A $20 Billion Success Story 👀

Learn from the inspiring journey of this young developer who turned Silicon Valley upside down!

In SF, Dylan Field's crowning achievement came on September 15 when software giant Adobe bought his app, Figma, for $20 billion.

One of the biggest deals ever for a private technology company.

This is the crazy story of Dylan Field, Co-founder of Figma.

1. A promising start:

Dylan Field grew up in Penngrove, California in a rather modest family. His mother was a teacher and his father a respiratory therapist in a hospital.

In high school, he became interested in web development. So he started creating websites for his friends. During his college years, he studied fields such as law and politics.

As an intern at LinkedIn, during his first year, he came up with the idea of helping NGOs use LinkedIn data. His boss didn't like it at first...

But Dylan continued to work on the idea in secret... And later, he presented the project in front of the whole company during a hackathon.

The CEO of Linkedin, Jeff Weiner, was impressed and declared his project a success!

2. A meeting that will change his life:

During his 2nd year at the university, Dylan meets Evan Wallace, a WebGL expert. The two young men, both tech enthusiasts, got along very well. He decides to join them in their future projects.

The two geniuses dream of building up a big project.

Both passionate about drones, they want to revolutionize this market. So they give up their studies to start their great adventure. But how to do it without money?

So they apply for the THIEL fellowship, a two-year program for young entrepreneurs. Thiel Fellows stop their studies to receive a $100,000 grant and the support of the founders' network. (God bless America ^^)

First failure...
The drone markets were far too regulated, so the startup failed, so they gave up their project after a few weeks.

3. The beginning of the ascent:

After this first failure, he decides to change his field. Evan is a WebGL expert, so they decide to create something related to this skill.

They explore different ideas:
✎ SaaS photo editing with WebGL.
✎ Computational photography using WebGL.

they even think of making a gif generator with WebGL...

They discuss it with a business angel from "THIEL fellowship" who puts them directly in place.

"Guys, stop your bullshit, you must be dreaming big".

So they start thinking.

• "Developers collaborate using Github."
• "Copywriters collaborate using Google Docs."

That's when an idea comes to them: there was no collaboration tool for designers.

Designers had to work on their own, sending files to each other to make alterations, which was quickly very frustrating.

So he decided to dream big, with a game-changing idea:

👉 Revolutionize Photoshop using Web Gl.

So Dylan and Evan decided to create an online Photoshop where designers could collaborate.

4. The beginning of the problems:

Figma was not an immediate success, far from it....

Dylan and Evan had no experience as managers or in business. They only had experience as interns.

This brought them a lot of problems:

• They wasted a lot of time deciding on the main use case for Figma and in designing the interface.
• They became so obsessed with product development that they only delayed the launch date.
• Employees became frustrated and many left the company. The situation became so bad that their best employees wanted Dylan to get help or leave his position as CEO.

As a result, Figma's internal situation began to spin out of control.

Another problem is the design community. When designers heard about Figma's idea, they began to scoff:

"If this is the future of design, I'm changing careers."

But Dylan and Evan are not going to give up. So they turn that hatred into strength. The challenge was even more exciting! Figma couldn't just be good. Figma had to be exceptional.

And finally, after years of hard work and the launch of Figma in 2015, it was an immediate success!

• Investment requests are pouring in
• Long waiting lists began to form.
• Designers loved Figma.
• Big companies like Microsoft, Twitter, Netflix have become Figma customers.

With persistence, Figma became the success it deserved to be.

The company was valued at $10 billion.

September 15, 2022: Sale to Adobe for $20 billion.