In 2012, Figma set out to make design accessible to everyone [1]. Just over ten years later theyâve amassed some 4 million+ users, including teams at Microsoft, Uber, and The New York Times [2]. 2/3 of these arenât designers, but developers, marketers, product managers, and researchers who collaborate on design [3].
They pioneered the first design tool built for the Web, combining all the powerful features of a native app with multiplayer functionality that makes design work faster and easier than ever before [4]. Itâs so good that design software behemoth Adobe couldnât compete with it so they tried [59] to buy it for $20 billion [5].
Beyond this impressive feat of web engineering, it is community-led growth that has helped Figma become the go-to tool for design teams around the world [6].
In this deep dive, we take a close look at how community made Figma pop đ„
âïž Origin Story: How Figma and its Friends of Figma community got started.
âïž Community Everywhere: How they tapped into existing design communities to kickstart growth.
âïž Community-driven Sales: The programs they use to power self-serve and enterprise sales.
âïž Return on Community: What value they create for members and the value it derives for its own business.
Here we go đ©âđš
The idea for a browser-based web design tool started in 2011. Figma was founded by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace in 2012, but it wasnât until 2015 that they started to ship its beta software to end-users [1].
For the first three years, they were merrily building away in stealth mode. However, it was only by June 2013 that the specific direction of Figma materialized. Until then they were exploring what to build and what would make business sense [5]. Then in June 2015, they hired Claire Butler as their first marketing hire and employee #10 [1].
For the next 6+ months, Claire worked closely with Dylan, going around talking about Figma to designers. That was their biggest focus, and itâs also how they got started with their community-led approach [8].
Community has been core to Figmaâs GTM strategy from the get-go [1] and this community-led strategy has evolved with the company as it has grown. Four key phases have enabled them to go from getting designers onboard right through to enabling champions in the Enterprise. Letâs take a look at each one and the programs and tactics they used along the way.
Designers are passionate about their tools. When youâre spending 8 hours a day inside them, you need to be. What Figma was setting out to build was a big change and they faced stiff competition. Not only were designers used to using a native app, but they had been using most of their tools their entire careers - Adobeâs Photoshop was first released in 1990 and its Creative Suite has been around since the early 2000s [9]. Even Sketch had been going since 2010. Trying to replace such tools as a designerâs daily driver was a lofty goal. They needed to win hearts and minds. And thatâs exactly what Claire and Dylan set out to do, one designer at a time [8]:
âIt started with some VC intros,â says Claire. âThen we'd ask those people who we met to introduce us to other people, friends of those people we talked to.â
They would talk to whoever they could find within the design community. The first person they spoke to at Microsoft, for example, was Claireâs friendâs ex-boyfriend whom she DMd on Facebook [8]. They were hustling.
The product was very early, and no one would have switched over to using full-time. So what they were doing was sowing the seeds of community. They were forming relationships with designers, building their trust, and finding the people who wanted to come on this journey with them. They did this by listening. They asked for feedback and used that to shape and refine the product [8].
They were still in stealth mode, so they didnât have a community of their own. Instead, they tapped into the existing design community [1]:
âItâs about building individual relationships with people in communities that have already taken shape.â
A big part of this was hooking into key influencers within #DesignTwitter - Twitter being the go-to platform used by designers at this time, and how many of them keep up to date with the latest design trends and opinion formers [1]. âWe really went all in on Twitter,â says Claire [7].
Dylan coded a script to break down the different clusters of people within the design community on Twitter. So they could see who were the most influential people within different sub-groups, like typographers, iconographers, illustrators, and product designers, for example, and identify the key people who connected them all [8]. They would then message them, and seek their feedback on what they were building. âIt's about making them see that you get them and that you're innovating in the space in a way that they should follow you,â says Claire [8].
.webp)
Nairi Hourdajian, VP of Communications, Content, and Community Marketing at Figma, notes that this process takes time - itâs not something you can shortcut [11]. They stuck with it, and it became a whole team effort: âPeople on our design team, of course, our designer advocates, some of our product managers, our support team, our CEO, they all chime in, connect, and learn,â says Chief Customer Officer Amanda Kleha [12].
They would consistently put the product in front of designers, ask them for feedback, and come back later with that feedback implemented [13]. This process is even more impactful when it isnât someone from Marketing who is running things. Claire knew this, and so the first hire she made was Bryn Jackson as a Designer Advocate [7].
Bryn brought credibility to Figma. He was a design insider, co-host of the popular Design Details podcast, and part-time CEO of his own development and design podcast network SpecFM [14]. He had a lot of connections in the design influencer world, and while he liked Figma, he was no fanboy - he had a lot of critical feedback about the product that he would share in his conversations with fellow designers [12]. This worked in Figmaâs favor, though - designers trusted him and it set the tone to get real, honest feedback that Figma leaped on to make its fledgling product even better [15].
By establishing deep relationships with key influencers, Figma laid the foundation for what would become its community-led growth engine [8]. But next, the focus switched from planting seeds to building credibility and early evangelism. Key to this was launching out of stealth [8], which they did, releasing a closed beta in December 2015 [16]. It made a splash - leveraging its influencer network, its launch was promoted by folks like John Maeda and Ev Williams [8]. It became all Design Twitter wanted to talk about, but not all of it was positive [17]:
Ouch đŹ. They now poke fun at such critical feedback by featuring it on its About page, but at the time, it showed that Figma still had a lot of work to do. They had momentum but needed to continue to build credibility. A big part of how they gained that was with content [1].
They created deep, technical content, which was a hit among its target senior designer practitioner persona. âThey donât want fluff,â says Claire [1]:
âWe had to think about how we might speak to this audience in a different way, so they understood that weâre not just trying to sell them BS. We are building something thatâs going to be useful to them.â
So the content they produced went deep into the details of how they built specific features, and why they made some of its design decisions [8]:
âWe weren't sharing our messaging and positioning with them. We were going deep into the product with these early adopters who were interested in Figma and also engineers who were interested in learning how we did it.â
This proved effective in flipping some of its critics into advocates and building up a group of power users who were passionate about the product [8]. While for others, it was a way to passively keep in touch with product developments over time. However, they also wanted to expose people to the use of the product, too.
One way they did this was with a game called Pixel Pong. Theyâd invite influencers to test out Figma by competing with each other to design something in real-time on a live stream [12]. This worked well in getting people to see the product in action, not just with those trying it out, but with the people watching along, too [12].
They kept up with the influencer outreach, but they soon took things international. Dylan went out on the road organizing a series of Design Systems-focused meetups in Nigeria, Russia, Ukraine, Singapore, Indonesia, and elsewhere [29]. For each of these, Amanda recalls: âWe worked with local evangelists to host the meetup at their place of work and then invited the design community alongâ [12]. Design Systems became a key focus of its content and it later launched DesignSystems.com - a resource site that gathered lessons and stories from community members from customer companies like Airbnb, GitHub, Braintree, Segment, and others [28].
They would keep going back to these influencers over time, too - updating them on developments within the product. This long-term commitment formed a real connection with people, letting them know they were being listened to, says Amanda [12]:
âA lot of those early influencers are part of our community today and helping spread the word of how they use Figma and what they think of it.â
Post-launch, Figma layered in traditional marketing too. However, âdon't be thirsty,â was a constant refrain coming from its Designer Advocates. As Claire says, âIt wasn't ever about the hard sell. We were getting people to try it and then try it againâ [8].
To remove all friction from just getting folks to try the product, Figma remained free for the first two years post-launch. This meant that if designers weren't ready to use it yet full-time, they could still use it for side projects [8]:
âYou could pop in, you could test it out. Designers love doing side projects, so that became important for us, too,â says Claire.
Community was helpful with some of those marketing tactics too. They wanted to showcase customers in case studies, but many Enterprises still didnât want to feature in them and share that they were a customer. So they got those early proof points in different ways. Amanda recalls that since âWe invested in social channels⊠I could show proof points of many companies using Figma because their end-users are talking about it online, even though the company PR department doesn't want us to use their logoâ [18].
Building credibility took time, and according to Claire, there wasnât a clear defining point when they shifted into early evangelism. But over three years, as the product continued to mature, it became clear that these efforts were working and they edged towards a tipping point where people began to use the tool full-time [8].
Finally, it came time for Figma to introduce self-serve pricing. With this, the community strategy shifted to scaling up and enabling evangelists to bring Figma into their organizations [8]. The work focused on elevating and amplifying the contributions being made by community members, and events have played a key role in this [12].
Figma started with running some informal meetups. âThe first meetup we had⊠was probably just like ten people in the office,â says Claire [7]. But soon enough, they started to take them more seriously and now âWe have a really robust events program,â says Nairi [11].
This mostly began with its own user conference, Config [12]. Config got started in February  2020 [19]. An in-person event held in San Francisco, rather than celebrity keynotes, the schedule of talks all came from an open call for proposals where they asked its community members what they wanted to talk about [7]. As Claire explains, the thinking here was âIf we can get them excited to talk to each other, talk about topics they're interested in, that is a key recipe for successâ [20]. The motto was âby the community, for the communityâ [12]. The majority of the talks ended up focused not on Figma-led brand or product talks, but on its customers, how they were actively using the product, and how others could use it to improve their craft. âA community-driven, unbiased message just holds more weight,â says Amanda, âcompared to any kind of content we might put out ourselvesâ [12].
The vibe of the event was less corporate and more communal as a result, too [2]. For example, attendees were invited to contribute to a digital quilt (in Figma, of course!) that represented what community meant to them [12]. While they initially anticipated 200 attendees [21], they ended up with 1,200 [26]. Before the event, they spun up a Slack instance for registered attendees to talk and meet each other. That proved to be a hit, and so they kept it going after the event. Later that year they also ran Config Europe, a virtual conference that ran on Hopin [12].
During COVID, the main user conference also switched to being virtual and registration numbers swelled to 60,000 people in 2021 [11]. Back to in-person again for 2023, they had 8,000 attendees [31] but Amanda notes that theyâve stuck to their roots [20]:
âFor every single one of these we put on, we've really gone to the community to be part of and lead on what the content is.â
Theyâve also added in a 2nd major event, Schema, focusing specifically on Design Systems. Design Systems are a big gating feature for Figma, itâs a core reason teams upgrade from Pro to its Enterprise plan [7]. So Claire says that this event is used to âBring in these advanced design systems practitioners and just show you how they're workingâ [7].
Other events they run include a series of livestreams, called âIn the File,â where they give the stage over to one or two of its customers who present their Figma workflows [32]. They also had a student-run Hackathon program for some time, where they would offer financial support and swag, although this was suspended in 2021 [33].
All these events have proven to be especially useful in getting a lot of user feedback into the product development process. Theyâve âfilled me and our entire team with ideas of how to go make Figma so much better,â remarks Amanda [20].
Beyond Twitter and events, theyâve also invested in their building up owned community platforms, too. Back in 2018, they started a Spectrum-based chat community [23]. Spectrum was a community platform co-created by Bryn alongside his work at Figma. It was later acquired and subsequently closed down by GitHub [24]. Around this time, they also launched Figma Local Communities [25]. More than 80% of Figmaâs user base is outside the U.S., and it had grown internationally sooner than it had expected [6]. So this program aimed to connect its global community. This initiative was piloted in Africa, with 21 ambassadors in 11 cities and 7 countries who organized 25 meetups. They also started an online Slack group, which included just over 2,000 people [28].
The Local Communities program was later rolled out to an additional 20+ cities around the world [25]. The cities chosen included places where evangelists had already self-organized meetups or where they had a large concentration of Figma users. Volunteers would organize local events, enabling Figma fans to get together and discuss best practices. Dylan noted at the time that âProduct design is at an inflection point and designers are hungry for IRL opportunities to connect.â Each of its initial events in these cities reached capacity with 100â300+ people RSVPing [28].
These efforts were supported by its designer advocates, who by then had grown to 3 people based in the U.S., Europe, and Africa [25]. Initially, this effort was run using Meetup, but they later switched over to using Bevy [12] and there are now over 150 regional groups, as well as a dozen topic-based groups, including product design, illustration, accessibility, and ones for specific products like FigJam, too [22].
That Slack community continued to grow and it moved over to Discord in late 2021 [11] and merged with its Local Communities program to become whatâs now called Friends of Figma. Friends of Figma brings together regional user groups and events alongside its 23,000+ member Discord server [22]. Itâs a place for passionate Figma users to connect and where Figma sources many of its community advocates [13]. Outside of this they also have a Discourse-based forum. This is also used to connect with others and ask questions about the use of the tool, but it's used for suggesting product improvements and voting on ideas, too.
Aside from its team of Designer Advocates, who are paid Figma employees, it also has a Community Advocate program, for volunteers to become group leaders and run its regional user groups [27]. Hugo Ben Brahim, a Paris-based Community Advocate since 2020, explains that he volunteers because, in the design community, âWe mainly come across English-language articles from the U.S. So I wanted to highlight our experts and know-how in France,â adding âItâs also a great opportunity to get to know new peopleâ [30]. Community Advocates are expected to run at least one event per quarter, and itâs a fairly lightweight process to sign up - you fill in a form, have a video call with someone from the Community Marketing team, and if all goes well, youâre in [30]. In return, advocates are identified as a Figma expert within Friends of Figma, they get access to a private Discord channel and are invited to a quarterly meeting where advocates share top tips. You also get a free Figma Pro account, access to beta features, and opportunities to represent Figma at events [27].
In January 2022, Figma launched a swag store [11]. An initiative by the community marketing team, Nairi says, âWe had a lot of pull from our community for swag and we were trying to figure out a scalable way to deliver swag to the people who wanted it.â True to its brand, it looks great and the products are fab quality. âIt's not a money maker for Figmaâ, says Nairi. Itâs âjust a vehicle to bring what we heard from the community that they were excited about and just deepen some connection with themâ [11].
The final phase of Figmaâs evolving community strategy is about enabling Enterprise sales [8]. After launching out of stealth, âWe actually didn't have a Sales team for the first three years,â says Claire. âWe got to the point where Microsoft and Google and all these big companies would have clusters of Figma users all over their organization, but they werenât connected to each other at all. People were just putting Figma on their credit cards all across the Enterpriseâ [1].
It wasnât until 2019 that they introduced Enterprise pricing [35]. By this time, its community growth engine was in full effect. Former VP of Growth Marketing at Figma, JesĂșs Requena, says âWhen I joined, most of the acquisition was direct traffic, organic traffic, word of mouth, communityâ [34]. Its self-serve motion was marketingâs domain, turning free users into paid Pro plan users, but community proved to be effective in helping to drive its Enterprise motion too. âWe had so much organic inbound and people just going to our web form saying, will you help unblock me?â says Claire. âThat was enough leads to feed our sales teamâ [8] and they are focused entirely on selling its top-tier plan [20]. Although, itâs worth noting that you can still self-serve its Enterprise plan - âIf you don't want to talk to someone, you shouldn't have to talk to someone,â says Amanda [20].
The typical path is for an organization to start on its free plan, then âMaybe they use it for Pro, which is on your credit card,â says Claire. âOnce it's widespread and they gain the confidence, then they're ready to bring in Salesâ [7]. Its pricing is set up to enable time to build up internal adoption and advocacy before having to pay. They provide unlimited viewers, charging just for editors, which means a designer can work with multiple other team members, like product managers, and marketing who can all add comments.
Wider industry trends have helped further this too. Amanda notes that âLarge companies no longer have a centralized design team, but rather design teams that are within business units or within product lines.â So for Figma, this means âWe'll land in one team, grow there, and then we'll expand to other teamsâ [3]. In many ways, Figma is built around enabling this growth loop. Since itâs browser-based, it makes it easy for folks to share files with just a link. As a result, âA lot of our inbound signups are from people that have been invited into a Figma fileâ [3].
This growth loop is furthered through its affiliate program. Run through PartnerStack, its affiliate program enables creators, advocates, and partners to earn $3 for each new qualifying Figma or FigJam signup, as well as 30% of a new customer's first payment on a Professional plan [54].
Itâs unsurprising then that most of Figmaâs marketing-qualified leads come from its Free and Pro plans [7]. Even then, itâs a consultative approach, rather than a hard sell [20]. Designer Advocates are heavily involved in this community-assisted Sales process. They are there to help identify and work with internal champions, while Sales work to unblock issues around security, procurement, and administration [8]. Claire says that âOur designer advocate team would talk to users and build one-to-one relationships with folks,â adding theyâre there to âkeep the conversation openâ [1]. Theyâre also there to equip champions with the data and the stories to help them make a case for Figma internally [7]. For example, before joining Figma as a Designer Advocate herself, Clara Ujiie was on the other side of the sales conversation and recalls [36]:
âThey explained why they chose to de-couple color and text styles and depart from existing setups. The entire conversation was such a departure from the sales pitches I had gotten earlier that week. It was thoughtful, empathetic.â
The goal is to form a real partnership with champions, so that means âmaking your champion inside the company kind of a superhero,â says Claire. So beyond the sales assistance, advocates also think a lot about how they can help them grow and improve their careers, building the relationship beyond a transactional sale. That means inviting them to âspeak at one of our events, we're going to amplify you on social. We're going to promote you and make you a Thought Leader.â This is a win-win, notes Claire [7]:
âPeople want to learn from them, and we have the platform to be able to amplify them⊠that builds back into building credibility for Figma because now there's all these additional designers talking about Figma. It's all Flywheels.â
Pairing champions with Designer Advocates and Sales has proven to be âa really efficient model,â remarks Claire. It âhas really powered so much of our growthâ [7].
Champions participate in many different ways, from providing feedback on beta features, to continuous feedback on Slack/Discord and debugging work. âItâs been really amazing to see how much time our customers are willing to spend with us to make Figma better,â says Engineering Director Jessica Liu [21].
Claire goes on to note the importance of the Designer Advocate, highlighting that âdeals were so much more likely to close if [a Design Advocate] joins the calls.â And it has worked well for them, their Enterprise customer list includes Slack, Dropbox, Square, Airbnb, Netflix, Zoom, Uber, and many more [11].
Advocates are common in developer tools, but I think they are underutilized in other industries. Figma made a smart move in creating the role. So letâs take a closer look at the role and responsibilities of a Designer Advocate at Figma.
The Designer Advocacy function within Figma is âthe magic dust,â says Claire. âWe sprinkle it on⊠to make a lot of our go-to-market function workâ [7]. This is because designers have an aversion to traditional marketing [8]:
âThey don't want fluff, they don't want to be marketed to or sold to. They want authenticity.â
Thatâs what the Designer Advocates deliver. Designer Advocates have been full-time professional designers themselves, so theyâre able to work with and understand the painâpoints and pressures that its practitioner customers have. Theyâre multi-skilled individuals and the role includes aspects of Marketing, Sales, Support, Product, and of course, Community. They combine these skills and experience and plug them into the sales enablement, community engagement, and product development pipeline [37]. Clara portions out the time and responsibilities:
On the marketing side, they create a lot of its best practice content [15], which includes hosting livestreams on YouTube, creating guides, and sharing Figma examples or resources. When a major feature is released theyâll host Office Hours to dive into the nitty-gritty of it with folks. On the sales side, they join sales consultations to explain the product, share best practices, answer technical questions, and capture product feedback. Theyâll be on hand later in the process too to help unblock customers if they get stuck [37]. Luis Ouriach, a Designer Advocate at Figma says that, âIf we are helping someone out with a specific problem, more often than not that file will be published to the community as well so it can help others.â That file can be on Figma, or as Luis highlights, âI love a Loom video. I love recording quick tips⊠so that we can offer visual support for blockers or issues that people are facingâ [32].
Nairi points out that, âOur Designer Advocates are career designers who love using Figma, loved using Figma in their careersâ [11]. So they also act as a great liaison between customers providing feedback and the product team because they understand all of the context [15]. Theyâre able to acknowledge both the strengths and the weaknesses of the product [12], which makes every customer engagement an opportunity to learn more about how they can improve Figma. Designer Advocates then bring together and synthesize that feedback at scale into a form the product team can make use of [37]. âBeyond the conception of the Figma editor,â says Claire, âitâs pretty tough to name a product or feature in Figma that didnât start as an ask from our community [21]. Community-sourced feedback is something that âhelped us scale a lot,â says Claire [7].
Thereâs also a support and success element to the role. They run the weekly Figma 101 sessions for beginners and also write and maintain the Figma Best Practices guide section of the site [32]. Luis says âWe are often a first line of defence when a customer has an issue⊠Rather than going directly through to Support, sometimes we can offer a fix and allow that person to become successful in a few minutesâ [32].
While most of the Designer Advocates have a regional focus, Miggi Cardona is a Designer Advocate for Education. He helps run the Figma for Education program thatâs aimed at not just accredited colleges but also online courses, bootcamps, and other forms of educational groups [38]. They provide them with a free Education plan, which includes all the features of its Professional plan as well as dedicated resources, like practical classroom templates, access to a Discord group of fellow students and educators, and invites to virtual events and meetups [38]. As part of this program, theyâve also funded student-run hackathons and hosted a two-day virtual make-a-thon, Camp Figma, which brought together students across dozens of time zones [39].
The final key pillar of Figmaâs community-led approach is incorporated into the Figma product itself.
Figma has had a developer API since 2018, enabling you to integrate Figma with other tools [53]. It later added a plugin layer, which resulted in a thriving developer ecosystem for plugins, which add supplemental functionality to Figma [4]. However, in October 2019 it released the beta of Figma Community [41].
Figma Community is like GitHub but for designers, providing a platform for designers to publish and share design files and plugins [40]. These files can then be inspected and remixed, or you can learn from them [41]. It effectively enables open-source sharing for designers [42].
This is a big change. Developers have long embraced open-source, and practically no software is created anymore that doesnât build upon hundreds of packages of pre-written code. However, this never caught on in the design space. Designers would happily share the finished outcomes, showcasing their skills on sites like Dribbble and Behance. But in terms of the design files themselves or re-usable assets, these were often just found on sleazy-looking ad-infested websites. Designers often felt embarrassed about making use of such resources. However, with developments like Figma Community, this perception is changing and designers are now seeing assets and templates shared on Figma as being a useful tool that they can build upon and the process has become more collaborative [43].
A designer known as âVicâ who works on Design Systems at Microsoft, for example, says âI had no design education, no access to design resources or mentoring. I share resources today because I want to pave the path for early-in-career designers, for career changers, and for people who have difficulties entering the industryâ [43]. The Figma Community has now become a thriving ecosystem. As of May 2022, Figma shared that [44]:
âEvery day, Figma Community members publish over 1,600 resources to help designers and their teams work more openly and efficiently in Figma and FigJamâeverything.â
Figma Community is accessed from the main left nav bar in the product. Thereâs a curated listing of assets like files, plugins, and widgets. You can create a profile, including a cover image, logo, and bio to showcase your creations, and follow other designers to get updates on when they create and share new things. So you can not only explore and get inspiration from what other designers are up to, but when used, you can save time and effort by leveraging these pre-made resources and templates.
It was keenly adopted by several well known design-first companies, including Airtable, Slack, Uber, Dropbox, and others who shared assets on the platform [45]. As well as prominent designers like Nerdfox who shared animated prototypes and Bonnie Kate Wolf who created collections of reusable artwork on the platform [46].
The resources you list can be freely available, or you can choose to charge for them too. Figma takes care of the payment integration, licensing, file hosting, and even things like managing refundsâso designers can just set a price, publish, and begin earning [47]. Figma takes a 15% cut of sales to cover its transactional and operational costs [48].
There are benefits of Figma Community to the business beyond this additional revenue stream, though. JesĂșs says âPeople with templates have higher intent, they activate higher and the cost per acquisition is lowerâ [49]. The templates are good for SEO, too - each asset gets a web page, which is indexed by Google and findable by designers looking for such assets. While the Figma product team also uses the plugins that get added to the platform as a way of spotting gaps in the core product. As Designer Advocate Rogie King says, âYou could look at plugins and then be like, Hey, I want this natively, but I just created a plugin because I need it nowâ [50]. However, he goes on to point out that thereâs a risk, too [50]:
âWhen you allow an integration into your product, be it like a plugin or a native integration of some kind. Now the perception of your product can be tainted by their experience with that plugin.â
To help ensure thereâs a stream of high-quality plugins and other assets, Figma created the Creator Fund. Launched in March 2023 [52] the Creator Fund is a grants program for designers to make and share free resources on the Community [48]. Recipients of the grants can give back to the community through open source tools and content by using the funding to build their ideas and then share their creations freely with everyone so they can learn and benefit from the work [47]. As of November 2023, Figma says it has received hundreds of grant applications and they have distributed nearly $300,000 to 13 creators across 9 different countries, funding things like free widgets, plugins, templates, and more. Each month its Creator Fund grant committee reviews applications and chooses up to five new recipients [51].
They also recognize contributors to the Figma Community with its Community Awards. The awards started in 2022, as a way to encourage users of creations on its platform to nominate the resource and show some love to the creator behind it. Figma describes the awards as âa celebration of the ways that the community imagines, designs, and buildsâtogetherâ [44].
So how does all of this come together? Nairi says, âMy team right now is about 20 people and includes⊠comms, content, and communityâ [11]. They all sit within the larger Marketing department [32], but the community team is comprised of community marketers, like Claire, and covers events, social, and education. Plus, thereâs the advocacy team which includes more than a dozen Designer Advocates as well as developer and FigJam advocates, too [12].
They track many of their community programs using Common Room [55]. Amanda says, âOne of the major metrics at Figma we track is weekly active usersâŠ. We also track a lot of basic things like what's our share of voice out in the market, what's our impact on impressions on social media and things like thatâ [12].
Claire says, when it comes to community, âThe metrics don't immediately show you if something's working or not,â so you need leaders âwho are able to trust their own intuitions and their own gutsâ [21].
When Figma was first created, it had a lot of obstacles to overcome. They were trying to build something that hadnât been done before - put a design tool in the browser. They were also up against strong, well-funded, incumbent competitors that had owned the design tool market for decades. And yet, armed with a great product and a community-led approach they succeeded. They created the first design tool that combined the accessibility of the Web with the functionality of a native app [37]. Company revenues were expected to surpass $200M in 2022 and be on track for $400M by 2025. Its customers love it, and stick with it - thatâs why it has a best-in-class net dollar retention of 150% [4].
This has taken an amazing effort right across the company, but as Amanda says, âthe community will pay off for years to comeâ, adding that folks should not âunderestimate the value of building a community through your brand.â Community was part of the founding team's ethos from day one, and they stuck with it from stealth through to (failed) acquisition and beyond. âItâs part of our competitive edge,â says Amanda, âcommunity is a big part of our successâ [56].
Thatâs it! Thatâs how community growth works at Figma. For more detail, dig into the sources below. If you found this newsletter useful, please share it with friends and colleagues. And if you havenât already, subscribe below. âïž
