[HN Gopher] Figma Files Registration Statement for Proposed Init...
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Figma Files Registration Statement for Proposed Initial Public
Offering
Author : kualto
Score : 133 points
Date : 2025-07-01 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.figma.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.figma.com)
| pm90 wrote:
| From the adobe disaster to this. I am glad Adobe didn't snuff
| them out. Cheers and congrats to ... fig-mates? : )
| pixxel wrote:
| If you're tired of it all, and the inevitable, and you have
| agency, try penpot.app
| rglover wrote:
| Also Sketch [1]. Everyone abandoned it when Figma became the
| pOpUlAr tool, but I still use it every day, nearly 15 years
| later and it's continued to improve.
|
| [1] https://sketch.com
| zX41ZdbW wrote:
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579878/000162828025...
| giacaglia wrote:
| Its S-1 shows $70M held in Bitcoin ETFs, and board approval for
| another $30M BTC purchase via USDC!
|
| https://x.com/tier10k/status/1940133141546770454
| cluckindan wrote:
| Oh, so that's why they're taking it public: they are turning
| the company into a crypto investment fund which just happens to
| provide a SaaS design tool.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| It's the other way around, they bought some bitcoin because
| they are going public for the meme stock value.
| boredatoms wrote:
| Thats pretty weird, you'd think they would offload things like
| that to not spook investors
| btown wrote:
| They don't link to the Form S-1 prospectus from their
| announcement, but it's publicly available at
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579878/000162828025...
|
| Their highlighted metrics page: $821M LTM revenue, 46% YoY
| revenue growth, 18% non-GAAP operating margin, 91% gross margin.
|
| It's an incredible success story, and the engineering they did
| upfront (primarily led by co-founder Evan Wallace) that set the
| stage for their success is the stuff of legends.
| https://madebyevan.com/figma/ has links to numerous blog posts
| breaking it down, but here are some choice quotes:
|
| > [Evan] developed the hybrid C++/JavaScript architecture for
| Figma's editor that made it possible to build a best-in-class
| design tool in the browser. The document representation and
| canvas area is in C++ while the UI around the canvas is in
| JavaScript (the team eventually settled on TypeScript + React for
| this). This let us heavily optimize the document representation
| to reduce memory usage and improve editing speed while still
| using modern UI technologies for fast iteration on our UI. C++
| development was done using Xcode (not in the browser) to provide
| a better debugging environment.
|
| > Even though the contents of Figma documents are similar to what
| HTML can display, Figma actually does all of its own document
| rendering for cross-browser consistency and performance. Figma
| uses WebGL for rendering which bypasses most of the browser's
| HTML rendering pipeline and lets the app work closely with the
| graphics card. The rendering engine handles curve rendering,
| images, blurs, masking, blending, and opacity groups, and
| optimizes for high visual fidelity.
|
| > [Evan] developed Figma's multiplayer syncing protocol, worked
| on the initial version of the multiplayer live collaboration
| service (a kind of specialized real-time database), and added
| multiplayer syncing support to Figma's existing editing
| application. The initial version was written in TypeScript but
| [he] later ported it to Rust for improved performance and
| stability.
|
| It's a great reminder that it's not premature optimization if
| your UI's fluidity is your distinctive feature and your calling
| card! And the business acumen to turn this into such a wildly
| successful product in the context of competitors with kitchen-
| sink feature lists can't be understated, either. I have an
| incredible amount of respect for this team, and they should
| inspire all of us to tackle ambitious projects.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| I was one of their first Enterprise customers way back in
| 2017'ish-give-or-take.
|
| The brilliance of the system he built was that it allowed for
| real time collaboration. Which was god send from the Sketch ->
| Zeplin -> Invision -> Avocode (version management) 'stack' that
| lost Enterprise design orgs were using.
|
| Which was already a large leap from what Adobe was expecting us
| to do with Photoshop/Illustrator (after they depreciated
| Fireworks).
|
| Figma made handoff much easier. Made version control dead
| simple. Made my life as a UX leader much much better. I
| remembered talking to a few now-Gigantic companies back then
| and we all plotted the move together
|
| It wasn't lost on us that Sketch is/was much much smoother with
| its usage of Mac OS's native shape rendering. It's just that
| the benefits far outweighed the small drop in snappiness.
|
| And for anyone who's going to say "Sketch was Mac only that's
| why it failed!" I assure you that had nothing to do with it.
| For the same reasons an entire generation of UX/UI designers
| stopped using Axure. But we would need to start talking about
| Invision 7 and Invision Studio if you wanted to get into the
| nitty gritty.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Don't forget the incredible lock in Figma has in the design
| space.
|
| Figma just has to jack up the price in order to appease Wall
| Street quarterly.
|
| Business wise it's got a great margin, but the avaricious
| nature of Wall St. will force them to enshittify the entire
| product, the engineering doesn't matter unless Wall St. is
| satisfied.
| overfeed wrote:
| > Figma just has to jack up the price in order to appease
| Wall Street quarterly
|
| Aren't designers mad at Adobe for doing exactly this?
| 1zael wrote:
| Evan Wallace basically said screw it, I'm writing a custom
| WebGL renderer and multiplayer protocol, when everyone else was
| slapping together existing libraries. Most of us would have
| built a janky Electron app and called it a day. Instead they
| went nuclear on performance because that WAS their product
| differentiation.
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| > The rendering engine handles curve rendering, images, blurs,
| masking, blending, and opacity groups, and optimizes for high
| visual fidelity.
|
| And thats how you get designers whining that their design looks
| great in figma but not in a real webpage
| cluckindan wrote:
| This, so much this.
|
| I've been thinking about a box-first approach to design
| tooling. The overall layout workflow would consist only of
| adding boxes (block-level elements) to a blank web page, or
| inside other boxes. Boxes could also contain other elements
| like inputs, buttons, images, etc.
| YZF wrote:
| Maybe the real webpage also needs a better stack _and_
| designers need to worry less about things they can 't control
| and think more about usability and simplicity.
|
| I work on a large web based application, with designers, who
| use Figma. It's just too easy to lose the plot and come up
| with things that don't work well. Not because of Figma.
| Something about the balance between the software stack(s),
| the domain, the focus of designers today, the front end
| engineering, and product management is broken. It's
| interesting that Figma did (IMO) a great job at addressing
| the stack so they can build a product that does what they
| want it and then is used by so many to build products that
| don't always do what their customers want. Asking Figma to
| use the wrong stack for their product (which is what I'm
| reading between the lines) is not really the right answer...
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| > Maybe the real webpage also needs a better stack
|
| I'll call Google and I'm sure they'll get right on aligning
| their browser's rendering engine with figma's
| YZF wrote:
| Is this alignment _the_ issue with your application? Are
| there design alternatives that would be impacted less by
| some rendering engine differences?
|
| What about other browsers? Versions? Platforms? OS?
| Resolution/screen size? My huge frontend team can't
| handle this, even before we used Figma.
|
| Isn't the problem trying to get this "web platform" do
| something it was never meant to do? How would this be
| solved by Figma using a rendering engine that would grind
| their product to a halt?
|
| I'm old enough to have done a lot of native platform UI
| work, the web stack in many ways was a step backwards. It
| has obviously a lot of advantages (run anywhere) but in
| some ways it's more like IBM terminals on a mainframe vs.
| a native UI where you have full control. I (obviously)
| use and make web apps all the time, but they often suck,
| and this isn't Figma's fault.
| tshaddox wrote:
| In my experience that's rarely due to low-level rendering
| differences, and almost always due to the Figma design not
| accommodating real-world data.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| While I like the product, the net income would worry me if I
| were to participate in the IPO. $280M net income in 2023 after
| they received $1B for the failed merger and $730M net loss
| because of RSU/Stock Awards in 2024 is not great when the total
| revenue for the company was $500M in 2023 and $750M in 2024.
| system2 wrote:
| When they go IPO, will you guys buy it immediately, expecting it
| to go up? Curious what people think about the figma's future.
| diegof79 wrote:
| Point of view as a Figma user...
|
| With all the AI tools, the market is in a transition period.
|
| Those transitions are crucial for a product's success or
| failure. For example, the transition from web to mobile with
| the iPhone, along with the growing pains of using Photoshop and
| Illustrator for mockups, opened the door to Sketch. Then, the
| evolution of web apps, like Google Docs, opened the door to
| Figma (while other products like InVision had a drastic fall).
| What they accomplished in a web app is an impressive
| engineering feat, so they have an excellent engineering team.
|
| The good: Figma is implementing multiple product updates to
| capitalize on the "AI wave". The Figma Make in beta is very
| similar to Vercel's v0 (and others). Still, the tight
| integration with Figma could help them leverage their current
| subscriptions and attract designers, PMs, and developers.
| Recently, they released an MCP server in beta that enables AI
| coding tools to obtain information from designs. While many
| designers may disagree with me, I believe that at least they
| are trying to maintain a leading position in a rapidly shifting
| market.
|
| The bad: They are diversifying their product offering too much,
| trying to compete on many fronts. Figma Site competes with
| Framer and Webflow, and Figma Buzz aims at digital marketing,
| which is usually covered by many tools (including Canva). Figma
| Slides is ideal for designers who use Figma daily, but it may
| not be as user-friendly for those transitioning from PowerPoint
| or Keynote. They switched the focus from the Design->Dev
| process that made them successful. The dev mode still doesn't
| resolve many issues, such as versioning, and the variable
| features seem half-baked; component handling needs more love,
| and the prototyping options are still limited.
|
| The future... is hard to tell. In terms of UI design tools,
| they are the leaders. Penpot is far from being stable; Sketch
| is similar, but their web experience is not as good as Figma.
| Unless a new player enters the market, their biggest threat is
| a significant disruption caused by AI tools... but the tools
| I've seen so far are not different from Figma Make.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Looks like I got access to it riiiiiiiight as they're gonna start
| gutting themselves to pay for retirement and pension funds.
| Awesome!
| colesantiago wrote:
| So now that Figma will be owned by Wall Street, it will only get
| considerably worse from here. It is now time consider and find
| and fund open source alternatives.
|
| I know of excalidraw and perhaps penpot are there anymore?
| cluckindan wrote:
| I agree. If they're so profitable already, why take the company
| public at all?
| bdangubic wrote:
| to be a lot more profitable
| cluckindan wrote:
| And how would that happen? They already have the product,
| which can be sold in huge numbers without really needing to
| scale operations. Are you suggesting they need cash to
| rewrite or improve the product?
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Because there are likely many employees and investors who
| want to cash out.
|
| Going public makes their shares liquid. It's (probably) not
| reasonable for the company to repurchase that equity or to
| pay employees pure cash comp.
| atombender wrote:
| At my company we use Miro a ton. It doesn't have the design
| tools, just the white boarding and diagramming, so its Figma
| counterpart is FigJam. But the realtime collaboration features
| are just as good, and sometimes better. They have a decent
| desktop Electron app that wraps it, too.
| rvz wrote:
| Very predictable outcome: [0] [1]
|
| Now prepare for price increases, lock-ins and many threads of
| people looking for Figma alternatives.
|
| The ones cheering already have stock ready to dump it on the
| public markets on retail.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36533826
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34920968
| jonator wrote:
| Reminds me of the Linear story. You can disrupt a set of
| established players by focusing on simplicity, opinionated
| design, and maximum performance via hardcore engineering.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| Going public is usually terrible news for users.
|
| That said, today it's an incredibly good design tool - worth
| checking out before shareholders start the enshittification
| process. Congrats to the devs / founders for making it all the
| way to an IPO!
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Anybody have recommendations for good alternatives that are
| earlier in the enshittification cycle?
| Zealotux wrote:
| Figma's enshittification started back when there were talks of
| Adobe taking over, it's already bloated beyond reason.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Their new "AI" feature is a bolted-on POS.
|
| But Figma itself is excellent at what it does.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Beyond Penpot and Excalidraw, check out Sketch (Mac-only but
| mature), Lunacy (offline-capable), and Plasmic (code-focused) -
| all with different trade-offs but less pressure to monetize
| aggressively.
| granzymes wrote:
| Headline financials: FY Ended December 31, in
| millions except percentage | 2023 |
| 2024 | YoY ---------------|--------|--------|-------
| revenue | $505 | $749 | 48% gross profit |
| $460 | $661 | 44% op ex | $534 | $1,539 |
| 118% net income | $738 | $(732) | (199)% free
| cash flow | $1,041 | $68 | (93)%
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| What happened in 2024 that caused their operating expenses to
| increase so much?
| granzymes wrote:
| Mostly a 356% increase in R&D: FY Ended
| December 31, in millions except percentage
| | 2023 | 2024 | YoY
| ---------------------------|--------|--------|-------
| research and development | $165 | $751 | 356%
| sales and marketing | $201 | $472 | 134%
| general and administrative | $168 | $316 | 88%
|
| And most of that increase came from a one-time charge from
| allowing employees to sell their RSUs. While not a cash cost
| for Figma, it was booked as an expense and allocated as
| follows: | 2024
| -----------------------------|-------- cost of revenue
| | $25 research and development | $463
| sales and marketing | $187 general and
| administrative | $184 total
| | $858
|
| If you subtract the one-time charge, you get:
| | 2023 | 2024 (adj.) | YoY
| ---------------------------|------|-------------|-------
| research and development | $165 | $288 | 75%
| sales and marketing | $201 | $285 | 42%
| general and administrative | $168 | $132 | (21)%
| total | $534 | $705 | 32%
| drexlspivey wrote:
| They received a $1B termination fee in 2023 when their
| acquisition by Adobe collapsed. They would be losing money in
| 2023 otherwise
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| Initially Tepid about AI. Didn't want to upset their base
| like Adobe was (seemingly) doing. Look at that year's Figcon
| for evidence. The keynote led with the new Figma, front
| loaded anything. He quickly moved past it and spent 90% of
| the rest of the time on non-consequential features.
|
| Then that AI feature they highlighted was pulled off
| production because it was cloning iOS.
|
| The AI heavy product dump we just got are lessons from that
| time.
| jonas21 wrote:
| In May 2024, after the Adobe acquisition was called off, they
| removed some of the vesting conditions on RSUs so that
| employees could sell shares in a secondary offering
| (employees were probably expecting to be able to cash out in
| the acquisition and disappointed when if fell through).
|
| From an accounting perspective, it was an $800 million stock-
| based compensation expense, but it didn't really cost Figma
| anything.
| Animats wrote:
| There's a president-for-life clause:
|
| _" Immediately following the completion of this offering, and
| assuming no exercise of the underwriters' over-allotment option,
| Dylan Field, our Chair of our Board of Directors, Chief Executive
| Officer, and President will hold or have the ability to control
| approximately % of the voting power of our outstanding capital
| stock, including % of the voting power pursuant to the Wallace
| Proxy. As a result, following this offering, Mr. Field will have
| the ability to control the outcome of matters submitted to our
| stockholders for approval, including the election of our
| directors and the approval of any change of control
| transaction."_
| mattmaroon wrote:
| That generally makes me more inclined to invest as I find that
| the biggest problem with a lot of public companies is they
| manage to Wall Street which means putting the short term over
| the long term, and those are often at odds with each other.
| Kye wrote:
| What Figma did in this era of anticompetitive buyouts is
| admirable but my mind will always think figma balls even after
| they IPO freely.
|
| Anyway, congratulations to everyone at Figma and good luck.
| urda wrote:
| Don't forget how Figma bullied Loveable from being able to use
| "dev mode" [1].
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/15/figma-sent-a-cease-and-
| des...
| lvl155 wrote:
| Figma is an incredible product but I don't like what they're
| doing with AI. They should focus on enabling UI/UX designers to
| do more instead of making a glorified Dreamweaver.
| greatgib wrote:
| To me, an IPO by them at this moment let me think that they know
| that they are on top of the wave and that it is better to cash-in
| before growth starts to stale.
|
| They got a huge influx of users when image editing AI started to
| be a thing, I'm not quite sure that they haven't already
| conquered most of new users that could join them.
| andybak wrote:
| And the cycle continues. Who's working on the "Figma but not
| enshittified" at the moment?
| Lalabadie wrote:
| Penpot is the most solid alternative I know of at the moment.
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