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Figma files for proposed IPO

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Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#161

Post by latexr »

rco8786 wrote: post #105
skeeter2020 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this downplays what they've actually built. Their technology is first-mover and incredibly impressive in the enterprise app space, and they've built a big business around it.

That was certainly not my intention. Nothing but respect for what they’ve built. Only pointing out that they entered a crowded space that already had “winners” in it, and succeeded.

Except it was not a crowded space. They did a bunch of stuff no one else was (or is) doing right from the start. Being entirely in the browser, real-time collaboration, vector networks…

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#162

Post by zelphirkalt »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #155
nicce wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know anything about shaders and this is not personal against Evan, but if someone wrotes code that nobody understands, isn’t it bad thing and not good thing? I thought similarly (admired) many years ago, that those people are wizards and that is cool, but the older I get, less I think so. You often can write the same thing so that it is also easier for others to understand. In most cases, when we talk about c…

That's what I was thinking, but then, it is very specialized and high performance code well outside of my domains (font rendering, shaders, C++, high performance / frequently called code is very much not my bread and butter). I frequently glaze over whenever trying to read a post about some optimization problem. Fast inverse square root [0] is succinct and cleanly written even though it uses math symbols instead of v…

Usually it is dangerous to let such people write application level code, but according to the reports in the comments, the guy might be one of the few exceptions, who gets the low level right, but also created flexible extensible structure of code in other places, without it becoming obscure on the application level.

Usually when I see some mathematical code that's not explained at all and has obvious flaws in terms of simple improvements that could be made to improve readability or even something as simple as some comments, I just keep thinking: "Please don't let this person touch application level code!"

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#164

Post by ojosilva »

lvl155 wrote: post #45

Figma is an incredible product but I don’t like what they’re doing with AI. They should focus on enabling UI/UX designers to do more instead of making a glorified Dreamweaver.

So, this is a cash out before AI or AI-first solutions out do Figma?

Seriously, are people starting to replace Figma with just basic LLM or simpler LLM-based solutions? I'm just trying to understand the timing of the IPO and the market. We used to use Figma, but dropped it as first phases of product design loop ended. Basic LLM does not feel there yet, but it does feel like it could be there very quickly.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#165

Post by diggan »

latexr wrote: post #158
F7F7F7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was one of their first Enterprise customers way back in 2017’ish-give-or-take. The brilliance of the system he built was that it allowed for real time collaboration. Which was god send from the Sketch -> Zeplin -> Invision -> Avocode (version management) ‘stack’ that lost Enterprise design orgs were using. Which was already a large leap from what Adobe was expecting us to do with Photoshop/Illustrator (after they d…

> And for anyone who’s going to say “Sketch was Mac only that’s why it failed!” Why would anyone say that? Sketch is still alive and (presumably) well. Apple themselves continue to officially release design files for Sketch with every OS release. They share more resources for Sketch than any other app, including Figma and Photoshop. http://developer.apple.com/design/resources/ > after they depreciated Fireworks I’ve…

> Why would anyone say that? Sketch is still alive and (presumably) well

When people deep into the startup-woods say "Fail" what they really mean is "Didn't take over the world". Their perspective of "winning / failing" is a bit more black and white than the average person.

With that said, Sketch certainly didn't become more popular because the macOS requirement even for viewing the files. I remember that there was some hacks to be able to at least view them on Linux, and other things like Zepplin (or similar) made it even easier, but it was still cumbersome.

Then Figma appeared, offered more or less the same features, slightly worse performance than Sketch, but worked absolutely everywhere and was easy to open and inspect things for everyone on the team. Obviously, Figma ate a lot of the Sketch user-base, which is something I saw in multiple companies myself.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#167

Post by scary-size »

hiphipjorge wrote: post #60
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…

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…

IIRC a few folks from Mapbox joined Figma years ago. They probably know their way around font rendering in WebGL (unsigned distance fields et al.).

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#168

Post by scott_w »

nicce wrote: post #71
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 don’t know anything about shaders and this is not personal against Evan, but if someone wrotes code that nobody understands, isn’t it bad thing and not good thing? I thought similarly (admired) many years ago, that those people are wizards and that is cool, but the older I get, less I think so. You often can write the same thing so that it is also easier for others to understand. In most cases, when we talk about c…

As others have pointed out: if the complexity is in the domain then that's perfectly acceptable. I always remember reading some lines of code in Linux that had a comment above them: "This code is meant to be read by a CPU, not by a human."

The hard part is knowing when the code is complex because the domain/performance requirements demand it be that way vs when the code is complex because the engineer was just trying to appear smarter than they are.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#169

Post by diggan »

Lalabadie wrote: post #57
andybak wrote: post #52

And the cycle continues. Who's working on the "Figma but not enshittified" at the moment?

Penpot is the most solid alternative I know of at the moment.

With the biggest differentiator being that in Penpot, everything is a SVG/Open Standards, which for us web folks is a neat addition. Also developed by a local company in Spain, go Spain! And for the nerds, it's open source and built using ClojureScript :)

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#170

Post by diggan »

habosa wrote: post #110

So much negativity in this thread. I thought we’d be able to celebrate this one. Figma provided an alternative to the evil Adobe empire that was actually better. It’s powered by some amazing tech built originally by one of the founders. It’s still got a generous free plan. I’m happy the employees will get to cash out.

> I thought we’d be able to celebrate this one.

I mean yeah, it's cool and all that the employees and owners get a pay out, but IPOs are generally bad news for users, and I'm sure I'm not the only Figma user here, so makes sense that people are cautious about something that is usually bad news for them.

> Figma provided an alternative to the evil Adobe empire that was actually better

That's the crux, because generally IPOs mean that they'll now slowly turn into whatever it was they were supposed to fix. Maybe Figma will be the 1-in-a-billion products that won't suffer that fate, but it's understandable that people are now starting to casually look for alternatives, given most people's experience with IPOs.

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