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Figma files for proposed IPO

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Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#71

Post by nicce »

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…

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 compiled languages, compiler optimises it anyway, if you use some extra variables and so on.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#72

Post by skeeter2020 »

rco8786 wrote: post #61

Congrats to the team here. Let it be a lesson for anyone worried that “their idea has been taken” or “there already solutions for this” out there.

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.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#73

Post by skeeter2020 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #39
Animats wrote: post #32

There's a president-for-life clause: "Immediately following the completion of this offering, and assuming no exercise of the underwriters’ over-allotment option, Dylan Field, our Chair of our Board of Directors, Chief Executive Officer, and President will hold or have the ability to control approximately % of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, including % of the voting power pursuant to the Wallace Pr…

That generally makes me more inclined to invest as I find that the biggest problem with a lot of public companies is they manage to Wall Street which means putting the short term over the long term, and those are often at odds with each other.

Short term focus is not a control issue it's a fact of life with public ownership. They still need to manage to market expectations or they will be punished, now one person can do whatever it takes to stay focused on only the next 2 quarters.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#75

Post by rib3ye »

urda wrote: post #44

Don't forget how Figma bullied Loveable from being able to use "dev mode" [1]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/15/figma-sent-a-cease-and-des...

Don't forget how Loveable used the moment as an acquisition tactic, which was probably the whole point.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#76

Post by zdragnar »

YZF wrote: post #46
snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the real webpage also needs a better stack I'll call Google and I'm sure they'll get right on aligning their browser's rendering engine with figma's

Is this alignment the issue with your application? Are there design alternatives that would be impacted less by some rendering engine differences? What about other browsers? Versions? Platforms? OS? Resolution/screen size? My huge frontend team can't handle this, even before we used Figma. Isn't the problem trying to get this "web platform" do something it was never meant to do? How would this be solved by Figma usin…

I've been fighting the way figma interprets fonts for years. It's not too bad at my current company, but at my last company things would look great in figma but with the exact same styles applied they'd be wrong in every browser. That's the sort of thing people are complaining about here.

I'm sure there's something fundamentally wrong with the font files. In both cases, they're not standard, widely available fonts. With that said, browsers render the fonts consistently with each other, but not Figma.

There's also a lot of ways that figma can lead designers down the unhappy path. They'll put together two different screens that look great, wave their hands around the idea of "just make it responsive" and when you go in and look, there's nonsensical crap like absolute positioning on elements, or arrangements that don't work with block layouts and force you into convoluted grid stuff.

Figma is clearly built to be useful for web development. It has tons of gaps that lead designers off the happy path. Take out all the "browsers / versions / os / screen size" differences from the argument; my points above would apply to any design tool built for any product. If it doesn't accurately reflect what is possible or how something is done, it's not a perfect fit.

PS: I prefer figma over pretty much every other tool I've used. With that said, there's no pretending that it is perfect, nor any reason to deflect accurate criticism elsewhere.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#77

Post by rib3ye »

boredatoms wrote: post #54
giacaglia wrote: post #6

Its S-1 shows $70M held in Bitcoin ETFs, and board approval for another $30M BTC purchase via USDC! https://x.com/tier10k/status/1940133141546770454

Thats pretty weird, you’d think they would offload things like that to not spook investors

It says more about Bitcoin than it does Figma.

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#78

Post by timcobb »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #66
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…

That's... not a screaming testimony, dude.

> A true 100x-er

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#79

Post by preommr »

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…

> which no one has touched ever since. The engineer who told me this had spent a few days trying to understand it and said (after having worked in this area for years) was stumped by it.

yikes

Re: Figma files for proposed IPO

#80

Post by isaacremuant »

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…

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 very fast but I don't think praising it is the right idea.

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