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Dylan Field on his biggest learnings from Figma’s 0 to 1 phase

March 14, 2025

Figma’s 0 to 1 phase was notoriously long. The company was founded in 2012, but it took four years before they publicly launched their product in 2016. Figma co-founder Dylan Field reflects on what he learned from this period:

“From August 2012 to June of 2013, that was a period where we were pivoting constantly trying lots of things. But then we had a thesis, felt like there was an opportunity, and started to build it out more. Then it was like, ‘Okay, this is going to take a while.’ In retrospect, we were lucky to have raised money and have resources, but I should have hired faster once we started to get signal from the market that we had product/market fit.”

Dylan recalls going to a user study with a friend who was a designer at Coursera. The following day, his friend sent over a 12-page document listing all of the stuff he wanted Dylan to build into Figma.

“I should’ve taken something like that and gone, ‘Okay, this is clear product/market pull.’ The market was pulling the product out of us. I should’ve then gone and hired faster. But instead I was still very cautious. And so that’s something where I wish — if I could go back in time — we would’ve gone a little faster there.”

Sam Altman gives similar advice:

“In the early days, when you’re experimenting and zig zagging, you’re like a fast little speed boat and want to be able to turn the whole company on a dime. You can’t do that if you’re a big company—cash burn aside, which is another problem. The flexibility of the company basically decreases with the square of the number of employees, so you want to stay really small until you’re sure things are working. Once things are working, then you can get really big.”