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Figma files for proposed IPO

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Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#221

Post by latexr »

virgilp wrote: post #179
latexr wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can define any space as "not crowded" if you narrow it down enough. That was the point really, they entered a crowded space & re-defined it with their offering.

> You can define any space as "not crowded" if you narrow it down enough.

I mean, you’re technically correct¹ but that’s not exactly helpful because the inverse is also true: You can define any space as “crowded” if you widen it enough.

That is to say it is perfectly plausible I am wrong and the space was crowded, but that argument doesn’t really prove or disprove it.

> That was the point really, they entered a crowded space & re-defined it with their offering.

Especially if you allow someone in the space to redefine it. At that point all bets are off and anyone can claim anything.

¹ The best kind of correct: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hou0lU8WMgo

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#222

Post by geodel »

benatkin wrote: post #111
1zael wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> Hasn't he all but washed his hands of Figma?

Great. What's the point of achieving great things with hard work if one is still stuck working with same product for life.

> I have a hard time being interested in something that has such a painful..

Thats okay. One can always use products that are reasonable to their expense budget. Not every product is to be used by every one.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#223

Post by latexr »

F7F7F7 wrote: post #203
latexr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Good point (also, “deep into the startup-woods” is a great way to put it). I suspect there’s a major overlap between those people and the ones who are obsessed with products “killing” another. The same kind of people…

This is 1 part hilarious and 1 part bewildering. You wrote an entire silly imaginary novel about my life based on a poorly worded (to your standards) sentence. Sketch dominated the landscape. Now they are a small percentage of the landscape. I characterized that as a 'fail'. Sure, maybe an inexact word but what else do you call going from 60%+ of the market share down to below 20%? And btw I currently pay Sketch $120…

Er, my friend, you utterly misunderstood my comment. I wasn’t thinking about you at all when I wrote that (I didn’t have any individual in mind, just an amalgamation of opinions I’ve seen shared in multiple places). Why would I? The way I understood (and replied) to your original comment, you weren’t one of the people saying Sketch had failed. I was supporting and continuing your point, not refuting it, though now I understand you were indeed agreeing with your imaginary users saying Sketch failed but disagreeing with their imaginary reasons. My bad, I misunderstood that about your argument.

But if you felt attacked, that is entirely on you. It wasn’t at all my intention, and my comment is pretty clearly a continuation of what the other user said, which in my view also didn’t attack anyone specifically. Yours was one of the strangest and most unexpected responses I got in recent memory, and it took me a bit to even understand why you were so mad and thumping your chest. Hilarious and bewildering indeed.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#225

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#226

Post by granzymes »

dustypotato wrote: post #199
granzymes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly a 356% increase in R&D: FY Ended December 31, in millions except percentage | 2023 | 2024 | YoY ---------------------------|------|------|------ research and development | $165 | $751 | 356% sales and marketing | $201 | $472 | 134% general and administrative | $168 | $316 | 88% And most of that increase came from a one-time charge from allowing employees to sell their RSUs. While not a cash cost for Figma, it…

How'd you manage to summarize these figures so nicely ? Are you good at accounting stuff or are you using some AI tool ?

Manual labor, going back to before LLMs were a thing. I just like reading S-1s.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27701617#27702669

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26362443#26363190

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25143334#25143800

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#227

Post by doctorpangloss »

taminka wrote: post #149
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…

why is it so high? all of their high performance stuff is on device wasm, so all of that just to host their website and like collab features or some such?

Not sure why you are being downvoted for asking a question. One POV is that Figma’s technology can afford to be run expensively. Their on device ie in browser stuff is running on very expensive computers too. It isn’t necessarily optimal. We don’t know.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#228

Post by trollbridge »

dcchuck wrote: post #216

Congratulations to the Figma team! Well earned. It was such an exciting product when it hit the scene. It became the standard so fast, and it was easy to see why. When there were talks of them being bought for $20 billion I thought it was a great deal for Adobe - and that was before seeing these impressive financials. I will admit I have waned enthusiasm a on Figma over the past couple of years. I find the UI churn c…

Others do, and an IPO and the resultant financial pressure means we’ll be looking for a different platform to migrate to. Products simply never get better at this point from a customer’s perspective.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#229

Post by whymsicalburito »

dcchuck wrote: post #216

Congratulations to the Figma team! Well earned. It was such an exciting product when it hit the scene. It became the standard so fast, and it was easy to see why. When there were talks of them being bought for $20 billion I thought it was a great deal for Adobe - and that was before seeing these impressive financials. I will admit I have waned enthusiasm a on Figma over the past couple of years. I find the UI churn c…

I'm a little surprised by this comment because both dev mode and variables are the main ways I use Figma. Our design team creates the design and then the Devs use dev mode to implement what they designed. Dev mode has been great for our team!

Is this an uncommon use case?

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#230

Post by andrecarini »

spooky_action wrote: post #114
danielvaughn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

- Clunky component and variable system; inadequate for more complex stuff with lots of parameters.

- Can't set connectors on Design files (used for documenting the navigation flow between different pages of an app).

- You can set connectors on FigJam files, but if you want to bring your components from Design files then you can't keep the instances synchronised to the component definition. And you can't attach the connector endpoint to some element inside the Design component. It's essentially just an image export of the Design component.

- Prototyping is very clunky and trying to build a flow that has elements reacting to interactions on other distinct elements is either variable hell or downright impossible.

Those are just off the top of my mind. I'm always finding threads from 5 years ago on their community forums with loads of people on the same boat and no activity from Figma side.

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