Figma’s Early Days—How Patience & Discipline Fostered a Killer Product

It’s surprising how often young startups push complex pricing tiers from the onset. At Figma, nurturing self-serve to develop the Enterprise tier was the right path. Once that proved itself, we layered on and scaled a sales org.

What made Figma special was patience and discipline.

By working within the browser, Figma introduced an astounding level of efficiency into the design process and drove organization-wide adoption, which resulted in large ACV enterprise opportunities. This required a period of complex product development prior to monetization — so being product-obsessed and patient were a big part of the company’s cul

Having the discipline to understand your customer data and to invest in accurate reporting is what powers the GTM flywheel, drives efficiency in a sales org, and educates product decisions.

Much has been said about Figma’s astounding growth from $0 to $400M+ ARR in <5 years. In addition to being tough to build, developing a successful GTM motion took time and patience. Leadership was adamant that the product and pricing tiers be feature-complete before charging the customer. Product obsession and patience were ingrained in the cult