Candid with Index: In Conversation with Figma's Dylan Field

In this episode our partner Danny Rimer sits down with Dylan Field, Co-founder and CEO of Figma. Dylan talks about his entrepreneurial journey that began in high school when he was deeply interested in computer science and mathematics. His early internships at LinkedIn and Flipboard, interacting with talented founders and product leaders, led him to consider entrepreneurship as a promising career path.

As an undergraduate at Brown University, Dylan met his future co-founder Evan Wallace. Their casual conversations around the capabilities of nascent WebGL quickly formed into visions of incredible possibility. If tools for designers could be built on the web, then could a whole world founded on collaboration and community power an entirely new design process? Dylan and Evan felt the answer was undoubtedly yes and the idea for Figma was born.

Over the past decade, while building an innovative ecosystem of enterprise design, Dylan’s understated leadership style has evolved and matured, leading to some valuable lessons. He shares these insights with Danny, which include a strong belief in reverse mentorship, the importance of team trust, and the prioritization of customer insights which vary across the world through different communities and cultures.

During their conversation Dylan discusses his philosophy on leadership, his predictions for the future of the crypto market, and what it’s like to build and lead a borderless, open-sourced company that continues to experience incredible growth. Today, Figma has over 4 million global users, and counting, and powers much of the visual design at companies like Airbnb, Microsoft, Slack, and Twitter. On September 15, 2022 Figma entered into an acquisition agreement with Adobe for $20B making it the one of the largest deals ever for a venture-backed startup.

Tune in for the full candid conversation below.