During a VC job interview in 2018, Kyle Harrison built a model with Figma becoming a $19B company in 2025. His analysis was called ​“unrealistic”. Good thread on compounding growth, and there is a deeper dive in his newsletter.

Rafa from Layout FM podcast shares his thoughts and predictions after the acquisition. Also, listen to his podcast episode on this topic.

A good summary of topics discussed at the Figma All-Hands call on September 16th.

Dann Petty hosted an open chat about Figma’s acquisition with Scott Belsky from Adobe.

Nice thread from Nathan Barry, founder of Convertkit, on Figma’s dominance.

Mike Davidson, ex-VP of Design at InVision and Twitter: ​“Figma did a lot of things right over the ten (yes, ten!) years they’ve worked on the product, but one thing they did that no one else has been able to replicate is meet and in some cases exceed native app performance inside of a web browser.“ Also: ​“Within the next several years, it’s going to be possible to go from idea in the morning, to prototype in the afternoon, to working code in the evening… and the company who can do that most thoughtfully is going to be one of the most important companies in the world.”

David Sacks on late bloomers and responsiveness of VC markets. See a more in-depth discussion in Episode 96 of the All-In Podcast.

Andrei Herasimchuk, the ex-Lead Designer at Adobe, shares a list of ​“big wins” and ​“small wins” that Figma cofounders and he wrote down in December 2013. Pretty amazing to see how almost all of it is a reality now. (“Modernizing masking & gradient UI” sounds pretty sweet though!)

Insightful interview about the role of community in Figma’s go-to-market strategy early on. ​“As Senior Director of Marketing, Claire Butler joined Figma as one of the first ten employees and the company’s first business hire. She began shaping the company’s bottoms-up growth strategy and laying the track for a vibrant community before the product was even publicly available.” The conversation is also available as a podcast.

An interview with Badrul Farooqi, the first Product Manager (and 18th employee) at Figma. He spent nearly five years at the company and worked on the two largest customer-facing products at Figma: the core design tool and Figma Community. Learn about solving problems for the most discerning customers, the benefits of being an internal transfer PM, how and where to talk to customers for maximum benefit, and more.

Hatch Design Talks podcast interviews Julia Kestner, Manager Designer Advocate at Figma. With Figma being in the hypergrowth phase and expanding in Europe, her job comes with exciting new challenges. The host spoke with Julia about the role of the Designer Advocate, the dangers of becoming too precious with one’s design system, and what we can expect now that Figma is putting more resources in Europe.

Jaelyn Brown shares her experience as an Early Career Program Manager Intern with a focus on developing engagement for HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions).

“Cloud 100 leaders from Algolia, Figma, Gong​.io, and Papaya Global share their stories from the trenches as they offer both strategic and tactical advice to founders on building enduring businesses.”

To celebrate 10 years of Figma, Dylan Field shares 10 physical objects from Figma’s history that are special to him. The beta notebook and WebGL coffee table are my favorites!

Forbes’ Cloud 100 is a list of the world’s top private cloud companies. Figma keeps climbing higher and higher in this rating — this year it’s #5 on the list, after being #7 last year and #29 in 2020.

In light of the sad news of InVision layoffs, Nathan Barry tried to answer the question of what made Figma so successful that it completely changed the design tools landscape.

The founder of Cron wondered about this question, and Figma’s Design Director Noah Levin came up with some great links in replies.

Fantastic article by Shirley Miao about the complexities and hidden challenges of building Figma’s dark mode: ​“We wanted to build a solution that wouldn’t just solve the existing need for a new feature, but would be flexible enough to scale with us as the product evolved. Doing so would make it easier to onboard new engineers, tackle unforeseen challenges, and introduce new themes down the road. The trick was developing an approach that would be easy to implement and maintain, while also ensuring that it was regression proof.”

“On this FINITE Podcast, Jesus Requena, VP Growth Marketing at Figma, shares how reducing customer churn is, yes, about recapturing the interest of waning users, but also about acquiring the right users in the first place.”

I’m not a big fan of Sketch’s ​“Sketch vs Figma” page, but I had a big laugh over this. Highly resourceful.