Figma will IPO on July 31
226 comments
·July 30, 2025iTokio
seanwilson
I notice HN comments often that say people want and appreciate native apps/UI, people don't like web apps, and people don't want files stored in the cloud. I think Figma proves these aren't things non-tech people care about when a web app is done well, similar for Google Docs.
The ease of collaboration in teams, and being able to just click a link on any platform to preview or start working on a design without installing anything is a killer feature.
The risks of vendor lock-in, losing control of your files, or price hiking sucks though, but convenience outweighs this for most. Coming from a dev background, I'd love open file formats and being able to pick where the files are stored though.
> …and everyone is learning Figma, that’s a viral adoption mechanism that is not possible with Adobe products.
I have to use both and switching to Adobe for stuff is painful and feels so archaic now because you lose the ability to have multiple people live edit/preview a document, you have to muck around with syncing files + installing, there's no free plan, and nobody on Chromebook or Linux can use it.
For example, it's so much easier, faster and with better results to just let a client edit copy directly on a design, rather than the clunky way of having them message you a list of edit suggestions that doesn't let them iterate properly. Or live pair editing with another designer. Really hoping Figma add CMYK/printing support too (would it really be that hard when they already support P3 and non-P3?).
For Sketch, it being Mac only feels very restrictive and not a good business choice for them. I personally use so few native Mac apps, a native UI isn't something that influences me and I'm not even clear on what differentiates them now. Native UIs can also be bad as well as good, I just want an app with a good UI. I often prefer a web app because it feels like it would be more sandboxed, especially for installing plugins (like Figma allows).
I have a browser extension that I sell, and I'm so glad I didn't go the native app route. It's higher friction than a web app for users to get started, but much lower friction than a native app, and it lets me easily target Linux, Window, Mac and Chromebook.
robenkleene
Design is a unique creative field when compared to most others, because with design you're not actually creating the final asset, it's more like you're creating a picture of the final asset that someone else needs to create.
E.g., take Blender, Adobe Premiere, Ableton Live, Photoshop, Illustrator, in all of those cases, what you export is the actual real asset (it's the movie, the drawing, the song, etc...).
It's not like that with design and it ends up pushing design apps away from native apps and towards web apps, because at some point someone, usually an engineer has to get in there and figure out all the details of how this actually needs to get built. So if the app only runs on a Mac that's annoying. But that's not an issue with say, Final Cut Pro, where the person editing the movie can just export the movie themselves, they don't need to involve someone that's maybe using a platform that Final Cut Pro doesn't run on.
seanwilson
Hmm, feels more related to how big the imported assets and final exports are, and how fast + accurate previews are, rather than who does the export? If I'm dealing with GB size videos and image files, local is going to have performance and storage cost advantages so that's why local makes more sense for e.g. movie editors and high-end photoshop work? A lot of terminal based development work could be done via a web app without a problem for example with the big plus of sidestepping complex local dev setup but it becomes less attractive when real-time graphics are involved.
Figma files are relatively light so previews and exports are fast - you can't even import images that are more than a few MB.
whywhywhywhy
Figma treated responsiveness and framerate as a key part of the experience, because of this approach even though it’s webtech it has much higher performance than Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, XD etc. so in a sense it embodies what native represents to people better than some literally native but poorly made software.
silvestrov
It is a real failure of Adobe management that Adobe didn't make Figma but kept doing the native old klunky apps.
The failure started with the Adobe Acrobat being such a dog slow app and never being fixed. Adobe looked too much at market share and forgot to be a tech company, so every platform now has their own PDF reader instead of using Acrobat Reader.
rcarr
100% agree. People want, above all else, convenience. Whichever tool gets the job done with the least amount of friction for the end user will generally win. People don't want to mess around learning a program, they just want to get the idea that is in their head out into reality as quick as possible. The more friction there is, the more likely the idea is to die before it's realised.
It's like the old story about Steve Jobs. He asked a bunch of engineers to make him a printing application. So they scoured the printer manuals and made this app that implemented every feature possible and took it to Jobs. He instantly dismissed it as being way too complicated, went over to the whiteboard, drew a box with a button, and said something like "You drag the file you want to print on to the box and then click the print button."
ako
Heard the same story, but it was about cd burning, not printing.
robenkleene
> For Sketch, it being Mac only feels very restrictive and not a good business choice for them.
Also replying to this re Sketch, especially it being a business choice for them, Sketch is a Mac app through-and-through. That entire application would never in a million years have existed were it not for being Mac only. Sketch leveraged the Mac specific APIs created by Apple in the 2000s (e.g., Core Image and Core Graphics), this is exactly why Sketch was able to innovate on the UI-side (whereas Figma pretty much took Sketch's UI innovations wholesale, as pointed out several times in this comments section), because they didn't need the technical depth that Figma had, which had to re-implement all the low-level graphics APIs themselves in order to be cross-platform (Figma is not exactly a web-only app, it runs on at least Mac native as well, I don't have a source for this but I've heard it a few times [and I don't mean the separate app download Figma makes available, which is just a web wrapper, but there's a real Mac-native internal-only version of Sketch that's used for development]).
This is why for example Sketch was able to launch a compelling product with, I think two full-time employees(?) when it initially launched, that was competitive with Adobe products. This purely a product of the Apple ecosystem and specifically the climate in the 2000s when Apple was still pushing desktop-first technologies like high-quality image and vector libraries. Note also that Sketch didn't take funding until 2019 (and only then because Figma forced their hand), whereas Figma were VC-funded from effectively day one (Field was a Thiel fellow in 2012, first funding round in 2013).
There's two patterns here that were happening during the 2000s, one is bootstrapped Mac-first applications were often quite successful. Two, applications were using the AppKit to quickly iterate on interesting UI innovations, the fuzzy finder (LaunchBar, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaunchBar), the entire native-app-with-an-API-backend (Watson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelia_Watson), the extension-based editor (TextMate, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextMate), are some other examples of this.
pyrale
> The risks of vendor lock-in, losing control of your files, or price hiking sucks though, but convenience outweighs this for most. Coming from a dev background, I'd love open file formats and being able to pick where the files are stored though.
Also you don't really have proper version control, and what little you have isn't integrated with the rest of your project.
tbbfjotllf
I believe it has more to do with having a great user experience than to do with whether it's a native app or a web app. Figma was convenient and way ahead of it's competitors. The thing that made it stand out was the collaborative features and the extension ecosystem. The features it didn't have were launched by highly motivated people as extensions. It made both collaboration and working fast extremely simple. Both collaboration and extensions are features that can easily be added to a native app. I love figma but I do miss the ability to be able to work offline.
jve
> The risks of vendor lock-in, losing control of your files
As for Figma, being able to export SVG is lock in really a concern here? Many tools support .svg. So to me lock-in ain't even a concern for a tool like figma.
And you noted it well - I seem not to care if it is a web app if it works well: Figma, VSCode (Performance as a feature)
seanwilson
> As for Figma, being able to export SVG is lock in really a concern here? Many tools support .svg. So to me lock-in ain't even a concern for a tool like figma.
You'd lose things like shared components within and between files/libraries, interactive prototypes, shared design-tokens/variables, and responsive layout features, which is huge if your team are all-in with UI design system stuff. If you're mostly doing mockups, coding them, then copy/pasting old mockups to create new ones without using an extensive component system, SVG export is more bearable.
For UI work, it's much harder to be productive in a regular SVG editor like Inkscape though compared to something like Penpot.
Lalabadie
Exporting it, and exporting it fully editable are two very different expectations here.
gdubs
I always thought one of the things that made Figma successful was that it was multiplayer from day one.
A lot of apps start as single player and then try and bolt the multiplayer experience on later.
But Figma was designed around collaboration.
I actually think this was more crucial than whether it was web or native.
OldfieldFund
And also it's soooo much smoother than native Adobe tools, even though it runs in the browser.
pjmlp
Yes, Sketch's failure was to focus on being Mac only.
It may be than in US, and countries of similar income levels, all designers carry Apple gear around, however 70% of the world does not.
Before Figma, we were using a mix of InVision, Adobe XD or Balsamiq.
jnsie
I love Balsamiq and it was great to see it mentioned here. While the wireframes are intentionally simple looking, the ease of creating a mockup is unsurpassed IMHO.
cherrybajan
+1. I still use Balsamiq. Their pricing is also very helpful.
anonymous344
balsaqmiq was nice many many years ago, but then i found pingendo. Used it heavily, but it was buggy and short lived... web frameworks moved on and they abandoned the project very soon.. have to say that my customers never seem to understand the mockups created with balsamiq..
rafram
Figma? Fast and snappy?
It runs impressively well for a web app, but I still get multi-second freezes all the time on high-end hardware.
esskay
Cant say I've ever experienced that, been using it several years on a range of hardware types (all mac based). The UI freezing would be something local, it's not literally running every action through a 3rd party server.
mitemte
Figma was quick until a 12-18 months ago, it’s been getting progressively worse. It’s excruciatingly slow at times now. The version history feature takes forever to load. It’s a shame, at one point it was, in my opinion, the best execution of a web app, having avoided all of the issues that other web apps suffer from.
Lalabadie
That's my feeling as well. I don't think I've started using (more) complex layers or effects, yet the same files started to seem taxing when open.
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figmasupport01
Hey there, our Figma support team would love to help dig into what might be causing this. If you’re up for it, you can reach out to them directly by filling out this form: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=...
dleeftink
I don't have first-hand Figma experience, but Adobe products aren't free from lag and freezing issues either; there's a large hardware and software surface to support that comes with its own set of issues.
sourabhsss
I agree with you. Even with their app on Mac M2 Air, it keeps freezing for me.
rramon
>I personally think that a key fact that is driving adoption, is that from the very beginning they used a web app instead of going native with a heavy desktop app.
In 2018 I signed up for Figma because of the Notion integration (you can embed Figma frames in Notion), and the generous free tier. Notion took off that year as well and I think both profited from another.
wordofx
Is notion still being developed? Seems to have stagnated and feels like there’s 0 investment now. It’s getting slow and buggy.
rramon
I've stopped using it years ago, Figma as well. First I went down the Zettelkasten/Obsidian rabbithole but ended up just using Apple notes. I've ditched Figma too because I was faster with code using design systems and UI components.
bayindirh
I think so? There are some small changes here and there, new integrations are added as they go.
They are not getting investments anymore AFAIK, but they're profitable because of the paying users.
I don't think you have to add X features every hour to stay relevant. The software is pretty powerful at this state already, and I might be discovered 15% of its capabilities probably, despite using it relatively heavily.
prmoustache
Being actively developed is usually the #1 reason apps/services become slow and buggy. You are not introducing bugs by not touching at the code.
robenkleene
Flat design removed the technical barrier of entry for design, which made a design move away from a difficult-to-use app (a la the Adobe Creative Suite) and towards something like an office suite app (Figma is more similar to Google Slides than Adobe Photoshop). And office suite apps were already popular as web apps (e.g., Google Docs) before Figma.
> …and everyone is learning Figma, that’s a viral adoption mechanism that is not possible with Adobe products.
This wasn't possible before flat design, design was a hard technical skill requiring use of light sources, noise for texture, and carefully constructed gradients and shadows. Flat design is mainly just text on large swaths of color, which makes it much easier for someone to just jump in and edit a Figma file (e.g., this was not possible with the much more complicated Photoshop setups folks were using before to create designs like this https://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/4485?cPage=3&all=False&...)
(Note on a long-enough timeline, it's not clear how this is all going to end up. E.g., if something like Apple's Liquid Design catches up that'll move the needle back in the other direction towards more complicated software to create complex lighting and refraction effects. Note that the problem with Figma isn't that it can't add these features, it's that adding them will make the software more complicated, which will reduce the value-add of it being a web app, because the more complicated the software is, the more difficult it is to use collaboratively. Simplicity is really what facilitates collaborative editing.)
criley2
I'm not sure I agree that flat design removed the technical barrier to entry. First off, not everything is flat. Second, and I think this is really important, the ability to deliver a beautiful design system and the ability to use a design system to create a nice UX are two fundamentally different skills. The artist that delivers the most beautiful gradient (which apparently using the gradient setting in photoshop is a Big Scary Skill™ that flat design solved) often is not an expert at how best to deliver iOS UI.
And your resident mobile designer who knows everything about iOS and Android probably isn't the best at rolling brand new design systems with or without really pretty gradients.
Because these are two different skills, I don't think the style of the design system really impacts the barrier of entry. Most UI designers aren't fiddling with the finer details like that. They're composing already defined "atoms" into the "molecules" of components and pages.
robenkleene
I think your mainly indexing on the word I used "technical", because yes I agree I'd also categorize creating a design system as "technical". But it's technical in a different way than say, creating a glass material in a 3D modeling program, or simulating 3D effects in a 2D image-editing program. So I mean the way the latter is technical, not the former, if there's a better word than technical to use here, I'm all ears (maybe "skilled"?).
The key difference in the specific context of Figma is that a layman without any technical skills can give pretty good feedback on a design system, but say, wouldn't be able to give good feedback on how a 3D modeling material is constructed.
> which apparently using the gradient setting in photoshop is a Big Scary Skill™ that flat design solved
This isn't what I mean, I meant combining layers to create 3D effects like this https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/kj9yut/guide_to... i.e., creating the gradient itself isn't complicated, it's composing layers to achieve a specific effect that's complicated (and "technical").
robenkleene
I guess I didn't really address the split in roles you mentioned which is accurate, but I think flat design is what facilitated (and makes possible) that split.
E.g., you couldn't do this with the type of design I was doing in the 2000s, because the assets we were making didn't scale and recontexualize as easily as flat design elements. I.e., I think flat design not only paved the way for Figma, but also design systems in general.
> They're composing already defined "atoms" into the "molecules" of components and pages.
OtherShrezzing
I honestly think the main thing driving their adoption is that you don't need to _learn_ anything to use it. For 90% of use-cases, the UI is as simple as the iOS photo editing app. It's a familiar experience from the moment you open the app.
Your most tech-savvy friends couldn't even reliably install the correct Adobe product, never mind be productive with it. Meanwhile, your grandma could crank out a deck in Figma Slides if she needed to.
bodhi_mind
From my limited use of figma, everything starts from a template. I think this is a core part of adoption.
xucian
accurate
tiffanyh
Network effects create strong moats.
Just look at FB, GitHub, LinkedIn, etc…
neom
Good readings:
https://madebyevan.com/figma/building-a-professional-design-...
https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-... (old but interesting still)
a1371
> Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Allen & Company LLC, and J.P. Morgan are acting as joint lead book-running managers for the offering
Can someone explain the advantage of simultaneously having these four massive companies as book runners?
mitchell_h
Couple reasons, spread the risk and increase the possible people to sell to.
Fraterkes
I recently tried Sketch for the first time, and was kind of blown away by how Figma looks identical to it. Did Figma exactly copy the Sketch ui or did they copy eachother and slowly grow closer?
preommr
Sketch was the market leader in ui design tools. Before that, it was photoshop. Only a step away from using something like blender or after efffects tbh. It was also mac only. And desktop only. It turns out design is one of those things that people like to see, and is not insrcrutable like code. So stakeholders asked to see your ui and you would send them... this file. They would then have to download the application, and deal with all the joys that come with different platforms, asking how to install the thing, security complians, licenses, etc.
Figma came in with a web app that made designing and sharing as easy as sending a link. They also had... let's say creatively viral approaches to licensing where anyone that edited a file automatically got added as a seat. But unlike those desktop applications, you could also leave notes - that's editing! So it wasn't just for designers the way photoshop or sketch was. Now instead of your team of 2-3 designers, it's like half the company. It's beautiful in a way that the latter group is way more numerous and uses <1% of the software features, yet gets charged just as much. Beautiful. And lucrative.
Anyways, they're similar because Figma made a web-based ui tool, and the base model for the workflow was already established by Sketch, so their fundamentals are very very similar.
eagleal
> Sketch was the market leader in ui design tools. Before that, it was photoshop
No before the current iteration there was Fireworks, then the smaller web apps for wireframe prototyping (Balsamiq, etc).
Professional Designers used inDesign for bigger portals or complex and vast UIs. Or AI for the prototypes.
Photoshop lacked good vector tools and comprehensive styling of corpus.
zdragnar
You've got all the players named, but I do believe there was a time inbetween where Sketch was noteworthy, if not as a market leader, then as the most notable rising star.
lastdong
For those who are not as skilled in design, "AI" refers to Adobe Illustrator. :)
wdb
Never seen anyone design UIs in InDesign. Mostly they would go for Illustrator or Fireworks.
darkwater
> It's beautiful in a way that the latter group is way more numerous and uses <1% of the software features, yet gets charged just as much. Beautiful. And lucrative.
I know that I'm in a small/medium European company (~400 people total), generally very mindful of how we spend money but this is the exact billing model that would turn us away because too expensive for the features actually used.
cluckindan
Sketch also had a cloud service for sharing designs and prototypes, and commenting on them.
You could also get a constraints plugin for Sketch. That’s built-in on Figma.
thecupisblue
Wouldn't say it's just that.
- Design sharing was great and easy, yeah. - Autolayout easily won over folks who didn't wanna learn Sketch - Sketch was moving too slow at a critical time, leaving a lot of ground uncovered for Figma to jump in
But most important:
It was free.
addandsubtract
It took this comment for me to realize Figma is not Sketch. I thought Sketch rebranded or got bought up by Figma. Never realized they are two different apps.
afandian
That model reminds me of Gitlab. You need all these features so a seat has to be expensive. But you need a seat for even the smallest interaction with repos, whether you’re a dev or you just want to raise issues. Left a bad taste in the mouth.
jastuk
I've used Sketch since its early days and then after (who knows how many) years, reluctantly and angrily moved from Sketch to Figma. Sketch was the pioneer and Figma took a very long time to catch up with what I've considered important features, and of course Figma had the advantage of being cross-platform but that was a non-issue for me as Sketch introduced web-based previews for clients.
The reason why I ditched Sketch (even though I loved it) was because Sketch had quality control issues over time and they started messing with my work, even losing some of it (cloud saves). The frustration grew over a longer period of time until I lost all hope and just had to admit that it was a lost cause. I peeked at Sketch's changelogs for a year and saw only bugfixes and no features. I assumed it was dead; either way the chapter was closed, the entire company shifted to Figma.
P.S. which is not to say that Figma is in a good state now, or that I don't feel history repeating itself.
_fat_santa
Sketch's biggest drawback was they only build a Mac app. The "mac app" space will get you consistent business but you will never grow your company to the scale of Figma or Adobe.
It's funny how the successes and failures of these two companies ultimately comes down to a single architectural decision that both took different paths on. Sketch's biggest drawback (even back in the 2010's when they were on top) was always that they didn't support Web, Windows or Linux and focused only on Mac's. Honestly it paved the way for Figma to just come up and eat their lunch.
The biggest mistake that Sketch made was not realizing there was a sea change sooner and shifting their focus to a web based app or even releasing Windows and Linux clients. Even now I went to their website and they only offer basic viewing tools on the web, if you want to create with Sketch you need a Mac and there's no way around that.
jastuk
And yet, I cannot stop myself of thinking about that native architecture decision whenever my beefed up Mac Studio takes a minute to load a mediocre-sized Figma project and struggles to keep up as I try to navigate it, just so that I can leave a couple of comments somewhere.
I will say that some outsourcing phases/efforts would definitely not be possible with Sketch though. It's one thing when we as a company all have company-provided Macs, but another when remote hiring/collaborating.
jondwillis
I don’t have the entire history of the two apps in front of me, but Sketch was definitely first, and from what I recall, Figma copied them, at least initially.
ardit33
Macromedia Fireworks was the modern predecessor of these tools that ushered web graphics back in the dot com days. It was bought by Adobe, and shuttered around 2009.
I loved that tool
wwweston
Still keep a machine on Mojave to use FW CS 6 and will probably eventually have a VM running it to use it, it’s a distinctive combination of features.
mrcwinn
Most of the offering is from current shareholders, not new shares issued. That’s non-dilutive I presume but also raises less funds for the company. Who has the privilege of selling at offer time? Employees I imagine are locked up and the stock will take a dump in 6 months.
twothreeone
No you absolutely can sell as employee. For that you have employees determine how many shares they would be willing to offer up for sale initially as part of the roadshow. The catch is that shares sold during the roadshow will then not have a price yet, because the price per share in the IPO is determined by the demand and what underwriters are willing to pay during roadshow negotiations. The lockup period starts after. Additionally, insiders can negotiate structured sales during the lockup (e.g. in the event the PPS gains significantly), but they again have to say how much they would be willing to sell without knowing the exact price.
reactordev
And it turns out that price is $33/share.
cluckindan
So not as much an IPO as an exit through the greater fool.
bredren
Congratulations to everyone who made this company go. That said, this company's growth seems threatened by AI adoption rather than boosted by it.
bko
One thing I thought would have been incredibly useful for me is to go from HTML -> Figma
There is a ton of focus on going from Figma to something you could presumably dump into react or html. But I found nothing in the reverse.
Realistically, for a lot of applications, there are more things in production than in Figma. It's just not practical to spec everything out when you're moving fast. But when you do want someone to look at it or tinker, it's a huge lift to migrate your current production to Figma. I wish they would use some AI for that. Just take a webpage, and build the Figma design docs. Doesn't even have to be perfect, just good enough to get help from designers
snarf21
The feature we need most is Figma > SwiftUI, etc. The ability to take the Figma UIs and export to web and mobile would be such a time saver.
Cthulhu_
There is a Storybook-to-Figma [0] plugin, the same company built a whole slew of X-to-figma plugins.
[0] https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1075741140914731351/s...
berkes
Ah yes Dreamweaver. Look how well that turned out.
Turs out people don't want "quick dump as HTML" but rather "maintainable, understandable, performant HTML". I don't see how that has changed with AI.
cluckindan
Dreamweaver was a widely used tool back in the day and definitely started a trend in web design tools.
hnlmorg
If by “people” you mean “developers”, then yes you’re right. But I don’t think anyone else ever really cared.
The problem with Dreamweaver is that you still needed a developer to upload and run the site. And back then, you couldn’t run single page applications (web stacks hadn’t evolved that far yet), so still needed developers to write the backend.
Thus there wasn’t a huge amount to gain in using Dreamweaver for the professional world.
AI has changed that in that it doesn’t have the same limitations as Dreamweaver. However, like yourself, I don’t think we’ll see AI replace developers. Or at least the current crop of LLMs still have a long way to go before they can be used without developer oversight.
Edit: also worth noting that Flash was everywhere back then too. So many web designers opted for Flash instead.
edoceo
Take your current project, then run `figma-cli-ai --fix` and have a modern design.
jjani
I guess I'm missing the joke as this doesn't seem to be a thing?
didgeoridoo
Check out html.to.design
esafak
I want to be able to refactor designs, and not entirely from the command line. I do not see why Figma should not be able to do this. Coding comes later.
reactordev
They’re adopting AI so that designers within figma can create. I don’t know whether this is good or bad (I don’t design) but if the tool everyone uses to mock things up gains coding abilities, we’re cooked.
You’ll be able to go from figma to production in weeks.
Incipient
And we'll have 10x of the Tea app incidents.
AI tools are still just that tools - they're not abstraction layers from "intent" to "production product".
Cthulhu_
There's also code snippets so that developers can provide the HTML or React or whatever code to implement a component or set thereof. And that stuff feeds into an MCP server, so that in theory an AI / code assistant can implement a design in whichever framework you build in, but within some limits if you provide the right code.
qoez
It'll depend on other vendors to make the models who will eat up all the margins
echelon
It won't just be figma. The market is already filling up with lots of players in this space.
There may be no moats. Just distribution winners.
reactordev
Never underestimate the power of market share. Adobe has had a bunch of competitors but still dominates design.
voidfunc
> It won't just be figma. The market is already filling up with lots of players in this space.
MongoDB wants a word.. another "this will never amount to anything" HN special.
tonyhart7
"but if the tool everyone uses to mock things up gains coding abilities"
adobe tried this 10 years ago (Adobe dream weaver) and failed
I literally can drag and drop design photos from drawing board to claude or open ai chat and they recreate it themselves instead of needing figma
not sure where you know that "we are cooked" its for them not us
reactordev
Figma is what all the designers are using. If they turn that into a Claude for design and add the ability to complete the wireframes with AI generated code. There’s no need for engineers until after acquisition. Just maintenance.
The difference here is - Adobe tried using a proprietary stack. Figma can spit React. Everyone knows React - even if you use something else. It’s perfect timing with AI coding agents and every, single, UX team using it.
Nazzareno
S-1 SEC file here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579878/000162828025...
adidoit
Great product. How they adapt AI in a way that doesn't alienate but empowers their core ICP will be important
I don't think they can afford to be a follower on AI but being a leader will also be untenable.
raincole
So what's the alternative? Is open source solutions catching up?
bryanhogan
There's Penpot[1], but it's not as good as Figma, currently.
[1]: https://penpot.app/
rendaw
In what ways?
omnimus
One main difference is performance. Penpot becomes unusuably laggy in some situations (like when you use raster images). Penpot made bet on .svg rendered directly using browsers. They thought these engines will become fast enough.
Figma renders everything with webgl in their own engine and has 0 performance issues.
AFAIK penpot is now working on same approach.
ethan_smith
Penpot (open source, web-based) has gained significant traction with a 4.0 release this year that added real-time collaboration and improved developer handoff features, while Inkscape and Krita continue to mature as desktop alternatives.
freefruit
https://penpot.app/ is doing pretty well and quite well featured!
mortenjorck
I randomly came across an app called Lunacy the other day, from stock vector and image marketplace Icons8.
I decided to give it a try. It’s pitched as a Figma alternative, but as essentially an expensive advertisement for Icons8 (the stock marketplace is built into the app), I didn’t have very high expectations.
Honestly, I was blown away. As a product designer who relies on a lot of advanced Figma functionality, I wouldn’t rely on it as my daily driver, but for a side project? I would choose it over Sketch. It covers all the basics of a modern UI design application, and even a few of the more recent additions to Figma like color variables. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more coverage of it.
serverlessmania
Why what's happening with Figma?
iambateman
The thinking is that an IPO will encourage them to reduce the app’s functionality except for enterprise tiers.
The technical term is enshittification.
danielvaughn
That’s been going on for a while with Figma. Their core user base (at least historically core) generally feels neglected, because they’ve been trying to go horizontal with a slew of related products. Meanwhile they’re charging designers to use variables.
Imagine being charged to use variables. Crazy.
no_wizard
I’d just settle on Figma supporting features that enforce consistency when designers are working in it.
It has no way of setting for example, designs to always use auto layout.
That’s my frustration with this product
scarface_74
Charging more money for features is not enshittificaton. Making the product worse like adding advertisements would be.
A full professional seat is $16 for individual, $55 for organizations and $90 for enterprises. Either price is a nothing burger for a professional tool.
paxys
The IPO price started from $25 last week and ended at $33 due to increased demand. If it opens at the high range the company would be worth exactly what Adobe bid for it ($20B).
Fendy
I am not a designer but i used figma a lot for website projects. It is good but it took sooooooo long to load the files... even though I downloaded a desktop, still very slow.. anybody met with the same issue?
usaar333
$19.8 billion market cap to save everyone from doing research
That’s the tool that is used everywhere nowadays, from prototypes, mockups, concept designs to specs from designers to developers.
I personally think that a key fact that is driving adoption, is that from the very beginning they used a web app instead of going native with a heavy desktop app.
Thanks to this, you can share designs with just a link and everyone can access it, users interact with a mockup, devs look up the styles and components.
…and everyone is learning Figma, that’s a viral adoption mechanism that is not possible with Adobe products.
Their secret sauce seems to be making a complex web app fast and snappy with webassembly and an ecosystem of plugins secured with quickjs sandboxes.