Latest / Startup Stories with Fexingo: Conversations About Founders, Funding, and Building Companies from Zero / How Figma Won Design Collaboration Without an Undo Button
Transcript
- Lucas: So back in 2016, if you were a digital designer, your toolkit was pretty much Sketch on a Mac, with some plugin to sync files to the cloud. And if you wanted to collaborate with someone in real time, you'd basically screenshare over Zoom and yell at your screen. Luna: Right. And the file would inevitably get saved as 'final_v3_actuallyfinal.sketch'. Lucas: Exactly. So along comes Figma, a browser-based design tool. And they make this incredibly bold product decision: no native undo button. At least, not the way people expected. The undo command exists, but it works on the whole document's history, not your last local keystroke. Luna: Wait, so if I accidentally delete a frame, I can't just Cmd-Z and have it back instantly? Lucas: You can, but it's a versioned undo. It rolls back the entire file to a previous state, which means if someone else has been editing simultaneously, your undo might undo their work too. It sounds like a nightmare. But that friction was intentional. Luna: Because they wanted designers to think in terms of collaboration first, not local ownership. Lucas: Exactly. The whole architecture was built around a multiplayer model, like Google Docs. Every keystroke is an operation that gets sent to a central server, and the server resolves conflicts using operational transform — the same tech behind Google Wave, believe it or not. Luna: So the undo had to be global because there was no single 'local' version. You're editing a shared reality. Lucas: That's the idea. And it was a huge gamble. Sketch at the time had something like 80 percent of the UI design market. Adobe XD was launching. And Figma says, 'We'll be browser-first, multiplayer-first, and we'll run on WebGL and WebAssembly.' In 2016, WebAssembly was barely a thing. Luna: Why not just build a desktop app? The technology was proven. Lucas: Because then you lose the shareable link. Figma's killer feature wasn't the drawing tools — it was that you could send someone a URL, and they could view or edit without installing anything. That single link turned every stakeholder into a potential user. Product managers, engineers, even clients. Luna: That's a classic network effect. Every new collaborator makes the tool more valuable for everyone else. Lucas: Right. And Figma leaned into it hard. They made commenting free, viewing free, and the free tier was generous enough that a whole startup team could use it without paying. By the time they hit scale, they had millions of users embedded in their workflow. Luna: But let's talk about the technical bet. WebGL in the browser for vector editing? That's not trivial. Lucas: Not trivial at all. Figma's rendering engine is custom, written in C++ and compiled to WebAssembly. That lets them do things like real-time boolean operations on vectors, which even native apps sometimes struggle with. The founders, Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, met at Brown and both had a background in computer graphics. Evan actually wrote a WebGL library called Three.js's predecessor, kind of. Luna: So they had the right technical DNA. But the business strategy was also clever. Instead of competing on features, they competed on workflow integration. Lucas: Exactly. They built APIs and plugins early. There's a plugin ecosystem now that rivals Sketch's. And they made the tool extensible in ways that mattered: design systems, handoff to developers, prototyping all in one place. Adobe's suite was fragmented across Photoshop, Illustrator, XD, After Effects. Luna: Figma basically said: 'Stop jumping between apps. Just use this one browser tab.' Lucas: And it worked. By 2022, Figma was valued at $20 billion. That's when Adobe came calling with a $20 billion acquisition offer. But regulators in Europe and the UK blocked it in 2023, arguing it would stifle competition in the design software market. Luna: Which is fascinating, because Adobe's whole argument was that Figma was a tiny threat. Lucas: Right. But the numbers told a different story. Figma's revenue was growing at over 100 percent year-over-year. It had become the default tool for UI design, especially among startups and tech companies. Adobe was essentially trying to buy their way out of a competitive threat. Luna: And they failed. So now Figma remains independent. What's happened since? Lucas: They've expanded into whiteboarding with FigJam, introduced AI features for design generation, and continued to grow. The irony is that the regulatory block might have been the best thing for Figma. They kept their culture, their independence, and they didn't have to integrate into Adobe's bureaucracy. Luna: It also removed the uncertainty. Now they know they're going it alone, so they can plan long-term. Lucas: And the design market is still evolving. New tools like Penpot are open-source and multiplayer. But Figma's lead is enormous. They have the network effects, the plugin ecosystem, and the brand loyalty. It's a classic case of moving early, betting on the right technology, and making the user experience so good that switching costs become prohibitive. Luna: So what's the one lesson you'd pull from Figma's story? Lucas: That the most powerful moat isn't a feature list — it's the workflow people build their entire process around. Figma didn't win because it had a better pen tool. It won because it made collaboration the default. And once your team's entire design system lives in a Figma file, you're not leaving. Luna: That's a good lens for thinking about your own product, too. What's the thing that, if you took it away, would break your customers' daily routine? Lucas: Exactly. And on that note — if these conversations have moved your work forward in any small way, there's a simple way to keep them ad-free and independent. Luna: Yeah, we don't run sponsor spots, so listener support is what keeps this going. Lucas: If today was worth a coffee to you, you know the link: buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's all lowercase. And it genuinely helps. Luna: Appreciate everyone who's chipped in. Now, back to Figma — I'm curious about one more thing. Did they ever add a proper local undo? Lucas: They did, actually. In 2021, they introduced 'local undo' as an option, but it's still scoped to your own changes. The global history remains the source of truth. So the principle held: collaborative integrity over individual convenience. Luna: That's a pretty good metaphor for building a company, too. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a little individual flexibility for the health of the whole system. Lucas: Exactly. And that might be the real lesson from Figma's rise. They designed not just a product, but a way of working. And that's what made them indispensable.