Who developed the web-based design program; How much is Figma worth now?

Setting up Figma was also a very difficult and complex process because:

The company was actually founded on the basis of 'drone, which is an unmanned aerial vehicle'.

Dylan questioned why he dropped out of college during what he called the 'worst week' at Figma.

Dylan Field (born 1992) is an American technology executive and co-founder of Figma, a web-based vector graphics editing software company. 

After investment talks with investor John Lilly, he heard these words from him: “I don't think you know what you're doing yet.”

In 2012, Dylan left Brown University to become a Thiel Scholar. (Thiel Scholarship Program was founded in 2011 by Peter Thiel, a technology entrepreneur and investor, author of Zero to One book. The condition to benefit from the scholarship is to leave the university.)

Then, he and fellow co-founder Evan Wallace (Dylan's friend) began what they then started as Drone; but they started working on their company that would later become Figma.

Figma is a collaborative web application for interface design, with additional offline features enabled by desktop applications for macOS and Windows. The feature set of Figma focuses on user interface and user experience design, with an emphasis on real-time collaboration, utilising a variety of vector graphics editor and prototyping tools. Adobe announced on 15 September 2022 that it would acquire Figma for approximately $20 billion in cash and stock.

After a while, Evan convinced Dylan not to work in the drone field. Because they couldn't come up with "an idea for a drone that doesn't harm people or violate their privacy."

So what would they do now?

Evan had worked on 3D objects years ago. He made a 3D demo of a ball in a pool of water. Therefore, they decided to conduct studies in this area.

Maybe this doesn't seem like such a big deal. But in a browser, it was an indication that real-time graphics could happen. And they thought they could use this technology to create a design suite.

In line with this, they began to create what they call “Photoshop in the browser”. But Photoshop had a lot of features. For this reason, they have developed a number of independent projects:

• Poisson Collation on CPU
• Image Cropping
• Color Lines
• Photo Editor

And the hardest was the funny video/image (meme) maker. The team worked on this project for a full week. Dylan calls that week 'Figma's worst week'. And in the process, “Was it really worth it to drop out of college?” He couldn't help but think.

Moreover, the team did not even have a focal point. Everyone in the company had a different vision for the projects they produced. They had investment talks with investor John Lilly. Lilly was honest with Dylan and told him, "I don't think you know what you're doing yet." said.

After all this, Dylan gathered everyone on the team. They canceled many features including animation, 3D design, photo editor and painting. And they decided to focus on 'interface design'.

Everyone was now gathered around a common vision and purpose. Thanks to this, they moved much faster. And finally they managed to get investment from Lilly.

“The main force in Figma,” Dylan calls Lilly.

Remember, the process of starting a startup is never simple. But as Dylan puts it:

"Life is pretty good if you're working on things you find interesting. Keep working and exploring. You may find yourself in a place you never imagined."

What is Figma?

Figma is a cloud-based design and prototyping tool for digital projects. It is made so that users can work on projects collaboratively and almost anywhere. You can design, prototype and transfer developers with one tool.

https://www.figma.com/