Dylan Field live at Config: Intuition, simplicity, and the future of design

0:02 Today I'm excited to bring you a very special episode which was recorded live at Figma Config with Figma CEO and co-founder Dylan Field in front of a live audience at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. This is the first ever live recording of this podcast. And it was so much fun. If you watch this on YouTube, you can see the epic stage that they built specifically for us to recreate my podcast studio. I could not be more thankful to the config team for making this happen.

0:28 In my conversation with Dylan, we dig into how he builds and refines his product taste and intuition. How intuition is a hypothesis generator, the future of product management. How Dylan attempts to operationalize keeping Figma simple and to continue simplifying the experience. Bunch of stories from the early days of Figma that I've never heard before. Also he shares his favorite AI tool called WebSim, which is wild. And if you wait till the very end, you can see a very young child actor, Dylan Field. in a clip that I found online that was hilarious.

1:00 If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Dylan Field. Dylan, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Annie. Hi all.

1:21 Uh Is this your first live podcast? This is my first ever live podcast. Also, uh a big thank you to the config team who set up this crazy studio. I had no idea this was gonna happen. I feel like I'm in my studio here with a thousand people watching us. Uh it's very impressive. I I very much dig the background and also the mics that may or may not be wires. Don't say that. Don't tell me. Sorry. There's no wires coming out of them. There's no one behind the curtain either. Okay. Dylan, I want to start by just checking in on how you're doing. So config

1:53 It's about to wrap up. We've been at it for two days now. I know how much lift goes into doing these sorts of things. I imagine you've been thinking about this for a long time now. I'm just curious how you're doing. Any surprises, any highlights, any low lights? Uh the highlight is the community. And just the incredible, incredible people here at Config. Yeah. Y'all are awesome. I don't know why I keep talking in the mic like this.

2:18 But seriously, it's just the most amazing community to be part of and uh I I feel so lucky. And then um in terms of how I'm doing this exact moment, like exhausted but riding on caffeine and whatever this like really cool probiotic drink is. Any surprises from the past couple days? Anything that's like oh wow, that went a lot better than I thought, maybe less well. Um yeah, I mean like, you know, demo uh Definitely I would have improved. Uh but also like the uh Emile and Mejica were phenomenal. Uh and it was it was just like so awesome to see them do their demos and

2:57 Uh present materials and then um Yeah, I was just really pleased. With the conversation I think that's getting started at config. around AI. Um And

3:08 Uh I think that You know, I was looking online, um, on social media Yeah, I think people are already kind of like zero in the right conversation, which is Okay, in a world of you know, more software being created by AI.

3:21 What does that mean? And You know the impact on Craft.

3:28 And the impact on quality. And the uh need to have more unique Design. And how design is a differentiator. And

3:38 I think some people are saying I agree with that, some people are saying that I disagree with that. And that's exactly the bounds of Um But the conversation I kind of imagine would emerge. Uh from yesterday. Um You know it's funny, the make design feature

3:53 You know, we I think I said on the keynote I was like This is gonna give you the most obvious thing in the most obvious form possible. And then people online are like, It's just gonna give you some obvious thing. I agree.

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6:32 The best part about Anvil is the level of customization their SDK provides. Non-technical folks love Anvil's Drag and Drop Builder, and developers love their flexible APIs and easy to understand documentation. Build document software fast with Anvil. That's useanvil.com/slash Lenny to learn more or start a free trial. That's use A N V I L dot com slash Lenny. Let's keep talking about design. You once said that the definition of design is art applied to problem solving.

7:05 Can you just add a bit more to that? What do you mean by that? Because that's an amazing line. Well I I don't think it's my original line, I think someone else said it. There's a lot of definitions of design out there too. I mean there's also design as dialogue or Problem solving. You guys go straight there. Um I can go with like ten more, but uh uh but yeah, I like I like art applied applied to problem solving because I think that um Design is often uh there is some component of uh creativity to it. And unique expression that you're trying to provide and create and put out into the world.

7:38 But you are also trying to do it and match it to a user need. A problem that needs to be solved. And uh I I think that um it's not pure art. And if you but if you lose the art

7:51 And you're just solving the problem. Like it's totally utilitarian and it has um they l they lack soul. And so the combination of those two things uh is to me really beautiful. I'm going to pivot to a very hard hitting question. I hope your PR people don't kill me for asking you this. Many people asked me to ask you this question. Okay. Very important. Please explain a figma tradition called raccoon feet and muffin hammer.

8:16 Okay. Um I should probably just leave this interview now. Okay. So the this is a a a conversation. I'm not sure exactly where it started, but it started early Figma. And basically we had these um lunch tables at Figma where We would just kinda all gather and have very long, interesting meandering conversations. Before we got back to work.

8:38 And uh One of the questions that was a would you rather was would you rather have raccoons for feet or muffins for hands. And I I think this is this is a deeply philosophical question. Uh I pondered it. Uh since I've heard it, I still don't have uh one answer.

9:00 If you've got an answer, I'm curious what it is. I've got follow up questions or the uh the the racuna. Can you control where the raccoon take you, or are they just deciding on their own what's happening? I think that raccoons um probably wouldn't even agree with each other where to go. Okay, that's complicated. Uh I mean if if you had raccoons for feet right now. Do you think that it would interfere with this podcast? But uh muffin hands would also interfere with my newsletter and it's like I'd be out of work. I don't know if you can type. I need a special keyboard.

9:28 Okay. This is very difficult. You haven't even thought about the upside of this yet. Yeah. What are the upsides? We can get there. But then maybe you could eat it. Yeah. If you have muffins for hands, you know, maybe if you're hungry. Do they regenerate after as you eat them? That's a good question. Okay. There's no answers here, just questions. Do your nails grow? Yeah. Oh, okay. Interesting.

9:52 Mm. It's deeper than you might think. Okay. Okay, um I'm gonna play a short clip. With Rick Rubin and then have a question about it. So we'll see if that plays.

10:06 But exactly what he does and how is difficult to describe. Do play instruments. Barely. Do you know how to work a soundboard? No.

10:16 Maybe no technicality. And I know nothing about music. You must know something. Well I know what I like and what I don't like. And I'm I'm decisive about what I like and what I don't like.

10:29 So what are you being paid for? The confidence that I have in my taste. And my ability to express What I feel.

10:41 has proven helpful for artists. Okay, so I'm not gonna say this is you. You need to grow the beard. But I think this is a little bit you because what I've heard from a number of your colleagues is that one of your superpowers is intuition. And product taste and

10:59 Someone said that you have the sixth sense for what's gonna work when you're designing Figma and you're making decisions in the product. So I'm curious how you've built and refined your Intuition and product taste when it comes to Figma and then even broadly. That's a lot kinder than I thought you were gonna be. I thought you were gonna be like you don't know how to code and you don't know how to design. No. Um Uh no, I I I

11:21 I mean I I think um Though here's my framework for it. I think intuition is like a hypothesis generator. And Uh you're constantly generating these hypotheses. And others are generating hypotheses as well.

11:34 And you then take these hypotheses and you put them forward. And you debate them? And you try to find data to support them or negate them. And then you win it down into like what is our working hypothesis. And from that, uh you move forward.

11:48 I heard that you read every tweet that mentions Figma and share them with folks and there's a Slack channel repaste them. I imagine that is a part of this, where you're just constantly watching what people are saying about Figma, what people are complaining about. I mean I I I definitely look Everywhere. I'm trying to constantly ingest information about Figma. Uh and it's not just like

12:09 Twitter slash X, whatever that's called now. Uh But You know, anywhere on the internet, support channels, et cetera. Um And

12:20 Uh yeah, I'm I'm always trying to understand I also ask a lot of questions. Um And I try to get to the root problems and understanding.

12:30 Where people are coming from and what are they actually trying to solve? Uh sometimes people are are saying, Hey, I need X, but they really want Y or Z. Mm. You know, trying to do that myself and kind of engage and dive deeper there, but also to encourage our team to do that. Uh I think leads to you know really good outcomes in terms of what we ship.

12:51 Uh Is there something you've changed your mind about? Kind of building on that. Mm. Either based on customer feedback or some employee just like making a case and like okay, you're right. Is there something that comes to mind of something you've changed your mind about recently? Um

13:05 I Well, it's not recent, but like one good example of me changing my mind uh is that you all have pages in Figma. You're welcome. Um but like

13:25 I I think I have deep skepticism about pages still. Like I'm not I'm not sure they're like If you could freeze time. I could just go and with my team work on Figma for a very long time.

13:40 Um I'm not sure we'd come to the same implementation of pages that we are at today. Uh I I just don't think it's like the most elegant solution. in the context of like the entire system of product design that you could create. Mm. The world told me and our team.

13:55 That that did not matter and it needed pages. And don't worry, we're not unshipping pages. Uh but but yeah, I I'm I'm still very sceptical of them. Uh and I think that In general.

14:10 Probably my team would tell you that Um I don't Always change my mind. Well.

14:16 I also Uh I like build trust of people in deep ways. And I think across our organization.

14:27 If things are not gonna be fatal. Then If I Hear from someone, hey I really think we should do X.

14:35 Then I'll say okay, just go with it. And Here my Feedback.

14:42 Let's see what happens. And then you know. Sometimes they come back to me and they're like, see I was right, but but usually they're pretty polite about it. Just to build on that, something a lot of people uh try to work on is being good at influencing leadership, exec COs.

14:57 What do you find helps you help works to change your mind? What do people come to you with that helps you like, Okay, you're actually right. I think the more concrete an artifact is, or the more you can debate something, the better. Uh I like gas for examples a lot. I

15:14 Try to ask follow questions about things. Um And make sure I fully understand it. And I think

15:21 Uh where I get stuck sometimes is if I like ask fall of questions and we don't have answers yet. And then My response might be let's go find the answers to these questions. And then let's go back to this conversation. If I think it's something that's really important. And I think for some people they might go, Okay, this is actually really obvious. Like I can't believe you're so dense and you don't get it yet. Uh And sometimes they're right, and they come back and they're like, Okay, here's the data, and now can we move on.

15:46 Um then we do. We move on and right. And uh Uh and Yeah, I I just think that um It's it's important though to Just really understand something from first principles.

16:00 Uh for for a lot of decisions. And Maybe it's just a perfectionist quality, but Uh Repeated over time. I think it's it it leads to good outcomes.

16:11 Uh as long as you make sure it's not bottlenecking the organization. Okay, so kind of following up on that, let's talk about product management. Okay. So last year you had Brian Chesky here, I think maybe on this stage, maybe a bigger stage. And he he kind of said that they got rid of product management at Airbnb and everyone cheered and all the PMs were very sad. And he didn't actually mean they got rid of product management. They changed the function and evolved it.

16:35 I'm curious just to get your take. Yeah. It's funny. Surprise after all. Surprise. We're still here. We're still here. I want to get your take on product management. Uh you all have amazing product managers at Jigma. I've had three of them on the podcast already.

16:56 I'm curious just what value you find the best product managers bring to Figma. It's really funny. Uh Last year after that interview. So Yuki, uh our chief product officer had invited me To a dinner.

17:10 Uh for our PM team. And you know it took a while to get out of config. Uh at the end of the day. And I uh I eventually made it to dinner, but I was like forty minutes late.

17:21 And I walk in. In Mexica. uh who was on stage yesterday presenting s uh slides. Take my slides. Slides.

17:33 I She was she was like standing up. And doing a mock, uh Brian Chusky And she she's like standing up in front of the entire product team and she goes,

17:45 And then Brian Cheske's like There don't need to be any PMs and Dylan's like, ooh And I'm like, hi Mika. And you know, I'd never seen her so red.

17:59 And then I gave like a you know like quick Hey PM team, I believe in you. Thank you for your hard work. Uh but seriously, I I um Uh I think that if you kinda zoom out It's Always tricky.

18:14 Whenever you're asked to formally define What is the separation between a product manager, a designer, and an engineer? It's it's always hard to actually create those clear lines. And I think in many organizations they're blurry. But At the end of the day.

18:31 You know, a PM a designer, they need to have some technical expertise. Or at least understand how the system systems work. Uh to probably create the best things they can possibly make. Um you know, a designer engineer. They should probably have some sense of the business objectives, they should have some sense of what users want.

18:48 Um engineer And a product manager. They should have you know, taste and craft and uh in in some sense of the option space.

18:58 And uh some ability to care about or or desire to care. About the visual implementation. Um So I I I and I think y and you can include research in there too if you want to make it four legs of the stool rather than the trio.

19:13 Uh and you can talk about You know, all three probably should have exposure to users and be talking and in dialogue with users. So So I think that um If you think about sort of that that group holistically

19:27 Each is important. If you think but a team, there's all these qualities that you have to have To make a great product. And that's said I think for product managers and the product function What I think it sometimes when you see people that fall down on that function

19:45 It's because they treat it too much like process. I Which is n very important too, don't be wrong. good process uh can help support good outcomes. But

19:59 I think that you can't lose sight of the problems that you're solving. You have to go talk to users. And you have to actually have a strategy. And if you're really good, you should have a point of view. And some point of views are gonna lead to good outcomes and some point of views aren't.

20:13 And there's some sense of taste. And You also have to bring everyone together. And make sure that they

20:23 That it's celebrated. Uh and that Then the project. Or uh when you complete a milestone. Everyone's stoked.

20:30 Otherwise It's not gonna be a team of gels. You're not gonna get to the next outcome. Even if Yeah, you get to an outcome and

20:38 You know, it's a milestone, but if everyone's unhappy, like you kinda failed. Mm. And so somehow good product people are able to do all this and they're able to create great frameworks that bring everyone along. With them. And so everyone's able to have a shared headspace around.

20:53 What it is they're trying to get to. Someone once said that If a PM if PM's disappeared, or if a PM goes on vacation. Uh everything's okay for like a week or two or three and then things start to crumble a little bit because they're They kind of glue everything together. Do you I don't know, do you find that sort of thing?

21:10 Let me actually ask a different question along those lines. bullish on the future of product management. Do you think PMs will continue the way they are? Do you think PMs will dwindle? Any sense of the future of product management? Um I think

21:25 Probably Everyone's learning to do a bit more of everyone else's job in this current moment. Uh that said I definitely think there's still Immense value.

21:35 uh in product, men's value in design, and engineering. Will continue to exist. So maybe just I just want to come back to the question of just uh what the best PMs that you work with. Do you find what value do they most bring?

21:52 I guess is there anything that's like here's what wouldn't be gone if we didn't have these PMs? The best PMs I think uh Again create those frameworks. that bring everyone else along and those frameworks also have a point of view and a strategy associated with them. Mm.

22:08 Take the strategy, take the point of view. Wrap it all up in a framework. And then Make it so that uh everyone knows what the destination is. And how to

22:18 How to get there. Awesome. Okay, so kind of along these lines, something I've heard you're really big on is simplification. Uh somebody told me that when you're in a designer view and things just feel too complex to you, uh quote, you furrow your brow and Why is simplification so top of mind for you? Why is it so important for you and just why is it so hard to do?

22:41 Oh gosh. Um Well I think probably anyone here who's like worked on product knows how hard it is. Uh It's I think The the more that you add. Uh the harder it is

22:53 To Create something that's coherent. Um You know the one one uh essay that Evan, my co-founder, introduced me to early on in Famous History. Uh I think from

23:03 Uh Uh Stevie's drunken ball grants or something like that. Uh contains the term irreducible complexity. And it's basically this idea that like one plus one does not equal three. It sometimes equals like one and a half. Uh and the more that you add and the more that you continue to put in something

23:21 Um the more complex it gets and the worse it gets. Mm-hmm. And I think this is definitely true for tools. So in the context of Figma Uh we can make that more powerful.

23:32 But to do that in a way that's not making it more complex at the same time is extremely hard. And We have to always be paying attention to how complex or how simple things are. Uh

23:45 Because If we don't, it just kinda becomes a monstrosity really fast. And there's parts of our product that Like I I don't want to dive into that part of the conversation, the self critique, but uh Um Definitely like as I'm in conversation with

23:59 A bunch of our product leaders at Figma, there's parts where it's like okay, this thing is too complex. as a system. And we made like all the right local decisions. And yeah. Together they're too complex, and they're not.

24:10 Working anymore. And let's go revisit the system now. This episode is brought to you by user testing. Transform how you build products and experiences with user testing. Get fast feedback.

24:23 throughout the development process, so that you can build the right thing the first time. Make better decisions that lead to better business outcomes. Companies are being asked to do more with less. They need to move quickly to build experiences that meet changing customer expectations and do so faster than ever, all while minimizing risk and costly rework. With user testing, you have a trusted partner in experience research. They empower user research, product, and design teams to make higher confidence decisions with human insights. Learn more today at usertesting.com slash Lenny. I know you just redesigned Figma. I imagine part of that came from things are just getting too complicated. Not as simple as we want. Is there anything that's been like the bug in you in the old Figma that like, oh this is way too complicated. I really want to simplify this thing. Yes. Okay. What's that?

25:15 Many things. Sounds good. Um Okay. And in terms of How to keep things simple. So I had Darmesh Shaw on the podcast. He's the co-founder of HubSpot. And the way he described it is that you're always fighting the second law of thermodynamics and entropy, just the product getting more complicated. And he kind of sees himself as part of the solution. If you uh top down you have to like be on top of that. Is that the way you see it? Like that's kind of your role to keep things simple? Do you think People.

25:43 Further down the ladder can do that or I don't know. Absolutely, yeah. Everyone's responsible for simplicity and I think another quote that is not mine, but is a really good one is you know, keep the simple things simple, make the complex things possible. I think that's a really important thing. Uh

25:58 uh principle to hold as you're designing tools. Um And I'd say that uh it's really easy to make the simple things complex, unfortunately. Okay. I wanna pivot to talking about early days Figma.

26:13 Sure. So I don't know how many people know this, but it took three and a half years to launch Figma from when you're beginning to work. Don't do that. Okay. This is this is my question. So it took three and a half years to launch and then five years to get your first customer. Uh Dylan, what the hell were you doing all that time? I don't think you think five years for a first

26:31 Well okay, paid first paid customers. Yeah, okay, fine. Um Slightly less, but but approximately five years. I guess we can round up. Yeah. Uh I mean I think that

26:44 You know, if if we had if I'd been probably better at hiring and recruiting. Like if not I see Naughty in the audience, um making eye contact with her the entire time for some reason. She's our our chief people officer. If she had been at Figma from day one, we would have hired probably faster. And uh And we would would have gone into market faster. But I think that um Yeah, it was it was a hard

27:06 product uh to build and to get everything to come together with. Um and uh I think For

27:16 Uh Sho is joined us as a director of engineering. He's a VP of product now. Again, people can wear many hats. Um and He was someone that joined Figma. And uh said, Hey, we all need to ship this thing. You're really close. Um and he really helped catalyze

27:34 Us to ship. In that moment and yeah, I think he week one. He gave a presentation and it was like Here's what we gotta do. Here's the gap. Everyone agrees on it. Let's go. So

27:45 And so you already said that you wish you shipped earlier. Is there any advice there for just people building something today of get it out as fast as you possibly can? Like everything they tell you about uh You know, making sure that you get a product out really quickly. Is Totally true.

28:00 The faster you get out, the more feedback you get. That is a positive thing. And um No I I index on that when we Try to build.

28:11 And fig Jam's a great example of that. We shipped it incredibly fast. Um And it helped us get to market and get feedback faster. Thinking the slides. Great example of that too. Dev mode for what it's worth.

28:22 It takes us longer. Uh we Just had to keep iterating. And Building it and building it again.

28:29 Uh You know, certain directions we tried didn't work out. And we really had to get to a place where We were Able to

28:37 Um really believed that we were adding value and really understood the developer's user. And it just didn't happen for a long time. So it's it's interesting because I think people look at dev mode and sometimes they go, Oh this is this is quite simple. So point about simplicity. Um

28:52 You know Sigma uh Mike. Like w is this is this uh simpler than fig jam.

28:59 Yeah, and the reality was it took like At least three times as long. Mm-hmm. So you your advice is ship quickly. There's also this kind of push that could hold a bar for sure. That's that's kinda the question I have is there's also a lot of talk of just like the the bar has risen.

29:15 Uh you need especially B2B software craft is really important. You need like Linier talks a lot about this, just like the bar is very high for people to switch from something out there. Is there anything I don't I I don't know. I don't think you'll have like here's the answer when you're ready to ship, but just any advice of just like here's good enough versus like no, you should probably wait. Well Yeah, another thing that Evan taught me was that um For new ones, you got quality features, that wine choose two. And uh I think that

29:43 The beautiful thing about software is you can keep iterating on it. So it's not like a physical product where you have to always have quality in there, otherwise it's never gonna have quality. You can ship it with features and deadline and then improve it iteratively over time. I'm not saying you should always do that. Sometimes you need to at least have a minimum bar of quality for the yeah. The things you have and

30:02 We're gonna ship us features, maybe? Uh you can choose. And sometimes you can't. Say actually here's the minimum feature set and we're gonna have this quality bar and You're willing to push it out.

30:15 When you're introducing a new thing. What it's gonna take. And then uh to make that minimally awesome product. But also When your um Yeah, I think that that um when you're

30:28 It will be improving it, but you shouldn't just be focused on the features, you have to focus on the quality too. Uh I like this term you use, minimally awesome product. Love it. Um The Okay, so the way you got your early users for Figma is quite fascinating. I don't know how many people know this story, but you basically wrote a script to scrape Twitter and create a s a graph of the most influential designers on Twitter, and then you made it your mission to convince them to use Figma and make them evangelists.

30:55 Uh is there anything more to the story there? And then I have a question about it. Kind of along those lines. Yeah, I mean uh you can't do this anymore, first of all. Uh because the Twitter API doesn't exist anymore. Um

31:09 Uh but um Uh I mean look, I was uh intern at LinkedIn and when I was there I saw uh some really cool work people had done with Gefi. Uh which was a sort of network visualization tool. And Based on that

31:23 Uh I thought it'd be interesting to try to do it. Like you said, look at who the design network was. Who the central nodes were. Which you can just run page rank on. And see.

31:33 Uh and you could do that for other communities too, which I I've I have done in the past, I just'cause I'm curious about social network dynamics and social network analysis. Uh And um And you could just like do those things. Back in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen when Figma started.

31:48 I So yeah, so I I kinda constructed this list of like here are the most central designers in the graph. But also then I like looked at their work. And the ones that I was really inspired by and like As

32:01 And someone who like wanted to learn as much as they could about design. Uh was inspired by these folks. The ones I was inspired by I reached out to. And said, Hey, can I buy you a coffee? And most of them were really kind. The design community is amazing.

32:16 And uh they said yes. And then from there was able to Learn from them, show them Figma, get their feedback. And uh I I think it started honestly more as like uh me fanboying, me getting feedback. I mean one example is Tim Van Dam.

32:31 Uh, you know, if I saw him on dribble, you know, Max Valtar, I'm like, Oh my God, this guy is Just genius. These icons are incredible. Like I I think um The first time I met Tim Was it Dropbox?

32:45 And uh I had this total fanway moment I'm like I've been tracing your icons. Like Hi.

32:54 Um And uh I didn't working on vector networks with with a team. And uh my y my test cases were like a lot of his icons. Um And uh'cause they were just like beautiful and I liked looking at them and studying them and

33:08 Yeah. To now have Tim on the team and have him like doing the icons for UI three. Is like such an honor and Like privileged to work with

33:17 Someone of that craft. Uh So yeah. Um So reaching out to your hero sometimes works. It's interesting'cause when people hear that story, when I've heard that story many times, it was always like here's a growth act, find the most influential

33:31 People in your field go try try to convince them to use your product. And the way you're describing it is you were using it more as feedback. I just want to show you the product, get your feedback, make this better, and then ended up working. They're like, Oh, I love Figma, I'm gonna use it. Well I think it especially works for designers that way. Cause designers are really good at giving feedback. Like it turns out that not everyone is good at giving feedback. Uh but yeah, designers are are awesome at that. So we're really lucky. And I mean literally, you know, early on in Figma's existence.

33:57 Folks, uh I I think Pyer Murjabi is here somewhere. Uh I'm not sure if he's in this room, but um I was hoping to see him before the end of config. Yeah, Pyam wrote like A very long dock for us about all the things that he wanna see in Figma. uh after we did like a a user research study with them um with a bottle of wine because our our text editing didn't work very

34:18 Well then. Sorry I'm that you just thought you knew we'd need a bottle of wine to finish and it took like hours'cause the type of sentence in Figma was so slow. Mm. That reminds me of a a story I've heard where uh your f one of your first customers was Coda, sponsor I think of Config. Uh used to be call Crypton. Uh and there's a story where you installed Figma, you helped them get set up.

34:40 You drove home. And then they called you like hey Figma's not working anymore. And you drove back. Like yourself to help fix them and it turned ended up their Wi Fi was down, right? Or there's a Wi Fi issue. I don't remember what the solution was, but uh we were like halfway home

34:57 Uh and uh somehow I saw Uh definitely is not something anyone here should do. Uh But yeah, somehow found out that that they were.

35:11 Had an issue and we turned the car around. Yeah. And they were um Shashir is amazing, by the way, and like has been a mentor for a long time to me and many people on our team. And uh He I I think at the time did not know he was the first customer.

35:26 Later on. Uh He came over to Figma's office. And I introduced him without really thinking about that. And I was like, Yeah, this is Shashir, he's the first Yeah, his team was the really the first user of Figma as a team.

35:41 Uh and he goes, Wait a second, I am? Amazing. Okay, I want to talk about uh something totally different.

35:51 you are good at is you spot trends ahead of other people So obviously WebGL you're on early and that's what the allowed figments exist, building it in the browser. Uh I saw you tweeting about crypto punks way before they were worth millions of dollars. You're just like crypto punks, look, I got a few. They're really really cool. They're super cool. Little pipe. Um

36:11 I'm curious if there's anything these days that you're really excited about that might become bigger in the future. Yeah. Well we talked about web sim. I I mean I I we're just talking about them backstage. And uh And I think in before this conversation too. Yeah.

36:25 That's an example of something where It's so interesting'cause it's like there's a generative generative UI component and yet it's not What we're going for for Figma, it's totally different. Um So we actually invest in WebSIM u with uh Figma Ventures. Maybe explain what WebSIM is for folks that have. Yeah, WebSim is like a um hallucinated internet, basically.

36:45 Uh you can use different models like Claude or GPT. Uh four oh

36:54 Uh you can Do that either. Through their defaults, or you can use open router to get like a bigger context window. And The more that you use it, the more you construct this context window.

37:05 of this almost universe that you're building up. Websim. And as you do it, uh, it's almost like you're world building. And uh I just to like Gotten deep and geeked out on this uh when I've had time and they've evolved the platform a lot. So, I'm gonna go ahead

37:22 Like we were back there and they were showing me some new functionality that's really cool too. But uh but yeah it's I think So interesting to to see it as like this like almost lean forward entertainment tool. Uh using the internet.

37:36 So I thought you would answer this. And so we're gonna have a picture come up here that I I tried web sim. and played around with it and hopefully a photo comes up somewhere. Okay. So this is so all I typed here was gmail.com slash Dylan Field. So this is in an invented Gmail. Just came up with this using AI. This is not actual information, nobody buy stock based on this. So it's pretty common on seventy five percent year over year.

38:12 Yeah. Yeah. Did you try you? What was your inbox like? No, it didn't do me. I I don't think it wouldn't have anything if you like that. Uh so yeah, the way it works is just you type a URL or a prompt in the URL field and it'll just invent what that website looks like. It's awesome. It's awesome. So I think they're gonna get a lot of traffic right now. Someone posted

38:35 In our random channel on Slack, they said I had a dream last night. It's always a good start for the random channel. So I had a dream last night that I was working on uh Uh fig jam, but it wasn't fig jam, it was frog jam.

38:52 And so I uh I And WebSim was like Figma.com slash frog jam. Uh and it came up with a whole marketing website complete with like toad puns. For a frog jam. Sticky notes.

39:08 Were lily pads. And you were supposed to like it had this whole metaphor of hopping from Glypad to lily pad to generate new ideas? Genius. Awesome. This is genius. Okay, so Interestingly, before Figma

39:24 Your only other job was an intern at three different companies. And now you're leading this juggernaut of a business, thousand plus people. I imagine there's a lot you've had to learn over this time. So I'm not gonna ask you what you've learned because I think it's probably a lot. I'm curious just what does most help you

39:42 Scale and learn? Is it exec coaches, is it CO friends, is it hiring execs? Like what's most helped you scale with the business and become the leader you are today? I think all the above. Um And also just having like a mindset of you have to constantly adapt. And uh grow and change and adapt.

40:00 Um But yeah, I would say that mentors can come from anywhere. It can come from the community. All of you Uh mentorship can come from the people you hire. It can come from, you know, folks that you actively seek out as investors or Uh or explicit mentorship.

40:16 uh and mentors. Um it can come from people that that call themselves coaches. Like uh and you know. What's interesting too is it can come from people you mentor as well. Like there have been plenty of people where Uh they asked me a question.

40:30 at some point and I give them an answer and they think it's insightful for whatever reason. And then years later we're talking again. And I asked them a question, they're like, Well, years ago, you told me. And they like repeat back, but I told them like that's a really good point. Or they've grown and they've changed and they've learned and they tell me something completely different. They give me a new framework. And so I think that uh when you're

40:53 Yeah, like a lot of times when I talk with new founders, they teach me things that are are totally things that I've just never Never thought about it. Our our interns at Figma have been mentors to me in many ways. So it you really have to have a worry mindset and just always be ready. To absorb the information, I think.

41:09 When you were just tinkering around with Figma. Did you ever imagine you'd be running a thousand person company and audience just spellbound by what you're building? There's like people lining up to take photos with your logo in the lobby. Like that doesn't happen. That's very rare. Uh Just to give you a chance to reflect on just how it feels to have built that over time.

41:30 How does that feel sitting here right now? I I feel very, very lucky, but also very humbled by just the community that is around Figma. I mean I I mentioned the keynote, but just like the people that are in the Figma community are the people that are shaping the world's technology. And the chance to to serve them. And

41:48 To make software for them and hopefully Improve their life in some little way. Uh is Such a privilege. It's a responsibility. Uh and one I don't take lightly, but also I try not to like

42:01 carry that as a weight, but rather as like Pump me up and Uh and get me excited to go build for them. So Yeah, when we were talking about this idea earlier, the you you like the first thing you said is it's a responsibility, which I didn't expect.

42:16 Is there anything more there just like wow, I really have to help make it. Very important that we continue to make Figma more and more simple. We make Figma the as powerful as we can. For the people that are in our community.

42:34 Uh That we figure out what people's needs truly. Um And that we advance the state of the craft? And

42:42 Make it so that we do that in a responsible way. Uh And and that we champion design. And and champion quality. So

42:52 We're trying to do all those things. We Son message? But people have been very patient with us and we're very thankful for that. And thankful for the support of just everyone. Uh here.

43:01 And uh and in our community that That are giving us a chance to to make this impact. Is there anything else you wanna oh yeah, there's some applause. Not that you Pause break.

43:16 Is there anything else you want to share, anything else you want to leave listeners with before we get to our very very lightning round, very quick lightning round? Um well no, I just I I think Uh I think we're so early on this journey of computing in general. Um

43:34 And In our lifetimes. We're gonna have the chance to just build such incredible technology and incredible products. And I'm really excited to see what everyone in this room builds, but

43:45 Uh also those everyone on the internet that's Swiss maybe also builds uh and send me cool stuff. So if you s you build something cool, like Message me somewhere. And uh and share it with me. What's the best way to message you?

43:58 Uh email's good. Uh you can probably figure out my email if you use the web for like five seconds or use web sim. And uh uh Twitter slash X is good. Uh those are two places at least. You can find me?

44:12 Dylan, with that we reached our very exciting late round. We only have a couple minutes left. It's a very short one. Do you have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really love other than WebSam? Um Well I'll say that it's not like a favorite product, but I will say that um

44:33 If you get Like Yeah. Not to Yeah.

44:40 I I'm trying to Hesitating if I should say this or not. We'll cut it out in post, don't worry about it. It's so fascin I'll say this. It's so fascinating to look at all the different LMs out there right now. And what each one is uniquely good at.

44:59 And It's really fun. If you can hack them the right way and get them in the right mood, what they'll do. That's what I'll say. Whoa.

45:08 What does that mean? Okay. Okay, interesting. Okay. Uh do you have a favorite life motto that you come back to, repeat to yourself, share with friends or family that you find really useful? Hm. I don't know if I've got a like life motto, but one piece of advice I've always appreciated is

45:27 When people give you advice, they're not giving you advice. They're giving themselves advice in your shoes. Uh I think that's like a an interesting one. So if I gave you advice here. Um giving myself advice in your shoes. Mm.

45:41 Final question. Not many people know this, but you're a you're an actor, a child actor when you're five years old. Do you think you made the right career move? Do you feel like you sometimes regret Acting. Uh yeah, definitely.

45:56 Uh Oh that's my mom. Uh my mom's in the audience and she says yes. We've been talking about product. Uh if you're an actor, you're a product in some way. And um that's not to disparage actors. Actors are awesome. Acting is awesome.

46:15 I loved it, but uh my differentiators when I was five. Uh five and a half, I think. Was that a I could uh I could read. And I can sit still. Yeah.

46:24 Decently cute. Um And I hit puberty and those things were no longer differentiators. And uh then it was like let's let's do some computer science. So to close, we're gonna play uh oh yeah.

46:46 Uh We're gonna play a clip of something I found on YouTube to close. And uh enjoy. Thirty seconds clip. Will you find a world of ideas for your child?

47:12 Only at E Toys. From Barbie to Brio to swimways. E-toys. Where great ideas come to you. Those are good finds. Thank you.

47:27 Dylan, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Can I make one comment about that commercial? Okay, one comment. Okay, one comment before we end. That commercial made that company go bankrupt. Thank you all for joining. Thank you for having me on E. Good luck. Thanks, Dylan. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

47:52 Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast.com. See you in the next episode.

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