. But bringing people in and then bringing the rest of the company in helps you understand why it is so crucial. And like with the benefit of hindsight, I can understand why it was so crucial and why it's important to have especially at a company of that scale. But like, is that how you kind of think about or like, do you see that? And do you see yourselves as being a solution or an assistance to a solution?
Dylan Field 46:47
Touching so much there? I think there's the core tension, maybe your highlighting is okay, if you have a design system? Are people that are working on design system every day? Are they more creative or less creative? Right? And I think it's it depends on how the design system set up depends on how the org is set up. And I think that for figma, our role there is how do you make it so that you can create design systems that have flexibility to them that are not just gonna be like, Okay, this is the only way you can use it and good luck otherwise? And also, how do you make it so people can adapt design systems, they can like propose changes more. And you can open those communication pathways rather than like they're closed off, you have some tiny team that's working design system, and they don't talk to anyone else. Yeah. And so I wouldn't give ourselves a perfect grade there, I think we've got a lot of work to do. And design systems are like one of the things we care most about at figma. And we work really hard to keep evolving it. But they're also really hard problems. Because what ends up happening is you've got these design systems that you basically create, which are then used in all these different places. And it becomes this giant distributed systems problem, in addition to trying to create the UI on top of it to explain what's happening, and then the sort of product flows to impact the system. But yeah, it's it's a really fascinating area to me, and one that I think we're just the start of, honestly, yeah, I think that you know, design systems as kind of an area of design has been really means existed for a long time look at any operating system that has a design system. But the same time, the popularization of that system is less than 10 years old, for sure. I would like to think that we had some part to do with it. And I think that, you know, we're in the early days still of what that can mean. Yeah, for sure.
Darrell Etherington 48:15
It's probably too big of a topic, especially wearing out within the last what, two minutes. So
Jordan Crook 48:19
like two minutes left, and you were like, Let's get started on
Dylan Field 48:24
another hour. And whenever you want.
Darrell Etherington 48:25
We'll start a new podcasting
Dylan Field 48:29
conversation that are like, think about these problems every day. It'll be fun. Oh, great.
Darrell Etherington 48:32
Well, thanks so much. Do
Jordan Crook 48:33
you have it? Yeah, we're doing it. Yeah, it's locked in on the calendar. So we just wanted to say that if you missed it, audience, this episode will be in the feed, so you can subscribe to found to listen to the full conversation between us and Dylan and you Rockdale Yeah, it was great. A lot of fun. All right. See you guys next time. Bye bye.
Darrell Etherington 48:57
Founders hosted by myself, TechCrunch news editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook shot Kulkarni is our executive producer. They are produced by Maggie Stamets and edited by Cal Keller TechCrunch. His audio products are managed by Henry pick of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and on twitter@twitter.com slash Mt. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com and you can call us and leave a voicemail at 510-936-1618. Also, we'd love if you could spare a few minutes to fill out our listener survey at bit.li/found listener survey. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai