00:11:29 · Corey Lee
[00:11:29] S6: And then then I, you know, I could just share that it's always up to date and thinking about, like, the repercussions of that of, like, how that would change the way people interact and just reduce the friction. I think it was just a big thing I think about a lot of time in the process. So I was like, oh, well, to realize the value of that, I actually have to do... Use this tool with somebody else. So that the first thing I did was, okay. Let me find some other people on my team that I can get to get in the tool and let's use it together. And then once I did that, they understood it. I understood it. I was like, okay. This is a game changer. You know, once you start using it together, you you just realize it's, like, it's completely different experience. And I think that was when it was clicked, and then I realized that. And then I was like, oh, I need to get my whole team on this. I need to get everyone in this and get everyone in the file. Before I was, like, gonna introduce my team to it, there's actually an issue with, like, Japanese input. And, you know, back in the day, like, I can... You still have it today. In the bottom, like, right corner of Figma, there's a little question mark right there. If you push that, you can have, like... You can send a message, right, to the help desk and and get support on that. Right? So I was using Figma, and then when you input the Japanese characters, it wouldn't show up correctly. Japanese input was basically broken in in Figma at the time. I was like, oh, yeah. This is great, but, like, I'm in Japan, and, like, I'm I'm designing in Japanese, so I can't use this on my team until this is fixed. Right? I was like, maybe I'll just try to send them support and see what happens. Know? So I I told him. I I sent him some screenshots. I said, hey. I'll send a detailed request, I said, hey. Leo, this thing is broken here. If you could fix this, this would really be helpful for your Japanese users. Right? And then a couple weeks go by, and I pick it up again, and it's fixed. And I was like, wow. This is pretty nice. I was I was like, the tool is pretty cool, but I was like... What was really, really cool was it's like, oh, I gave this feedback, and then they fixed that.
00:13:05 · Corey Lee, Hannah Lee
But, also, I know that, like, they're accepting feedback from the community, and the speed of that iteration is is something that it gives me confidence. I think, like, changing tools is like an investment for the whole team. That was kind of me weighing the option. Was just like, okay. I'm really kind of investing in this team, and I'm gonna tell my team we should use this this product. [00:13:22] S7: So you joined Figma before the product launch. How did you approach marketing marketing a product that was still in SELK mode?
00:13:22 · Hannah Lee, Claire Butler
[00:13:22] S7: So you joined Figma before the product launch. How did you approach marketing marketing a product that was still in SELK mode? [00:13:29] S5: So I was the first marketing hire, but I was also the first just go to market person. In the beginning, when we didn't have a product, I would go around and drive around Palo Alto, San Francisco with Dylan, and we would just pitch Figma to different TEKS. We had a bunch of connections and different design teams, and we would just go there, and we'd we'd show them the product. And so a lot of what I did in the early days was meet these people, gather their feedback, kind of like what Corey was saying in in that more of a one on one setting, and hear what they thought about the tool. And then we were really trying to understand, okay. When are we ready to go out at Stealth then launch launch the product? And so a lot of what I was doing was trying to understand, you know, are teams ready to adopt this? And is the the tool good enough to launch? I think it's such a balance that you have to think about where it's like, okay. We wanna get out of self and wanna get in this this in people's hands. But if it's not good enough, then it's also like, well, we're gonna lose our chance. [00:14:23] S7: You only get one shot to launch. And, like, what were some of the factors that made that decision?
00:14:23 · Hannah Lee, Claire Butler, S0
[00:14:23] S7: You only get one shot to launch. And, like, what were some of the factors that made that decision? [00:14:28] S5: Yeah. It... It's hard. Right? It's a... It's such a a hard question for people because you really do only get one chance to launch the product, and you wanna do it right. And so you want it to be good when people are all going in and looking at the tool. You want them to have a good experience. So that's on one hand. But then on the other hand, you don't wanna wait too long. Right? Because the tool... The team had already been building the tool for years before I got there. You wanna keep things going. You wanna start building with people and getting their feedback. And so it is a really hard balance. It's definitely more of an art than a science in terms of, you know, when to launch. And I remember I was sitting in this meeting, and someone literally took the laptop out of Dylan's hands because they wanted to play with it. I don't think that they didn't mean to, like, didn't take his laptop, but they were just like, that's so cool. I have to try it. And I think once I saw people starting to do that, that was like, okay. This is... This feels like it's kind of ready. One of the biggest challenges that we had in terms of deciding when to launch was multiplayer wasn't actually done when we launched Figma. It just was Ad[00:15:29] S0: This episode is brought to
00:15:29 · S0, S1, S2, S3
Ad[00:15:29] S0: This episode is brought to Ad[00:15:31] S1: you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Ad[00:15:53] S2: Hiring now? Then this is Ad[00:15:54] S1: a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ad[00:15:59] S3: It's officially the holiday season, and Abercrombie's new collection has outfits for everything on your calendar. It's the busiest time of year, and between shopping and party invites, I don't have time to plan every look. But Abercrombie's always got me covered. Their sweaters are the perfect easy layer for low key plans. And on a nice night out, I'm reaching for their classic trousers. Fill your closet with the pieces you'll need all season long. Have a very Abercrombie holiday. Shop in the app, online, and in stores.
00:16:29 · Claire Butler
[00:16:29] S5: Gonna take, like, another year for for Multiplayer to be done. And so that was a really hard decision at the time where it was like, this is our most important feature arguably, and we know it's gonna take another year before it's done. And the decision that we had to make was, you know, do we launch without multiplayer, or do we wait another year? And we decided just to go for it and to launch and to start getting feedback, start getting in people's hands, keep it in beta even though we knew it wasn't finished. But that is such a hard challenge. Right? Like, I think there'd be a lot of good arguments on why you should wait for the the core feature to be done, but it definitely becomes kind of more of an art than a science at that point in terms of making that decision because you also just gotta keep the immense muck too. Metrics are so important, but I feel like you can't really look at them that closely when you're in a micro setting like that. You kinda have to go on anecdotes. Right? Like, we didn't have enough people to, like, have these metrics dashboards and be like, look at the usage over time. Right? Like, honestly, we were meeting these teams, and what we looked at was like, at at the beginning, can we get one team to transfer full time? And it sounds so funny because it's like, our metric was, like, zero or one. Right? It's not like you're looking at these dashboards. And that's why I feel like sometimes when you're doing something really early and you're like, I have to 10 x this. I have to 100 x this. I have to a thousand x this. You kinda have to go more on intuition and more on feeling, I think, and really believe that because metrics just aren't gonna get you the answers that you're looking for.