When Dylan Area pops up on my Zoom display, his face is a mix of giddiness and fatigue. He’s again at work, after a whirlwind journey to New York Metropolis the place he launched his firm Figma on the New York Inventory Trade, bucking the pattern of multi-billion-dollar startups staying non-public. Even earlier than it grew to become clear that this is likely to be the wildest public launch in years, the Figma world—followers of the app, workers (often known as Figmates), and buyers—had already turned Wall Avenue right into a block celebration, handing out swag, serving free pizza, and blasting music from a DJ that shook the caverns of mammon. However the sweetest music performed out on the Huge Board, because the opening $33 share value skyrocketed to $142 earlier than settling down at a snug $90.
By the point Area flew again to California, he was price greater than $5 billion. However he doesn’t need to speak about that. The story, in his thoughts, will not be about an organization going public, however the IPO of design itself. “What I care most about is what our product can be in 5 years, 10 years,” he says. “Are we progressing design ahead?”
Not specializing in the cash might be a good suggestion. On the day we’re talking, Figma’s inventory value dropped 27 p.c, reducing its valuation from round $60 billion to simply over $40 billion. That’s nonetheless manner larger than anybody anticipated. Whereas Figma’s IPO celebrates design, it isn’t the one firm hoping to revolutionize the sphere. AI will provoke a brand new period in design. Figma, like its rivals, can be outlined by the way it handles that expertise. In the end, it’s nonetheless not clear whether or not AI will assist its enterprise or blow it up.
Area Work
Each time I speak to Area, it looks like one thing monumental is occurring to Figma, the corporate he cofounded as a 19-year-old Thiel fellow and a dropout from Brown College. From the beginning, Figma’s browser-based app allowed individuals to collaborate and brainstorm about design on-line. It grew a loyal following, threatening the large in design instruments, Adobe. Throughout our first assembly in 2022, I pressed Area on that David and Goliath trope—and whether or not he may pull an Instagram and promote out to an even bigger firm. Area nobly talked about how he was in it for the lengthy haul. In reality, he had a secret he couldn’t share: Adobe had simply supplied $20 billion for his firm, and he was going to take it. The information broke weeks after our dialog. Once I confronted him about that on the WIRED convention in San Francisco final December, he apologized. “I felt so dangerous about that,” he instructed me.
The following time we talked, in December 2023, that deal had simply fallen aside, as a result of former President Joe Biden’s Division of Justice indicated it will object to the merger. Area was clearly shaken however decided to hold on along with his unique plan to construct an organization that may change the best way individuals create apps, web sites, docs, and decks. It wasn’t simple, as months of momentum had been squandered making ready to merge with the larger agency.
Over the following two years, Figma expanded its choices and stored profitable followers. Its 13 million customers solely trace at its ubiquity: work produced on its app is seen by billions of individuals. Amongst Fortune 500 corporations, 95 p.c use the product. Figma turns a revenue. And post-IPO, even after its inventory leveled off, the corporate is price greater than twice what Adobe was going to pay for it.
Nonetheless, I used to be a bit baffled that Area felt it essential to IPO when startups as of late can attain stratospheric valuations with out the mishigas of accountability that comes from turning into a public agency. Area cites the virtues of neighborhood possession, the company hygiene of following the reporting guidelines, and the way the choice to purchase shares in Figma will lead individuals to know its enterprise higher. In the end, he says, “If you happen to’re going to go public ultimately, why not do it now?”
Design or Lose
As is customized for a lot of tech leaders going public, Area wrote a founder’s letter within the prospectus wherein he pledged larger values than earnings. (These vows usually wind up haunting their authors because the scrappy entrepreneurs morph into yacht-seeking profit-hounds.) Primarily, the letter is an argument that design now has a central place in peoples’ lives. It’s not simply an necessary consider the best way individuals construct merchandise and specific themselves: it’s the issue. “Design,” he wrote, “is larger than design.” Once I ask what he meant by that, he doesn’t unpack the koan too simply. “It’s one thing that may imply a number of issues,” he says. “It’s the rise of design going from pixel stage craft to extra normal downside fixing, to the way you win or lose.”
He explains that within the early 2000s, design was about making issues fairly. By the 2010s, individuals had been emulating Steve Jobs’ philosophy that design was about operate. Now, Area says, design will not be solely each these issues, however our technique of communication—who you might be, what your model stands for, the way you interact with the general public. Our world is constructed on software program, Area says, and the extra software program is created, the extra design turns into the core differentiator. It’s our new language, and Figma needs to be the Duolingo for these striving to grasp it.
