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Figma files for proposed IPO

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Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#111

Post by benatkin »

1zael wrote: post #16
btown wrote: post #10

They don't link to the Form S-1 prospectus from their announcement, but it's publicly available at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579878/000162828025... Their highlighted metrics page: $821M LTM revenue, 46% YoY revenue growth, 18% non-GAAP operating margin, 91% gross margin. It's an incredible success story, and the engineering they did upfront (primarily led by co-founder Evan Wallace) that set the stage…

Evan Wallace basically said screw it, I'm writing a custom WebGL renderer and multiplayer protocol, when everyone else was slapping together existing libraries. Most of us would have built a janky Electron app and called it a day. Instead they went nuclear on performance because that WAS their product differentiation.

Hasn't he all but washed his hands of Figma? I have a hard time being interested in something that has such a painful freemium tier, tries to merge with Adobe, and trademarked "Dev Mode".

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#112

Post by safetytrick »

isaacremuant wrote: post #80
hiphipjorge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former figma engineer, let me be the first to say that Evan Wallace is, in fact, a legend. A true 100x-er. There's still parts of the codebase basically no one at Figma really understands that Evan wrote back in the day. One example of that is something like he adapted a shader we use internally to render font glyphs, which no one has touched ever since. The engineer who told me this had spent a few days trying…

I understand where you're coming from and the admiration for someone for whom no problem is seemingly impossible. I wouldn't glorify "brilliant code" that much though because code should be made to be changed. If it isn't, it's a fragility trait, not a positive trait. Code that no one knows how to change is opportunity lost. I do understand that it may be hard to create stuff for others when you're alone and going ve…

I don't think changeable code is the number one priority. The goal is to solve a problem and code that solves a problem without needing to change is sufficient.

Code that doesn't need to change is a really good sign that you've got something good.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#113

Post by us0r »

> The table above does not reflect our renewed cloud hosting agreement with a third-party provider, entered into on May 31, 2025. Under the terms of the non-cancellable agreement, we committed to purchase a minimum of $545.0 million in cloud hosting services over the next five years. This renewed agreement replaces a previous agreement with the provider.

$300k/DAY AWS bill. I wonder what the "non-cancellable" savings is.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#114

Post by spooky_action »

danielvaughn wrote: post #93
colesantiago wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the incredible lock in Figma has in the design space. Figma just has to jack up the price in order to appease Wall Street quarterly. Business wise it's got a great margin, but the avaricious nature of Wall St. will force them to enshittify the entire product, the engineering doesn't matter unless Wall St. is satisfied.

I’m in a monthly meetup with designers (not randos, these are typically people who are known in the industry), and half the time is spent shitting on Figma. It’s not necessarily the quality of their design product, it’s the business model and their general focus as a company. There are several things designers need that Figma has dragged their feet on for years, and when they do release them, they’re usually behind t…

I'm curious what the missing features are in Figma from a designers perspective. You've mentioned the paywalled variables, what else? (I haven't been a product engineer in years, and have barely touched Figma in the last ~5 years)

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#115

Post by poiru »

rudi-c wrote: post #82
hiphipjorge wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former figma engineer, let me be the first to say that Evan Wallace is, in fact, a legend. A true 100x-er. There's still parts of the codebase basically no one at Figma really understands that Evan wrote back in the day. One example of that is something like he adapted a shader we use internally to render font glyphs, which no one has touched ever since. The engineer who told me this had spent a few days trying…

Font rendering is indeed complex, but the anecdote seems to be misleading readers into thinking Evan wrote obscure code. I worked extensively in the parts of the Figma where Evan wrote a lot of foundational code, and have also worked directly with him on building the plugin API. One of Evan's strong points as a CTO is that he was very pragmatic and that was reflected in his code. Things that could be simple were simp…

+1 from another Figma engineer who happened to work on the text engine back in the day.

I think that Evan generally wrote code that was as simple as possible — there was no unnecessary complexity. In this case there indeed is some inherent, unavoidable complexity due to the math involved and the performance requirements, but otherwise I found our text rendering pipeline very understandable.

Evan actually wrote about it if you're curious to learn more: https://medium.com/@evanwallace/easy-scalable-text-rendering...

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#117

Post by doctorpangloss »

us0r wrote: post #113

> The table above does not reflect our renewed cloud hosting agreement with a third-party provider, entered into on May 31, 2025. Under the terms of the non-cancellable agreement, we committed to purchase a minimum of $545.0 million in cloud hosting services over the next five years. This renewed agreement replaces a previous agreement with the provider. $300k/DAY AWS bill. I wonder what the "non-cancellable" savings…

Figma earns more profit for AWS than it could earn for itself firing everyone.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#119

Post by __loam »

nout wrote: post #116

More and more companies are now holding bitcoin in their treasuries (including Figma according to the filling). It's interesting, but it makes a lot of sense.

It's pretty weird that a lot of the business leadership in tech is earnestly invested in a recreation of the free banking era actually.
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