Figma CEO Dylan Subject’s path from school dropout to billionaire

Mark Zuckerberg will be the most well-known college-dropout-turned-tech-billionaire. Dylan Subject is the wellness, after his design startup Figma soared in its inventory market debut this week.

The 2 entrepreneurs have one thing else in frequent: shut ties to Peter Thiel.

Zuckerberg bought his first outside check for Fb from Thiel in 2004, quickly earlier than leaving Harvard College to construct his social community in Silicon Valley. Fb went public in 2012, the identical yr that Subject scored a Thiel Fellowship, which supplies cash “to younger individuals who wish to construct new issues as a substitute of sitting in a classroom.” Over 300 folks have been selected since its inception in 2011.

Subject, now 33, was a part of the second batch of Thiel fellows, a gaggle of 20 entrepreneurs who every took house $100,000. This system doubled that sum earlier this yr. Like Zuckerberg, Subject got here to Thiel from the Ivy League, having spent two and a half years at Brown College in Windfall, Rhode Island.

On Thursday, Figma’s inventory value greater than tripled in its first day of buying and selling on the New York Inventory Trade. It rose again on Friday, wrapping up the week with a totally diluted market cap above $71 billion. Subject’s stake is value about $6.6 billion. Zuckerberg, in the meantime, is now the world’s third-richest individual, with a internet value of over $260 billion.

Whereas the contours of Subject’s story could sound acquainted, he is a really totally different type of character.

“Dylan is, by far, probably the most humble billionaire I’ve ever met,” mentioned Joshua Browder, CEO of authorized companies startup DoNotPay and a former Thiel fellow.

Mike Gibson, who used to assist run the fellows program as vice chairman for grants on the nonprofit Thiel Basis, contrasts Subject with one other tech luminary.

“He is type of just like the anti-Steve Jobs,” mentioned Gibson, a co-founder of 1517 Fund, a enterprise agency that prides itself on investing in dropouts. “On the subject of Jobs’ legend as this hard-charging a–hole, Dylan is the other.”

The Apple co-founder, who dropped out of college after one semester, died of most cancers in 2011, as his firm was on its strategy to turning into probably the most beneficial enterprise on the earth.

Subject was poised to formally enter the billionaire ranks virtually three years in the past. With Figma having emerged as a frontrunner in web-based instruments for designing apps and web sites, Adobe agreed to snap up its budding rival for $20 billion. However regulators within the U.Okay. mentioned the tie-up would’ve harm competitors, and the businesses scrapped the transaction in late 2023. Adobe payed Figma a $1 billion breakup payment.

Figma’s IPO this week represented not solely an enormous valuation markup for the corporate but in addition served as a banner occasion for Silicon Valley, which has seen a dearth of high-profile IPOs for the reason that market cratered in early 2022 as a consequence of hovering inflation and rising rates of interest.

“A very powerful factor to remind myself of, the crew of, is share value is a second in time,” Subject instructed CNBC’s “Squawk Field” on Thursday. “We’ll see all kinds of habits most likely at the moment, over the weeks forward.”

Figma declined to make Subject accessible for an interview for this story.

Subject’s trek again to the Bay Space, the place he’d grown up, started with a TechCrunch article in regards to the fellowship. He submitted his software two hours earlier than the deadline, on New Yr’s Eve of 2011, whereas he was a junior at Brown. He disregarded his SAT scores.

“It’s my perception that the SAT is a poor reflection of aptitude and may simply be gamed,” he wrote in his software, which he posted on LinkedIn years later. Within the essay part, he was requested to supply a extremely controversial take.

“Chocolate is repulsive,” he wrote. “Even the scent of it makes me wish to vomit.” 

In response to a query about how he was going to vary the world, Subject mentioned he was going to construct higher software program for drones, and that he would “cofound an organization with the neatest programmer I do know and work on this drawback.”

That co-founder was Evan Wallace, who had been a instructing assistant for a few of Subject’s programs at Brown. Wallace was technologically gifted, incomes the nickname “laptop Jesus,” or CJ. However he was already 20, that means he was too previous to be eligible for a Thiel Fellowship.

Subject scored the $100,000 from Thiel, and shared it with Wallace, convincing him to depart his educational pursuits. The pair moved right into a small residence in Palo Alto, California.

The drone software program plan had gone out the window. Wallace needed to develop one thing associated to WebGL, a graphics rendering system for internet browsers. A yr later, they have been exhibiting traders a slick browser-based demo that allowed for the motion of a ball in a pool of water.

The plain aggressive goal was Adobe, which was ending development of Fireworks, an app design product that it acquired with the 2005 Macromedia buy.

“We thought, ‘Wait, possibly there’s a possibility right here,'” Subject said on a podcast earlier this yr.

“What we’re making an attempt to do is make it in order that anybody will be inventive, by creating free, easy inventive instruments within the browser,” Subject said in a 2012 interview for a CNBC particular on the Thiel Fellowship.

In 2013, the founders began speaking with traders about elevating a seed spherical. Subject confirmed the pool water demo to John Lilly of Greylock Companions at a Starbucks in Palo Alto. Lilly had beforehand been CEO of Mozilla, the place an engineer developed software program that led to WebGL. He was impressed with what he was seeing, however he did not assume it had a lot financial potential.

Figma took on seed funding from Index Ventures and different traders. The founders assembled a small group of staff at an workplace in Palo Alto. Progress was slow. Early variations of the product did not impress potential customers. Subject was micromanaging.

When Figma would present the product to firms within the Bay Space, reception wasn’t all the time nice. Stress was constructing. Lilly, who ended up main Figma’s Collection A spherical in 2014, got here to the corporate’s San Francisco headquarters the next August as struggles have been mounting. Workers needed adjustments.

“We each heard it,” mentioned Danny Rimer, the Index accomplice who led the seed funding, referring to conversations he and Lilly have been having with staffers about Subject.

“We sat down with him and defined to him the scenario,” Rimer mentioned. “We heard it and we type of mentioned, ‘Look, that is an deadlock. You are going to need to adapt and alter.’ And he heard it and he modified. I believe that is such an important character trait of Dylan, is to listen to the knowledge, be goal about it, course of it and settle for it and act accordingly, if it is smart.”

Round that point, Sho Kuwamoto joined the corporate. Kuwamoto introduced with him expertise from Macromedia and Adobe. 4 months later, Figma launched its debut product in a free preview.

Subject bought concerned with customers. He replied to folks on social media who have been posting about Figma, telling them they have been receiving entry to the preview. He additionally sought out outstanding designers.

Corporations like Coda and Uber turned early adopters. Some designers have been excited by the concept of sharing paperwork by copying and pasting a URL, as a substitute of getting to take care of variations, codecs and updates. Figma operated within the cloud, offering all the required computing infrastructure, so customers did not want their very own highly effective graphics playing cards.

It wasn’t till September 2016 that Figma made the design editor accessible without spending a dime to most people and made it attainable for a number of designers to make adjustments in a single file concurrently. That turned the killer function.

The software program began gaining traction inside Microsoft. However there was a problem. Microsoft feared that Figma’s lack of a transparent enterprise mannequin may result in a burial within the startup graveyard. Jon Friedman, a design govt on the software program big, visited Figma’s headquarters to ship the message, Subject told CNBC in 2022.

“Look, we’re all anxious you are going to die as an organization,” Subject recalled Friedman telling him.

The next yr, Figma launched its first paid tier.

By the point enterprise stalwart Sequoia Capital came on board in 2019, Figma was a sizzling commodity, elevating its Collection C spherical at a $440 million valuation. Sequoia accomplice Andrew Reed mentioned a few of his agency’s portfolio firms had began migrating to Figma, and founders have been utilizing it for pitch decks.

“Corporations typically will present prototypes in board conferences of latest merchandise they wish to construct, and so the very first thing we noticed lots of Figma hyperlinks for was that,” Reed mentioned in an interview this week.

“It was an easy funding,” Reed mentioned. “We went via a few of our previous funding voting knowledge. I believe Figma may need been the very best vote we ever had for an funding.”

Sequoia’s in depth roster of winners over the many years consists of Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Zoom and WhatsApp.

Monetary analysts masking Adobe began asking about Figma. Adobe, which had launched the XD app for consumer expertise design, responded, adding the startup to its official record of rivals.

However Adobe’s market capitalization sat above $170 billion, and Figma wasn’t even a “unicorn,” a standing reserved for startups value not less than $1 billion. Subject instructed Forbes that some job candidates have been hesitant to affix due to the modest valuation. In 2020, the corporate raised a funding spherical from Andreessen Horowitz at a $2 billion valuation.

Then got here Covid. Places of work closed. The world went distant in a single day. Figma’s collaboration functionality immediately turned crucial to the way in which many extra folks labored.

“We requested ourselves: how can we assist groups join, have enjoyable and enter a move state throughout the earliest phases of the design course of?” Subject later wrote on Twitter.

The consequence was FigJam, a digital whiteboard that turned Figma’s second product, and represented a key step towards diversification.

The Adobe noise continued to get louder. In 2020, Subject had discussions with Adobe govt Scott Belsky a couple of partnership or acquisition, however Subject selected to remain the course. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen talked to Subject a couple of attainable deal in early 2021, however once more the Figma CEO demurred, opting to lift a round at a $10 billion valuation.

“Our aim is to be Figma not Adobe,” Subject wrote in a 2021 tweet.

The setting rapidly modified. By early 2022, with the Fed lifting rates of interest to struggle inflation, traders have been promoting out of high-growth tech and rotating into companies with predictable income. Sequoia was encouraging its startups to scale back prices.

Belsky once more approached Subject in April of that yr, this time alongside David Wadhwani, who was main Adobe’s digital media enterprise.

“Mr. Subject expressed openness to understanding the phrases of a possible acquisition of Figma by Adobe, and Mr. Subject, Mr. Belsky and Mr. Wadhwani continued their dialogue of the potential advantages of a mix the next week,” Adobe said in a regulatory filing.

Subject was contemplating the implications of the rise of synthetic intelligence.

“Look, once we did the take care of Adobe within the first place, my head house in 2022 was, “Oh my god, AI is coming. That is clearly exponential as a know-how. I do not know what this does to us. Is that this one-tenth our market, is it 10x our market? What does it imply for creatives and designers?” Subject mentioned in an interview with The Verge final yr. “And I used to be like, it is higher to crew up on this world with Adobe and to navigate this collectively and to determine this out collectively than it’s to go it alone.”

In September 2022, Adobe agreed to purchase Figma for about $20 billion, saying that Subject would stay accountable for his a part of the enterprise and would report back to Wadhwani.

“Adobe has a singular alternative to usher in a world of collaborative creativity,” Narayen instructed analysts on a convention name the day of the settlement. “In my conversations with Dylan at Figma, it turned abundantly clear that collectively we may speed up this new imaginative and prescient, delivering nice worth to our prospects and shareholders.”

That chance by no means got here. An intensifying regulatory setting within the U.S. and Europe had made sizable tech offers extra burdensome. Adobe was immediately within the crosshairs, and the transaction was hitting repeated hurdles.

“We’re anxious this deal may stifle innovation and result in increased prices for firms that depend on Figma and Adobe’s digital instruments — as they stop to compete to offer prospects with new and higher merchandise,” Sorcha O’Carroll, an official on the U.Okay. Competitors and Markets Authority, mentioned in a press release in mid-2023.

Round that point, Subject introduced one other step towards product diversification by introducing Dev Mode, which turns Figma designs into supply code that may function a place to begin for software program builders. The reveal got here at Figma’s Config consumer convention in San Francisco, which attracted 8,000 attendees.

The U.Okay.’s investigation dragged on for months. Subject was pulling double responsibility working the corporate and fascinating with regulators. Adobe had mentioned it anticipated to finish the deal in 2023, however time was working out. Regulators have been proposing remedies that the events did not like.

“Even towards the ultimate months, there have been these moments of, ‘Oh, that is going to undergo,’ and moments of, ‘F—, what are we doing?'” Subject instructed The Verge. “And clearly on the finish, there is a mutual understanding of,’ This determination has been made for us and let’s name it.'”

On a Sunday in December 2023, Subject gathered board members for a 10-minute name, informing them that the deal was off. The official assertion adopted early on Monday morning.

“It is irritating and unhappy that we’re not in a position to full this,” Subject told The New York Instances.

Not everybody in Subject’s orbit noticed it that manner. Grammarly CEO Shishir Mehrotra, a buddy of Subject’s and longtime Figma consumer, mentioned the entire ordeal was having an influence.

“You might see it in his face,” Mehrotra mentioned of Subject, including that he was relieved when he discovered Figma would stay unbiased. “He was getting older proper in entrance of us.”

However Figma had some enterprise considerations. Its internet greenback retention price, a measurement of the corporate’s potential to promote extra to current prospects, slid from 159% within the first quarter of 2023 to 122% by the tip of the yr, in response to Figma’s IPO prospectus. Figma chalked it as much as a troublesome comparability from the yr earlier than, due to the launch of FigJam, and financial uncertainty that triggered some shoppers to scale back seat counts. The retention price bounced again to 132% within the first quarter of 2025.

Throughout the 2023 winter holidays, Subject thought-about methods to rally the workforce. After the brand new yr, he introduced internally that Figma would give further fairness to staff who joined or acquired promotions following the acquisition announcement, as a result of the valuation was going again right down to $10 billion. He mentioned any staff who wished to depart would get three months of severance, with no laborious emotions.

Fewer than 5% of staffers took him up on the supply.

As Figma pursues a go-it-alone technique, it faces an existential query: Is the corporate prepared for a future dominated by AI?

In Might, Subject took the stage at Figma’s consumer convention earlier than 8,500 attendees at San Francisco’s Moscone Middle, carrying a black “Config 2025” T-shirt. He walked the group via a slew of latest merchandise, together with Figma Make, which pulls on Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a big language mannequin from AI startup Anthropic.

“With Figma Make, you could possibly take an current design and immediate your strategy to a totally coded prototype,” Subject mentioned.

A product supervisor, Holly Li, got here up for a demo. At a laptop computer, she copied the design for a music participant within the Figma editor and pasted it right into a chat field, typing directions to rotate the album artwork like a report whereas a tune is enjoying. She confirmed apps created with Figma Make, eliciting some cheers, and returned to the demo.

“Okay. This time, the mannequin had slightly little bit of problem, however that is okay,” she mentioned. The cloudy background picture from the unique design was gone, and observe names turned tough to learn. The group was silent. She introduced up a working model in a unique browser tab.

The function went dwell final week. Mehrotra mentioned it is off to a very good begin.

Different merchandise out there have been constructed with generative AI in thoughts. They embrace Lovable, Miro’s Uizard and Vercel’s v0. Brent Stewart, an analyst at Gartner, mentioned that Figma is “completely, completely dominant” in design however that among the choices from different firms look extra spectacular.

Andrew Chan, a former Figma software program engineer, wrote in a blog post final yr that “an attention-grabbing and ongoing query is whether or not Figma can repeat the success it had in design with different merchandise.”

Nadia Eldeib, a former Lyft product supervisor and CEO of startup CodeYam, tried Figma Make earlier than the broad launch and put it up in opposition to Lovable and v0. Writing on Substack, she mentioned it gave the impression to be at an earlier stage.

It is the type of suggestions that Subject will learn and ship to his staff, often known as Figmates. He reads help tickets and mentions of Figma’s title on X, previously Twitter. He took no break day to handle such issues on the very day that his firm was conducting its IPO, in the end pricing shares $1 above the anticipated vary.

Yianni Mathioudakis, a inventive director in Maryland, tagged Figma in a publish on Wednesday, asking if anybody had discovered a strategy to take a Figma Make design and produce it into the primary design editor.

“Hello Yianni, we’re working in the direction of this and really enthusiastic about what it can unlock!” Subject replied. “Please hold the Make suggestions coming!”

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