When Dylan Area pops up on my Zoom display, his face is a combination 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 Alternate, bucking the pattern of multi-billion-dollar startups staying personal. Even earlier than it turned clear that this could be the wildest public launch in years, the Figma world—followers of the app, staff (often called Figmates), and traders—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 Massive Board, because the opening $33 share worth skyrocketed to $142 earlier than settling down at a snug $90.
By the point Area flew again to California, he was value greater than $5 billion. However he doesn’t need to discuss that. The story, in his thoughts, just isn’t about an organization going public, however the IPO of design itself. “What I care most about is what our product shall 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 worth dropped 27 p.c, slicing its valuation from round $60 billion to simply over $40 billion. That’s nonetheless approach increased 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, shall be outlined by the way it handles that expertise. Finally, it’s nonetheless not clear whether or not AI will assist its enterprise or blow it up.
Area Work
Each time I discuss 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 folks 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 a much bigger firm. Area nobly talked about how he was in it for the lengthy haul. In actual fact, he had a secret he couldn’t share: Adobe had simply provided $20 billion for his firm, and he was going to take it. The information broke weeks after our dialog. When 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 could object to the merger. Area was clearly shaken however decided to hold on along with his authentic plan to construct an organization that will change the way in which folks create apps, web sites, docs, and decks. It wasn’t simple, as months of momentum had been squandered getting ready to merge with the larger agency.
Over the following two years, Figma expanded its choices and saved successful followers. Its 13 million customers solely trace at its ubiquity: work produced on its app is seen by billions of individuals. Amongst Fortune 500 firms, 95 p.c use the product. Figma turns a revenue. And post-IPO, even after its inventory leveled off, the corporate is value 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 today can attain stratospheric valuations with out the mishigas of accountability that comes from changing into a public agency. Area cites the virtues of group possession, the company hygiene of following the reporting guidelines, and the way the choice to purchase shares in Figma will lead folks to grasp its enterprise higher. Finally, he says, “In the event you’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 through which he pledged increased values than income. (These vows usually wind up haunting their authors because the scrappy entrepreneurs morph into yacht-seeking profit-hounds.) Basically, the letter is an argument that design now has a central place in peoples’ lives. It’s not simply an vital consider the way in which folks construct merchandise and categorical themselves: it’s the issue. “Design,” he wrote, “is greater 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 whole lot of issues,” he says. “It’s the rise of design going from pixel stage craft to extra normal drawback fixing, to the way you win or lose.”
He explains that within the early 2000s, design was about making issues fairly. By the 2010s, folks had been emulating Steve Jobs’ philosophy that design was about perform. Now, Area says, design just isn’t solely each these issues, however our technique of communication—who you’re, 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 desires to be the Duolingo for these striving to grasp it.
