Latest / Brand Storytelling with Fexingo: Narrative, Mission, and Stories That Sell / How Figma Built a Brand by Letting Designers Lead
Transcript
- Lucas: So Figma. I've been meaning to do this episode for a while because I think it's one of the most instructive brand stories in B2B software over the last decade. Luna: The design tool that basically everyone uses now. But it wasn't always the obvious winner. Lucas: Right. When Figma launched in beta in 2016, the design tool market was already crowded. Sketch had a loyal following, Adobe had Photoshop and Illustrator. The conventional wisdom was that a browser-based design tool would be too slow, too laggy, no professional would trust it. Luna: And yet they pulled it off. How did they get people to switch? Lucas: They didn't lead with features. They led with a fundamentally different premise: design should be multiplayer. The very first thing you noticed when you opened Figma wasn't a toolbar — it was a cursor that showed other people working in the same file. That was the brand. Luna: So the product itself was the marketing. They made collaboration the core experience, not an add-on. Lucas: Exactly. And that changed the emotional relationship designers had with the tool. Design had always been a solitary, possessive craft — my file, my layers, my artboard. Figma made it feel like a shared canvas. Suddenly inviting a developer into your file wasn't an intrusion, it was a feature. Luna: That's a huge cultural shift. I remember when I first tried it in 2017, the multiplayer aspect felt almost like a game. Like Google Docs but for design. Lucas: And that's the brand right there. They made design feel social. But they also made a very smart strategic bet that most people overlook: they gave Figma away for free to students and educators. Luna: The classic razor and blades model, except the razor is free and the blades are enterprise seats. Lucas: Yes, but it's deeper than that. By giving students free access, Figma embedded itself into the formative years of an entire generation of designers. Those students graduated, entered the workforce, and demanded Figma at their jobs. It was a brand funnel with a ten-year lead time. Luna: I've heard that called 'bottom-up brand building' — start with the individual user, not the IT department. Lucas: And that's why Figma's brand is so sticky. It wasn't forced on teams by management. It was pulled in by designers who already loved it. That's a completely different power dynamic than, say, Adobe's approach, which has historically been top-down — the company mandates Creative Cloud. Luna: So the brand became a kind of Trojan horse. Designers became internal champions. Lucas: They became evangelists. And that's the holy grail of brand storytelling — when your users tell your story for you. Figma didn't run a ton of traditional marketing. They invested in community events, meetups, a conference called Config. But the real driver was word of mouth from designers showing off what they built. Luna: There's also the plugin ecosystem. That feels like a brand magnet too. Lucas: Huge. By letting anyone build plugins, Figma turned every plugin developer into a brand touchpoint. Each plugin solved a specific pain point and reinforced that Figma was a platform, not just a tool. The plugins created a network effect — the more plugins there were, the more valuable Figma became, and the more users attracted more developers. Luna: That's very similar to what Shopify did with its app store, or what Slack did with integrations. A brand that enables its ecosystem to create value. Lucas: And that ecosystem also acts as a moat. Once a designer has invested in twenty plugins, switching to another tool means giving up all that custom workflow. The brand becomes infrastructure. Luna: But then Adobe tried to buy Figma in 2022 for $20 billion. And the reaction from the community was almost hostile. Designers were furious. They saw it as a betrayal. Lucas: That's the paradox of a beloved brand. When you build something people love, they feel ownership. The Figma community's reaction to the Adobe acquisition was essentially: 'You're selling us out to the very company we left behind.' That's a sign of an incredibly strong brand — but also a fragile one. Luna: And the deal ultimately fell through due to regulatory hurdles. But the brand took a hit, didn't it? Lucas: Temporarily. But I think Figma handled it well. They communicated transparently, they kept building product, they didn't change their community-first approach. And since the deal collapsed, they've been able to say, 'We're still independent, we're still on your side.' That actually reinforced the brand narrative. Luna: So the near-acquisition almost became a brand-building moment. 'We almost sold out, but we didn't.' Lucas: Right. And now they're in a position where their brand is stronger than ever because the community fought to keep them independent. That's a story you can't buy. Luna: It's interesting. I think about this when I use Figma today. There's a kind of pride in being a Figma user, like you're part of something that beat the corporate machine. Lucas: And that's real brand equity. But let's get concrete about the numbers for a second. Figma's valuation in its last private round was around $10 billion. Adobe's original offer was $20 billion. That multiple on revenue — they were doing about $400 million in ARR at the time — implies a brand premium that most B2B companies can only dream of. Luna: Fifty times revenue? That's not just product-market fit. That's brand-market fit. Lucas: Exactly. And a lot of that premium came from the network effects and the switching costs created by the brand. Investors weren't just buying a design tool; they were buying a platform that had embedded itself into the workflow of millions of knowledge workers. Luna: Speaking of knowledge workers — Figma's expansion beyond designers into product managers, engineers, marketers. That's a deliberate brand stretch. Lucas: It is. And it's risky. Because if you dilute the 'designed by designers, for designers' ethos, you might alienate your core. But Figma has been careful. They introduced FigJam, a whiteboarding tool, which is more inclusive but still feels like Figma. They've kept the design tool sacred. Luna: So the brand stays aspirational for non-designers. They want in on the magic. Lucas: And that's the ultimate brand moat: when people outside your core audience aspire to use your product. It's why you see engineers eager to get invited to a Figma file. It's a status signal. 'I'm in the design team's file.' Luna: That's fascinating. The tool becomes a badge. And that's hard to replicate. Lucas: Now — if these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own work, maybe a strategy you've adapted or a story you've told differently — we want to mention that this show stays free and ad-free. We don't run commercial breaks, no sponsor reads interrupting the flow. The trade-off is that listener support matters a lot. Luna: Yeah, and it's totally optional. If you find value in the show and want to support the choice to keep it independent, there's a link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No perks, just knowing the show stays as is. Lucas: Exactly. And that's it. Back to Figma. I want to talk about one more thing: the brand's visual identity itself. Figma's branding is intentionally minimal — the purple logo, the clean interface. They let the user's work be the hero. Luna: That's a smart restraint. A lot of brands try to be loud, but Figma's visual identity says 'we get out of the way.' Lucas: It reinforces their core value: focus on the work, not the tool. And that extends to their website, their marketing materials, even their conference stage design. It's all very clean, very purple, very consistent. Luna: So what's the takeaway for other brands? If you're building a B2B product, should you try to copy Figma's approach? Lucas: I don't think you can copy it, because the magic was timing — they launched when browser technology was finally good enough, and when design was becoming a strategic function in tech companies. But the principles are transferable: build a product that people want to use socially, make it free for the next generation, and invest in community evangelism. Luna: The multiplayer aspect seems key. Making the product itself a shared experience. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's not just for design tools. Any software where collaboration matters — project management, document editing, even spreadsheets — can learn from Figma's brand playbook. The question is: can you make your users feel like they're part of something bigger than just getting a job done? Luna: I think that's the real legacy of the Figma brand. It turned a tool into a community. And that's a story that's still being written. Lucas: Yeah. And with the acquisition off the table, they have a chance to write the next chapter as an independent company. I'm curious to see if they can maintain that community ethos as they scale to a billion dollar plus revenue business. Luna: That's the classic challenge. Can a brand stay authentic when it's no longer the underdog? Lucas: We'll see. But if any company has the brand equity to pull it off, Figma does.