Software design startup Figma is the new enigma in the design technology sector. Figma is a space-agnostic design platform for teams to collaborate on product design for the uninformed. The design software helps businesses create, test, and ship better designs faster. On a mission to make design accessible to all, Figma has some rich enterprise bonding with Airbnb, Spotify, Slack, Dropbox, New York Times, and Microsoft, helping them design success.
As per Crunchbase, on Jun 24, 2021, the software design startup, Figma, raised its latest Series E investment of $200 million from nine investors, including Sequoia Capitals, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Greylock, Founders Fund, etc. This latest round of funding drawn up by the software startup Figma raises its market valuation to $10 billion—five times the valuation last year at the beginning of the pandemic.
Co-Founder and CTO of Figma, Evan Wallace, acknowledge good growth in the design sector. Gathering from his interview with the media, Wallace shares his observation of more people wanting to be involved in the design process and usher in more collaboration across time zones as the world is unsettled by social distancing. The core product is to help design mobile and web interfaces, while the recently launched Fig Jam is a digital whiteboard.
Turning to the product, we see that Figma has 82,377 monthly app downloads, according to Apptopia. The most popular apps downloaded are Figma Mirror, Figma Mirror, and Figma. Figma’s enterprise solution offers businesses access to inclusive design workflow from anywhere; design, build, and review prototypes real-time or asynchronously. Figma also boasts scalability and security through centralized team management, visibility, and secure access.
Inspired or already interested in the possibility of building a Figma of imagination? You can explore the Figma agency partnership program. Experienced Figma partners can help you run your design show with organization-wide consistency and efficiency, advise on best practices, improve your workflows, and explore ways to refine your brand’s visual language. If you are in for designing world-class products, go Figma! Alternatively, you can also learn from Figma tutorials on YouTube.
According to Adobe’s Quarter 1 results, “Digital Experience segment revenue was $934 million, representing 24 percent year-over-year growth. Digital Experience subscription revenue was $812 million, representing 27 percent year-over-year growth.” Source: Adobe Raises Annual Targets on Strong Q1 Results. With Adobe’s subscription revenue alone at $812 million, a software design startup, Figma raising $200 million is no mean feat. Designing a profitable startup on the face of Corel, InVision, Sketch, or Canva, for that matter, takes courage.
At the mention of Canva, the immediate recall is both Canva and Figma share the same birth year and two different geographies with the longest distance. Although the two design tech startups, Canva and Figma, act on democratizing design, Canva covers up for individuals and businesses, while Figma is more of a cloud-based and on-premise solution for businesses alone. There’s not much price difference, but Capterra offers a highly differentiated value analysis of both products.
Peter Levine, general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, one of the prime investors of the Series E Figma funding, has likened Figma to GitHub. Earlier, Levine invested in GitHub, the world’s most venerable hub for coders and programmers designing new technologies. As he invested in Figma a decade later, he believes that what GitHub has contributed to coding, Figma will deliver it for design, fundamentally redefining table stakes for a great product.
With design hubs in San Francisco, New York, and London, Figma has also designed a hybrid work policy for its associates, also known as Figmates. Figmates might choose to work remotely or from the office, but it is the collaboration metric that Figma preaches to the world that every Figmate practices at work. “I’m under no illusion that migrating from an in-office culture to a flexible, hybrid model will be simple and we have a lot to learn,” informs the co-founder & CEO of Figma, Dylan Field, on the company blog.
If Melanie Perkins of Canva design app, labeled by Forbes a “populist, profitable and a potential threat to Adobe and Microsoft,” can have a scenic narrative of brushing against the corals in the Caribbean to deduce her fundamentals in fundraising, consider Dylan Field of Figma dropping out of Brown University to become a member of the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year program funded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. Rich stakes. It is designed to deliberate the future in magnificent stakes.
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