NPLG 9.15.22: What Figma Got Right

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What Figma Got Right

This morning, Figma announced that they are being acquired by Adobe for ~$20B, the biggest acquisition of a private technology company ever announced. Figma is the poster child for PLG and community-led growth. There are so many things that Figma got right, but in celebration of this iconic acquisition, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite PLG best practices that Figma pioneered.

Dylan Field @zoink

THREAD: This morning we’re announcing that @figma has entered into an agreement to be acquired by @Adobe ! More information here: figma.com/blog/a-new-col… (1/9)

figma.comA New Collaboration with AdobeToday, we’re announcing the exciting news that Figma has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Adobe.

1. Community is Foundational: From early days, Figma CEO Dylan Field prioritized building a vibrant, digital community. I love this quote from him: “The first place is your home, the second place is work, and the third place hopefully is the community of interest – a global, online community of interest around design and creativity. Long-term that’s what we want to do with Figma.” Figma was one of the first companies to have a community page (www.figma.com/community) and was proud to highlight work of the community and democratize access to best design practices and powerful plugins, built by the community.

2. Make Learning Easy: Figma’s mission from day 1 was to build a collaborative design experience in the browser. The product is easy to jump in to and start using. Figma is approachable. Figma went a step further and invested in educational and learning content to expand anyone’s design capabilities. Figma is not only fun and intuitive, but is rich with design lessons and courses.

3. Go Beyond Designers: Designers were naturally the first to adopt the product, but they shared their work with other team members. Figma made it easy to review and collaborate on design work, especially if you weren’t a designer. Figma was inviting and welcoming to use, often as simple as clicking a URL link and exploring the design board. Thus, Figma was able to expand the design TAM (total addressable market) by pulling in marketing, sales, product, engineering and legal teams into the design experience. Before long, many of these non-design team members were launching their own Figma boards.

I would love feedback. Please hit me up on twitter @zacharydewitt or email me at zach@wing.vc. If you were forwarded this email and are interested in getting a weekly update on the best PLG companies (private & public), please join our growing community by subscriving:

PLG Tweet(s) of the Week:

juan @juanbuis

figma: we are the fun, independent way to design :) adobe: what about $20,000,000,000 figma: ok fine

Gokul Rajaram @gokulr

Huge congrats @zoink and @figma team on this milestone. You’ve revolutionized design, invented PLG, and built an incredible community. Here’s to the next chapter!!

Dylan Field @zoink

THREAD: This morning we’re announcing that @Figma has entered into an agreement to be acquired by @Adobe ! More information here: https://t.co/eqJsSlkShq (1/9)

Daniel Gross @danielgross

In case you're wondering what a $20B company looks like at seed, here's @zoink pitching early @figma to me:

youtube.comDylan Field pitches seed-stage Figma to Daniel GrossFigma CEO & founder Dylan Field pitches his company to Daniel Gross as if back in 2013. A special feature of our June Demo Livestream.--Pioneer is a fully re...

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