What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #234
You can't sell platforms - nail the initial product first - Figma masterclass in product execution, listening to customers, earlier entry point in workflow
Ed Sim | Apr 24 |
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #234You can't sell platforms - nail the initial product first - Figma masterclass in product execution, listening to customers, earlier entry point in workflow
The big news this week was UiPath’s massive IPO which raised $1.3B of new financing and ended up with a closing market cap of $35.8 billion. It’s a huge accomplishment especially considering how choppy the markets have been as of late (more from CNBC).
On the product side, many of you know I’m a huge fan of Figma as I believe they are a walking master class in product led growth. This week Figma did not disappoint as it released its second product, Figjam, an online whiteboard to ideate and brainstorm together (uh oh Miro!). While this looks like another whiteboarding tool, why am I so excited and what lessons can founders learn? 🚀 Just announced at #Config2021: FigJam.
FigJam is a new online whiteboard for teams to ideate and brainstorm together.
Check it out: figma.com/figjam Figma was founded in 2012 and launched its core product in 2015 with a belief that design tools had to be all in one, online, and collaborative from day one as design is not just for designers but other stakeholders as well. So while the initial entry/insertion point to a workflow was around getting designers to use the product, what Figma got right (well covered in Kevin Kwok’s essay) is that design is not just for designers but for teams. So Figma nailed its initial wedge of designers, owned that market, raised $130M+, and ONLY after that, 6 years later, it launched a new product, Figjam, a collaborative whiteboard which is 🔥. In one fell swoop, Figma just exponentially increased its TAM as any one can use Figjam to collaborate and share ideas. More importantly though, Figma has created an earlier entry point in the design process, the whiteboarding and ideation phase before you actually design.
Figma has now moved earlier into the design workflow and also expanded its TAM as Figjam can be used for just about any creative, ideation process. Figjam is also a natural extension as they listened to their users. Figma also doubled down on the collaboration element by adding voice chat into all of their products. And now it’s a full end to end platform for the entire design process, 6 years after launching its first product. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, too many companies are focused on TAM and expanding into new markets too quickly before dominating their own. Figma is another example of nailing its initial market first before expanding too quickly. Lessons learned from Figma include you can’t sell a platform, nail an initial product first and own the market, listen to your users, entry/insertion point in workflows matter, double down on your strengths (collaboration), and many business use cases involve cross functional teams versus siloed groups. More to come next week as my firm @boldstartvc held an online discussion yesterday with Kyle Parrish, head of sales at Figma, about the PLG GTM and playbook. As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues! Scaling Startups
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