E1040: Figma CEO & Co-Founder Dylan Field shares insights on crucial moments in Figma’s creation, overcoming SaaS burnout, active vs. passive user-pricing, getting Greylock & Sequoia to invest after they initially passed & more!
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2020
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
7:09 Why ChromeOS is flourishing in schools
11:28 Who are Figma’s competitors & how do they compare
14:12 How does multiplayer mode work on Figma?
17:29 What does Figma charge, Dylan’s thoughts on charging for SaaS: bottom-up or top-down?
30:26 Is SaaS burnout real? Active-user pricing vs. Passive-user pricing & the importance of increasing pricing transparency
34:41 Becoming a Thiel Fellow, meeting Jason at Foo Camp, what happened between Mahalo & Google?
44:52 Jason goes deeper on what happened at Mahalo
46:33 Why Figma releases new features so quickly, the open-design theory & how it makes Figma anti-fragile
48:42 How is Figma handling COVID-19 on an internal & external basis
1:02:39 Figma’s funding history, why Index led the Seed, why Greylock initially passed & wound up investing
1:08:13 Why Kleiner Perkins invested & why Sequoia passed on the Series B & wound up investing, importance of getting to know your lead investors
1:11:05 How Dylan preps for & leads Figma’s board meetings
1:12:05 How working from home has given bosses better insights into who is actually making major impacts
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This Week in Start-U-S-S is brought to you by Fiver. |
| 0:03.5 | Find the perfect freelance services for your business. |
| 0:06.5 | Go to Fiver.com and use code Twist to receive 10% off your first order. |
| 0:12.0 | That's F-I-V R dot com and use promo code twist |
| 0:18.0 | Zendes a service first CRM company with support, sales, and customer engagement products designed to |
| 0:26.5 | improve customer relationships. Qualifying startups can join the Zen Desk for |
| 0:31.2 | startups program and get six free months of Zen Desk products. |
| 0:35.8 | Visit Zen Desk.com slash Twist today to get started. |
| 0:40.6 | And Silicon Valley Bank. For over 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank has been providing banking and financial solutions |
| 0:48.6 | for every stage of the startup journey. |
| 0:51.4 | Learn more at CVB.com slash twist. |
| 0:55.3 | Silicon Valley Bank. |
| 0:56.9 | Ideas bank here. |
| 0:59.5 | All right everybody welcome back to this week in startups. |
| 1:02.2 | We're here today happens to be March 24th. Not sure when you're going to be listening to this. But we are in the middle of the coronavirus and wishing everybody well and everybody's safe and practicing social distancing which we are doing here I'm in the |
| 1:14.4 | studio and our guest is in the studio but we are six feet apart and so we're practicing |
| 1:19.4 | social distancing and we're the only people in the studio except for the engineer |
| 1:22.0 | and we've been cleaning things like crazy on the program today after many |
| 1:26.9 | mentions from his investors on this |
| 1:33.2 | here, he is the CEO and co-founder of Figma, that's FIGMA.com, |
| 1:37.8 | which is a piece of software that allows you to design |
| 1:42.0 | apps, websites, etc. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jason Calacanis, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jason Calacanis and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.