Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Friday, August 1st.

Today on Forbes, thwarted by regulators, vindicated by Wall Street,

Design Startup Figma's CEO is now a billionaire.

When staff at San Francisco-based Design Startup Figma returned from the Christmas holiday in January 24. They were met

with sobering news. A $20 billion takeover by Adobe, which had been stuck in 15 months of

regulatory purgatory, had fallen apart amid antitrust concerns. In the wake of that news,

co-founder and CEO, Dylan Field, pushed the reset button for the

startup that aims to be the Google Docs for design. Figma slashed its internal valuation to just

$10 billion and offered employees a voluntary exit package of three-month severance.

Only around 4% of the company's 1,300 employees took the buyout.

The move, insiders and investors say, was meant to anchor the company and prepare it for the long-term

future as an independent startup. Figma investor Mahmoun Hamid, a partner at venture capital firm

Kleiner Perkins, says, quote,

the net effect was that you had a lot of extremely motivated folks who have been working

relentlessly to deliver new products. Nearly 18 months later, Fields Gamble paid off.

Figma and its investors were set to raise $1.2 billion yesterday, Thursday, by selling shares

to the public at a more than $19 billion valuation on a fully diluted basis, including options

and other equity awards outstanding.

The tech IPO is among the five biggest in its sector this year.

One of the biggest winners of that listing is

Field himself. At Thursday's IPO price, he is now worth an estimated $1.8 billion, but that may

only be the first chapter of his payout. Over the next 10 years, the 33-year-old could unlock

...