Figma, where did it go right?

Ah Figma, a true David vs Goliath story. How did it manage to take on the likes of Adobe and Sketch and win? Not only win, but absolutely blow them out of the water?

I need to put my hands up, I am a late adopter to the world of Figma. I didn’t start using the software until 2020. In 2016 when all the cool kids were telling me that this new prototyping tool was the dog’s balls, I was skeptical. How could a startup take on the likes of Adobe? I thought it would eventually come into scaling issues and die like so many software startups have before them. Well, in May 2021 Figma was valued at $10 billion! So I think it’s safe to say it’s not going anywhere.

So how did Figma do it? What has it done to attract 4 million users? I have picked out six key features that, in my (humble) opinion, transformed what was a slow stagnating market into an arms race for designers subscriptions. Competitors are now scrambling to try and keep up with Figma’s technology and release rate.

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1. Web based

Browsers have really advanced in the past decade so has access to fast internet. Figma saw a gap in the market; Design software that can be used on any major operating system including MacOS, Windows, Linux and even Chrome OS. This meant that the bar to entry was suddenly a lot lower than its competitors. Other perks of Figma being web based include:

One source of truth

As the documents need to be stored in the cloud this means there is only one instance of the file. Gone are the days of saving files locally and making sure everyone in your team is using the correct version.

Live collaboration

It allows users to work on the same file at the same time rather than being locked out if someone is working on the file you need. It’s great to see how other designers work, you can easily talk about the design and prototype ideas together.

Commenting

For better or for worse it’s easy to allow clients, project managers, developers, etc, into your file. You can give them view privileges and they can easily comment away on your designs.

Version history

Mistakes happen, especially in big teams, so being able to roll back changes is a life saver.