An inside look at how Figma builds product | Yuhki Yamashita (CPO of Figma)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2023

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Yuhki Yamashita is Chief Product Officer at Figma. Prior to Figma, he was Head of Design of Uber’s New Mobility efforts, and before that a product manager at Google and Microsoft. Adding to his impressive resume, Yuhki also taught introductory computer science at Harvard. In today's episode, we talk about operationalizing quality, the case against OKRs, and how Figma isn't just known for product-led growth, but also for building a community of empowered users. Yuhki also shares why he thinks storytelling is key to being a great product manager, owning the "why," and the potential impact of Adobe's acquisition of Figma.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/an-inside-look-at-how-figma-builds-product-yuhki-yamashita-cpo-of-figma/#transcript

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting this podcast:

• Notion—One workspace. Every team: https://www.notion.com/lennyspod

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Where to find Yuhki Yamashita:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/yuhkiyam

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuhki/

• Website: https://www.figma.com/@yuhki

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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Referenced:

• Yuhki’s guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-figma-builds-product

• Shishir Mehrotra on Lenny’s Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rituals-of-great-teams-shishir-mehrotra-of/id1627920305?i=1000576021672

• Five Why’s template: https://www.figma.com/templates/5-whys-template/

• Dylan Field on Twitter: https://twitter.com/zoink

• Jeff Holden on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffholden

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• Friends of Figma: https://friends.figma.com/

• Camille Ricketts on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-notion-leveraged-community-to-build-a-10b-business-camille-ricketts-notion-first-round-capital/

• Adobe Illustrator: https://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/campaign/pricing.html

• Adobe Photoshop: https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/

• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard: https://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/0385528752/

• The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Stone-Dream-Chamber-Vol/dp/0140442936

• Serial podcast: https://serialpodcast.org/

• The Good Nurse on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81260083

• FigJam: https://www.figma.com/figjam/

• Asana: https://asana.com/

• Slack: https://slack.com/

• Notion: https://www.notion.so/

• Dropbox Paper: https://www.dropbox.com/paper/start

• Figma’s Alignment Scale: https://www.figma.com/community/widget/1030848035996871692

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Yuhki’s background

(09:05) What Yuhki learned from being on a design team

(10:29) Why managing designers is more difficult than managing product teams

(12:20) Why storytelling is important for product managers

(16:35) How to improve your storytelling skills

(18:51) Why PMs need to know the “why” of the product they are managing

(22:34) The importance of developing a community and strong customer relationships

(26:13) How to use different types of feedback

(28:11) Working with Dylan Field

(32:44) Testing at Figma and the branching emerging feature

(34:54) Why your entire company should be using your product

(36:50) The importance of having personal accountability

(38:48) Why Yuhki likes to stay out of the way of engineers fixing their own bugs

(40:50) Yuhki’s thoughts on OKRs and how they are used at Figma

(48:40) Figma’s interview process

(51:45) How Figma’s sales team works by creating human connections and empowering designers

(54:57) How Figma built community and created organic growth

(56:36) Advice for founders

(58:57) The potential acquisition by Adobe and the future possibilities for Figma

(1:01:42) Closing thoughts

(1:03:44) Lightning round

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Transcript

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0:00.0	there's something controversial about this idea that, you know, everyone can see what you're doing, right, or that, you know, multiple designers can be in the file at the same time.
0:08.7	Like, we like to say that one of the first responses we saw O'Alon's Sigma was, this is a feature of design I'm quitting, right?
0:16.1	I'm changing careers and there's that kind of like tension of that narrative tension,
0:21.1	but like that is signal that you're kind of part of this revolution,
0:25.4	and you're trying to change something.
0:26.7	And when you can equip your customers or user base with that,
0:31.4	and I think that's something that they can really get behind and
0:34.4	champions. It's not just that they're chanting for a tool, they're also championing for
0:38.0	like a new way of working. Obviously that's a tall order. Or a thought to kind of come up with that,
0:43.3	but hopefully you're a founder, you're working on something,
0:45.6	your vision is so big that like you have those kind of ideas
0:49.6	and it's like, how do you actually equip your customers to want to talk about that?
0:55.0	Welcome to Lenny's podcast.
1:00.0	I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better the craft of building and growing products.
1:05.0	I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences
1:09.3	building and scaling today's most successful companies.
1:12.1	Today my guest is Yuki Yamashita.
1:14.4	Yuki is chief product officer at Figma where he's been for almost four years.
1:18.5	Prior to Figma, he was at Uber both as a product leader and also interestingly as head of design for one of their bigger
1:24.8	product teams. Before Uber, UQS spend time at Google and Microsoft even taught an introductory computer science course at Harvard. In our conversation, we explore Bigmas
1:34.8	product development philosophy, how they build such consistently great products, how they hire,
1:40.7	what habit Yuki has found to be the most instrumental in his success in his career and also what
	...

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