Short answer: After Figma filed its S-1, Sam Nadler says their own Figma use has dropped with AI. Jordan Metzner agrees tools like Bolt, Lovable and v0 replace some work, but calls Figma the top web design tool and expects a mega IPO.
Watch this answer from Episode 2 (starts at 26:29) · Episode 2 notes and transcript
From Episode 2: We Built an AI SEO Machine That Writes and Publishes Itself, starting at 26:29.
Jordan Metzner [26:29]: Yeah. One other story I wanna talk about is, yesterday, Figma filed their s one to go public. And, this is after the Adobe acquisition failed. But luckily, we're able to get a lot of information from the s one and just what an interesting company it is. But just first wanna chat about Figma and kind of your use cases of it, especially as being not being a designer, of course, and then what you think of the IPO as well.
Sam Nadler [26:56]: Yeah. So, Figma, I think, has been a tool that has been really impactful for what we do. I'm not a designer. You're not a designer. We both have Figma licenses. I would say we have 10 Figma licenses across, if not more, across our organization. And, I can get around Figma, and I can whip some things up pretty quickly? So I think it's a great tool. I mean, it's it's a lot more cost effective than other solutions, and they've got a great story. I think it's been growing rapidly. I would say that I think it's a great business, and I'm not here to make, like, a bold prediction. I would say the one thing with, over the last two years or last year and a half with AI's ability, I would say our daily use case or weekly use case of Figma has decreased. I mean, there's other great elements of the business. It's growing quickly. Lots of revenue, 70,000,000 in Bitcoin ETF, etcetera, that make it interesting.
Sam Nadler [28:00]: But just from that kind of perspective of your own use case, do you see that dwindling with AI or increasing with the ability to use Bolt or, other solutions that create great UI pretty quickly?
Jordan Metzner [28:13]: Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. I think, like, we've seen our own Figma consumption go down. I don't think it's gone to zero, but it's definitely gone down over the last year or so with the ability to use different AI tools like you mentioned, like Bolt, Lovable, v0.dev. And I don't know if you recall, but, like, about a year ago, they launched an AI tool in Figma, and they got in some trouble because, like, the UI looked just like, some other apps or something. And it seems like they haven't picked up the AI baton yet of kind of what the tool with AI could really do. It still to this day seems like it is the number one, like, web based design tool, especially for designing web and mobile. And Adobe doesn't even come close. But, yeah, I do hope they kind of figure out a means or method to adopt AI or, use their capital to acquire and integrate some more tools to just make Figma a more valuable tool to, designers and developers. But I think you're absolutely right.
Jordan Metzner [29:16]: I mean, like, can go into Cursor or you can go into Bolt and say, design me a beautiful interface that does this. And, it's way faster than actually doing it yourself. And maybe you can do some of that in Figma today, but I just haven't seen it become front and center in kind of like the core elements of what Figma can be. But, it's got a lot of potential. It has a huge community. It's got great community assets, incredibly smart young entrepreneur who is a Thiel Fellow. I don't know if you knew that as well. Mhmm. So high college dropout. And, yeah, I think, like, in general, he's got Silicon Valley behind him kinda backing this thing. So I think it's gonna be a mega IPO. And, yeah, probably for the next few years, we're still gonna see a lot of growth here.
Sam Nadler [30:05]: Cool. Well, I'm excited to see what happens. Well, Jordan, thank you. And anything else before we wrap up this episode?
Jordan Metzner [30:14]: No. This was super fun. Episode two of Built This Week. We're building more products every week and super excited to show you what we're working on next week. And, yeah, it just seems like the AI news is gonna be crazier and crazier each week. We're gonna continue to see new cool products as well as crazier salaries coming out of these, top tier companies. So I'm excited for what's coming and looking forward to catching up next week as well.
Sam Nadler [30:44]: Likewise. Thanks, everybody.
Jordan Metzner [30:46]: Thanks. Bye.
