Figma's IPO: Design is everyone's business

When Evan and I started Figma in 2012, our founding vision was to "eliminate the gap between imagination and reality."

At the time, people found this vision a bit confusing and abstract, especially for an early-stage startup. Thirteen years later, with the age of AI upon us, this goal of helping individuals and teams get ideas out of their head and onto a screen feels more possible than ever.

With design always at our core, over the years we've built an engine for product design and development used by teams worldwide to create the software you enjoy every day. We feel immense gratitude to the design community, Figmates (past and present), investors and users who have helped us get to this point. And also: we know this is just the start when it comes to tackling our larger vision. This is a vision that will play out over many decades and I believe Figma's most innovative days are ahead.

In this prospectus, I'm excited to share more about Figma with you as we begin our transition into public markets. Given the trend of many amazing companies staying private indefinitely, you might be wondering why I have decided to take Figma public in the first place. Some of the obvious benefits such as good corporate hygiene, brand awareness, liquidity, stronger currency and access to capital markets apply. More importantly, I like the idea of our community sharing in the ownership of Figma-and the best way to accomplish this is through public markets.

To be clear, that's not a promise of share price growth. Even if we execute perfectly (we won't-no one ever does) markets wax and wane. In addition, you should know that while we've built an efficient business, our primary goal is not efficiency. Our goal is to achieve long-term growth by supporting the rapidly evolving needs of designers.

Some companies run out of ideas as they scale. At Figma, we have more ideas than ever. Expect us to take big swings when we see a chance to invest in our platform or pursue M&A at scale. That means at times we will make decisions that may not seem immediately rational. And, while we always strive to exercise good judgement, sometimes we will make the wrong calls. If you decide to invest in Figma, we hope you will take a long-term view and stay patient-there is so much to build, and we will bias towards long-term compounding (measured in decades) over quarterly share price appreciation.

As an example, we're already investing heavily in AI and we plan to double down even more in this area. AI spend will potentially be a drag on our efficiency for several years, but AI is also core to how design workflows will evolve going forward. Figma Make and the AI features in Figma today are just the start; we see so many possibilities for how AI can help designers and bring more people into the design process.

The impact of AI will extend far beyond the Figma platform. In the Internet boom of the late 90's, the ethos was "build it and they will come." Today, this couldn't be further from the truth-it's easier than ever to create an MVP. It used to be that design was an afterthought. Now design is more than form and function. Design is how you win or lose. Design is bigger than design - and the world needs more designers in charge.

As more companies realize that design, craft and point of view are core differentiators, we will see more experimentation, expression and creativity. We will also see more personas contributing to the design process. To accommodate these new audiences, Figma must strike the right balance between accessibility and power. And we need to create a welcoming environment for organizations to collaborate and make decisions at scale.

Design will evolve as AI is integrated into user-facing surfaces. Right now we're in the MS-DOS era for AI, where the prompt is the interface. Over time new design patterns will emerge that enable deeper domain-specific use cases. Just like the GUI helped everyday users understand the capabilities of computers, there will be a proliferation of interfaces that surface the capabilities of AI through exceptional design.

As the rate of technological progress accelerates, the future might seem dynamic and chaotic. It's also going to be a lot of fun. At the end of the day, tools don't change the world. You change the world. My hope is that Figma can be a peaceful garden where you can nurture ideas-by yourself and with others-and that you can use our platform to make our world a little better.

I look forward to seeing what you create! Thank you for taking the time to learn about Figma, and I hope you will consider joining us on this journey.