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How Figma grew with Product-Led Growth (PLG). Getting Champions to spread the word
Champions in. Product out.
Whatâs 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.
Itâs been a bit since we spoke.
There have been some exciting updates in my life: if you missed it.
But now itâs back to giving you all the tactics you need to scale your startup.
Welcome to the final episode of the Figma series: Designing a $20B multiplayer experience.
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 wouldâve needed a killer sales team. And they do - just not in the way youâd expect.
Figma didnât 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? Itâs more about unblocking than outbound.
The first step in this growth motion, which we talked about in the last episode, was to turn these ICs into Champions. I.e., get them to absolutely love the product and be willing to share it.
Today 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 letâs get into how Figma closed its PLG loop in a four-step process.
đŹ How this looks practically:
3 actionable insights from the tactic.
âď¸ 1. Make it easy to try and share
When it comes to PLG, a free tier is table stakes.
You need a product thatâs easy to try and explore alone. And when thereâs an upfront paywall, some sort of sales is required. So youâve missed the easy and alone boat.
The best PLG motions have you up and running in a few clicks.
Loom - 5 clicks and youâre recording.
It really is.
Notion - a few clicks and you now have a project database (same with Airtable).
Mailchimp - a signup. a survey. and youâre 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.
Template-led starting.
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, Figmaâs 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).
Unlimited designers for the win.
As we spoke about in Episode 1, Figma set out to make design multiplayer, and not just for designers. So free commenters and viewers were key in Figmaâs 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, youâre running a business. You need to charge. The hard part is figuring out how and when. Figma didnât 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 Figmaâs 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.
đŤ 2. Give users relatable touchpoints
Design is a highly technical craft. And as with any highly technical craft, thereâs a high bar to what the people in it respect and relate to.
Marketing jargon wonât 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. Whoâs job was, you guessed it, to advocate for designers.
Anyone job searching?
These DAs are often previous Champions themselves. And importantly, designers.
Meaning they can relate to and inherit respect from Figmaâs users.
We spoke about DAs a bit last episode, but we didnât go into how Figma scaled their DAs as they grew.
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 donât. 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.
đ 3. Give companies a reason to adopt
When youâre 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, itâs collaboration and the creation of a hub - a central source of truth.
Can confirm I am now happier.
For ClickUp? Itâs similar, the operational excellence of team collaboration on ClickUp is unmatched (especially now with all their newly shipped features).
Seriously. For everything.
And for Figma?
It was design systems.
The all-important design systems.
A central hub for design:
Templates.
Asset library.
Real-time updates.
Meaning if you change the look and feel of, letâs 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.
Media as part of a SaaS? Iâm here for it.
Design systems became one of the key gated features for Figmaâs 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.
đŚ¸ââď¸ 4. Make Champions superheroes
Letâs recap.
Figma now has Champions who love them, a touchpoint for them to access Figma, a product thatâs easy to share, and a reason for the organization to adopt it.
All thatâs left is supporting Champions in the process of getting companies to adopt it.
So thatâs exactly what they did.
Figma set out to make their Champions superheroes. Both in their companies and within the design community.
Designer-led conferences.
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 youâre 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 didnât 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 Figmaâs 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, itâs been your host, Sheldon.
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In case you missed it âŽď¸
Last week we looked at how Figma created product evangelists - turning ICs into Champions with a three-step process of establishing credibility, building with users, and nurturing trust over time.
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Stay awesome and speak soon!
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