20VC: Figma Founder Dylan Field on The Biggest Mistakes Young Founders Most Often Make, How To Go Slow To Go Fast With Venture Dollars & How The Design Process Will Fundamentally Change Over The Next 5-10 Years
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2019
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dylan Field is the Founder & CEO @ Figma, the startup that provides a better way to design, prototype and collaborate, all in the browser. To date, Dylan has raised over $82m in funding from some of the world's best investors including Sequoia, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Index Ventures and more. Prior to changing the world of design with Figma, Dylan held roles at Flipboard, Microsoft and LinkedIn and was part of the renowned Thiel Fellowship.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Dylan made his way from Thiel fellow to changing the world of design and prototyping with Figma?
2.) What is the story behind the 4-year journey to the launch of their first product? How did Dylan maintain morale with such an extended window between creation and launch? What are the core challenges of building tools companies and getting initial traction? How did Dylan satiate VCs desire for fast growth with such a long period to launch? Is it possible to "go slow to go fast" with VC dollars?
3.) Sequoia led Figma's Series C, how did the round come together? What was it that made Dylan choose the lead investors for each of his rounds? How did this round compare to prior rounds led by Index, Kleiner and Greylock? How does Dylan advise founders to build relationships of trust and transparency with their VC in short period of time?
4.) How did Dylan approach the topic of board construction? What did he most want to get out of his board? What have been some of Dylan's biggest learnings when it comes to board management? What has Dylan found the most challenging element?
5.) As a young founder himself, where does Dylan see commonalities in the mistakes that other young founders make today? As a young founder, how has Dylan been able to hire A** talent execs? What have been some of the biggest learnings on team assembly and construction through the process?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Dylan’s Fave Book: Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Dylan on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to The 20 Minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:03.6 | and it would be great to see you on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with 2Bs, |
| 0:07.8 | where I'm trying to be more active in taking you behind the scenes of all things 20 VC and stride. |
| 0:12.7 | However, to the founder joining us in the hot seat today. |
| 0:14.9 | And what's awesome about this episode is we had over 15 investors and design experts chime in on the questions, and I've wanted to do this |
| 0:22.1 | episode for a very, very long time, and so I'm thrilled to welcome Dylan Field, found and CEO at |
| 0:26.9 | Figma, the startup that provides a better way to design, prototype and collaborate, all in the |
| 0:31.8 | browser. And to date, Dylan has raised over $82 million in financing from some of the world's |
| 0:36.5 | best investors, including |
| 0:37.7 | Sequoia, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, founders fund, index, and more. Prior to changing the |
| 0:43.0 | world of design with Figma, Dylan held roles at Flipboard, Microsoft and LinkedIn, and was part of |
| 0:47.7 | the renowned Teal Fellowship. And I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Danny Reimer, |
| 0:51.8 | Mamun Hamid, John Lilly, Scott Belski, Dan, Rose, Andrew Reed, |
| 0:55.9 | and more for such fantastic questions today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we |
| 1:00.7 | jump into the show's date, I want to spend a minute to talk about Brex, the first corporate |
| 1:04.5 | card for startups. Brex founders Enrique and Pedro built a payments business in Brazil, but found |
| 1:09.5 | themselves rejected for a corporate card |
| 1:11.3 | when they were in Y Combinator. They decided to build Brex with instant online sign-up, no founder |
| 1:16.4 | liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher than standard cards. Pretty incredible, I know, |
| 1:21.8 | and you can sign up for Brex and get fees wavered by entering the code Harry during sign-up. |
| 1:26.4 | Honestly, it really is such a special |
| 1:28.2 | service. And speaking of Bregg's an incredible high-growth company. Well, a lot of what we do on |
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