How Figma won design and scaled to a $20B valuation

What’s up! This is Sheldon from The Zero to One - helping you grow your product by breaking down the growth tactics, strategic playbooks, and GTM motions behind your favorite startups and giving you the actionable insights to replicate them.

Check out all my previous deep dives here.

Some quick housekeeping. For the next month or so, I’ll only be releasing a newsletter every second week. I’ve been working on something super cool for you guys and can’t wait to share it. But it does mean a bit of a delay in my usual process.

So with that out of the way…

Welcome to the full deep dive of Figma: Designing a $20B multiplayer experience.

Figma: Capturing the design market through PLG.

The best startup ideas are often those which are on the edge of obvious and complete stupidity-led failure.

Problem is, it’s only a small group of people who see how obvious the idea is:

Typically, only the founders.

And if you’re lucky you might have a few investors and some enthusiastic friends and family see it too.

That is until you build it. Then it becomes so obvious that people can’t believe they hadn’t thought about it. Think of some of the greatest products to be built:

The Macintosh - why would anyone want computers at home?

TV - who has time to watch that?

The internet - no online database would ever replace daily newspapers.

PG has an essay where he discusses the concept of big startup ideas:

Figma is a great example of this.

Today if you need to design a product you go to Figma. No questions asked.

But 10 years ago, designers would have crucified you for suggesting a web-based, multiplayer design tool, that brought the whole team into it.

Blasphemy.

So how did Figma convince a skeptical market of technical users to adopt a product so foreign to their core beliefs?

And do it so convincingly that in only 10 years, almost 90% of the market uses Figma.

And it’s not just popular with the masses, Figma is the design engine for the world’s biggest startups: Slack, Airbnb, Dropbox, Square, Netflix, Uber, and Zoom…

This is the story of how Figma went from Zero to One (and a bit more). 🚀

Figma’s Growth

I have to admit something to you.

I told you a small lie earlier. Figma is actually a bit older than 10.

Figma started 13 years ago.

The lovechild of a Thiel Fellow, Dylan Field, and a CS TA, Evan Wallace. They raised a $3.8M seed round and used the first three years to build “Photoshop in a browser”.

Now this might sound like it went against all modern PG-inspired wisdom - Launch quick. Get something out there.

And to some extent it did.

But I would argue that Figma actually did follow this advice.

Firstly, although we take Figma for granted today, it was (and still is) a huge technological feat.

The technology (Web GML) was new and highly technical. Figma wasn’t a product you could spin up overnight.

It took deep expertise and a lot of work.

Secondly, Figma was building a product for highly technical and specific users: designers.

They couldn’t afford to make a bad first impression from a UI/UX pov. Their product needed to inspire confidence in other designers.

Designers needed to believe that they could craft beautiful designs in it.

Bad product design could kill any confidence before they even started.

Thirdly, Dylan was getting the product into the hands of designers as often and as soon as possible.

So while the product wasn’t “live” - he was getting data from one-on-one and informal meetings.

And he was persistent with them. He would go to designers, get their feedback, build it, and go back for more.

That is the essence of ship fast.

Just without the public part.

And lastly, Figma cut a lot of bloat while building.

Photoshop has hundreds of use cases. They narrowed down to one.

Interface design.

As much as this was a product decision, it was also a speed-to-market decision.

The goal at launch isn’t to be everything for everyone, but rather a pain killer for a specific type of person.

The narrower. The better.

Figma even launched without their now highlight feature: Real-time collaboration.

Figma wasn’t waiting for perfect. They were building something good enough to be loved.

And so in December 2015, after a top-up round leading to a post-money valuation of $47.5M, Figma was launched in a closed beta.

And it launched like a rocket breaking through the startup and design worlds.

Taking over 10% of the market before even charging users.

And once they started charging, their growth only accelerated. Capturing ~35% of the design market by 2019 and introducing their enterprise sales team.

One year later they almost doubled to 65% of the market.

And as of today, Figma owns ~90% of the design tool market.

Along the way Figma has also released two separate products that are wildly popular in themselves:

FigJam - a digital whiteboard.

And Dev Mode - an easier way for devs to translate Figma designs into code.

But in 2023 the design world flipped on its head.

Figma accepted an acquisition offer of $20B from Adobe

At the time they were making ~$600M ARR (~33x multiple), with a huge global user base, and negative effective churn.

So although the deal didn’t go through, it still speaks to the truly great business Figma has built.

Today, Figma’s market valuation is probably a little lower as it doesn’t offer the strategic multiples added by Adobe. For context, Dylan lowered it internally to $10B.

So, how did Figma take over design in just 5 short years?

Let’s get into it:

Default Singleplayer to Default Multiplayer

Many of you reading this grew up in the generation of multiplayer, online applications.

Something so intuitive and normalized to us that we often don’t even notice it.

The best example is Word vs Docs. (Something Dylan references himself)

Word was (and still is) designed as a local application first, where the default behavior is single-player.

Meaning I work on my own. Then send my work to someone. Who then reviews. Then sends it back to me. Then I implement. Challenge some things. Then send back…

And this keeps going on.

Now I know you can work together in a Word doc, and many do. But it’s not the out-of-box behavior.

Plus, it’s still intended for all parties to have Word installed locally.

Docs on the other hand makes co-working the default behavior.

First, it’s browser-based, meaning the only limitation to accessing and editing a file someone shared with you is having an internet connection.

No need to download large applications.

Second, the only thing I need to share a doc with someone else?

A link.

No Sharepoint or One Drive set up required with different permissions and payment plans. Just a link.

Before Figma, design was very much single-player.

But what it means to be a designer today has changed.

Not luckily for Figma. But because of Figma.

Figma was the seismic shift that ruptured design and made it collaborative.

Figma took a default single-player sport and made it a team one.

🔬 Why this worked:

3 insights from the tactic.

👯‍♀️ 1. Brought the whole team in

Pre-Figma, design was a bit of a mysterious function that went away and came back a few days later with a finished product.

Feedback was clunky. The process was slow. And most non-designers couldn’t intuitively access it.

Figma wanted to give this intuitive access to people who previously didn’t have it.

And so Figma focused on more than just designers. Rather focusing on the best product. Which meant it became an experience for the whole team, or even, the whole organization.

Without sacrificing the depth required for a highly technical tool, they made design approachable and intuitive to even the most non-technical members.

PMs, Engineers, Marketers, etc. could now easily understand the design process. Leading to better outcomes for everyone.

• PMs could make sure the product was moving in the right direction.

• Engineers had a better understanding of what was required (and could guide on what was technically feasible).

• Marketers now had direct access to materials needed for quick testing.

But also, anyone could now start a design and hand it over to a designer. Who could then work their magic. This time, with a more accurate direction and clearer alignment.

Talking about alignment, what multi-player also did was allow for instant feedback.

This might sound like it can bring a too many cooks in the kitchen challenge.

And it could.

Designers certainly thought so at the beginning of Figma.

But that’s actually a team dynamic issue, not a product issue.

Figma was just an easy target.

High-functioning teams had massive benefits from this instant, multi-player feedback.

Products and designs could be shipped faster. Better. And with fewer issues.

To show this, let’s go back to the PMs.

Say you’re launching a new product. It’s killer (I believe in you).

Your designers deliver awesome work, but you want to tweak some messaging.

Previously, you waited for them to deliver the work. Sent back your feedback. They implemented (maybe after some other work as you might not be top priority anymore). You get it back. And you realize that we need to tweak it again.

So the cycle repeats.

But with Figma, you just tweak it yourself. And you can test as many variations as you want.

Instantly.

And although they received pushback at the beginning about design being a team sport. There’s also something inherently fun about working together, and you get better results.

Designers just needed to see it for themselves.

🫂 2. Improved designers work with each other

Don’t take the previous passage as Figma not focusing on designers. That’s not the case at all.

Figma focused on designers AND. Not instead of.

Figma didn’t just make working as a team easier. But it also made working with other designers a MUCH smoother process.

Remember that PM example of iterated feedback?

(again with the PMs Sheldon? - bear with me)

Now imagine it with a junior designer reporting to their manager instead. Everyday. For all their work.

Figma solved this.

You could just leave comments in the file, in real-time. Or make a small adjustment and explain it in a comment.

Figma removed the tedious back-and-forth of feedback cycles required to help both junior designers and managers grow in their careers.

Faster learning. And also an easier management aspect to a senior designer’s job.

But also consider sharing designs amongst peers.

Although the design tool market has typically always been dominated by a single company (Adobe then Sketch). Not every designer used Sketch, for example.

Now you might be pointing out, and rightly so, that not every designer uses Figma today (although it’s not far from it).

But there’s a key difference. Even if you don’t typically use Figma, I can still just share a link with you, and you can access and potentially even edit it.

But with something like Sketch or the Adobe suite, you would need to have downloaded the expensive software locally.

Figma did the same as Docs did. No downloads. Just vibes. I mean links.

🌍️ 3. Helped standardize design across the org

Since Figma’s launch, there has also been a shift from design as a centralized function in organizations to distributed design teams, within business units or product teams.

Figma enabled this shift and accelerated it.

A big reason design was previously centralized is that it needs to be uniform.

You can’t have marketing looking wildly different from the product.

Or even closer, you can’t have two different product teams, having different look parts of the same product.

In the pre-Figma era it was hard to be uniform across distributed design teams.

Spreading changes in design styles and assets was a lengthy process that was prone to mistakes.

Figma made this process instant.

It was now stored in a central, online, single source of truth. That could be updated, in a design tool, and across a company at the click of a button.

In fact, this became one of Figma’s biggest pay-gated features: design systems (think button styles, color schemes, all the things that are often repeated).

And not only did this become a feature that helped Figma monetize, but it became a key growth lever in their PLG motion.

Building a product that creates Champions

Product-Led Growth. The growth engine on every SaaS founder’s wishlist.

And the core growth driver behind some of the world’s most used and loved startups:

• Notion

• Airtable

• Zoom

• Slack

• Dropbox

• Mailchimp

And notably, Figma.

However, PLG only works when you have a product worth loving. Mid doesn’t cut it.

The next thing you need is people (typically ICs) to spread that product loving, i.e. Champions. If you’re planning to go the PLG route - these will be the people who make or break your startup.

But to turn ICs into Champions, not only do you need to build a product they love, but you need them to believe in you, as founders, a team, and a company.

Figma did just this.

Now why is love so important for PLG and a product like Figma?

PLG relies on your product being shared amongst peers, teams, and organizations - through Champions.

The problem is that sharing can be scary. You’re putting yourself and your reputation on the line.

You need to be sure about the product.

You can’t just like it, you’ve gotta love it!

So how did Figma turn ICs into obsessed Champions?

A three-step framework centered around a core principle.

Proximity to customers.

Let’s get into it!

🔬 How this looks practically:

3 actionable insights from the tactic.

🏋 1. Establishing initial credibility

The first thing Figma did to get ICs to love them was establish that initial credibility.

This is especially important with highly technical users like designers. When it comes to their craft, they don’t hand out trust easily.

Because of this, highly technical users often have high bullshit meters.

Meaning you can’t buzzword your way into their reimagined and integrated tech-stack, that completely revolutionizes the way they do work.

Designers care about only one thing:

The actual benefits.

To meet this head-on, Figma’s first GTM hire, Claire Butler, decided Figma’s new marketing strategy would be simple…

Don’t market.

Rather get the Figma team to focus on authenticity.

When you have a product that’s a technical feat and is designed for technical users, then that’s what you should use for your marketing.

So that’s exactly what Figma did.

Figma was, and still is, an amazing technical feat. So they focused on that.

Piquing the interest of both engineers and designers.

To do this, the Figma team started putting out technical content, both on how they built the product:

And design more generally:

Us tech nerds ate it up.

They were ranking in all the right places. Even going number 1 on Hacker News.

Figma is a design tool, for designers, and so who better to write content than their design team.

They started adding to their content portfolio. Creating content on their decision-making for the product.

Why and how they made different design and product decisions.

This made Figma relatable to other designers and gave an insight into the technical expertise of the Figma team.

The idea was if a non-designer could write the content, then it wasn’t deep enough.

Designers needed to respect the craft behind it. Only then would they feel heard and understood - rather than marketed to.

This put quality ahead quantity. Or for the more fancy of you, depth over breadth.

And with every piece of content tried to rank highly on HN, Twitter, and Designer News.

Talking about content. If you’re looking to create GTM content that generates demand, check out Narrative. We’ve worked with some awesome companies and founders like YC and Noah Kagan. Plus we offer a 30-day money back guarantee if you’re not happy with your content - does anyone else do this nowadays?

Now let’s get back to the newsletter.

Then to scale this non-marketing, marketing approach, Figma made the next hire in their marketing team.

A Designer Advocate. A role they invented to talk with users and designers, and, well, advocate for them.

This role became crucial to build this initial credibility, showing care and appreciation for designers. And as they grew, scaled with them. Playing an integral role in Figma’s PLG motion (but more on this next week).

Okay, so Figma now has some street cred.

What next?

🤲 2. Build with your users

Figma’s history of building with its users predates its launch.

Dylan would go to designers when they were still building and ask them to complete tasks and workflows in front of him.

This helped Figma understand the behavior intuitive to designers. And importantly, how to map that to Figma.

He also wanted to get as much feedback as possible. So he would go back to the same designers showing them progress made and how they solved the feedback they previously brought up.

Post-launch, this only amplified.

Especially with the editor.

It was a tool for designers, the editor needed to have an awesome UI/UX.

One story I love which shows the extent they were willing to go to help their customers was with Coda, their first full time user.

After successfully getting them on board, Coda phoned them to say they couldn’t go through with it.

Why?

Their lead engineer couldn’t use the product.

But turns out the problem wasn’t Figma, it was the MacBook being used.

So Evan drove to Palo Alto to fix it.

But this obsession didn’t stop at the Founders. Each person in the Figma team really cared and listened to feedback from users.

They would all do support:

• Talking to users directly

• Jumping on calls

• Meeting in person

• Talking on Twitter

And all these actions snowball trust over time.

The more you prove to your users that they can trust you, the more they will.

Plus, actioning user feedback doesn’t just give users more trust in you.

It also gives them a feeling of ownership.

Users start to feel like they can have an impact on the product and its direction.

They tell you about an annoying UX feature, and the next week it’s fixed.

They tell you about an integration that would massively improve their lives and then it’s also suddenly there.

A bug? Fixed.

A tutorial? Added.

Users start to feel invested in the product. Almost like a team member. But all in their own special category: Champions.

Often though, the common behavior is to focus on the feedback from paid users.

They’re the ones buttering your buns after all.

But Figma listened to free users with the same rigor as its paid ones. This is crucial with a PLG-driven company.

You want free users to also feel this ownership. As free users are most often the gateway into your product spreading. Plus it will leave them thinking, “if they take free users this seriously, imagine the experience for paid ones.”

💌 3. Nurture trust over time

When trying to find your initial distribution, it’s important to remember that people don’t care about you.

This might sound harsh. But it’s true. No one knows you.

So you can’t expect users to come to you.

You have to find them. This is something we spoke about a lot together in our The Hustle deep dive - so go give it a read if you want to go a bit deeper on the concept.

Figma did exactly this going all in on Twitter (X if I have to). Specifically, the design community on the platform, as well as a network of design influencers.

Figma even built an internal scraper to find design influencers to make sure they were engaging with the most influential people.

This tool spotted clusters of design influence, and figured out who was at the center of them.

They then followed and built relationships with those people.

These clusters were different spheres of product design:

• Iconographers

• Graphic designers

• PMs, etc.

Figma was getting both breadth, by covering these different pockets of influence, and depth, by identifying the key people needed for a tipping point within them.

Then to position themselves as experts, Figma shared deeply technical content (as we talked about above), both as Figma, and as individuals.

This gave Figma, and their team, a presence with users. Now with a name and face to connect with.

To get people to stick with them they never hard sold with their socials.

Instead, always focusing on feedback and helpful content relating to Figma.

And in doing so, users were building trust with a variety of different Figma team members.

The next Figma builds trust with its users is to be completely transparent with them.

Which admittedly is easier to do at the start. But is more impactful the bigger you get.

Figma doesn’t hide behind its brand.

Creating personal connections within the design community, and giving them open access.

The thing about transparency is that it requires a tradeoff.

You have to be vulnerable. Which means taking accountability - even when it’s hard.

So when you have a $20B acquisition offer and it’s stopped by regulators, you have to address it. Which Figma did with an open Twitter Space.

It also means that you have to consistently ask for feedback, face-to-face - which for Figma has led to major events that have become essential to the brand.

Config and Little Big Updates.

At Config, users decide what to speak about. And Figma finds the best ways to make those topics happen.

Which leads to deep and useful content for designers.

But Little Big Updates. What an awesome initiative.

Every so often the team fixes small bugs (is anything user related really small though?) that improve the quality of life of users.

Something that used to be 2 clicks? Now only 1.

Every little thing matters when it comes to your users’ experience. Few understand this more than Figma.

Champion-Led Growth (closing the PLG loop)

Figma is used by some of the biggest companies in the world.

Airbnb. Coinbase. Microsoft. Slack. Github. Zoom. Asana. Atlassian. NYT.

Now you might think that for enterprise companies to use Figma they would’ve needed a killer sales team. And they do - just not in the way you’d expect.

Figma didn’t even have a sales team for the first 3 years.

Their sales motions looks a bit different.

It starts at the bottom. With individuals (ICs).

Scaling into companies organically.

And sales? It’s more about unblocking than outbound.

The first step in this growth motion, which we talked about above, was to turn these ICs into Champions. I.e., get them to absolutely love the product and be willing to share it.

This tactic is about how those Champions get Figma to swim upstream and spread.

To the point where most of their leads come from users looking to expand Figma in their company rather than an outbound motion. Leading to a very different sales conversation - because well, the IC already is paying.

So let’s get into how Figma closed its PLG loop in a four-step process.

🔬 How this looks practically:

3 actionable insights from the tactic.

☑️ 1. Make it easy to try and share

When it comes to PLG, a free tier is table stakes.

You need a product that’s easy to try and explore alone. And when there’s an upfront paywall, some sort of sales is required. So you’ve missed the easy and alone boat.

The best PLG motions have you up and running in a few clicks.

Loom - 5 clicks and you’re recording.

Notion - a few clicks and you now have a project database (same with Airtable).

Mailchimp - a signup. a survey. and you’re sending emails.

The less a user needs to do to create an account and start using the product, the better.

(Except for in some rare cases where doing a bit more makes the user feel invested. Think of a baking mix requiring you to put the eggs and milk in).

So Figma made it easy to start designing.

Their free tier also gave you enough features to fall in love with. Build confidence with. And feel comfortable enough to put your neck on the line to try get the rest of your company on board.

To ease this process of getting the rest of your company on board, Figma’s free plan allows free collaboration (to a point).

With unlimited commenters allowed on a file - you only need to pay for editors (and unlimited files).

As we spoke about earlier, Figma set out to make design multiplayer, and not just for designers. So free commenters and viewers were key in Figma’s PLG.

It very tactfully allowed a whole team to get used to Figma, for free. So now, not only do the designers gain confidence in and love the product, but the rest of the team does as well. PMs, engineers, marketing, the lot of us.

This makes spreading into the rest of the company a lot easier.

At the end of the day though, you’re running a business. You need to charge. The hard part is figuring out how and when. Figma didn’t always get it right.

Initially, Figma allowed unlimited files, but only 2 collaborators on the free plan. The problem here was that this was getting in the way of their own growth engine.

It was stopping their Champions from getting Figma in the hands of the rest of their team and company.

So Figma changed their pricing model, allowing unlimited commenters and viewers, and got themselves into more places in an organization.

Increasing Figma’s influence.

This made inbound leads more likely and made all sales conversations higher converting - you go with a lot of weaponry if a big cohort of the company is already using the product.

🫂 2. Give users relatable touchpoints

Design is a highly technical craft. And as with any highly technical craft, there’s a high bar to what the people in it respect and relate to.

Marketing jargon won’t fly.

You need deep expertise.

So to help Champions spread Figma across a company, Figma gave them access to a close touch point. Designer Advocates (DAs). A role uniquely at Figma. Who’s job was, you guessed it, to advocate for designers.

These DAs are often previous Champions themselves. And importantly, designers.

Meaning they can relate to and inherit respect from Figma’s users.

DAs became an important touch point for designers. Someone they could give product feedback to, use as unblockers to spread within a company, and just talk design to. They helped users evangelize the product.

So Figma scaled it across products and regions.

Giving users more direct access to different parts of Figma. And attaches additional relatable names and faces to the company - increasing access and deepening the love.

This is a very niche role, so you might be wondering how Figma finds DAs?

Well, often they don’t. Rather, the DAs find them. Filled by passionate users, Champions of Figma at other companies, or active members of the Figma community.

This, together with their technical expertise, gives users more confidence to spread Figma, knowing that there is a knowledgeable and relatable touch point to ensure their voice is heard.

🏆 3. Give companies a reason to adopt

When you’re swimming upstream, you need to give companies a reason why they should adopt you. And not just let their ICs continue to use you by themselves.

Think about it like this: What is the benefit for the company to change the status quo and get a Team plan?

This is typically an operational unlock that creates efficiencies at scale.

For Notion, it’s collaboration and the creation of a hub - a central source of truth.

For ClickUp? It’s similar, the operational excellence of team collaboration on ClickUp is unmatched (especially now with all their newly shipped features).

And for Figma?

It was design systems.

A central hub for design:

• Templates.

• Asset library.

• Real-time updates.

Meaning if you change the look and feel of, let’s say a button, it can be updated everywhere, in real-time.

This is a huge unlock for efficiency in an organization. Exponentially helping with consistency the more designers you have in your company.

Figma leaned into this.

• Starting a conference called Schema.

• Creating loads of content on design systems and how to do it in Figma.

• Launching designsystems.com.

Design systems became one of the key gated features for Figma’s growth.

It turned a growth blocker (scaling into the organization) into an enabler.

The product became substantially better with design systems. And not just for the individual, but also for the company itself.

This was crucial for securing buy-in beyond designers.

Which leads us to the last step.

🦸‍♀️ 4. Make Champions superheroes

Let’s recap.

Figma now has Champions who love them, a touchpoint for them to access Figma, a product that’s easy to share, and a reason for the organization to adopt it.

All that’s left is supporting Champions in the process of getting companies to adopt it.

So that’s exactly what they did.

Figma set out to make their Champions superheroes. Both in their companies and within the design community.

The DAs and Sales Team would guide and empower Champions through the whole sales process.

Focusing on building human connections throughout the organization. As well as jumping on calls with Champions to arm them with the best practices they needed to get company approval.

This was anything from data on similar companies, case studies, fact sheets, guides.

Anything that a Champion could present to a decision-maker to get them on board.

Typically focused on two aspects:

• Education

• Social proof

Quick side note, if you’re looking to create content that builds demand and closes deals, I run an agency that does exactly that. We help B2B tech companies build content engines that drive business impact: Learn more here.

Back to the action.

If there were any questions from the organization, a DA would happily jump on a call to answer them.

Or even bring on an engineer or designer to help answer them.

This made Champions look good in their companies and helped speed up the sales cycle.

A win-win-win.

But Figma didn’t stop here.

Figma had a platform and they wanted to use it.

So they started helping designers grow in their careers, at their current companies and beyond, by making them thought leaders within the design world.

Getting them to speak at events, posting them on Figma’s socials, or sharing templates/guides on how they use the product in certain ways.

And as Figma grew, so did its Champions. Reinforcing the behavior.

In the end, love drives growth.

For The Zero to One, it’s been your host, Sheldon.

Stay awesome and speak soon!

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