When the field returned to California, it was worth more than $ 5 billion. But he doesn’t want to talk about it. History, in his mind, does not concern a company that becomes public, but the hypo of the design itself. “What interests me most is what our product will be in 5 years, 10 years,” he says. “Are we progressing forward?”
Not focusing on money is probably a good idea. The day we are talking about, the price of figma actions dropped by 27 percent, cutting its evaluation of about $ 60 billion to just over $ 40 billion. It is still much higher than it expected. While the hypo of Figma celebrates the design, it is not the only company that hopes to revolutionize the field. The IA will begin a new era in design. Figma, like its competitors, will be defined by how that technology manages. In the end, it is not yet clear whether the IA will help its business or explode it.
Field work
Whenever I speak with Field, it seems that something monumental is happening to Figma, the company that co -founded like a 19 -year -old Thiel Fellow and an abandonment from Brown University. From the beginning, the Figma browser -based app has allowed people to collaborate and make brainstorming on online design. A faithful sequel grew, threatening the giant in the design tools, Adobe. During our first meeting in 2022, I pushed the field on that Trope of David and Goliath and if he could pull an Instagram and sell to a larger company. The field has talked about how it was inside for the long range. In fact, he had a secret that he could not share: Adobe had just offered $ 20 billion for his company and would have taken him. The news came weeks after our conversation. When I faced him about the Wired Conference in San Francisco last December, he apologized. “I felt so bad for this,” he told me.
The next time we spoke, in December 2023, that agreement had just fallenBecause the Department of Justice of the former President Joe Biden indicated that he would obfiate the merger. Field was clearly shaken but determined to continue with its original plan to build a company that would change the way people create apps, websites, documents and decks. It was not easy, since months of momentum they had been squandering preparing to merge with the largest company.
During the following two years, Figma expanded his offers and continued to win the fans. His 13 million users suggest only his ubiquity: the work produced on his app is seen by billions of people. Among the Fortune 500 companies, 95 percent uses the product. Figma transforms a profit. It is post-IPO, even after its shares have settled, the company is worth more than double what Adobe would have paid for this.
However, I was a bit disconcerted by the fact that the field believed necessary for the IPO when the startups in these days can reach stratospheric assessments without the misehigas of responsibility that derive from becoming a public company. Field mentions the virtues of the property of the community, the company hygiene to follow the reporting rules and how the possibility of buying actions in figma will lead people to better understand their business. In the end, he says, “If in the end you intend to become public, why not do it now?”
Design or lose
As is customary for many technological leaders who become public, Field wrote The letter of a founder In the prospectus in which he promised higher values than profits. (Those votes generally end up persecuting their authors while poor entrepreneurs turn into signs of profit in search of yachts.) In essence, the letter is a topic that design now has a central place in people’s lives. It is not just an important factor in the way people build products and express themselves: it is THE factor. “Design”, he wrote, “is bigger than design”. When I ask what he intended, he did not unravel the koan too easily. “It’s something that can mean many things,” he says. “It is the rise of design that goes from the pixel level to the more general resolution of the problems, to how you win or lose.”
He explains that in the early 2000s, the design concerned things beautiful. In 2010, people emulated the philosophy of Steve Jobs that the design concerned the function. Now, says Field, the design is not only both of these things, but our means of communication, which you are, what your brand represents, as you commit yourself to the public. Our world is based on software, says Field and the more software is created, the more design it becomes the main differentiation. It is our new language and Figma wants to be the Duolingo for those who strive to master it.