From College Dropout to $20B

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Happy Tuesday and welcome to Through the Noise!

We're a day late after yesterday's funeral of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

But today, we're zooming in on the story of Figma. It was announced only last Thursday that Adobe would acquire the company for $20B. Time to uncover how two college students changed the world of design forever.

It’s time to strap in and enjoy.

Read time: 3 minutes

College Dropout to $20B Success

In 2012 two college students changed the world of design forever. They built Figma to a $20B exit. Here's how they did it.

The world is moving from physical to digital:

Word processing → Google DocsCode → GitHubContent → TikTok

Design is just the latest chapter. Figma is did for design what Google Docs did for word processing. But it wasn't always that straightforward.

Dylan Field started work on Figma in 2012 when studying computer science at Brown University. As part of Brown’s undergraduate computer science group, he met Evan Wallace. Wallace spent his summer interning for Pixar and built an algorithm rendering a ball bobbing in a 3D pool.

Soon after, Field was named a Thiel Fellow earning him $100,000. This led him to drop out of Brown to start a business.

After a handful of failed ideas (including a meme generator) the pair began researching Adobe's photo-editing apps. This was the start of David vs Goliath.

Field and Wallace noticed a HUGE problem.

Adobe was building a solo software experience. If you want to change an icon:

Find design → download design → check email for comments → edit → export → upload

Incredible friction for a tiny output.

Field saw Adobe's 'Creative Cloud' as merely a business model change from software sales to monthly subscriptions. Figma seized the opportunity. They were about to put collaboration in their DNA.

Field dreamt about collaboration from the start. As a teenager he would use Google Docs for all of his high school projects. It was only when Field met Wallace at Brown that his idea started to become a reality.

From a figment of Fields imagination, Figma was born. Standing up to Goliath would be no small feat. They were in build mode for over 3 years until they saw the light.

The company would conduct extensive tests with designers to nail the product including completing tasks in Figma vs competitor. This quickly highlighted shortcomings.

But Field's push attracted attention.

Index Ventures, Filpboard board director Danny Rimer's VC firm, then CEO of LinkedIn Jeff Weiner & others led a $4 million seed round in 2013.

Yet rejection by ex-Mozilla CEO John Lilly, investor at Greylock Partners came at the right time. Field kept asking for meetings with Lilly– he wanted feedback.

Lilly then connected him to former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen for advice.

Lilly led Greylock’s Series A investment into Figma in 2015. Across 6 funding rounds including the most recent $200 million Series E, Figma was valued at $10 billion.

Figma's mission was simple: make design accessible to everyone.

So what can we learn from this story?

1. There's no such thing as an overnight success. You've got to spend time in the trenches (in the case of Figma, 3 years) to start seeing some light.

2. Stand up to Goliath. Figma went after Adobe. Their success speaks for itself.

3. Be a truth seeker. Be irrationally passionate about getting the right information, find great mentors, be undeterred by people who think otherwise.

A Little Something Extra

• 🤖 Tribescaler is now live on Product Hunt. Your support last week was immense 🙏. Feel free to upvote, comment or just drop by.

• 📧 Young Money. My friend Jack Raines writes the best finance blog you've never heard of. His stories are great. His art is rivalling Picasso.

• 🕺 London Hangout. Aadit Sheth and I are thinking of hosting a hangout in London. 4th October 8-10pm. Feel free to fill in the form if you'd be keen.

That’s all for today friends!

As always feel free to reply to this email or reach out @thealexbanks as I’d love to hear your feedback.

Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you next Monday.

Alex

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