Sequoia's Andrew Reed on Figma's IPO: 'A company that's always had extraordinary attention to detail'

live. How you doing? You are live. Uh, here's my New York Stock Exchange. Thank you for having us. You guys look like you were made to be here. We're very happy to be here. decision to put on the suits 6 months ago has paid off flawlessly because we don't have to dress up for something like this. Is this my microphone?

That's your microphone. Wonderful. Uh, how are you doing? Give us your reactions. How's this day been for you? Um, let's see. Well, first off, congrats to your initial public uh appearance at the New York Stock Exchange. It's really exciting. Um, today has been it's been a good day.

You know, you open uh Dylan rang the bell at 9:30 and it's 2:11 p. m. Eastern right now. Sure. So, we've been milling around for many hours and it's a little exhausting.

it opened and yeah, it's amazing seeing the team here um and just the excitement of everyone chanting Figma and seeing all the traders in their swagged out Figma jackets. Yeah, the jackets are going to go and start market, you know, bidding uh jackets after this because those are totally iconic.

The thing that stood out to me is all the little like they really made they really made uh NY their home. Like every like every single place you look there's something Figma and it's just so so incredibly well done. Yeah.

Yeah, this one of my one of the experiences I've had with Figma, you know, dating back to when we first invested seven years ago was it's a company that success overnight success.

the um it's a company that's always had extraordinary attention to detail and you know it shows up when you do an all hands at their office um and the way the board slides the S1 config the conference and um how they applied that attention to detail to the NY is incredible because you know there's applying the attention to detail and then realizing all the things you can do in terms of the signs on the ground and the party outside like they just did an unbelievable job.

You have to be doing things that haven't been done before. Yeah. I mean, I think the the takeover outside was like breathtaking. And I'm obviously very biased cuz when I see the pickle logo, I get very excited. But yeah, it's like Did you see the road show? Did you go to any of the road show?

I heard there was like a long product demo there, which is kind of uncommon. Um, yeah. So, I think it's I think this is true for, you know, uh, many CEOs, but especially for Dylan.

Dylan cares a lot about the product and it's important that everybody who is considering investing in the company really knows what fig not just what Figma stands for and design and creativity and all the things you see but really how the product works.

Um and it was not a five minute flyby, you know, look at the cool, you know, shiny features. The product demo was, you know, they were in the weeds. Um it was Yeah, I was uh I in fact uncovered parts of the product I didn't know existed. Um, but that was good.

I think it's important again like part of, you know, that's like who Dylan is, right? He like actually cares so deeply about every single pixel and and uh every single feature and then that shows through in How early did you actually meet Dylan?

Sarah Sarah Guo was posting earlier that pre-launch they were burning $800,000 a month, which just sounds like that's the most nerve-wracking scenario for any, you know, a lot of founders will go through that at some point. Um, but uh when did you realize what a special foundary was?

Well, Dylan uh and Evan, by the way, I think just uh I think it's it's a nice moment to take a pause and just give a shout out to Evan Wallace and just like an absolute legend. And I think the stories that people here tell about Evan are just, you know, it'll go on.

Um Chris, who's going to come on next, you know, is Figma CTO. He'll, I think, have a lot of he'll tell you actually all the stuff Evan did in the codebase, but allegedly it's insane.

Uh and you know well well and and just going like taking another step back um people have like people love to use Figma as an example that it's okay to take a long time to ship your product and I think most like almost always when I hear a founder say well Figma took four years I go well you're not Evan Wallace and you're not like fundamentally changing you know the way that like software works online uh you you you're just um you're building enterprise workflow workflows you should probably ship like next month.

Yeah. The other thing about the um you know you can take take as long as you need you know um you know Figma there's this there's a something that Roof talks a lot about for our business which is the red queen dynamic. You have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place.

And I think in a world of accelerating technology change like uh in order to win in your markets you just have to run the company faster and do more. And obviously like AI is allowing companies to do a lot more. Isn't the red queen race usually an anecdote of something you want to avoid getting into? Yeah.

Well, that's just the truth of technology I think. Yeah. The truth of venture capital and the truth of enterprise software business. If you look at how you know when Figma went from four products to eight products at config, right?

Like uh the pace I think everyone who uses the product feels it like the pace is just picking up. Yeah. We got a little preview of config and and uh I I messaged Nai. I was like, "Wait, all you're you're announcing all of this at config?

" Like all all four of these like it was like four majors announcements and and that's what that's what picking up the pace looks like and like finding that new gear. Yeah. Uh how are you thinking about uh org design changing in the age of AI? This is something I've been talking to a lot of folks about.

There's taking uh you know designers and giving them the ability to ship code. kind of this flip from going from a zerox engineer, a designer to a 1x engineer. And that gain can sometimes be better than taking a 10x engineer and making them a little bit better because you just unlock this new capability.

How are you thinking about companies just broadly thinking about AI as a as a product vertical that is its own silo versus something that infuses the whole company? What what are you hearing? What are you seeing? So I've been I've been thinking about that question a lot.

Um, you know, the way I kind of craft the archetype would be the creative technologist. And I think in the same way that all of us are capable of scribbling something on a piece of paper when we're bored in a meeting, I think similarly all of us are going to be capable of creating something on the internet.

It's actually interactive. Yeah. Exactly. And I think that has been happening for a while. I think it's picking up steam in an incredible pace. Yeah.

And I think this role of creative technologist I think you know in big companies you'll still probably have siloed engineering product design you know marketing teams I think in our small companies like the founding the founding engineers founding teams people are wearing a lot of hats right and using tools like Figma to do everything from ideiation to prompt something to iterate get in hands of users and to actually you know publish code I think that um the small companies I bet will leave my uh my buddy at Andre said that when I was first pitching them, we we weren't like actually raising it.

I didn't have a deck and so I just was in Figma screen sharing, showing them the the product and showing them all the different ways that we were going to take it and things like that. And it it's just and and again that that that's just like evidence of Figma not being for designers.

I never thought I thought it was a tool for building things. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Uh what one dynamic Ben Thompson has been talking about is that as a public company sometimes it can be easier to do M&A.

Have you ever run into that in your career just broadly of a company that where that is an important factor in kind of their long-term strategy? I've always I've generally the meme has been like stay private as long as possible, but you know there's a reason companies go public.

There are obviously tons of benefits, but uh what what are the what is the M&A dynamic in public and private markets right now?

Yeah, I think the, you know, there's what you learn when you start out at Goldman Sachs and it's, you know, it's, you have access to the capital markets, if you need public currency for M&A, you know, blah blah blah. Tell your story.

For me, the um the the reason why I'm so happy with the IPO timing today is coming off of Config a few months ago and just like feeling the energy. You guys were there and felt the energy amongst the community, like the incredible community surrounding Figma.

Um, and then being able to tell that story and all the stuff we're doing with our new product initiatives with AI and tell it to the broader world.

Um, you know, in the S1 we reported I think 13 million monthly active users, twothirds of which are not designers and um, you know, like did you did you know did you did you was that was that your guess early on?

Did you did you did you fully see that the that the TAM for this was not like how many designers are there and just like add it up and multiply it?

Uh did did you I imagine you believe that it could be used across the tam is it's similar to what I was saying with the you know I think the creative technologist archetype who's going to do a lot of things and eventually in 10 years the way that companies run their product engineering things will probably look very different.

I think similarly like there were there were even you know predating our investment there were definitely examples of teams that went all in on the Figma way collaborative way of building products and you had you know full product engineering design teams at small companies or even at mid-size companies I remember Airbnb and square were in our portfolio and we talked to them before we invested and they were you know early at pioneering this you know we're getting off of the Dropbox links being sent around we you know we're going all in on on you know working in Figma And it turns out there's a much better way of shipping products if you wanted to ship really good products quickly and therefore the entire world seemingly um changed its mind in a few years.

I think similarly some small companies are going to pioneer new ways of doing things. They're going to move really fast. It's going to be obvious that there's like a new archetype emerging. I think many of those people are going to live in Figma.

I think the most creative community on the internet today already exists in Figma. Um, I I always it it it felt even I remember using it as a like a social app like in the sense that like I would get I would it'd be late at night. I would open my laptop and I'd be like, "Oh, Brandon's up.

" And I just go over to wherever he was designing. I'd be like, "Hey, what's up, dude? " I just type a comment and it was like this like it was like almost like uh a lot of people built these in uh these like virtual offices, but like Figma was our virtual office. That's interesting.

Where I would just be like, "Hey, what's up? " or I just like start, you know, I just mess with them and like move change the button colors. Yeah.

The one thing I'm really excited about with um the new products is, you know, they're both raising the ceiling of what it is possible to do for the most creative people in Figma, you know, like with like Figma draw for instance, right?

Like the ability to do like really interesting artistic creative work inside of Figma files and also massively raising the floor for those of us who are, you know, more Excelincclined in our, you know, creative abilities. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Um, and I think it's so rare to find like technology shifts that allow companies to capture both of those things. Usually there's a trade-off. Yeah. And yeah, it's really exciting. I mean, Excel kind of serve the same purpose, but decades ago, right? Totally. Yeah.

Like and and similarly to the idea of, you know, Figma slides came out of this intuition or not intuition, just the reality that many people were torquing Figma files into slide decks. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, I had a a I I had a file called deck formatting that I've shared with probably hundreds of people at this point of like this is how I build decks. Like this is how I build fundraising decks. Here's like, you know, 50 examples for each page. Uh, and I would just send it out to everyone.

They could just copy it and start working off of it. Can you have me that? That sounds great. It's great. I I We don't We don't have to make many decks at at We should start We should start making more decks just for each other. We should. Yeah, it' be great. Uh, last question. I think we'll let you go.

Um, I I want to talk about the culture and and hiring changes and just how uh going public changes any of that. How do you describe the culture of like someone who's a good fit to become a fig mate? Oo, that's a really good question. Um, you know, when I was reflecting the series C lead. Well, yeah.

When I was reflecting on what I was going to tweet today, you know, because there's always a fine balance, right?

like how do I tweet something to say congrats without doing the you know can you believe this amazing event you know so I I kind of went into a very paranoid headsp space of how do I get you know not end up in the wrong quadrant we just go too far just you're welcome everybody you said uh congrats to the incredible Figma team the most creative determined imaginative and positive group of people I'm just so happy for all of your success there we go and I was I almost responded our success yeah so those those four adjectives I think they are um they are uh creative.

I think I tried to pull off an analogy when I was talking to you guys at Config about how everybody everybody who was at Config would be a good tattoo artist for my my face painting artist for my daughter and my brother said that was that analogy did not land. They're very creative. I think they're extremely determined.

I think look this is a company that you know when the early days of burning however much money they were burning a month and not having product market fit and grinding your way to product market fit and all the twists and turns over the last seven eight years since they really you know started their ascent but you still have like the hardcore WebGL crew and that's like it's not like quite like foundation model level AI research but it's like serious engineering.

It's a company that does hard things. They are not afraid of doing really hard things. Um I think they're imaginative. I think that's uh like you know the makebelieve billboard you see in San Francisco.

It's a company that really does think out there and I think Dylan obviously Dylan is on the bleeding edge of technology and they're positive like they are just good human beings and you know looking at obviously the reaction to the um to the IPO is just look around these are awesome people who are so cool.

The validictorian of my high school works at Figma. Her name's Katie Zto. She's aud PM here. She's literally like the smartest person I knew in high school. And you know, now she builds products to Figma. And anyway, um I'm just so happy with that. I really am happy for their success and your success.

We had I didn't put it out, but uh yesterday we did the we did it meme with ramp and it was every person involved. I sent you that. Yeah, that was great. And but now Ramp's congratulating Figma with the big billboard today or the big you know, they had that idea Monday. We're on the phone with them.

and they're like, "Yeah, we think we might get a banner and like hang cuz we're our office is right across the street from Figma's New York office. We should just hang it out. " And it's like this like 40. It's unbelievable.

It looks like you can I will say the the ramp thinking Figma with TVPN and New York Stock Exchange. Today's a big day. Today it's awesome. Well, lovely. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Enjoy talking to everyone else and obviously I hope to see you later. Congratulations on your success, too. Congratulations.

We'll talk to you soon. Let's bring in our next guest to the studio. We are going to tweak some cameras and give you an update. What did he say? Celebrate the moment. Celebrate the moment says Jim Kramer. We certainly are. And we are at 10154 and uh it's getting quieter.

The the the the folks have uh the the Citadel Securities that nobody's manually executing trades.