I'm going to show you exactly how Figma did it - every channel, every mechanism, every belief that made it possible - and in return I want you to read this one all the way to the end.
Because the lesson here isn't "be Figma."
Researching stuff like this is long and booOOOoooring (even for me), but here’s the stuff I found that made me keep going down the Figma rabbit hole:
The lost billion - Adobe tried to buy Figma for $20B. The deal died. Then something happened with the $1B breakup fee that nobody covers in the postmortem.
Marketing vs sales - Figma's sales efficiency is 1.0. Adobe's is 0.39. There's a reason for that gap and it has nothing to do with the sales team.
Audience - Two-thirds of Figma's 13 million users aren't designers. So who invited them in - and why did Figma spend a decade pretending they didn't exist?
Community - Figma has 250 community chapters in 82 countries. Their community team doesn't report to the CMO. You've seen what happens when it does.
Content - Figma has 10,000+ indexed pages driving search traffic. Their content team didn't write a single one. Who did, and why do those people keep doing it?
Influencers - The first designer advocate had real criticisms of the product. Why did Figma recruit him at a pizza meetup?
Brand - In 2024 Figma killed the one visual element that had defined their brand for five years. The reason why tells you everything about where they think growth is coming from next.