TBPN | Wednesday, May 7th — searchlore

TBPN | Wednesday, May 7th

Published May 8, 2025

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Wednesday, May 7th, 2025.

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We are live from the dojo of design, the grid iron of grid layouts and the Valhalla vibe coding. It is Figma Config 2025.

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We are here in San Francisco in a pod.

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We are potting in the pod.

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We're very excited about it. Very excited to be here.

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Uh did you expect the scale of this event? No. The sheer magnitude.

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I mean, I met I met Dylan camping years ago.

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He's not the most boisterous of CEOs.

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He doesn't walk around with this swagger of someone who takes over San Francisco with something that is absolutely future.

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I don't know if we can go to that camera and show uh just the scale of everyone walking around, but he was on stage.

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I mean, it felt like there were it was the Super Bowl of design.

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It did Woodstock of Generative AI.

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Many people have been saying this, the gladiatorial games.

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It feels like moment like a Roman coliseum moment, right?

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Glad like something you'd see in Gladiator but for designers and vibe coders. That's right. That's right. It's amazing.

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There's so many uh so many different builders, designers, agencies, uh other, you know, SAS companies, and uh yeah, I wish we could honestly be out watching a lot of the keynotes, but we're going to be in here talking with some of the people doing keynotes and we have somewhat of a live audience here.

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We're in a in a basically in a fishbowl. It's great.

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Uh and so if you're here at Config, just come by, say hello, wave.

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But we're very excited to be here and we have a stacked lineup of guests for the day. Yeah.

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So, we're going to run through uh some designers, some venture capitalists, some friends of the show, all sorts of people, some people we just met a few minutes ago who uh uh stopped by, took some pictures, and uh we said, "Hey, come on the show."

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So, we're going to be uh doing some interviews over the next few hours, hanging out, talking about uh Figma, talking about what they're launching today.

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Uh should we kick it off with what they launched and then maybe we can go back and do some history on Figma because you found some interesting uh data points to share.

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I thought it'd be interesting to take people through since um that's the business side.

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This is not a business conference.

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They're not pitching the company.

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Uh they're pitching the product, but we focus on the business and technology side.

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And so I thought it'd be interesting to go through some of that. Yeah.

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So I can talk briefly about the new products that are launching today. Absolutely massive.

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And then we get into we should really run through the backstory of the company early years of Dylan Field.

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There's some crazy Dylan Field lore lore that we'll break down.

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But the things that are launching today, so uh the big one I already posted about this Figma sites.

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Uh it sounds like what it is. Yep.

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Uh I've wanted this feature since the very first day that I ever used Figma in college.

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So, uh, if you've ever designed a website in Figma, you usually hit this point where you're like, great, we have a beautiful website.

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Now, we want to turn it into, uh, a functional website, uh, that anybody can visit.

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And at that point, you would have to go off platform, uh, and build your own site or or host it elsewhere.

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Now, you can effectively design a site and publish it all within Figma. Yep.

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And it's basically taking the time from design to live site down to effectively zero, right?

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Just publishing in the platform.

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So that's one of the ones I'm most excited about.

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And there's always like a tension point there with the designers and the engineers where the designers want a pixel perfect design.

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They export, you know, this amazing PNG usually and then the front end engineers like, well, I got close enough. Yeah.

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They have to completely rebuild it. Yeah.

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And so this is a game changer.

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Um it gives more and more control to the person that's actually designing the website and enables them Yeah.

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effectively to go um allows the designer and the user in Figma to ship even if you're not a designer, right?

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I'm not I'm not a classically trained designer.

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I basically learn design through using Figma back in the day.

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And uh this just is so effectively just empowering, right?

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So I don't I don't have to make something myself and then wait for somebody to uh to dev it out.

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So how do you think about this product positioned in terms of like enterprise versus proumer?

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I could imagine this is uh all part of a funnel to get uh individuals like yourself who are doing work in design and then they publish their site and then as they scale they stay on Figma until they're massive.

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Um or do you think this is something that will be vended into enterprises for even huge sites? Yeah.

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Yeah, because you imagine at a certain point there's going to still be, you know, that fine grain control that comes from building something from scratch, but uh even for front-end landing pages, uh marketing pages, all these things, uh it was always better to have something that was a little bit more wizzywig, right?

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Something you just No, I think I think you just look at the journey of a company, right?

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If this is something that you can use if you just have an idea for a company, something is simple or you're creating an event, you want to get something out there, this allows you to go in Figma, design something in a few seconds. Yep.

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Publish it and get it live.

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And so that can be the starting point for a company and and and you can uh I imagine grow on it.

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Um you know, the the access for Figma sites will be rolling out after today.

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So, uh, you know, I haven't been able to use it directly yet, but it's it's very kind of, uh, like everything else with Figma, I imagine it'll be super intuitive. Yeah.

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Um, but yeah, over time, you know, companies of all sizes from, you know, one person, uh, freelance operations to, you know, companies with thousands and thousands of um of people I'm I'm sure will be using this product.

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You have to imagine it's it's amazing for agencies that want to just share a link with the client and say, "Hey, here like we're here's our iteration.

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We built we built you a design in Figma, but you can actually just go play with it at this URL as opposed to needing to go into Figma and there's all these different tools and even if you're in the view only mode, you're still kind of as a client saying like, well, I'm in a design software.

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This doesn't feel like the final product." It allows an agency. So yeah, we should talk.

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The big thing I mean the the amazing part of where design is going, where generative AI is going is that it takes the uh it takes the time from ide rough idea in your head to real product, you know, in this case in the form of website.

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It's just compressing that, right?

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So uh the second product that they're announcing is Figma make.

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It allows you to turn natural language prompts or imported designs into working prototypes or apps with AI.

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So uh this is what you're alluding to on the sort of like vibe coding side. Yep.

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you can go in and effectively prompt your way to, you know, working products and prototypes.

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And again, this idea of taking uh effectively compressing the time from that initial spark of an idea to something that you can actually use, right?

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And we've talked with Ki from Linear on the show, a couple weeks ago about this idea that with engineering costs dropping dramatically.

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Uh everybody's expectation is let's not just you know let's not spend you know hundreds of hours planning uh and and you know iterating uh uh you know spending all this time iterating if we can get you know basically get to something that's maybe even 60 70% as good as what the final product will be so that we can feel it use it and really evaluate it from there.

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Uh the third product, Figma Buzz.

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This allows you to create visual assets at scale without compromising brand consistency with built-in AI. This is an obvious one.

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Oftent time historically, I've built um sort of like brand brand books, brand identity guides in Figma.

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Y and then, you know, any number of people on the team are going to go in there and sort of distort it and turn it into different assets.

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Even for us, like we post like a silly meme or some like we want to overlay the TBPN logo on a paparazzi photo, for example, and it's different every time.

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And it's different every time.

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I'm actually I use like a different app on my phone for that.

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And then don't have version control if our as our logo's evolved.

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I'm still using the old logo and stuff.

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So yeah, the idea with Figma Buzz is any any person in an organization can come in uh and generate assets for a variety of needs.

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Whether you need to generate an email for retention marketing, an ad for uh meta, if you need to generate, you know, temp, you know, design for some type of event, you can do that all within Figma.

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I do wonder how much that becomes just a true consumer product because you can imagine something that is designed for these brand assets can also be used to make, you know, a invitation to a wedding or something like that.

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And a lot of those like, you know, consumer products that you want to go in and not just have a blank canvas. Yeah.

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But you want to be able to build off a template, make something look nice, then export it.

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Like you you could imagine that this allows them to go even further, I guess, down market into the the consumer who might wind up making a design software choice in the future. Totally.

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I mean, the the line between consumer and proumer and B2B enterprise is just like blurring.

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I mean, it's the story of like Gmail, right?

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Gmail, right? like you get everyone a Gmail account eventually they're going to walk into the enterprise and say hey I I I want to use Gmail at work and then all of a sudden Google workspace becomes a huge business so anyways I expect this

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to be big in you know the enterprise specifically if you have you know hundreds thousands of people at your company that you want to keep assets consistent if you are a creative director VP of design or CMO yeah

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there's nothing more frustrating than watching people sort of take the brand and just kind of do their own thing with it and so this provides guardrails and also like uniquely empower powered by generative AI that like the example that

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they have is uh this national park uh kind of uh invitation and then they're able to publish this template and then have a different design for every animal that you could find in the national park. Kind of like what Ryan Peterson

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Kind of like what Ryan Peterson did with those uh Chachi uh images in Chachi.

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He made a uh a poster for every single Flexport location and was able to say, "Oh, Flexport Sydney."

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And it has this beautiful like Sydney background.

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Um, and so you can imagine that that's normally so much grunt work even just to go find the uh the stock image that fits with that.

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But all of a sudden you have a, you know, you're you're creating a template that can then have the eastern greywolf and the alpaca and the all the different elements that you'd want to actually have a flow of assets as opposed to just like okay I made one now it's just as much work to make the second one. Totally.

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It's just as much work to make the third one.

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Instead you're thinking at this like higher level abstraction and so you're getting way more leverage out of your whoever's on that project. Right. 100%.

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Uh the last product, Figma Draw.

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This is a product that allows you to express yourself with enhanced vector editing and illustration tools right in Figma design.

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So this is a product people have wanted forever, much like the others.

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And uh historically people would have to go outside of Figma to do this sort of like more complex uh illustration work.

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And so now you can do that inhouse.

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And so, uh, again, Figma is a company that historically, uh, wants to spend, you know, the necessary time to make truly great products.

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And so, again, the full suite here are things that, again, the users and the people that are here uh, at config have been asking for for years.

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And so, it's uh, really uh, making a statement to come out and launch these, you know, four massive products.

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So, um, we should talk about uh, some of the early history. Should we dive in there?

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Yeah, I just want to make sure that John Leapour is uh ready because we could maybe bring him in do that if there's a gap later in the show.

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But if he's ready to go, let's bring him in. Welcome to the stream.

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Thank you so much for joining us. Grab some headphones. Uh good to see you.

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Good to meet you in person. Great to meet you.

11:16

What's happening, fellas? How's uh not too much? Welcome to the pod.

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We're potting in the pod. Welcome to Config, man.

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This is uh this is wild, right?

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Uh is this your first one?

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This is my first time coming here.

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I I knew it was a big deal, but uh my face was melted when I got here.

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Like the street shut down, the block was taken.

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Yeah, you kind of expect it with Apple because they've been doing these these big releases for decades now, but it's not every year that we see a company graduate to this scale.

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And so, it's really shocking in that way.

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And then, of course, I was talking to Jordy about this, like Dylan is not the type to be like, "Oh, it's all about me.

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I gotta throw this massive thing."

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It just kind of clearly happened because there was demand and there's partners and there's lots of people. It's a community too.

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Like it's a epic scale community as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.

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Um so can you give us a little bit of background?

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Introduce yourself for the stream for those who might not know. Sure.

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So my name is John Leapour.

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I'm the co-founder of a practice called Blackbox Infinite. Cool.

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Um the so I'm here at Figma to present in about an hour upstairs on the mezzanine stage and I'm going to be talking about my weird little corner of the world uh which is this bizarre journey that I took towards working in tech and product design which actually started through working in film. Yeah.

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And I had this background of making the fake gadgets and technologies that you would see in science fiction and superhero movies.

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Y and is that specifically like FUI like futuristic UI or or product design that would be done by the art department?

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So for me it started as FUI which was typically implemented into the film as a visual effect after the fact but also started evolving into like really rich world building and creating deep technology concepts that might affect the plot of the story and help to move the narrative along in any of these films. And I love that space.

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I thought it was a really fascinating world to work in.

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And then I got really excited because at a certain point um pretty early on, real world tech brands started popping up and saying, "Hey, can you help us close the gap between these aspirational visions of technology that we see in film that sometimes are just they're they're just sort of, you know, beautiful images on screen or stuff that like doesn't make sense if you know anything about tech.

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Like real tech doesn't say access denied from one side of the screen to another. is being hacked.

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There's a hacker and all the code is spewing out. They're in my computer. Yep.

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But you get to do these other fun things where you're like you you find yourself prototyping different concepts that are a little more applicable to the real world.

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And so, uh, two years ago, I started my practice because we had hit this inflection point where it felt like the real world technology was not just like catching up to science fiction, but in some ways it's fully surpassing it, right?

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And science fiction is still just showing us the same glowing blue bleepy bloops.

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And there's this whole other world of of things that you can get into.

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And so what I'm going to be talking about is this concept of what it takes to design a positive future and how you do everything that you can to not get too caught up in the science fiction of it all.

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Especially No, I've talked I mean if if you want to change the future, one of the best ways would be to travel back, you know, maybe to the 50s and make a bunch of, you know, positive science like solar punk over cyber punk.

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doesn't always have to be, you know, these dark, you know, glows.

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Sometimes it can be a more, I don't know, grounded in nature vibe even for the future.

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I mean, we we know that the near term is going to be pretty disruptive on a technological perspective or landscape, but we also have been seeing nothing but the future portrayed as like mega dystopian. Totally. Right.

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Like it's it's the darkest imaginable all I refuse to watch the new Black Mirror.

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Yeah, I'm just not going to put it in my brain.

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And it's, you know, and I mean it's and it's I I still love that stuff.

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Like I I I enjoy it and I I appreciate cyber cyberpunk aesthetics and whatnot.

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I mean, we got some cyber punk going on here, but we should we shouldn't be making our real products and our real experiences, you know, they shouldn't be influenced or driven by that because it's like, yeah, yeah, that would look perfect after the apocalypse, you know?

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It's like, well, in order to get there, we have to live through the apocalypse. Exactly. Exactly.

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Maybe we could avoid that. Uh, yeah.

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I I'm I'm interested to know, uh, back on the FUI thing, what was the what was the typical software stack back then?

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Was it a lot of like After Effects and like were you getting into like Cinema 4D and Houdini?

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Yeah, I I went to CG a couple years ago and there was a ton of cool like FUI projects, but and then I want to know like how has that evolved uh as we get into more generative projects and there's just so many more things you can do even even robust tools are more accessible just because you can search for what you want to do easier. Yeah, absolutely. So, uh you nailed it.

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When I started out with this stuff, it was After Effects, it was Cinema 4D, it's Houdini and Luke and Blender and, you know, a lot of these traditional platforms.

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And even even when not working in film, our team finds ourselves using some of those tools and those approaches just to kind of like pre-prototype certain concepts or ideas.

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But also, I'm seeing now there's a lot more new tools and approaches.

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And of course there's all the generative stuff.

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There's, you know, uh, designing things, but designing things while you're in VR or in Apple Vision Pro or whatnot, so that you have this sense of scale and you get this very different way.

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Like I I've been obsessed with Vision Pro since that came out just as this thing where How many How many hours a week have you used it since launch?

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Um, so I know not not legitimately interested.

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I'm not trying to do a gotcha, but I'm I'm genuinely curious around, you know, is it is it an hour here or there sporadically or it is it is at times like it's a very intentional choice to be like, you pull that tool out to get it out of the drawer.

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Totally blow a little bit of the dust off of it, you know, uh, put it on and go in. Yeah.

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But I also find particularly being creative. Yeah. in that space.

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Yeah. in that space. Yeah, it reminds me of like the first time that I ever started using 3D tools or learning how to design on a computer because like it's almost like I've got a the world's fastest 3D printer in front of me that can just like, you know, I I

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was designing uh uh swag for our company and making, you know, a design that goes on a hoodie and then viewing the hoodie at human scale and immediately being like, "Oh, well, now that I see it like in my space like as if it's hanging on a hanger, in front of me. I'm going to

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I'm going to change this. I'm going to tweak this.

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I'm going to There's something about being in that virtual world that just makes the blank canvas more accessible.

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Like I remember I I had uh this was before Apple Vision Pro.

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I think I had a Quest and went into one of the the modeling softwares that you could kind of just 3D draw whatever you wanted.

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exported that as OBJ, brought it into Houdini, and then it was so much easier to to kind of tinker with and add like all the details on top uh as opposed to having to start fresh with just like a blank canvas. Yeah.

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To me, so much of the excitement that I have around specifically Gen AI, yeah, is taking the timeline from that highlevel idea down to genuinely feeling what the end product could be like.

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product could be like. Maybe it's not 100% what what it will be, but uh but yeah, it's just it's once you can see something and interact with it, whether it's a digital product or, you know, even again like some type of 3D render

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in VR is just and and coming from a background in animation, the process would be, you know, you set your key frames, you set everything up, and then you hit the render button, wait, and then and then you're like, I'm gonna play the render now. And then you watch

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And then you watch it and you're either excited or you're like there's 15 things I gotta change right now, but it's gonna be even better, you know?

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And it's a really it's really interesting that sort of feedback loop that you get.

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And now that feedback loop is getting almost immediate and having things be more, you know, the the notion of spatial computing, it makes things a bit more intuitive or just natural at a certain point.

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Um, we, uh, our practice got on everybody's radar early last year because we put together this prototype for what it would be like to watch a Formula 1 race. Oh, yeah. You You did that? Yes.

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Oh, that went super viral. I saw that. It was amazing.

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I had no idea that was you. Went unbelievably.

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Uh it it was it was a wonderful experience for us but it also it inspired a lot of people that are working in the space and there was a a few different groups of developers who jumped in and started making their own prototypes based on so that was basically a spec work for you.

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you weren't weren't paid by F1 for that, but I was totally speculating this uh project just because we were really passionate about this $3500 array of sensors and amazing tech and we were super disappointed that like when we saw all the first demos of it, it was like cool, put on this insane hallucination machine and use it to viewed rectangle your inbox with 2,000 unread emails.

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look at that PDF, you know, and and we just thought like there's so much more that you could do with this.

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And so like that experience and if you're a racing fan, there's a fully fully functioning beta of it today. That's amazing.

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And it changes the way that you experience this stuff and you put it on and you do like feel like Iron Man, but you also feel like, oh, this is like this is so obvious.

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Like of course this is the way that we interact with things like this.

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So, I'm just stoked that there's all these different things that are happening with these paradigms where we're still in the like Apple Newton days of all of these things, whether it's spatial, whether it's AI, and it's going to enable some amazing things that we can't even accurately predict until these until we've been living with these things for a while.

21:39

Uh, can you talk a little bit about the reception of AI in Hollywood, in the film industry?

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Like we were talking about how it takes a day to render.

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I remember when Redshift came out, we started rendering things on the GPU instead of the CPU.

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That was like a 10x increase in speed. Everyone loved it.

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Now we've now we were like, "Oh, we're almost going too fast because it renders instantly and obviously there's like job displacement issues."

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But in general is are there pockets of cautious optimism? Yeah. Yeah.

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optimism? Yeah. Yeah. And the the only other context that I would add there is I I think an interesting thing has been happening where uh historic you know good renders have always been uh expensive truly great renders have always been extremely expensive in in

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context and uh I think there was this idea maybe you know starting a couple years ago what's going to happen to the sort of craft of generating these types of assets and the thing that I've seen happen is the uh uh okay, you know, okay renders are now available almost at a push of a button. They're not actually

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They're not actually 3D assets, but the people that I know that are, you know, truly, you know, uh elite at the craft are actually busier than ever now because companies need to in some ways different separate themselves again from from the sort of average.

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But I'm curious what you're seeing.

22:57

Yeah, I I want to be as cautiously optimistic as possible.

22:59

Um, but there are there's also a tremendous amount of stress across particularly the visual effects and animation community.

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A little less so than in digital product design, but I feel like there's a point at which that will start to catch up here as well.

23:16

Um, for me these tools, there is something sad about this idea of like this tool is going to do the craft for you for the people because the craft is sometimes what's enjoyable.

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I mean, any of the people here love the craft, that aspect of it, and they they like the vision and creating, you know, following through on that vision to create a an amazing end result, but uh so much of that comes from the craft and applying yourself to that.

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And there's not, you know, there's not a lot of this work where people are just like, "Oh, I wish, you know, someone else could do all of the stuff for me."

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that people really models and some of the processes for figuring out how the creatives can have a little more control and a little more real time manipulation and basically you know are just closing up that feedback loop.

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And the other thing that's amazing to me is as soon as even in you know 2022 firstg gen midjourney stuff, the only people that could make really good stuff with it were professional creative directors. Totally.

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Whose jobs it was to give clear yep like in you know very articulate direction. Yep.

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To achieve their goals and had you know the vocabulary wisdom and now you know like you should study art history if you want to be great a pro. Yeah.

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you find these like cheat sheets of like, hey, these are all the different and whatnot.

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Um, so it's it's wild and it's interesting.

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You know, I'm I'm excited because things will, you know, we'll we'll get to the end point just faster and faster and everybody becomes a production studio of of sorts and it and it does reinforce, you know, the need for a clear and articulate vision.

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But yeah, you know, I just want to make sure people can still hold on to the craft. Totally.

25:13

Uh are you excited about any of the uh kind of other product unlocks downstream?

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Like I was I was with my son.

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I he made like this like little Lego thing.

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I was able to take it studio giblet and then but but like just showing the image was one thing but when we printed it out it was like oh this is something you could hang on the wall and I feel like like you kind of reinjject that creativity once 3D printing gets really good or or some sort of manufacturing.

25:40

And I know you've you've done like product design in many ways.

25:43

Is there are are there things that you're excited about bringing you know yes this one aspect of the work is collapse but then there's other ways to instantiate the the vision.

25:52

Yeah I think 3D printing is uh really really epic really exciting.

25:58

I mean at some point it's also just going to be like oh and your humanoid robot will let itself out of the box and we'll craft whatever you instructed it to build.

26:06

Yeah, that's the next Figma conference or whatnot. That's 2026. Oh, humanoid. Humanoid.

26:10

So, uh I I bring that up partially because we've been doing some stuff with some of the leaders in the humanoid robotics space around like how do you create like a face? Oh, sure. Yeah.

26:21

For these things, which is some of them are so dystopian.

26:24

It's very I don't want to name names, but some are bizarre.

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Really, really wild space.

26:28

And it's what can you share at a high level around what what you think the inevitable face form factor is for humanoids?

26:36

What's your optimistic vision?

26:39

Yeah, it's like uncanny I always think about photoreal or like the aimo just like cute little happy face.

26:44

So I think about the example of you know you get up you know uh let's say you get up at 4:30 a. m. You have an early day.

26:50

You walk out to your kitchen and your your you know humanoid is you know doing some dishes or something like that. Sure.

26:57

And what's the face that's that's not going to, you know, I think over time anything, but what's what's going to be pleasant versus jarring.

27:05

I I even have a tough time imagining what's the ideal future because I've been so obsessed with well, what should it be today because they're already here?

27:15

And I I feel really strongly that today it should not have eyes and a mouth.

27:19

It shouldn't be this thing that's developed to like approach you and be like, "Tell me why do humans cry?"

27:27

You know, like it should it should just it should be very crystal clear. I'm a tool.

27:32

I'm a really expensive like forklift or piece of industrial equipment and just, you know, tell me what to do.

27:40

You don't have to say please and thank you.

27:41

Should it even have a head, you know? Yeah.

27:42

Should it even have a head?

27:44

I mean, there's, you know, and I could go on forever about like like why why even humanoid, you know?

27:49

why why work to those limitations of the human body and and whatnot.

27:52

But it's a it's a fascinating space.

27:55

There's a ton of things that you have to unpack and even just right now the priorities are just like safety. Yeah.

28:01

Making sure that you know nobody gets hurt or people could predict what a humanoid robot is going to do.

28:08

Did you see the video that came out of China a couple days ago where the humanoid just goes awall? Well, that was in China.

28:14

I saw the I saw that crazy kind of like something wrong. Not necessarily.

28:18

It didn't seem like Yeah, it probably wasn't trying to attack, but absolutely terrifying.

28:22

It's like It's like having Yeah, it looks like it's throwing a fit and it doesn't look happy.

28:29

And now I can All I can imagine is like that's the that's the ter the scariest Black Mirror episode is the thing that was like loading a dishwasher.

28:36

It didn't even mean to kill you.

28:38

It just was like I can't stop swinging my arm at 90 miles per hour. Yeah, it's wild.

28:42

Uh, anything else you're excited to check out while you're here?

28:47

any other partners you're talking to? Oh man.

28:49

Uh, you know, there's many amazing people.

28:52

There's a ton of wild talks that I want to check out.

28:55

Uh, I've been spend a lot of time bumping into um some friends that are in the automotive industry.

29:01

Done a ton of work in that space as well, which is like probably the digital experience that needs the most Yeah. unbucking. Yeah, totally.

29:11

Most people just plug in their phone and then they get this very basic like Apple hasn't really refreshed CarPlay.

29:15

The positive is that manufacturers are realizing that people love analog buttons. Oh yeah. Like analog.

29:20

The problem is they're realizing that today which means that products will be available in about seven years.

29:28

That's how long it takes to go for.

29:32

There's some manufacturers that are putting they figured out how to put buttons on top of the touchcreens. Have you seen this?

29:38

Yeah, that's kind of a funny like hack because they're like, "We just really want to do one big touchcreen, but somebody wanted a volume button, so we'll just glue that on and it'll be capacitive, so it just and it's Yeah, it's got like a little like sausage inside of it so that it activates the Yeah, the touch screen basically. Such a funny uh thing.

29:54

Well, anyway, thank you so much for stopping by.

29:56

Good luck with the rest of your config.

29:58

Good luck with your talk. You nervous? Uh, I'm stoked. I'm excited.

30:02

I I I love doing that stuff.

30:05

Yeah, I'm nervous about walking around because there's just so many goddamn Super Bowl everywhere and that that not enough time.

30:12

That gets me into my We were at a conference last week and one of our friends said uh he shook so many his hand so many hands his uh his hand got bruised. Crazy. So stay healthy. Thank you. Enjoy.

30:24

Have a blast while you're here. Talk to you soon. All right. Take care. Bye. Great to hang. Yeah. Oh, it's fascinating.

30:31

Um we have our next guest coming into the studio.

30:33

Um, I I love uh the the the motion design DNA moving from film and television into the real world.

30:43

Uh, we're finally able to instantiate some of the stuff.

30:45

And you do and you do see it pop up in in real world devices, but it feels like Hollywood is always the best at defining some kind of new UI paradigm and then actually bringing it. What's going on? Great to meet you. Nice to meet you. Great to meet you. I'm John. Excited. Excited. Excited to have you.

31:01

Um, feel free to throw on those headphones if you want.

31:05

You'll be able to hear your own voice, but uh, let's kick it off with a little introduction of yourself, who you are, what you do, why you're here, how you're enjoying the day.

31:12

Uh, for those who don't know you. Sure.

31:14

Yeah, I'm Elliot and I am a designer and author. I'm here.

31:18

I'm speaking tomorrow so I can relax today. I just have to enjoy it.

31:21

I've just seen one of my very old friends do a fantastic uh, presentation on stage named Dylan Field.

31:25

uh t well Tim Vanam and yeah they just announced some amazing stuff and it's great to be here.

31:32

So what's your talk about tomorrow? It's about typography.

31:35

Typography in design systems. Very cool.

31:38

Uh give us give us the full backstory.

31:40

Uh I I you I mean I'll go out on a limb and say you're you're the godfather of type.

31:48

It's a little bit dramatic but uh that certainly have had a massive on on type on type online.

31:53

So, uh, yeah, I would love would love kind of hear the the full journey. Cool.

31:59

That's, uh, that's, uh, kind of you to say. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. Um, yeah.

32:02

Um, I mean, I' I've been super lucky to kind of work in the type industry for for many years.

32:07

I did a bunch of stuff with Adobe Fonts.

32:09

Um, I'm now actually doing some more stuff with Adobe Fonts and uh and Google Fonts as well.

32:15

And I I like to kind of balance things like writing about typography and about about design with actually being hands-on in the tools as well.

32:21

Um and and yeah, it's been uh it's it's been great to just get to get to shadow everyone.

32:28

What is the structure of the industry?

32:30

Uh I imagine that there's the big players Adobe, Google, like you mentioned, who are buying lots of fonts, but then there's also companies that need whole fonts for their own brand systems and their design systems, I'm sure.

32:41

So, uh is that kind of the shape of the industry or is there another player that's really important?

32:45

Um how would you break it down?

32:48

It's the independent firms that make some of the fonts that you use and interact with uh on a daily basis.

32:56

Even some of the fonts that I'm I'm sure we use at at TBPN, but but would love to understand the market structure. Yeah, absolutely.

33:03

I mean the those indie foundaries that you mentioned are kind of uh you know the backbone of of the industry really because even you got folks like uh Adobe for instance, they that library is made up of a bunch of different foundry partners and so they are not owned by companies like Adobe.

33:18

They are independent practitioners.

33:19

A lot of the time they are like oneperson bands a lot of the time, you know, super super indie.

33:24

Obviously, you've got folks like Monotype as well who do own large libraries and they have they have their IP.

33:30

Uh but the the type industry is really just made up of of a huge number of independent foundaries who are then use those distribution channels like Adobe Fonts um etc. to get stuff on there.

33:42

Monotype have my fonts as well which is also another big uh channel and the the differentiator I suppose is like Google fonts they are open source. Yeah.

33:50

Um and so they tend to not um exist elsewhere although Adobe Fonts does pull in those as well.

33:55

Uh one second we're going to pull in Gary Tan. He's just stopping by. Gary, great to see you. How you doing? Great to see you.

34:00

I know you got to get out of here quickly. Good to see you. Busy man. It's great to see you.

34:04

H how's your Figma config been? Oh, it's been sick. Yeah.

34:07

All I wanted to say was keep mogging, guys. Keep mogging. always be mogging. We'll see Gary.

34:12

Well, uh I'm sure you know you do you familiar with Gary?

34:18

I have not counc Y Combinator also uh quite an accomplished designer a bunch of the logos of of some biggest companies.

34:27

But anyways, good friends.

34:30

So So I want to know more about the the the business model of working with Adobe.

34:33

Uh is it like Spotify where like you put your stuff up and then the more it gets used, the more you get paid or is it more of like a one-off deal? Is it selling a book?

34:41

book? the the yeah usage is is uh shared to yes so the successful fonts that get more usage okay uh they they get more money yeah basically are is it at the level where people are trying to you know pay influencers to use their fonts to promote them go trendy no I mean

34:56

viral so so from my perspective how mature is the industry from my pers perspective I mean you can see this sort of hype cycle with individual fonts where you know one uh you know oftent times you know one designer will will leverage a font in a really unique way

35:12

and then three months later sort of an explosion of sites using that and um you know we've even had uh we've we've had people that have been maybe a little bit too inspired by what we're doing at TBPN actually you know find the font that we use for our logo and sort of use that

35:30

for their logo and you know it's it's all you know mostly fair game on the internet but yeah it's I mean you can never predict how that stuff takes off as well there is foundaries obviously try and look at trends and see what's doing well and sometimes try to replicate that. But sometimes if

35:45

But sometimes if something blows up and there's no real reason, it comes from maybe someone using it or whatever.

35:49

And some foundaries have done very well at that.

35:53

I know some type designers who've struggled for many years and slogged away and they've released one thing and it blows up and they can go buy a house, you know.

36:01

Yeah, it's a business just like music at least like Spotify. Totally. Yeah.

36:04

Are there specific eras of font design, typography design that you think of uh as you tell the story of how typography has evolved over the last like I don't know 50 100 years or something?

36:16

something? I mean it's driven by technology a lot when you think of like the move from metal type wood type photoype setting early digital type when you look at like uh sort of what we know of as fonts these days you know you got the 80s so the '9s when folks like font shop really pioneered that originally uh making them available on you know actual physical discs and then obviously online and that would really radically change

36:39

things and you had web fonts come along in around sort of what sort of 20 2009 2010 which before that you couldn't use anything on your websites other than you know Georgia, Ariel, Donna, Tiny Roman, you know, and people forget that that

36:53

was, you know, a pretty huge thing for web design and I was I was a web designer exclusively at that time and it was a kind of a wild time to to be working on the web and with all this sort of new stuff that we had to play with. So, how how is the industry

37:04

So, how how is the industry reacting and responding to generative AI?

37:10

I mean, I I haven't played around with any tools around type myself, but I imagine we're not far away from somebody kind of saying, "Hey, I like these three fonts.

37:20

Generate me something net new."

37:23

And yeah, it is kind of odd that Chad GPT when they generate images, they can now do text pretty effectively.

37:26

But they're not using an actual font, you know, library, like a source source.

37:33

It's kind of just creating its own on the fly. Yeah.

37:35

I mean like everything with AI it's it's just changing dayto day.

37:39

Um there are definitely some experiments going on.

37:42

There are some like entirely AI generated fonts font generators which have mixed results.

37:46

Um but yeah there are some tools you know which will generate images and as part of that is text as part of that.

37:53

Um there is some recent huge um uh leaps been made in that like the designer Jessica Hish has been posting a bunch of stuff that some experiments she's been doing with chat GPT where she you know she's a very accomplished lettering artist but looking she's looking at what chat GPT can actually uh put out and it's actually you know the the progress is incredible.

38:14

It's now ability to to actually do some halfdeent lettering is is um you know it's it's super interesting where where you look at a few months ago and you'd be lucky if you could even have like the right words spelled correctly you know or No that was always that was the the most quick way to identify if something was AI generated was just how badly all the text was botched. Exactly. But it's certainly Yeah.

38:37

It's getting getting uncanny.

38:39

We're pushing past the uncanny valley now.

38:42

How do you think the what do you how do you expect kind of the business models of the industry to evolve?

38:46

I imagine I I can see it going, you know, the way of of fashion to some degree where, you know, maybe in the future you can get kind of a um factory uh a factory font that was just generated.

39:02

But but there's something about you know typography that's almost soulful you know and you you discover you know um something you can just see you can feel you know the the attention that was put into it.

39:14

Do where do you expect the kind of um how do you expect kind of the industry to evolve and and kind of the business models to evolve uh as as you know assuming I think we can safely assume that generative AI will be you know twice as good at type and a year, right? Maybe maybe more.

39:34

Yeah, I mean to totally AI generated uh fonts are coming for sure.

39:39

Like it's it's going to be a thing.

39:40

Um and it is interesting for the business because um at least in um in the US you can't you can't copyright uh a design.

39:48

You can you can trademark a name.

39:50

So you know things like Helvetica are always going to be trademarked and known by monotype, but you can't uh copyright the outlines.

39:56

So you know it's interesting uh models can learn from all of the type that's out there.

40:04

Also type by its very nature is very systems based.

40:05

There are there's plenty of like maths in there and and metrics and things which are in a sense easy to easy to replicate.

40:13

I mean my my hope personally is as a creative person and a and a great supporter of all type designers out there.

40:22

Hope that there will always be a market for people who want to make type and have a something very bespoke and and something that with got a lot of feeling and love put put into it.

40:31

Um but for sure AI fonts are coming and I think it's it's going to massively disrupt the industry in the same way that all those previous technological advances also changed the font industry. Give us some spice. Most overrated font. Most underrated font. Take some shots. I want to hear. I don't know. You can go way back. Let Let's see. Well, I mean, yeah.

40:57

I mean, there I I maybe met commentary, but what does the community typically say is overrated?

41:03

I mean, the community tends to people like free stuff, right?

41:09

So, a lot of people use um use stuff from places like Google Fonts that provide fonts for free. Um and it's great.

41:16

There are some sb quality stuff and they've done a lot of work recently to really improve the technical quality of their library.

41:21

Uh but it's important to remember that when you're using something for free, obviously lots of other people also using it for free.

41:26

So to get that differentiation, still the kind of easy hack is to effectively to to pay for a font, whether that's through a subscription service like Adobe Fonts or just buying the font outright from the foundry.

41:36

So that's always a good way to get something that's super unique. Yeah. Mhm. Amazing. Well, thank you so much.

41:42

I think we have our next guest ready to come in. Thanks for stopping by.

41:45

Good luck with your talk tomorrow. Thanks so much.

41:47

Hope you get We'll see you on the internet. All right. See you then. Thanks, guys. Cheers. This is great.

41:52

And we have Andrew Reed coming into the studio next. Second time appearance.

41:56

I'm sure he is uh doing deals out there, writing term sheets on napkins, uh finding the next Figma. There he is. How you doing, Andrew? What's going on? Am I live? Yeah. Yeah, you're live.

42:09

You can throw on the headphones, talking to the microphone. How are you doing?

42:12

Good to meet you in person. There we go.

42:16

Thank you guys for having me. What's too loud?

42:18

I You might be able to adjust it, but No, it's perfect. Okay, great. Um uh yeah. H how's it been?

42:22

Is this your first config or have you been coming for a long time?

42:26

This is my Yeah, I was gonna say very very bad investor if he's like, "Oh, I guess now that Pigma's a big deal, you know, I guess I'll guess I'll show up."

42:34

I remember back when we got standing ovation for the font picker, you know, the first the first of two standing ovations for the font picker. So, yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.

42:44

No, I mean today today uh feels monumental just just given the scale of the event, but but also uh the launches uh uh the people that were stand you know you know doing a standing ovation for the font picker uh I'm sure they're here today seeing you know the four massive launches and uh yeah it's it's it's massive. Yeah.

43:03

I mean what what was the precursor to config?

43:06

Were there like little user group meetups?

43:08

you hear about that with like the the story of Instagram where like Kevin would like go running with the early group which was there were only 100 people on the service but he still was doing that customer development.

43:17

Um do you remember kind of the the arc of how we got here?

43:19

Well for me so yes um well I remember predating our investment in Figma we were involved with GitHub which kind of universe which was like kind of the same sort of a vibe and actually very similar venues. Yeah.

43:35

It was the open source developer ecosystem.

43:38

Um, and I remember sitting through some of those universes back in the mid2010s and thinking like I'm never going to be involved with a company that can do something like this.

43:45

You know, just having like the true vibrant community like people actually want to show up.

43:49

I was like that was a cool thing to be involved with.

43:52

And then like I go to the first config and it was in a room that's you know like the size of the maker studio thing now and you know it was just like buzzing and I remember whenever I come to config like I really feel like I'm cosplaying you know.

44:06

Yeah, like um I like making websites, but like you know some say I apply like a design like creativity to my Excel sheets like an artist.

44:16

Let's say I'm I'm an artist in Excel. Um it's funny.

44:18

I'm so used to I go to these I I go to these events with um with my daughters like for school and stuff and they're um you know there's always like a long line of people for face painting and there's plenty of face painting supplies but there's only like two or three people who can actually do face painting.

44:36

I always walk around here like man like everybody here could be the most amazing face painter you know it's like you know I could just bring my my kids in in a face paint and have it all solved. Yeah.

44:46

No, the talent the talent density is wild. Yeah.

44:48

Um, on on the topic of like these annual releases, uh, Brian Chesy recently said like part of founder mode is like even if you're a company that can do nonwaterfall, more agile development, more iterative releases, it helps to get on an annual cadence.

45:07

Um, not talking about Figma specifically, but is that something that you think is correct advice for big companies, small companies, is it going to become increasingly um, popular?

45:21

Because the the uh, Airbnb, Brian, uh, the like the Chesky uh, memo kind of shook Silicon Valley.

45:29

I know uh, Ryan Peterson at Flexport was like, "We're doing that, too." Yeah.

45:32

At the same time, people have been looking at Apple and saying, "Hey, AI is moving too fast, Apple.

45:38

You can't wait to launch your next thing for a full year.

45:40

You should be dropping software updates every single month and just telling us, okay, you improved it."

45:46

Um, so there's a little bit of like a balancing act there, but what like what do you think of the overall trend of these an annual uh kind of agenda setting events uh versus something that's like you could kind of blend the two?

45:58

Yeah, I think um I think as software and technology has gotten easier to create, it has just gotten so much harder and as as there's more companies that gotten started and there more venture capital and like I remember back when you could, you know, you get a TechCrunch article written about your product launch and it would, you know, you drive all this signups and it was like this amazing thing and it's just so much harder to stand out now.

46:20

Like there are so many companies launching amazing stuff constantly. Yeah.

46:25

And just as a you know like the red queen dynamic like just to stay in place you have to be doing you know usability improvements AI upgrades etc to your product every single week just to like like kind of maintain fall behind. Exactly. Yeah.

46:37

Then I think as it relates to like genuine product launches um you know I think and you know even for the stuff that's launched today there's an alpha there's a beta right.

46:46

So there's um you kind of have to do the user testing in sync with this.

46:51

But yeah, it's pretty freaking cool to show everybody the things that you spent a year working on and rally your team around a deadline, you know, um like knowing the the the Figma team like this date has kind of been in the back of everyone's heads for a very long time.

47:06

Well, and it's such a it's such a you know, we we can kind of be understated, but but Dylan and the Figma team are making a huge statement coming in with, you know, sites, make buzz, like these are, you know, they can come out with a V1 now, but the the you know, my my expectation is they become, you know, very very significant pretty quickly. Yeah.

47:28

Uh I mean obviously you're here to support Dylan but uh has Figma grown into a type of ecosystem where there are other potential power loss startups building in and around uh because you see that with a lot of companies I mean Zuck was just talking about it with like Facebook ultimately becoming a platform at a certain point.

47:46

It's been a lot of companies that have built on top. Exactly.

47:49

Um I is there is there a story around like the broader design ecosystem that's taking hold um or is the venture capital community still just kind of like um like laser focused on fig Figma by itself?

48:03

I think Figma has supported and enabled a broad network of plug-in developers for a long time.

48:09

And I think a lot of the power of Figma, you know, comes from what Figma enables, but also comes from the ecosystem around it that applies to things like templates, right?

48:19

Like um and to these plugins.

48:19

So I think Figma from a architecture standpoint, Figma was a platform before it became the the platform, right?

48:28

Um, and I do think it is the center of a community and a center of a community of products.

48:33

Um, and I love the the mission of, you know, trying to eliminate the gap between imagination and reality. Yeah.

48:41

Um, you know, these are not just face painters, right?

48:46

They're like the most creative people in the world who also love technology. Yeah.

48:49

And I think for people with minds like that, allowing them to to do so much more, that's like one of the coolest things a company can do.

48:58

So, how do you think about design trends in the decks that you get pitched?

49:02

Um, I mean, if Figma launched a deck designer, obviously, just design is becoming more accessible.

49:10

It's becoming more affordable.

49:12

And also I feel like there's a little bit of just a meme in Silicon Valley that hey like if you're going out for a series A it's not unreasonable to spend 10k 50k on design for your deck.

49:23

At the same time that can totally be like band-aid on a bullet wound if you're not actually building a great business.

49:28

Um, so I imagine as a as an investor there's a little bit of like don't fall for the pretty design, but we've seen trends where I mean for a while there were like a ton of direct to consumer companies that were just getting funded and it was like oh you you went to the exact same brand thing that the Warby Parker guys went to or whatever. No, it's funny.

49:45

I remember this is going to definitely date me.

49:47

Um, you know, we used to print out all these decks, right?

49:51

You would like, you know, get the deck and you just hit print and I remember it started being black.

49:55

No, then for the first so we uh black backgrounds for the first um I'm going to send this clip to Joe at Loom, Joe Venet from Bloom.

50:04

For the first board meeting for Loom, they did like a 130 page deck in like dark mode squared, right?

50:12

It was like the the level of dark gray versus modestly less dark gray and these stack bar charts was impossible.

50:17

And I know I came into the board meeting with this print out and it looked just like basically like a bunch of black pages.

50:23

Look, we've already lost like $400 on this investment because we have like burned through our entire printer ink and I can't figure out what the hell's going on in our business, you know?

50:33

So anyway, we switched that one to light mode.

50:34

But I do think like um presentation, you know, it's like anything in business, you know, at its core, the Don Valentine thing is storytelling, right?

50:43

And um visual storytelling is imperative to fundraising.

50:51

It's imperative to sales.

50:52

And I think having the right set of assets that tell your story, it really matters.

50:56

I actually do think like spending the money to create a presentation that really captures your idea, your ethos, what you're trying to build is like totally worth it.

51:04

Um, and you know, there's also the flip side like, you know, you can do it in the Times New Roman, you know, like, you know, the the spreader presentation, you know, or like um, so you you can go that path like look how little we tried or you can do the Yeah. Yeah, really good.

51:22

Every once in a while you see a deck from someone who's like coming out of an enterprise and has like deep deep uh institutional knowledge and they're probably going to build something really cool but they just don't understand design or even how to speak Silicon Valley's language at all and you're like okay I got to like you know actually read through the read between the lines.

51:39

No, the worst is when you get the ones that are um and as a you know I worked for Goldman Sachs, you know, as a foreign banker I I I love my investment banker friends.

51:46

um when you get the all of a sudden it's a series B company and they hire the you know head of finance and operations from Goldman and then you get the you know 98 years of combined industry experience like highly seasoned management teams say we're not doing whoa whoa John and I have you know 20 years of combined experience in technology media. Exactly. Yeah.

52:06

I've never met a management team that's not highly seasoned. Yeah.

52:09

I mean Dylan was brand new. I'm I'm curious.

52:12

You think there's uh you know the the lore around Figma is that you know Dylan and it's Evan right Dylan and Evan you know spend years uh you know basically in obscurity building this like you know product you know today if if a founder was building a SAS tool and they were three years in and you know didn't have like a a product that they were letting people actively use uh I think most investors would would write it off.

52:43

I I almost feel like uh that it it almost ended up being an anti- lesson, you know, that sort of four-year period of obscurity because they were using they were pioneering the use of WebGL for, you know, a browser collaboration and uh h have you ever found yourself kind of like pushing back on founders that are like, well, Dylan and Evan spent, you know, four years getting their products?

53:08

Yeah, I know exact I know exactly what you mean.

53:09

So I think it's a little bit like you know for for decks you can either do the we really didn't try at all or we made it look beautiful. Yeah.

53:16

I think with companies similarly you can do the we're going to iterate constantly in the market and find our way to product market fit or you can do the we have a concrete vision and we're going to build what we want to build and when we launch it it's going to work.

53:27

I think the in between area where you're just like slowly maneuvering off of your initial course like that's I think the really um the unhappy path. Yeah.

53:33

And I think we've done so many retrospectives on like analyses on what are the commonalities between the big outlier um big outlier companies and the reality is if you look at most of Silicon Valley history the length of time it took you to get from nothing to a million dollars of revenue is basically uncorrelated with yeah how fast your company grows.

54:01

But the how fast you go from one to 10 is highly correlated.

54:04

So basically it's like you know you're trying to coil a spring you know and um most of the companies that really make it uh go very fast out the gate but uh take a variety of times to get into I mean I think the most the most recent example probably open AI literally a nonprofit for a decade and then all of a sudden a billion in like a couple months.

54:29

Um, do you think that there's uh like Well, actually one more Figma lore story I've never seen.

54:34

I just um so uh this is a Doug Beani story.

54:39

So I think it's time to give Doug his shine.

54:42

Um so when we were doing our Figma investment, it was this was uh January 2019 and I was an associate so I was like doing my best to to position ourselves and I thought you know we have we're totally going to do this investment you know like Dylan Dylan loves us.

54:58

Um, and I was, but just in case I'm going to bring Doug in to like, you know, bring in the big dog.

55:03

Um, and so Dylan and Evan are coming down to our office in Menllo Park.

55:10

We had already given them a term sheet.

55:11

Um, and we're just, you know, trying to show them how much we love them.

55:15

Is that the term sheet in that photo?

55:16

Yeah, the one that got like, you know, someone did the CIA analysis to figure out all the all the Did they reverse? That was a hand.

55:22

That was my bad to our comm's team.

55:24

Um uh and we're about to you know about to do the meeting and Dylan and Evan both into Brown and Brown's one of our LPs and we have all our all of our conference rooms at Sequoa named after our LPS and you know when we were going to do this meeting in the MIT conference room um and then you know I was just like yeah it's just it's a much nicer conference room than the Brown conference room.

55:48

um that Doug was like, "No, we're doing this in the Brown conference room."

55:51

And like maybe 10 minutes before the meeting, he moves the meeting to Brown and then he goes into our system and shows he prints out a page with like all of the amount that Brown had invested in our various funds over the years and how much we had returned back to Brown. Wow.

56:04

And sits down, you know, we talk about Sequoia and all the stuff that we're doing.

56:08

He puts this, you know, piece of paper out and, you know, Brown is where Dylan and Evan met.

56:13

It's where a lot of the early work at Figma kind of began.

56:14

Y and I was like, "This guy freaking rocks. that extra.

56:19

I was about to be just like hanging in the MIT conference room with no plan.

56:22

So anyway, that's the alumni alumni playbook.

56:25

That's crazy to actually go that extra step. You have fun at Brown. Well, we played a part. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

56:30

Um, uh, switching gears a little bit, are you surprised at how Gen AI seemingly came for image creation before product design in some ways?

56:44

Like yes, you can use Gen AI to to generate, you know, screens of various products, but you would think that that would be uh a lot of the product designers I know are still, you know, doing the sort of handcrafted work to uh design, you know, flows and features and things like that.

57:04

And meanwhile, if you want to generate an image of the three of us sitting in a podcast studio, you can do that instantly.

57:09

Yeah, I have been um I'd say I've been generally surprised at the order of things that have come out of this generative AI ecosystem in general, right?

57:20

Like I remember I remember back when people were, you know, self-driving truck wave and it was all this concern about blueco collar jobs, you know, and everyone should learn how to code and you fast forward five years, it's like, well, that was a very seemingly poor take, you know, in hindsight.

57:32

Um same thing with radiologists. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

57:38

They almost all have their jobs still. Yeah. And uh who was it?

57:40

Was it Hinton or I forget it was someone uh big machine learning foundational researcher was saying like stop training them. Yeah. It's the the Yeah.

57:48

The you know how stuff and I think it ultimately it's kind of what I was saying about creativity earlier.

57:54

I I genuinely think it's not because of a difficulty of the problem or some some underlying architectural thing.

58:00

architectural thing. I think it's just like um uh you know like look at the image editing models came out of amazing diffusion work right and that just happened at a point in time because of the creativity of a group of people yeah and it's amazing right and I think that

58:17

same sort of thing you know bottoms up creativity creating massive technology innovation like that's has been the story for this whole wave I think that will continue to be the story and I think predictions from people you know who are the spreadsheet types are going consistently be proven wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

58:32

Do you think that there's a Dylan Field out there right now kind of grinding in silence for four years and then we'll come out with something disruptive or or does that does that pattern not even work in the age of the internet?

58:43

Well, is probably already going to check in.

58:46

Well, the thing with Dylan, it's interesting is like haven't you guys known Dylan for a long time? Yeah.

58:51

Um, you know, like Figma was grinding for a long time. Yeah.

58:58

Um but it's not like they were grinding in true silence, right?

59:00

Like Dylan and Evan were in seven.

59:02

Evan, you know, absolute genius.

59:05

Um Dylan very engaged in the ecosystem. He's a teal fellow. Yep.

59:10

Um yeah, we were wondering about those early rounds because it seems like going back to 2014, 2015, like doing a $20 million series, even a $4 million seed round, like that's not easy even if you're a hot company. Yeah.

59:23

Um so yeah, I don't know.

59:26

Yeah, they were and they were, you know, they were engaging actually like interestingly so many of the people who I've run into already today were people who were like the early users of Figma when it was still a developing product. Sure.

59:38

And those people's, you know, they they didn't hear about it and want to try it and, you know, sign up.

59:41

Like those are that's customer development, right?

59:44

Like Dylan was like one of these true grassroots growth people in addition to the, you know, like um the the kind of product product visionary. Exactly.

59:58

And like building this community, you know, it's like everything that is magical in the what's that John Collison?

1:00:04

you know, the John Carlson tweet around like it's a museum of passion projects, right?

1:00:07

Like, you know, like this community doesn't just happen, right?

1:00:11

Like it starts with a spark.

1:00:12

And I think that spark really is Dylan.

1:00:14

Like um I remember there's a guy named Soleo Quervo who's the first product designer at Facebook. Yeah.

1:00:19

Um he now does some investing.

1:00:21

He's an amazing amazing guy. Yeah.

1:00:23

And I remember he told me about Dylan um you know back when Figma wasn't even around yet and he was just like this guy's gonna be amazing.

1:00:32

And um it's funny he's interested me like four people and one was Dylan and then one was GMO from Brazil. Oh wow.

1:00:39

So like it's an like no more optin. You know what I mean?

1:00:43

If you got somebody's send them my way yesterday.

1:00:45

Uh on on the note of you said uh Dylan kind of creating this spark of community.

1:00:50

I think that when people when startup founders talk about community, it's almost it's almost like a meme because usually the first context that they're using it in is like, oh, we should have a dinner.

1:01:03

And it's like to me like a community is not like getting a room at a nice restaurant and just like getting people to show up and eat free food.

1:01:11

like this is a community of people that have traveled from, you know, basically every, you know, bunch of different continents all the way here, taking time out just to be immersed uh with this group.

1:01:23

Um, and it just feels like community is uh ultimately created at the product level to some degree.

1:01:32

Like you can kind of like Well, that's I completely agree with this and to me like I was thinking about this this morning.

1:01:38

I I wish everyone could have seen the keynote. Like it was so awesome. Yeah.

1:01:41

It was like watching a rockstar.

1:01:43

Like the room the the the the room was it's so big.

1:01:49

There's like so many people in that room. It's massive. Like I didn't stand. Yeah. It's unbelievable.

1:01:53

But then you're like it's like 9,000 people, right? Yeah.

1:01:57

It's like, you know, imagine seeing a a slide with, you know, 9,000 monthly active users, right? Like nothing, you know?

1:02:03

Um but 9,000 people, it's a lot of people, right?

1:02:06

And to me it's the like your users aren't just numbers. Your users are people. Yeah. Right.

1:02:12

And the nucleus of of this community are people who travel from Southeast Asia to be here.

1:02:17

Travel from Europe to be here. Yeah.

1:02:18

Um travel from Africa to be here. Yeah.

1:02:21

Um and that core 9,000 MAU has such a loud voice and the ability to like really propel a company forward.

1:02:31

And if you put those 9,000 MA into a room, it looks like that, right? like it's it's enormous.

1:02:39

Um, and finding the ability to like get that level of a nucleus I think is like it's it's a product thing, right?

1:02:45

You don't just buy them dinner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:02:49

I know you can't talk about public companies too much, but I'd love to know if you have any interpretation of what's going on with the Mag 7 right now on as far as like an opportunity for startups like uh today uh what was the news with Google? they traded down.

1:03:03

Basic Apple might Apple's VP of services basically came out and said that for the first time searches in Safari like shrank month over month and that's it just seems like there's just general chaos in big tech whether it's uh Google potentially splitting up or you know the the pressure on Facebook for Instagram.

1:03:24

It just feels like that could be fertile ground for startups.

1:03:26

At the same time, a lot of people have been saying artificial intelligence, it just reads as a sustaining innovation, not necessarily a disruptive innovation.

1:03:33

Um, but but what are you uh like what is the level of optimism around the next generation of founders right now given what's going on with these like very well-run companies that are often in founder mode or have amazing management teams and fortress balance sheets.

1:03:48

I think um I forget whose law it is that you as a company ship your org chart, you know. Yeah, I know that one.

1:03:56

I'll look it up afterwards. Whatever. Um Reed's law now. Yeah. Yeah, too.

1:04:01

Um too, the I think the idea that AI will be a sustaining innovation.

1:04:10

Um I think it's probably it's probably like far enough along now to call that like mostly wrong so far.

1:04:20

Um and I think it comes from that grassroots creativity combined you know small number of people especially with AI can do so much.

1:04:29

I think that's one of the things that um I was thinking about listening to the Figma keynote is like, you know, if the origin of Figma were was specific, you know, vertical inside of companies, designers, developers, marketers, content people, legal, you know, coming together and collaborating to move this like very complicated process from idea through to deployment.

1:04:54

Um now any one of those people can basically do all of those jobs.

1:04:58

And I think that's like that's something that we are like definitely seeing and um so small enough people can do so much more and you aren't encumbered by shipping your ORC chart because you are the orc chart, right?

1:05:09

Like it's um and you can just put out amazing experiences and I think some of these big companies what you see is, you know, they'll have amazing models or products or ideas, but they just don't even let you find them.

1:05:22

You know, it's like the um the notebook LM thing, right?

1:05:25

Like, oh my gosh, that was sick, right? And like now what?

1:05:28

The fact that we're using past tense for a breakthrough Google product is so six months ago.

1:05:34

It's funny because past tense.

1:05:37

We should be like, "Yeah, it's still great."

1:05:38

There's probably all of a sudden you guys are in trouble. Yeah.

1:05:42

There's probably some app in the app store that's just notebook clown that's like doing 10 million of Yeah.

1:05:50

Um I uh has we we were talking about this idea that like you know there's the rapper the chatpt rapper meme and then uh the the recent news of OpenAI acquiring Windinsurf.

1:06:01

Uh I was debating this with Jordy like is it kind of game on for uh rapper M&A.

1:06:04

Maybe that doesn't affect how you're underwriting investments at Sequoia, but do you think that there are uh other venture firms that see a multi-billion dollar outcome as something that changes how they underwrite like if the M&A markets at that level are open?

1:06:20

Does that change the riskon nature of early stage venture maybe in like the midmarket or or do you think it should just be business as usual?

1:06:29

I um so I got a lot of questions that were similar to this after um we mutually called off the Figma deal with Adobe. Yeah.

1:06:39

And some of that, you know, how does this change your underwriting of an investment? Yeah.

1:06:44

It's like I don't know what this administration is going to do, let alone the next one, right?

1:06:48

Like and the gestation period for these companies is sufficiently long that like what's going on today I don't think really will be able to change your investment criteria today. Yeah.

1:06:57

investment criteria today. Yeah. Now what you do with your companies might change right whether it's you know you're looking to buy smaller companies you have things that you're going to end up selling to bigger companies as relates to the actual like investment criteria at least for Sequoa you know we are looking for the big outlier

1:07:11

companies one of ones you know the future aircraft carriers um but obviously you know you pay attention to the news and obviously you pay attention to what the administration's going to do yeah um I was thinking about it more just from this this idea that uh if like foundation model companies aren't necessarily going to steamroll application layer even regardless of the administration. Just this idea that uh

1:07:30

Just this idea that uh uh foundation model companies it feels like they need dance partners in a lot of different areas.

1:07:38

We saw this with the X and XAI merger versus social who are we talking about like should anthropic by snap.

1:07:44

Um and I'm just wondering if there's more are you guys have you guys are having Sonia on I think on Friday.

1:07:51

You should talk to Sonia about that in that present.

1:07:53

She gave a presentation based on this exact topic and I could, you know, try to copy everything she said and do a poor job or Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:00

What were the other takeaways from I I assume you went to AIN. Oh, yeah.

1:08:02

Uh, what were the big takeaways other than we found out that Jensen Wong's jacket is Farerraamo?

1:08:07

Oh, we did find that out. I know. I know. It's leaked. It's leaked from us.

1:08:12

It's sold out everywhere.

1:08:12

It's sold out everywhere. Yeah. Shout out to Alfred. That was a great trade. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He did the jersey swap. Jersey swap. That's legendary. Legendary jersey swap. Legendary, man.

1:08:20

That's hang it in the hall.

1:08:22

I would just leave at that point. I'm Yeah, the frame.

1:08:24

I would like oify it somehow.

1:08:26

Put it on a, you know, that's great. Um, yeah.

1:08:29

I think I think Alfred's jacket was Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:32

What's the state of the Sequoia merch team?

1:08:34

Have you guys explored anything as unique as a jacket?

1:08:36

Well, I was thinking for this one, you know, we this is all of a sudden we we can we can somehow turn it into a statue and then just that's like an operating.

1:08:44

We can sell that for, you know. Totally.

1:08:45

Um, you can see a lot of sequoa merge floating out there.

1:08:49

You guys are pretty hold it close. Very subtle. Yeah. Subtle. Yeah. Okay.

1:08:53

Versus the uh but anyway other takeaways from AINE. Uh who was interesting? What?

1:08:56

Vibe wise it was you know so much so much smaller than this room but I think vibewise it was really amazing.

1:09:05

We we've held it for a few years now predating I think GBT3.

1:09:06

Y and it's been you know a lot of the same sort of people right like the people who started working on this early really passionately are still the ones who are kind of at the bleeding edge. Yeah.

1:09:15

kind of at the bleeding edge. Yeah. Um is there more focus on like energy scale data center buildout or like new algorithms because a lot of people are scale build scale is all you need that are less enrich Sutton and then on the flip side there's some folks that are saying like hey maybe we're actually

1:09:31

topping out that seems like a really foundational question yeah we had a little bit of both we had a little bit of both um and I think I think the practical reality is the answer is just yes like both just both yeah of course why not better algorithms at higher scale yeah and it's it's going to be both Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Something that Yeah. Yeah.

1:09:44

Something that I've been trying to dig into more is like when are we going to see other models scale up to the size of like the big transformer from the GT models like we it feels like we're getting there with diffusion.

1:09:58

with diffusion. certainly not there with robotics even though some of the robotics companies are now saying like hey we have the end toend models we have you know big uh big data sets and but they're not yet talking about hey we're building the massive data set we're doing the 100k H100s or anything uh that seems like a really critical uh like

1:10:17

discussion point especially for yeah like where where where the next applications go because it does seem somewhat specific it doesn't feel like I I was talking to one the founder of etched and he was saying like uh he was saying like no I actually think like you will just be able to train a robot to walk by having it read every book on walking. I was like I don't know about

1:10:35

I was like I don't know about that.

1:10:37

I read the book on walking.

1:10:37

I read every book and but but there is something there where it's like yeah if you're training a humanoid robot like why not just feed it all the data possible including all the images and all the videos and everything just the more it knows the better and that just builds like the stronger world model.

1:10:51

I'm trying this with you know with my kids right?

1:10:52

It's like yeah just walk you know and it works it just works so there's a way to do it you know. Yeah.

1:10:59

Anything else before we move on? Uh, no. This fantastic. This is fantastic.

1:11:01

Thank you so much for Yeah. Great.

1:11:04

Um, and I will tune in later today. Yeah, absolutely. We'll see. Seated. Bye. Peace. Thanks for coming. Bye.

1:11:10

Uh, always a fun time with Andrew Reed from the best, uh, legendary investor, one of the greatest to ever do it.

1:11:17

Um, and we have our next guest. Still cooking. Still cooking.

1:11:24

Excited for the next 40 years. Yeah.

1:11:24

I'm bummed we couldn't make the AI send thing.

1:11:27

It would have been uh very good but we had a lot of uh a lot of travel going on.

1:11:32

A lot of birthday lot of birthday.

1:11:34

Anyway, there's a lot of event but fantastic. What's going on? Thanks for coming. Welcome to the stream.

1:11:38

Uh would you mind kicking us off with an introduction for those who might not know you? What's your name? What's your company?

1:11:44

And your camera by the way is over there but you can you can just chat with us here. Yeah.

1:11:47

Marty Ringline, CEO, co-founder of agree. com. Great. And what is agree. com? It's a better docysine.

1:11:56

Best part is it's totally free.

1:11:56

Free e signature for everyone.

1:11:59

But what makes it really special is we've combined invoicing and payment.

1:12:03

At the end of most signatures, somebody has to pay someone.

1:12:06

We just brought it all together. Okay.

1:12:07

When I hear When I hear free, I I I think I am I the product? What's going on?

1:12:12

Are you selling my documents to foreign countries or something?

1:12:15

We So, we operate like a fintech, right?

1:12:17

We monetize the payments on the payment side. Yep.

1:12:19

So, operates a lot like Stripe. Sure.

1:12:21

I can't I can't tell you how many times I've I feel like it's mostly with home services where I'm paying like for pest control and I'm like signing I'm I'm uh you know I'm like signing something and then I'm like okay like I'm ready you know again I'm ready to pay and then it's like oh well like zel you know zel me or whatever.

1:12:43

I'm just like really like this should be this should be built into one.

1:12:45

What um I'm curious what uh what markets have you guys really focused on?

1:12:49

Uh initially just we're at Figma designers, agencies, freelancers, solarreneurs are obvious ones, but the big B2B SAS sales especially in tech startups, they're just moving so fast.

1:13:01

The growth trajectory is there and then I think you've pointed out something that's really interesting where if I say you have net 45 to pay, I think most of us think, oh, I'll pay on the 46 day.

1:13:09

I'll stretch it out as long as I can.

1:13:11

But usually we want what's on the other side of that transaction so bad. We want to pay quicker.

1:13:17

We I want my pest control done. I want my roof fixed.

1:13:19

I want my contractor started.

1:13:22

I want my sock 2 compliance quicker.

1:13:23

So like delaying the invoice just doesn't make any sense, right?

1:13:28

I want to go from execution of agreement. I want to pay quickly. Yeah. Don't stop that.

1:13:32

That's such a manual process right now.

1:13:34

Everyone takes executed agreement, they send it over to finance.

1:13:37

Somebody in finance manually creates an invoice, manually sends it over.

1:13:41

It's just It's kind of weird in 2025. Yeah.

1:13:43

Uh I got to ask, how did you get the domain? Yeah.

1:13:45

So, uh it was always agree.

1:13:48

We knew that that was that was the word.

1:13:50

Um but one day we're pitching and my co-founder says to me at the end of the pitch, the investor um missed. He said agree. com.

1:13:56

It's like, oh, that that could be a problem. Got a nice ring to it.

1:14:00

He's like, "Hey, uh did you ever go to agree. com?"

1:14:01

I said, "No, what if it's a porn site?"

1:14:03

So, we go and it's clear that it hasn't had love in a number of years, but I I see I know there's a privacy policy and a privacy policy is going to be a legal entity. I track it down.

1:14:13

I find the owner of that legal entity.

1:14:15

And then it was four months of uh pestering and wooing and because he's a high net worth individual.

1:14:20

He didn't he didn't need to let it go for the money that we paid.

1:14:24

Did he make you give you some equity? No. No, we did all cash.

1:14:26

But, uh we did I did have to eventually sell him on the vision of the dream. Be a part of the story. Yeah.

1:14:32

like it'll be used for good.

1:14:33

And I will never not do one of these interviews where that question won't come up.

1:14:37

He will be like, "Yeah, I was at the beginning of Probably early.

1:14:40

com guy, I imagine, just sat on a bunch of big fantastic."

1:14:42

He he picked it up a few years ago for like 75k at an auction. Cool. Yeah. Wow.

1:14:47

Uh what's the go to market been like?

1:14:50

I imagine that there's some sort of like uh almost like viral loop where somebody sends something and then they get a chance to sign up and then you kind of grow from there.

1:14:58

Is there like a positive viral coefficient with this or Oh yeah. Yeah.

1:15:01

And it's one where I pitched it just like that in the preede.

1:15:03

Didn't realize how fast it would kick in and like how substantial that would be to us.

1:15:08

So we launched the product September 4th.

1:15:10

In a month there was a thousand users. Wow. Hey, not bad. Yeah.

1:15:14

30 days later 10,000 users. Okay, that's impressive.

1:15:17

And then 7 weeks after that it doubled to 20,000.

1:15:21

But when I looked at those users, a third of them they came to us.

1:15:24

Their origin story is someone sent them to doc to sign on the platform.

1:15:28

they signed like you know let me give this thing a shot.

1:15:32

So that's kicked in that's been awesome.

1:15:33

So we'll always talk about our customer but then our customers customer vitally important to us.

1:15:37

Um and then now yeah the go to markets just uh we see the same thing on the invoicing side.

1:15:42

So just more the the customer base itself is the biggest distribution engine. How big is the company?

1:15:48

I imagine it's like several thousand.

1:15:49

Are you in tens of thousands of yet in terms of just employees?

1:15:55

to run one of these businesses.

1:15:56

Typically, it's uh five figures of employees typically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:16:00

Everyone likes to remind that Docystein 7,000. That's how many it is. I I I chat GPTed.

1:16:05

It would take four Titanics to fit all the employees of Docuign.

1:16:08

Uh but we're we're a team of eight and I think this is what you're well,000 doing the impossible.

1:16:15

the impossible docuign exact look at you guys when they're like we don't know how they do it.

1:16:20

We don't know how they That's right. That's right. Um payments too.

1:16:24

We I mean we need to double Yeah.

1:16:28

Everyone always wonders what is what are they all doing over there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:16:32

Do you actually do you actually have a um I'm curious if you have a read.

1:16:34

I I was always surprised that after you know Twitter was able to lay off you know such a huge amount of the workforce I was surprised that didn't inspire other similarly drastic uh cuts.

1:16:48

Have you been are you surprised in general at some of these more scaled enterprise companies that that they that they haven't tried taking a leaner approach yet?

1:17:00

I think the one of the secrets behind some of the B2B SAS in Silicon Valley is that there are an enormous amount of humans that power what we think is technology.

1:17:12

And there's some companies where you can tell between like December 21st and January 1st the servers have gone down or something's not working. Oh, no.

1:17:19

The humans are gone, right?

1:17:21

They're out of the office.

1:17:22

This is a service as a software. That's right. That's right.

1:17:25

And so, I think for some of these organizations, um, you need a huge customer service staff, a huge support staff to make it all work because they're they're pushing buttons and pulling levers behind the scenes.

1:17:35

And so, they the tech deck is just so enormous that they they can't scale back even though they know they need to.

1:17:42

And I think this is what we're seeing with AI.

1:17:45

We know smaller teams can do more. They can do it faster.

1:17:47

Now, how do they start automating their workflows with Aentic AI or whatever tools they might be putting into place? Yeah, that's awesome.

1:17:54

So, you so you're here specifically uh pitching designers and studios.

1:17:59

Who uh who is the current customer avatar that you're going after at Config.

1:18:03

So, at 8, we got to do everything and anything to build the brand.

1:18:07

So, I'm I saw some flyers that were just hanging out stack of them out there. I saw a stack of flyers.

1:18:11

I was like, "Oh, he's doing I've got an official partner coffee cart out front that I push and I make cold brew coffee people, me and my co-founder Will."

1:18:19

Um, but this conference is going on, right?

1:18:24

Thousands of people here. Totally.

1:18:24

May 6th through 8th at Moscone West.

1:18:26

Turns out Stripe Sessions is right across the street.

1:18:30

The same dates within the same block radius. And my ICP is here. Why would I not be here?

1:18:35

So what I do, yeah, I'm here handing out cards, knocking on doors, giving out free coffee, whatever it takes, but just build that brand, get them to know what it is because for us it's an amplification.

1:18:44

The big announcement just went out about our seed round and so now we're doing interviews like this and just want people being like, "Oh, agree is everywhere. What's not everywhere?

1:18:52

It's just everywhere that I know you're looking and you're listening and you're reading." Yeah.

1:18:56

Break down the round for us.

1:18:58

How how did it come together? Uh who's in? Yeah.

1:18:59

So it was exciting because we we raised That was yesterday. That was yesterday. Yeah. Yeah.

1:19:03

So this is perfect timing.

1:19:05

We had closed three million preede in March of last year.

1:19:07

We launched in September and then once those viral loops started hitting and there was there was some interesting traction and so we had a number of investors start reaching out to us towards the end of the year expressing interest.

1:19:20

We were going to go to market with a round um either right before the summer, right after the summer.

1:19:23

Um but then a few folks asked to preempt just say hey let's just let's just do it now. Yeah.

1:19:29

So, we thought, let's formally go to market on January 6th and then it closed in two weeks, which was wild. Yeah.

1:19:36

So, it was beyond our own expectations and then we just made the big announcement yesterday.

1:19:38

It's great to get it out. That's great. Um, I'm curious. I'm curious.

1:19:43

Was some of the early push back from investors.

1:19:48

There's always push back even if people are gen generally bullish.

1:19:49

You're just like, why hasn't anyone done this before or doesn't this already?

1:19:54

This feels pretty counterposition against uh against um docysine, right?

1:19:58

Because like it would be a massive upending to their business model. No, no, no.

1:20:05

I know it's I know it's highly I know it's highly disruptive, but but uh you know if if you look back somewhere around two years ago, it it felt like a lot of traditional SAS and we were like out of new traditional fintech and SAS ideas.

1:20:21

But the thing that became obvious is if you just you know brought a new approach or a disruptive you know pricing model idea deadly seriously. Exactly. Exactly.

1:20:30

So so the biggest push back was this is too obvious. Yeah.

1:20:35

Why doesn't this exist right?

1:20:37

So and that it was a great qu because I'm like glad you asked because what I'll always say in the pitch at that point is this is the last time we'll ever actually talk about docysine because this is about payments. This is about pay tax.

1:20:47

This is about AR automation.

1:20:48

And it becomes very clear that the second question they shouldn't ask me is like what if docuine did this?

1:20:54

Docuine can't become a payments company.

1:20:56

The real question I'd have is what happens if Stripe across the street decides they want to do e- signature. Sure. Sure.

1:21:00

That would be disruptive.

1:21:02

That's really interesting to me.

1:21:02

What if they decided that owning the contract as a source of truth to revenue was really impactful to financial and CFOs.

1:21:08

Like that would be really interesting.

1:21:11

Well, hopefully they're not listening. Yeah. Yeah.

1:21:13

Well, the problem is you still have to be really They have their conference right now and we're live.

1:21:17

Yeah, they're busy so they can't be listening.

1:21:18

They're watching backstage.

1:21:20

We know John and Patrick are on stage.

1:21:22

They can't be watching this right now. That's great.

1:21:24

Uh, what was your background before this? Yeah.

1:21:25

So, um, longtime entrepreneur, had a had a startup back in 2007, then it got acquired by Twitter in 2012. Oh, cool.

1:21:33

Had a few exits, a few other startups in between, but most most pertinent to this one is me and two of the folks that worked with me even at that first company.

1:21:39

We started up a fintech that got acquired by Brex. Oh.

1:21:41

And Brex brought us into um build out expense management. Sure.

1:21:45

management. Sure. specifically invoicing bill pay and this is like right before we all meet our friend chat GPT but before the uh GPT3 beta goes out and the best technology we have at the time to scan and parse invoices is called OCR optical character recognition Brex's

1:22:02

position was spare no expense use the best technology it's Google it's 87% accurate reliable like it's just not great for financial services it means we still need human in the loop there are human beings pulling levers pushing buttons but that June when we get access to the GP. The whole world's freaking

1:22:15

The whole world's freaking out. Gen AI, Gen AI.

1:22:16

Turns out you put generative AI on top of OCR, it closed that 13% error gap almost instantly.

1:22:22

So, we knew that, oh, legal documents, huge because the generative nature of generative AI, right? It's context aware.

1:22:31

So, it can read the document and start to infer and imply things and fill in those gaps.

1:22:34

That was huge unlock for us. Yeah.

1:22:37

Uh, were you at Twitter postacquisition for a little bit?

1:22:39

Yeah, I was at No, no, I was only at Twitter preipo. Okay.

1:22:43

And I was only there I did my my year. Your year.

1:22:45

What was it like working there? It was awesome.

1:22:47

Uh, but I always talk about it as is equal parts frustrating and fascinating because the site's still going down. They're still fail. Oh, wow. But it was fun for us. It's 140 characters.

1:22:56

It's still no photos, no videos.

1:22:58

They they just acquired Tweety 2, so they didn't even have their own apps yet.

1:23:02

They just got Tweet Deck and Tweety 2, so they're starting to get their own app.

1:23:05

But this was the mantra of let's be mobile first. Yeah. Right.

1:23:08

So, we're watching them for the first time figure out what happens. Yeah.

1:23:12

Because that famous photo of when the plane lands in the Hudson, people forget that's a tweet pic. Yeah. But that's not Twitter.

1:23:18

That's tweet pick on Twitter.

1:23:20

That's a separate Twitter separate service, right? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

1:23:23

Very very decentralized back then.

1:23:25

Now you can't even link out to anything.

1:23:27

It's completely different. Yeah.

1:23:27

Now it's like for everything. Do not put agree. com in in a post. No. It hurts us. It hurts us. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm sure. I'm sure.

1:23:34

Um, are you finding any luck with um like the the world of venture capital and and startups sending safe notes around on a group?

1:23:46

So, this one made it easy on the pitch.

1:23:47

Um, I didn't have to explain the pain.

1:23:50

All VCs are like, "Yeah, this is a miserable experience.

1:23:52

I hate moving money with my bank." Yep.

1:23:54

I I don't like working with DocYsine.

1:23:58

Docuine's not a bad company, but people get a visceral reaction.

1:24:00

It's like Microsoft Teams or Jira and nobody likes Docu Sign and so um yeah when we told them that the way you invest in startups it'll be your workflows will be better.

1:24:12

It's like oh that's an immediate aha.

1:24:12

Is that a different product on the fintech side because it's a more of like an investment wire than just a payment.

1:24:19

It's different in that um to monetize the way just the benchmark against Stripe invoicing and billing.

1:24:23

They take 6% blended 4 to 7. Oh yeah.

1:24:25

You don't want to take 6% of like a Yeah. VC investment.

1:24:29

The the psychological moment for people is $50,000.

1:24:32

If it's a $30,000 SAS charge and you take66, nobody really even notices the millions. Yeah. 50,000. But on our 7.

1:24:39

2 million, I'm not paying anything of that.

1:24:42

But there is a place in fintech where people take a 6. Yeah.

1:24:47

Because what do I do with the 7. 2?

1:24:47

I don't spend it right away.

1:24:48

I put it into a bank and then it go a row bank if I can plug them.

1:24:52

But no, it goes They just been so great to us.

1:24:54

But um it goes into uh treasury account and I make you know greater than 4% interest on it. Got it.

1:25:00

You know what the rose Mercury Brexit take 6%. Right.

1:25:02

So so the agree um act two it's coming out uh this October the agree count by default will be a treasury. Yeah.

1:25:10

So we want founders doing their safes on the platform.

1:25:12

We want all the money flowing through it and then it would just make sense just to leave it in agree.

1:25:16

Don't don't move it to another bank because I didn't have a treasury.

1:25:19

I had to go to row and I had the checking but then I had to create a treasury account on top of it. Interesting. That makes sense.

1:25:24

Um, well, our next guest is here miking up.

1:25:28

Anything else you want to share with the stream?

1:25:29

Just love having you guys in.

1:25:31

Hey, uh, today we always say it's the last day you'll ever pay for Docside. So, there we go.

1:25:34

What a I feel like you're going to get a season at some point because I I feel like I can't wait to tweet that C.

1:25:40

There's something weird about startups that like they're very hesitant about even if they are building a direct competitor or something, they're usually pretty hesitant about saying it out loud for a variety of reasons.

1:25:50

Just inviting competition. He's bold. He's brave. bold graph. Take all of it. 7,000.

1:25:54

It's When you guys While you guys are in town though, if you happen to hit the blue bottle on uh Second Street, there's a billboard that's going up right as we speak. There we go.

1:26:04

All it says is today's the last day you'll ever pay for just one block from HQ.

1:26:08

That's putting the heat on. I'm poking the bear.

1:26:11

We're going to see what happens. Thanks for having us.

1:26:12

Good luck out there on Congrats on the new round. Thank you. Thank you. Good to meet you. That is bold.

1:26:18

Well, hopefully he's uh buying billboards on adquick. com.

1:26:20

We are of course sponsored by AdQuick.

1:26:22

Of course, we should tell you about all interesting.

1:26:26

I feel like it's the the treasury functionality feel like it makes sense potentially for if you're like an SMB. Yeah.

1:26:34

But if if you're a startup that raises through like a docuign like product, are you going to leave money in that corporate treasury?

1:26:44

Yeah, you probably want to pay your employees, do all sorts of stuff. I don't know.

1:26:47

Anyways, very bullish on the product overall. Good to meet you. What's happening? You too. Hi. Hi.

1:26:52

Uh, you can throw on uh headphones if you want to hear yourself, whatever you want. Are we twins? Yeah, we're brothers. Technology.

1:26:58

We're not related, actually.

1:27:00

We're not actually related.

1:27:01

You guys look so much alike. Um, it'll be easier. You can you can adjust. Uh, but we are live.

1:27:06

Would you mind introducing yourself and what you do for the stream?

1:27:09

Uh, Jeremy Hindo, production designer.

1:27:11

Uh, I designed Severance, Top Gun Maverick, Zero Dark 30. A couple things. Amazing. Just a couple things.

1:27:17

Why don't you go say a few more just first few were so impressive.

1:27:22

It's uh and a few thousand commercials. Yeah. And Detroit. A few other movies.

1:27:24

I have a new Kathern Bigalow movie coming out. Oh, cool.

1:27:28

Uh in the fall on Netflix. Awesome.

1:27:29

We're just finishing that up now.

1:27:31

Where uh where are you based normally? Los Angeles. Nice. So are we. Talk me through. I never worked there.

1:27:36

I moved I moved from Toronto 19 years ago. Okay. To work in LA.

1:27:39

You've only done one film in California. Yeah. Wow. Why?

1:27:43

Even when you moved it was already it's just so there's so much shooting abroad.

1:27:48

I mean it's good for like c certain projects like Zark 30 you need to you're always going to need to travel.

1:27:52

It's just now that there's you know other than but severance feels like something you could film in LA. So no.

1:27:58

So we shoot in New York because Ben still lives in New York which is awesome.

1:28:01

So we're not going too far which is nice and it's nice.

1:28:03

It's great to be in New York and a lot of the cast live there and the crew are amazing.

1:28:06

Do you agree with the criticism that Los Angeles and Hollywood have should have done more to prevent God?

1:28:11

It's been bleeding for years. Yeah.

1:28:14

The the the interesting thing that the the the tariffs on foreign films news came out Sunday and I forget the guy's name who was kind of spearheading that.

1:28:23

He was saying like these other countries, you know, it was like the the local state and county leadership in LA have to take some responsibility for creating an environment where you know, it's just like economically unfeasible.

1:28:39

Do you think that was just hubris by the elected officials in Los Angeles and Hollywood to say, "Oh, we don't need to compete with Atlanta because we're Hollywood."

1:28:47

Honestly, I don't know why they I mean, I think honestly the tech a lot of tech moved into California into Los Angeles. Oh, sure.

1:28:54

And I kind of think that might have distracted Oh, interesting.

1:28:56

I'm not sure they were paying attention coming, you know, and they saw that and I don't know, but you if like the studio system, but and all the prop houses, they've been closing for the last 5 years.

1:29:05

All the best ones are gone. They went bankrupt.

1:29:07

A lot of them through COVID and then a lot of them hung on till the last year, but they're all closing because no one's shooting in California. It's it's the stages.

1:29:15

I think it's I've heard 40% empty.

1:29:16

I mean, we No, we've been looking for a new So, we've been looking for uh like effectively a sound stage, new studio space, and we we found a space that we like. Everything's empty.

1:29:26

But but uh it was shocking negotiating.

1:29:28

We we would tour a space be completely empty then we'd start the negotiation process and they would have these even the spaces you know maybe the way that the management or however they're capitalized but they would start throwing out numbers and I'm like you realize I've been in the space and I know that there's no one there.

1:29:45

I'm like, I know you're kind of who's your who's who's your backup offer because Yeah.

1:29:52

And then of course like everyone who's ever been involved in the building management ownership, they're all of a sudden flying in to see you for just touring one little stage and you're like, "Okay, I this is a big deal for you."

1:30:04

No, there's something wrong for sure.

1:30:05

And I think it's just um you know, most countries there it's so like I did a movie in Australia and it's so incentivized. Totally.

1:30:10

It's not because what a lot of these countries are giving is above the line.

1:30:14

All the money is the above the line. It's actors.

1:30:18

That's the big money and places like California.

1:30:20

New Jersey starting to do that now.

1:30:22

Is that just tax incentives or actually Well, it's a tax incentive for crews and shooting and postprouction, but not always.

1:30:28

A lot of places don't cover the cost.

1:30:30

You know, if an actor's $25 million, they don't cover that part. Okay.

1:30:34

But now New Jersey is covering that part for Netflix.

1:30:36

Like certain people have their own deals.

1:30:38

That's where the real money is. Yeah.

1:30:40

State of New Jersey is giving a tax write off for for that.

1:30:44

Like a certain part of above the line. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

1:30:45

And a bigger because a lot of them are capped at like a half a million. Sure.

1:30:48

It doesn't save you much when someone's getting 30 million on a movie. Yeah.

1:30:51

You know, and say you have two or three of those people. Yeah.

1:30:54

That's a big chunk of money that it's it's a lot.

1:30:56

And I mean crew-wise for most people I know, everyone's making the same money they made 101 15 years ago. Yeah. It hasn't changed much.

1:31:04

So it's just how even if even if you've progressed a lot in your career in terms of doing, you know, I still think what I make I still probably make the same as Rick Carter would have made 20 years ago. the same number. Yeah.

1:31:16

And the currency is not even close. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a good number.

1:31:19

I'm not complaining, but it's not what it's it's the same number. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. It's interesting.

1:31:25

And they still go that's, you know, it's but it hasn't caught up in a lot of ways. And I'm not asking. I I have a nice life. Yeah.

1:31:30

It's more I just like to be home sometimes. Yeah.

1:31:31

Well, take me through uh the production design workflow on a project that um we might be familiar with.

1:31:38

Start with like is there location scouting involved?

1:31:41

Pho photo photographs, are you sketching things?

1:31:44

Are you in a particular software like what is your process?

1:31:46

I mean basically severances you know it's it was I when Ben sent it to me it was two scripts.

1:31:51

There was only two scripts for the first 10 episodes. Sure.

1:31:53

And tonally it was it was really nothing there. It was very funny.

1:31:57

Um and it it was a great concept like this people will want to be separate.

1:32:02

It kind of scares me but I could go well I know half my friends want this if I could get it.

1:32:05

And but it didn't have a look to it.

1:32:08

So I wasn't it read like the office.

1:32:10

It was budgeted exactly like the office.

1:32:12

shoot in a location, great cast.

1:32:13

Adam was already attached to it, you know, it could have been parks and it was the same sort of tone, like that feel.

1:32:19

And I was like, I don't really, it's not my thing. I want to do cinema.

1:32:23

I want to do something really visual. Yeah.

1:32:26

He said, well, what do you want to do?

1:32:28

And I'm like, give me a couple days and I'll put a lookbook together. I didn't know him.

1:32:31

I just put a lookbook of what I thought it would look like.

1:32:34

I'm like, if you want to do this, I'll I'll I love this.

1:32:35

I had an idea that I really fell in love with and he loved it, you know, and it was sort of conceptually like the outside was always going to be like it should always be winter.

1:32:45

It should always be really sad outside.

1:32:47

We have to kind of accentuated.

1:32:49

accentuated. It was and then when we go underground it has to be you know very um particularly designed and also all the technology should be all the tropes that I as a kid grew up with that if you came out in the outside world now and told somebody you worked at this CRTC screen with a track ball you no one it

1:33:06

wouldn't make any sense it had to be things that made no sense to anyone outside the world especially young people they never even seen my son doesn't even know what didn't even know what it was he's 20 like he still doesn't know what a track ball is really so it's trying to like that's the initial part is really conceptually what does the world look like? Yeah. And then Yeah.

1:33:21

And then I start I really always start everything with a researcher.

1:33:25

Her and I we just bang stuff out for a while and then I start with re with a concept artist.

1:33:29

How much of uh moving from a a look that's similar to the office which is very docu style to something cinema where you wound up is driven by actual budgetary choices versus just picking the right tools out of the same tool.

1:33:46

didn't have any on service.

1:33:47

We just abandoned that thought.

1:33:49

Like the cinematographer Jess and Ben and I, we were like, "What do we want to make?" Yeah. And we just made it. Okay. The budget exploded. It really did. But what drives that?

1:33:56

Because you people think about like, "Oh, we're filming with Cook lenses or Ari Alexa, and it gets expensive, but on the production side, uh, you know, not to degrade it, but it does feel like it's desk.

1:34:08

How how expensive can it be?"

1:34:09

Well, it's it's it's five stages a set. Sure. It's a lot. It's volume. Sure.

1:34:15

Like it a lot of shows like say parks and wreck, it's one set for the entire show.

1:34:18

The entire every Speaking of a lot of sets, uh the rehearsal that's a lot of sets. A lot. It's a Yeah.

1:34:24

I mean, every new scene is like the amount of sets and then the amount of actors that come in and the amount of time it takes to shoot all the sets and pre-light and camera tests.

1:34:34

It all just and the lighting probably gets more expensive as you're going for more cinematic look, right?

1:34:38

As opposed to just because we have sets that, you know, the birthing cabin in season 2, we we built it. It's only in one scene. Wow.

1:34:43

Yeah, but it's a particular scene. It's that's destroyed.

1:34:47

Well, never it doesn't exist anymore.

1:34:49

So, you start to you have to offset like how but a lot of shows are you know like Law and Order is designed to the sets are standing sets. It's a courthouse.

1:34:55

It has and then the only sets are the only other ones are locations.

1:35:00

Ours are whatever we want.

1:35:02

And also all the locations like they have to be places that we've never seen before.

1:35:07

Like we go to we shoot in Utica, we shot in Newfoundland.

1:35:10

We're all over the place because I I can't have somebody know that train station. We can't know it.

1:35:17

And then we alter take a location that's unique and maybe hasn't been, you know, popularized before and build on top of it. Absolutely.

1:35:25

And then we do a lot of visual effects after.

1:35:26

We augment and alter it because it's really about creating a world that everyone doesn't know.

1:35:31

They don't know where it is.

1:35:31

Like we're always I would say we're in Poland for all I know. Like nobody knows. Yeah.

1:35:37

And I don't want people to know we're in upstate New York.

1:35:38

There's nothing identifiable really that people could pick.

1:35:41

And it's not it's the intention is really just for people to go down that rabbit hole.

1:35:46

It's not to really trick them.

1:35:47

It's just it makes it believable that they can't go, "Well, I hike there all the time."

1:35:51

It's just Can you talk about uh previs or is generative AI playing a role?

1:35:57

Is everything do you interface with storyboard artists?

1:36:00

interface with storyboard artists? Um, what does that look like as you're trying to go from just this idea on the page which you said was very blank to something that you need to get to the point where you're like this is exactly what we're basically what I do is I I

1:36:14

concept everything and you do iterations like sometimes probably 50 times to get to the way we like the set looks the way we all think it should shoot like Jess the DP and and now she's one of the directors on Severance and Ben it's really the three of us that just run with it when we're in shoot mode. Yeah. Yeah.

1:36:29

And it's really they they both storyboard like crazy together.

1:36:31

Like we we're really tight and very opinionated.

1:36:36

We we ride each other like crazy. We argue all the time. Yeah.

1:36:37

But in a really passionate um collaborative way.

1:36:42

We have we're like there's zero egos.

1:36:43

None of us have an ego about it.

1:36:43

It's just passionately what is the best thing?

1:36:47

Like if it's not perfect, we don't shoot it. Yeah. Ever. Yeah.

1:36:49

Uh, do you ever feel like the materials that you're working with to build a particular piece of furniture, for example, actually matter beyond just how they read on camera?

1:37:01

Is there something about a heavy desk that actually brings out a better performance? Oh, yeah.

1:37:04

Even though you could just make everything out of balsa wood or something.

1:37:07

Well, it's like the desk, the main desk like, you know, it was just it just the script said four desks, one large room. Yep.

1:37:14

And I was like, this it has to be this is like the I kind of treat it like a spaceship.

1:37:18

It's like the control room of Star Trek, right?

1:37:20

You know, it's like you need one thing to set the tone and everyone buys off on that set, they'll believe anything after.

1:37:26

So, I'm like, the desk has to be let's let's build this desk that's very interactive.

1:37:32

They're like 5-year-olds.

1:37:32

We treat them like once they're they're birthed into the Audi on the on the boardroom table, which Dan calls the womb. Yeah. Of the office. That's the birthplace.

1:37:40

You go to this work and you're really five years old. You don't know anything.

1:37:44

You just start to work at this computer.

1:37:45

I'm like, let's make it really playful.

1:37:47

Like let's treat it like kind of like a playground. Yeah.

1:37:50

And but I I want them to be able to jump on it.

1:37:53

Like I want Zach to be able to jump on it.

1:37:54

I want it has to be structurally insanely strong and we just think of everything so that that way there's they they're not impeded by anything.

1:38:01

Whatever they want to do, safety first. Go do it. What? It's just amazing.

1:38:05

Did you I'm assuming you made the uh you you created the activation.

1:38:11

Where was it in New York?

1:38:11

It was in the middle of that's so marketing for Apple is amazing.

1:38:14

for Apple is amazing. That's all Mark that's all they are amazing and that the one in Grand based on based on yeah it's all based on what we do and then they but they're really interesting how they take it to the next level that one worked out really well well worked not in a good way but the fires so the

1:38:31

premiere was canceled because of the fires in LA so that was happening at the same time and all the actors were going to be we were all going to be at the premiere they all just jumped on a plane and went to the event so it would have just been like you know people cast to be there but they all showed up unknown to everyone I I wasn't there. I didn't know they

1:38:46

I didn't know they were going is I feel like I feel like that the the just the imagery there's so many different images from um severance that have become iconic and and in some ways just got outsized attention on the internet just because they were so Have you been Have you been to the Apple website?

1:39:06

Is it still Yeah, you click on it.

1:39:10

It's the first computer they sell.

1:39:10

I don't know if they still have it or IKEA started making the desk.

1:39:14

Like in Austria, they issued it first. Yeah.

1:39:17

It's on the cover of IKEA. It's Yeah.

1:39:19

But but so is that is it is it the work that you're most proud of in your career or or is there is there something else that maybe didn't get the same level of attention that that you I mean I love the process is the best part. Yeah.

1:39:29

I mean Top Gun was hilariously fun.

1:39:31

Terod 30 was amazing challenge.

1:39:33

Like um they're all it's about for me it's the experience of it's a year or two of my life. Yeah.

1:39:40

The people I'm with like I'm so particular who I work with.

1:39:41

It's like you better be they better be interesting cuz why are you going to spend your time with them?

1:39:47

That's really for me what it is.

1:39:48

What it goes out into the world when people make it is I mean this is exciting to watch.

1:39:51

Not unlike Top Cut was well I I I you must appreciate you know uh product design is is is really hard right there's there's no doubt about that.

1:40:01

about that. But uh somebody can have an idea for a product and you know within maybe call it 10 minutes to an hour they can have something that looks somewhat like the end state with with you must not have a lot of sympathy for for that given that you when you're like oh we need to design this like you know entire

1:40:18

scene and we're going to need to import you know wood from you know this this region and that it's just a very difficult but it's also AI is a funny one because we don't use any AI nothing but well no because I I mean my biggest problem is I don't need ideas I just need money to make stuff. I have so my

1:40:30

I have so my ideas just fall out of me like and the older I get.

1:40:34

So you want like you want humanoid robots that can you know assemble.

1:40:39

I really just want you know support you know really we just want artists that we can we're making art.

1:40:44

Yeah which is amazing and it's it's not actually a robot wouldn't work for me.

1:40:46

I need the person who has an opinion like I have this amazing sculptor who does all the sculptures. He's full-time.

1:40:52

I've never had a full-time sculptor.

1:40:54

I could go panko make let's make this let's make a bus.

1:40:58

Let's make this piece of art. Yeah.

1:41:00

He makes it in a day and it's and it's all in his head.

1:41:02

It has that human and it has like Yeah.

1:41:05

And it has his heart and it has I love that.

1:41:07

And it's not necessarily what I wanted.

1:41:09

It's I want what they want too. Sure. Sure. Sure.

1:41:14

Put that into where there's so much doom and gloom in the world. The movie industry. No, not the world. I actually world config. It's great. Config.

1:41:24

No, but but specifically in in entertainment, you know, film making.

1:41:26

It is pretty gloomy these days.

1:41:29

It is gloomy, but clearly there's amazing work being made.

1:41:33

There's all these new tools that people are going to have access to or already have access to that that that make variety, you know, different parts of the process easier.

1:41:41

Where where are the bright spots to you?

1:41:43

What what gets, you know, you excited?

1:41:46

I miss the John Hughes movies. I miss scripts.

1:41:47

I I'm so tired of seeing guns. I really am.

1:41:50

If I was the poster with a gun on it. Yeah.

1:41:52

I just I find it really sad. Yeah.

1:41:54

And I really I miss John Hughes.

1:41:56

Like I my kids know them all and most people know them, but there's nothing to really take like adolescence is is an interesting thing for young kids to watch because it's about real life, but it would be nice to also give them something that's to look forward to that's like how to fall in love for the first time.

1:42:12

Like yeah, the things that I find young generations are not getting.

1:42:15

They're literally getting I love John Wick.

1:42:16

It's fun, but they can't all be John Wick.

1:42:20

Yeah, you know, we do have a lot of John Wick.

1:42:22

Yeah, we we were talking earlier the need for uh positive science fiction, right?

1:42:26

You can still have a you can still have a dramatic story but not dystopian.

1:42:31

Not cyber punk necessarily, maybe solar punk or like ours I think ours is funny because it's really still a love story.

1:42:35

Yeah, he loves her outside and he fell in love inside.

1:42:37

It's just about love and that's really all we all want and it's the hardest thing to figure out how to have and how to let you be vulnerable is not something that's being allowed these days.

1:42:47

Can you talk about production design in the context of a film where there's going to be a lot of shoot shots on location?

1:42:55

Like I mean I imagine that the nature of an aircraft carrier plays into the design production design even when you're on a sound stage.

1:43:02

Um and there's less things that you have full control over.

1:43:07

Um, but how did you think about that in the context of Top Gun or or Zero Dark 30 similar where you know there's a certain grounding in the real world that you need to pull into the rest with the lighting design but also the production design.

1:43:18

I mean honestly I I I think we can do anything really.

1:43:20

We built a Sabbin London compound.

1:43:22

It's the size whole area. It's mass it's massive. That's amazing.

1:43:27

I'm like why wouldn't we build it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:43:28

It was 300 people laying bricks for six weeks just non just it was a factory line. It was amazing.

1:43:34

All these Egyptian That's remarkable brick layers. It was incredible.

1:43:37

Like I we built the Jet on Top Gun.

1:43:39

Like if I just don't think you can't do it.

1:43:42

I have zero understanding of no or why not.

1:43:44

Like I always go why not and they go why?

1:43:47

And I'm like I said why not? We're doing it. Show business.

1:43:51

What about uh what about CGI like set extensions as a tool? Amazing.

1:43:53

Are you reaching for that more?

1:43:56

And then how does that change your process?

1:43:58

We use it a lot in severance. We use it a lot. I use it on everything.

1:44:01

It's it is and I do a lot of cleanup now. Sure.

1:44:02

Because you're shooting so much faster.

1:44:04

you're prepping so much faster.

1:44:06

It's a great tool that's doesn't allow you to waste your time stressing over it that I can't do this in 3 weeks, but I can do this and then I'll do the rest after.

1:44:14

And it's it's more economical and it's way less stressful.

1:44:18

But it the hardest part is the production studio producers, it's hard because that bag of money hasn't been put aside until people are just starting to like I'm like, put it away. Yeah.

1:44:29

Let's commit to this amount of money and leave that money.

1:44:30

money and leave that money. But how much of how much of your process is a dance with the you know whoever's funding project where where you're just trying to understand you're like dancing with the bowl right you know where you're like you know trying to figure out if I

1:44:45

if I push the budget you know 15% maybe they'll be fine but if I take it you know 22% you know you kind of can read a room like anybody like you know and and I love just I'm I'm just like let's just talk to them let's can I just how about I just pitch let them see it and then if They say no, they say no. You got to

1:45:01

You got to nose a lot and you have to adapt, but you have to keep pushing. It's it's just a battle.

1:45:07

Like film making really is a war and it's a war till the end and every it's just how it works because and I I respect their job.

1:45:13

Like we can't all go rogue.

1:45:16

You have to be responsible but you have to they do hire me to trust my instincts and if you don't do that you don't make good art. Yeah. I can't. How confident are you?

1:45:29

Film is, you know, television, it's a hits business.

1:45:32

How confident are you, you know, mid during your process around uh what what the, you know, commercial, you know, commercial or just reception of a project will be.

1:45:45

I have no I I honestly have for a long time I did commercials because I couldn't pick a movie because I was terrified.

1:45:51

Is this going to be good? Sure.

1:45:52

And then I had a friend of mine who's done a million movies because you have to just kind of he said just let go. You have to let go.

1:45:58

Just pick the people you love to work with and forget about it because you know he did you know Silence with Marty and you know that movie didn't do well.

1:46:06

It's a great movie though but you don't know why and you can't bleed over it for the rest of your life.

1:46:10

You've got to do another one and another one and you just can't predict what people are going to like.

1:46:14

And honestly you just you have to not care. I couldn't care less. Yeah. You'd love to care.

1:46:18

Like wouldn't we all love to care to make everyone happy?

1:46:22

that I don't know why people like anything.

1:46:24

And I think once you just give up on that and just look, they want what you want.

1:46:29

If you are a visualist, they mostly want what you want. Yeah.

1:46:32

I have a conspiracy theory I want to run by you.

1:46:36

Um, someone was posting, this is just a random person on on the internet, but they said that uh Apple is preparing people for a world where we're using virtual avatars in the in the Apple Vision Pro by using a more highkey lighting style in shows like Severance and Ted Lasso.

1:46:57

Do you think there's anything to that?

1:46:59

No, I don't think I've ever none of us have ever even heard of it. Yeah.

1:47:02

I mean, our be odd that it would bleed over, but our goal is really we are we when I like Justin B and I really wanted to make a movie. Yeah.

1:47:09

A 10-hour movie and another 10-hour movie. Yeah, that's great.

1:47:13

Because everyone has a huge like I have a 140 inch screen at home.

1:47:16

A lot of people have a projector now.

1:47:18

And you can buy one for 500 bucks. Project it on your wall. It's still amazing.

1:47:21

I think most people have the, you know, a lot of people have the potential to see it bigger than watching it on their phone, which a lot of people producers say, "Yeah, but everyone's watching on their phone."

1:47:28

I'm like, "I don't agree." Yeah.

1:47:30

And I think some of these shows could be shown in theaters.

1:47:34

I think it could go back the other way.

1:47:35

We just screened Severance episode 10 at the Dolby Theater a couple weeks ago for 3,000 people and it was like the Rocky Horror Picture Show in one.

1:47:42

How would you is incredible.

1:47:45

How would you fix the theater industrial complex?

1:47:48

because the the the sort of 100% tariffs on foreign films plan involved government basically subsidies to help theaters like fix their bathrooms or at least that was what was put out there and I was like I'm going to go out on a limb and I and I don't think the reason our theaters are are suffering is because they haven't had a new toilet in you know 20 years.

1:48:08

I honestly I don't I don't I think everybody just wants like companies want this guarantee they're going to make money. They got to take risk. Yeah. You know so you fail. I'm sorry. I fail all the time. what we do.

1:48:19

Humans are failures works and sometimes it doesn't.

1:48:22

It's like so you have like their odds are still going to be good people like look at what people will watch and if there are like I couldn't believe how many people came dressed up as characters like they could screen on a weekend all 10 episodes and I guarantee you the dome if the arch lake was still open would be packed. It would be sold out.

1:48:40

You could sell it out for weeks. Yeah.

1:48:42

Like I I do believe that because I see what these kids want to see and I have a 25-year-old daughter.

1:48:47

She had every Friday night she had severance dinner night at her friends. Everybody was doing it.

1:48:51

It's like that's what Rocky Horror Picture Show was like when I was a kid.

1:48:54

That's there was there we had those experiences.

1:48:56

People want them and they want to walk out and talk about them.

1:49:00

They don't want to watch at home and then look to the left and to the right and then go back on Instagram.

1:49:06

There can only be so much laundry TV, right?

1:49:07

Like it's fun to to communally watch something and then talk about it and hang out on the street like and Yeah.

1:49:13

On that note, do you have a take on You guys have to get it back.

1:49:15

That's the thing is you have to you have to demand it. Sure. John Johns. Yeah.

1:49:20

I actually organize movie nights with all my friends and I just text everyone in Los Angeles. I get 20 tickets.

1:49:27

I text everyone in my phone who's in town.

1:49:28

Say, "Hey, do you want to come?"

1:49:30

And then if people don't show, I just refund the tickets. It's greating.

1:49:34

And and just put together his movie night.

1:49:35

It's just an activity to go out.

1:49:36

It's better than going to the bar with your guy friendss.

1:49:38

I'm not really that into sports.

1:49:39

I've always been more into movies.

1:49:41

But I think that's the thing is I don't think that they're look baby boomers have obviously lived too long.

1:49:46

They're still controlling how we live then there's you know my age and there's not a lot of like there needs to be a lot more control for at your age that's really controlling a lot of this and demanding that this is what you guys want.

1:49:59

They still think they know. Yeah.

1:50:01

The 65 70 year old guys they still think they have the answers.

1:50:03

It's like nobody wants to go.

1:50:05

No, you don't want to go out. You're 70. You want to sit at home. You loved co.

1:50:09

It's like 25 year olds don't want to sit at home.

1:50:11

They want You go to Paris, the movie movie houses are packed. Yeah.

1:50:14

Every little theater's jammed all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

1:50:16

You will go if they're available.

1:50:17

I've actually been surprised.

1:50:19

I mean, we're a technology and business focused show, but I've been surprised to not see more attempts at, you know, I'm surprised there isn't like a sweet green of theaters, right?

1:50:30

It's something that's like welldesigned and has healthy snacks and food and tired of the food. Isn't it awful? Yeah. Yeah.

1:50:38

I mean I that that's a big part of it is like I haven't eaten movie theater. Yeah.

1:50:41

Our play with that a little bit in LA and and but a lot of them a lot of them they they end up focusing too much on avantgard film and all that.

1:50:49

You just want to you know if they were just playing Yeah.

1:50:53

I I I do feel like yeah mixing in the hits and and creating these like big re-release moments can be good for kind of getting back people back in. Like look at Top Gun.

1:51:01

People saw it five six times. Oh yeah. Totally.

1:51:02

It was amaz It was exactly how I grew up.

1:51:04

you had to see in the theater and I loved it.

1:51:05

And it's like I there's also there there why can't there be more?

1:51:09

Well, so here here's another funny the the concept of scarcity could be interesting to implement.

1:51:14

It's like you figure out a way to Hey, we're going to pull this film off the internet everywhere for a year off all the streaming. That was the way it was.

1:51:21

No, but you see it and then nine months you have to wait.

1:51:23

Now it's on demand the next you can do it.

1:51:25

Take take a movie, pull it off every everywhere for a year. Yeah. Bring it back.

1:51:30

If you guys want to I would I hope someone starts an app and I'll I'll give the idea away for free.

1:51:34

Do one that doesn't track you or focus to you.

1:51:36

You have to be It's like going to Blockbuster, walk around and find it. Like interesting. You just get sexy stuff. It's awful.

1:51:45

Yeah, there's so many good like go to join the Criterion Collection, which not a lot of people do.

1:51:50

There's a billion amazing films on there. Yeah.

1:51:53

And and start watching them.

1:51:55

They're they're available.

1:51:55

You just have to get off some of the, you know. Yeah.

1:51:58

We got to get him the Criterion Collection.

1:51:59

He hasn't seen any movies. I've seen everything. So cheap, too. Is it 10 bucks a month? I know.

1:52:03

I love It's like the same price of a coffee with it, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:52:08

We got to get him through that.

1:52:09

Uh, so we're actually going into a production design session, building a new studio.

1:52:13

Uh, what are the common pitfalls where we could get stuck in quagmire?

1:52:18

We've been looking at big news desks.

1:52:20

We're thinking about putting some TVs behind us for, you know, graphics and displays.

1:52:24

It'll be a pretty basic set, but we do want it to have to be more opinionated than just one newsroom, please.

1:52:31

We want something that that speaks to a more modern brand, but we have a little bit of this like, you know, we wear suits even though we're tech people and there's a little bit of that.

1:52:41

But where where would we get stuck?

1:52:43

Where are the pe who are the people that we need to be talking to to really nail this project?

1:52:46

Yeah, because I don't think it's whoever did CNN's set. Those sets are so old. Yeah.

1:52:50

I mean, honestly, this is a fun set.

1:52:52

Do this do this at large. Yeah, that's cool.

1:52:56

I mean, I think the cool thing is to make it really what it's real.

1:52:57

Those sets are they're just designed for this.

1:53:02

They're all they care about is their logo. So boring.

1:53:03

Like make something like I remember Letterman Leman was hilarious when he throw that card through the window that didn't exist and you heard the sound effect.

1:53:10

Like just make it just make it fun. Yeah.

1:53:12

Like like an interactive cheap doesn't have to be expensive. No one cares. Yeah. Just make it fun. Fun is fun is key.

1:53:21

Like I Back at our home studio, we have uh a range of exotic sound effects that Yeah.

1:53:27

We're building the soundboard, but we also have props.

1:53:29

We have a tin foil hat for when we're talking about conspiracies.

1:53:31

We have a crystal ball that we pull out.

1:53:33

We have bottles of champagne and books and we've kind of built this whole like library.

1:53:37

Come back and come back and hang with us. Totally. I live in Studio City. Oh, fantastic. Just go to CBS Radford. It's the best. CBS Radford. What's that?

1:53:44

It's where they shot it's Laurel.

1:53:46

It's Laurel and um Ventura. Okay.

1:53:48

Yeah, maybe we should check that out.

1:53:50

Well, this other where they shot Parks at Rex where they shot Gilligans Island.

1:53:54

I mean, everybody the other CBS is is a place where we were looking at Television City. Oh, I don't know that. It's another CBS lot. Bill Maher films there. Oh, yeah.

1:54:02

Uh, but we were touring it and it was pretty empty, but it was very cool.

1:54:06

I mean, it was it was the real deal. Docs Bill Maher. I think that's public.

1:54:13

No one wants to go there anymore. So, no.

1:54:14

I mean, there's like seven layers of security to get in that building.

1:54:16

I think it's And it's a it's a live studio audience.

1:54:19

People go in all the time. Right. Right.

1:54:21

Anyway, um are there any uh are are there any new trends that you're tracking in in production design or or kind of advice for upand cominging folks who want to get into the industry?

1:54:34

Is it uh like what is the path?

1:54:34

Because I imagine you don't just call up a studio and ask for your first job.

1:54:39

You you need to build a resume of some kind, but it's kind of hard in the Tik Tok age to do anything related to that. You know, it's funny.

1:54:47

I tell all my kids, like all their friends, you just have you have to do what we did.

1:54:50

You have to knock on doors. Knock on doors.

1:54:52

Like my son's graduating from LMU right now.

1:54:55

He's interviewing for these jobs that have five positions, 8,000 applicants. Wow. Yeah.

1:54:59

That's the He's in marketing and wants, you know, marketing for somebody like event planning or um uh film promotion or he was work he was interviewing agencies. Connect us. We're hiring. Yes, we're hiring.

1:55:11

No, it's really it's amazing.

1:55:13

But that's what they're up.

1:55:14

And the other thing is they're all having to do these stupid Zoom interviews. You can't Oh, yeah.

1:55:20

That's You can't not I tell Sam, don't take one.

1:55:22

You need to know if you like them, too.

1:55:25

And you'll know their chemistry.

1:55:26

If you I find Zoom interview is waste. It's like I don't know.

1:55:29

I can't get a vibe from them.

1:55:31

But the second I sit with you guys, I'm like, I get their vibe and you want to hang out. Exactly.

1:55:36

And you know who you don't want to hang out with. Totally.

1:55:37

And that's what's being lost.

1:55:39

what's being lost. That's the art of I think that whole thing is just chaotic is there and and really lazy since co a lot of you no I go super quick it's typically one call 10 minutes come hang out let's meet up in person and meet up at coffee shop and really

1:55:54

you can just tell like there's a million things their style there's they look at you do they shake I don't know I feel like the etiquette of a human you need to meet um are there any particularly underrated films from a production design perspective that you go back and you think yeah play Playtime. It's the one I

1:56:09

It's the one I reference all the time. Jack Tati's Playtime.

1:56:12

It's a France Copala still talks about it.

1:56:14

It's It's what you know, Metropolis is going to be another one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're bombs.

1:56:19

Like Playtime is a masterpiece.

1:56:22

It's It's my biggest reference for Severance was was there's artist like there's cardboard cutouts.

1:56:26

There's people in the back.

1:56:27

Wait till you see the airplane.

1:56:28

It's just Wait till you see it. Okay. Awesome.

1:56:31

And it's it's he it was all his own money. Yeah.

1:56:33

He went bankrupt and and nobody watched it.

1:56:36

And it's like now there's books.

1:56:38

It's a It's one of the greatest films ever made and sometimes that takes 50 years. Yeah.

1:56:44

Sadly, he's not, you know, he doesn't see it.

1:56:45

Wait, so when is when does Metropolis actually release? It's out.

1:56:50

It's out and it bombed, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it was long.

1:56:52

I think people could watch it.

1:56:54

Will it be will it be appreciated in the fullness of time or or just, you know, I think sometimes it takes 20 years for people to want to watch.

1:57:02

Maybe it's too close to us.

1:57:02

It's about us and we don't really like watching about ourselves, right?

1:57:07

We don't like what we're doing to the world.

1:57:11

So, I think in 20 years they people will the young people your kids will be like watch this people like but but in a weird way people like White Lotus because it's it's like watching their own family vacation. Is that amazing?

1:57:25

But that's different different.

1:57:26

Yeah, White Lotus feels like being at a luxury resort and just eavesdropping on everyone and their lives are full. But you're doing great. than eaves dropping.

1:57:35

I know you're sitting there the whole time going, "God, I'm so lucky. My life is exactly here.

1:57:38

I'm eating the same food, but look at these freaks."

1:57:40

Yeah, look at these freaks. That's great. Yeah.

1:57:43

Anything else you're you're tracking or watching these days?

1:57:45

Have you seen the studio? I did. Yeah. Okay.

1:57:49

I don't I don't Do you think it rung true?

1:57:50

Because for me as an outsider, it felt like it was this great introduction.

1:57:54

It felt honestly like the world of Silicon Valley and venture capital with with like episode two, he he he is giving notes that he shouldn't. Yeah.

1:58:03

And then episode three is he has to give a note but can't bring himself to.

1:58:07

And and it showed that you know it's not just a there's not just a blanket rule.

1:58:11

Studio exec never gives notes.

1:58:11

No, sometimes they do have to.

1:58:13

And that that kind of uh back and forth was really I mean I think it has to be true because they're all Seth's experiences. He's regurgitated. Yeah, of course.

1:58:20

And I have a friends who have, you know, pitched me like I don't do I don't have that sort of relationship with studios. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:58:26

So, but a lot of my director friends who've pitched and pitched and they and they laugh.

1:58:29

They know they're like, "Oh my god, that's that guy. That's her.

1:58:31

That's it's based on real people. I think it's hilarious.

1:58:36

Um I don't know if other people get it.

1:58:39

I don't know because it feels very fily.

1:58:41

I mean sometimes he's doing Woody All and that cracks me up.

1:58:42

Like the one episode four I felt like Mad Had Murder Mystery, you know, he's I get what he's doing.

1:58:48

He's just trying to be fun, which is cool. Yeah.

1:58:50

Uh what's like the most expensive item you've ever had to procure during a production build?

1:58:56

Has has there ever been any moment where it's been like this is really high stakes. We got to get that shot. The jet for top gun. The jet for top gun.

1:59:04

It took me a lot of time. How did that work? You built it, right? Yeah.

1:59:07

And everyone kept saying no.

1:59:09

No, it's going to But you build it out of now you get why the F-35 is a trillion dollar, you know?

1:59:15

It was only it I think it was about 3 million allow to build, but it's only it's not it obviously doesn't fly, but to build a prop that's a lot of money for a prop. Yeah.

1:59:22

Does it go on some sort of like robotic arm or But we also built it to be real real at um China Lake and Tom see I wanted Tom be able to touch it, see it, interact with it. He gets in it.

1:59:32

We tow it out all the way till it takes off is all real. Wow.

1:59:37

And I'm like I'm just a believer everything should be real.

1:59:38

And you know I there's some feedback was like but we can do we can he's just going to change it and post later.

1:59:43

I'm like we're not going to change it. We love it. If we make it that's it. That's it.

1:59:47

And it's you have to find certain directors that can commit to that too.

1:59:52

A lot of directors want to change.

1:59:53

So producers are like, "We're not going to pay for this.

1:59:56

He's going to change it anyways."

1:59:57

We didn't change anything.

1:59:57

And there's a unique dynamic with Tom Cruz specifically. Correct.

2:00:00

Because he I I've heard like he even has his own insurance so he can do stunts.

2:00:04

But can you unpack like what's with him?

2:00:05

So when we did the cockpit like we built you basically, you know, when you did stuff like that, especially with Tom or you have to build plywood versions.

2:00:12

So we built it to make sure because Tom's an amazing pilot.

2:00:14

So, we built it in this wooden cockpit and with the wooden windows and a template and he's like, "It's not comfortable, guys.

2:00:22

We got to make it comfortable."

2:00:23

Like, "Yeah, we know it's a plywoods, but he's really he's he's really adamant.

2:00:26

He's going to be in there a lot.

2:00:27

It's got to be really comfortable."

2:00:29

And Ron, who was the aircraft designer I was working with, he's done about five movies with Tom. He got he got it all.

2:00:34

But Tom is very specific where he likes buttons.

2:00:36

Like, he moves things to where they want that where he is.

2:00:38

If he was a pilot, that's where he is a pilot. Oh, no.

2:00:42

I want I would put it there.

2:00:42

no. I want I would put it there. So it so it's all so when he's in that mode he's perfect because it's so custom to him and it and the inside cockpit we we did it with skunk works we had a whole deal with skunk works really I was out there Joe and I were there all the time we co-designed the cockpit with them

2:00:58

there are components there's buttons in there that are two $3 million that are from prototypes that only 10 people know what they are and and and they're nods to those people they're not they're not for us they're but they would bring them into us in these little boxes and we'd put them in and Yeah, you know, and it's just that part's amazing. It's such a

2:01:14

It's such a little touch, but you know, it just goes a little bit further.

2:01:17

And it's like that finishing that last 1%.

2:01:19

It takes 90% of the time.

2:01:22

Well, and for me, it's it's, you know, in severance, a lot of the actors say it to me.

2:01:25

It's like they look around the room like, there's so much we won't see.

2:01:28

And I'm like, but you're seeing it. Yeah. And they're using it.

2:01:32

And it's it's not just for the audience to see it all.

2:01:34

They feel if they walk into this bonker set and it's all feels real and there's things to do, they just get lost like you naturally would. Yeah.

2:01:42

So it's just the way you have to design.

2:01:44

A lot of people say we won't see that.

2:01:46

It's like I don't even know what that I just don't ignore it. Creating a world.

2:01:51

And as hard as a lot of designers, they will cut it out.

2:01:53

They'll be like, oh yeah, they won't see it.

2:01:54

It's like you don't know that.

2:01:56

And every director like Katherine Bigalow, everything's a 360.

2:02:00

You don't give her a half set. Yeah.

2:02:01

It's like because if she if you do, she will shoot that other half and it'll be in the movie.

2:02:06

Like you have to do the whole thing. Yeah.

2:02:08

But you just have to be She wants to be immersed.

2:02:10

Our job is to create a world that actors feel real in. Totally.

2:02:14

And then when you watch it, you believe it. Yeah.

2:02:16

Should there be an Academy Award for production design? There is. There is. Yeah.

2:02:20

But does it It doesn't happen during the main event. It does. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

2:02:25

My friend Patrice won for Dune last year.

2:02:27

I don't know who won this. Okay. I can't remember. Yeah. It's a big award.

2:02:30

I thought there was There's one category that I I I have to imagine you're going to be this will be an Emmy for severance. Yeah. There you go.

2:02:37

Um, I hate to cut this interview short. This is really fun. Super enjoyable.

2:02:41

I'll happily do it again with you guys. Yeah, this be great. You'll be in my home.

2:02:47

I'll try my best to put down the busy guys.

2:02:48

You can drive it on drive it onto the set. Do a burnout on the set. Don't go west side. It's too damp. No. No.

2:02:54

We're We're going to Hollywood. Nice.

2:02:57

We're bringing it toollywood. Come to Hollywood. Yeah. All right.

2:02:58

Bring media back to Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, thanks so much. Cheers. Great hanging. It was great. I got to watch Playtime. Um, 1967 comedy drama. Never seen it. Bye guys. Later. Hi. Um, yeah.

2:03:08

What a delightful conversation.

2:03:12

Not someone that we normally have on the stream, but we need to do more Hollywood.

2:03:15

We should do a whole Hollywood day. Welcome. Hey. Hi. How you doing? Welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Great to be here.

2:03:21

Really, really chill day, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. Super relaxing.

2:03:23

Just plenty of time to just come hang out on a podcast here.

2:03:27

And let's adjust that microphone so it's it's towards your face.

2:03:32

You can just adjust the mic. I think we'll be there. We go. That's good.

2:03:36

Um, would you mind introducing yourself for the stream?

2:03:38

Tell us who you are, what you do. Sure. Hi, I'm Na Hurajian.

2:03:43

I'm the chief communications officer at Figma, which basically means I'm lucky to work with this amazing design community on events and how we engage them all around the world, including config.

2:03:55

How are how have the comms been different this year than in years past?

2:03:58

Um, you know, I think that the launches really set the tone for how we bring the community together at Config every year.

2:04:07

And, you know, we were just so excited about the launch slate this year.

2:04:11

Four new products taking us from four to eight. Yep.

2:04:14

We had uh we had Andrew Reed on from Oh, good.

2:04:19

good. from Sequoa earlier and he said that a few years ago they were giving Dylan a standing ovation for the team for a font picker and to see this year it's make site you know buzz oh my god I remember in 2020 two was a dark mode was like similar

2:04:41

like oh my god everyone's so excited but now it's like and it's just been really amazing to see the response so far already and we're excited to see them the community play with the product, get feedback, and keep iterating. Do you

2:04:51

Do you think about uh who you're communicating with as specific customer avatars or cohorts, or is it all just kind of one big happy Figma family?

2:04:59

Uh, and yeah, if you put on the headphones, you'll just be able to hear yourself a little bit better, better, a little more authentic podcast mode.

2:05:06

podcast mode. Um but yeah uh in terms of in terms of the types of uh communities that are here obviously there's uh there's consumers who might use Figma just to design you know a wedding invitation or birthday card and then

2:05:18

there's all the way up to an enterprise that has you know probably hundreds of seats if not more um who uh do you think about communicating to different groups in different ways or is it kind of just a big celebration of the broader Figma community? Yeah, I mean Figma can be

2:05:30

Yeah, I mean Figma can be really good for figuring out your wedding seating.

2:05:33

So, I don't want to discount that use case, but um in general, we're really serving people who are making software. Yeah.

2:05:39

So, going from idea to product uh and all the tools that they need to be able to do that and you know, obviously the product design community is a huge part of that.

2:05:50

But over the past several years, the way people are building has changed. Yeah.

2:05:54

The entire process has become more blended, interdicciplinary.

2:05:56

Today you heard from an engineer, a product manager, designers, and they're all just working together um to build to go from idea to product and AI is changing that.

2:06:06

And so we really think of serving that entire development. Oh, it's crazy.

2:06:08

The entire org chart can now make things.

2:06:13

It's totally, you know, which is insane.

2:06:15

Like the idea that that someone at in legal could create a marketing asset or or you know, some type of material for hire, you know, it's pretty unheard of. Yeah.

2:06:26

even even just like a oneoff internal tool. Yeah. To be built.

2:06:28

Can you talk about uh kind of the pressure, you know, around Figma?

2:06:33

A lot of companies say they have a community, but they really just have, you know, an audience or a customer base.

2:06:40

But, you know, something that feels very obvious here and even online is that Fig Figma's community is a real community, right?

2:06:49

you have people coming in from Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, like all all descending here and and you don't get that without, you know, people um and these aren't, you know, some people are coming on behalf of a company, other people are like a oneperson studio that's just like I'm spending my own money to get here because I need to be there.

2:07:08

Can you talk about how how you've approached, you know, comm specifically at Figma, knowing that when you send an email, people are going to open it and they're going to care a lot about what they're hearing.

2:07:21

And I just feel like that's very different than even some big important companies where they're just sort of this monolithic organization and, you know, people are going to buy their stuff, you know, whether regardless of how they feel about, you know, the company. Totally.

2:07:34

Well, you know, a lot of that goes back to the very earliest days.

2:07:38

And you know, I think because Figma was in the browser and suddenly made design collaborative, it completely changed how designers worked completely like radical change in their day-to-day.

2:07:50

And so that we we always try to bring it back to the product solution that we're offering, but um you know, we think of config as being an event for the community by the community.

2:08:04

always has been that way since the first one back in 2020 right before the pandemic that predates my time at Figma.

2:08:09

Um but the talks are by the members of our community, the um like activations um even some of the other events that are being sponsored and put on by people who are just here gathering.

2:08:22

And so for us, the way we think about it is just to maintain authentic relationships with people.

2:08:26

We ask for a lot of feedback, sure, on the event, but also on product.

2:08:30

And so we're just trying to have a really open and engaged dialogue with folks.

2:08:35

Um, you know, we're happy that they tell us when they like things.

2:08:39

We're also glad when they tell us what they don't like.

2:08:41

Last year we had a lot of overcrowding at Config.

2:08:45

On the one hand, that was like, you know, an interesting problem to have to like more of a Coachella.

2:08:51

Yeah, it was it was not easy for folks to get in and around.

2:08:57

And so we heard that and I think it feels like much more roomy and spacious this year.

2:09:00

spacious this year. And so just trying to make the experience always feel as authentic and connected as the keynote was still standing room only I noticed but you know it's we maxed out the number of chairs we could put in there I

2:09:10

think of course can you talk about the trade-offs between um batching these four product releases into one big event versus splitting it up you could imagine like quarterly releases there's obviously trade-offs there uh in the age

2:09:22

of the internet there's a lot of demand on companies to just hey as soon as it's done give it to me I want it now even if it's rough around the edges let's iterate we get that at the same time uh you're becoming more of like the Apple like annual release and there's

2:09:36

something beneficial from a commas perspective about concentrating all the energy and attention to really break through with one big day of the year because you can't really dominate the internet every day even if you're the best in the business. Um but yeah, how

2:09:46

Um but yeah, how how do you think about it?

2:09:48

Was it ever a trade-off or do you just love the annual release cycle?

2:09:52

Honestly, we really look at the road map and let the road map kind of dictate what will end up at config and what ends up outside of config.

2:10:00

We're not necessarily on a big annual release a year.

2:10:02

Obviously, config is a catalyst for a bunch of stuff.

2:10:05

Um, we've never launched four products in one launch ever.

2:10:10

Um, and yeah, and going from four to eight.

2:10:13

So, for us, it's not set.

2:10:16

We really we believe in the philosophy that you just said of like get product into users hands fast, even if it's not, you know, like even if it's early. Yeah.

2:10:25

and learn and keep iterating faster from there because you know our philosophy is that design is always and product development are always iterative always living and so you're constantly going to be tuning it and the faster you can get it to users the better.

2:10:37

Dylan always tells the story of the early days of Figma where, you know, they didn't ship for Yeah. a few years.

2:10:44

He talks about that as being something he would do differently if he could go back again.

2:10:48

And it's advice founders. Yeah.

2:10:50

It's we were talking about this with with Andrew, too.

2:10:52

It's just so much part of the lore of, you know, just basically, you know, building in in relative obscurity and then just coming out and and uh and how most I do think that that's that that made sense in the context of building novel functionality in the browser and the super complex product.

2:11:12

But, um, now that there's a platform taking that kind of iterative approach, yeah, you know, makes a lot of sense.

2:11:18

Yeah, you learn faster the more people get their hands on it.

2:11:21

Uh, can you walk me through some of the other like comm's best practices from amplifying an event like this?

2:11:25

Like obviously we're here having fun kind of in the new media streaming very different world but I imagine that there's like a series of press releases that go out and how how do you work on getting coverage across like what is the what is the market map of like getting attention at level?

2:11:41

Well, um, because this is an event for and by our community, a lot of what we do is really about that direct and owned communication and the owned channels across social especially.

2:11:53

And then of course like the other events that are, you know, the constellation around config.

2:11:59

Like we had a day zero block party outside on Howard Street yesterday called Config Commons. That was so much fun.

2:12:06

Like great music, great vibes. People really warmed up.

2:12:08

Um, but I'm sure people joined not knowing what it was tried to join, not knowing what it was for, just being like, "Look, totally that looks like a fun party." Exactly.

2:12:18

But, you know, one of the things that we um like to do is just have fun with how our brand shows up. Yes.

2:12:24

Figma is a B2B SAS company, but we have a consumer patina to our brand and we get to lean into that, which is so much fun um and unique, I think, within enterprise software.

2:12:37

And so, you know, we changed our social handles to be called Config Crave, which I don't know if you all follow Pop Crave on Twitter, but you know, the Demois, the Pop Craves, and all these stand accounts that sort of get to feature celebrities for us.

2:12:49

Even this morning, there was a bunch of really funny posts.

2:12:54

I saw that celebrities here are our our community, right?

2:12:59

So, we wanted to feature them and we just are always looking for ways to do that authentically and have a little fun.

2:13:04

You saw the I think we talked about the uh auto Yeah. Yeah. Big pal CGI video. Yeah.

2:13:10

There's this like Godzilla auto. It's amazing.

2:13:13

We like to have fun and bring that vibe while also like sharing clear factual information. What's launching?

2:13:19

When can you get your hands on it?

2:13:21

So, it's really a balance um to do it all. It's the hardest thing.

2:13:26

Clarity while trying to get Max attention. Makes sense. Yeah.

2:13:29

I mean, this is your first config.

2:13:30

Tell me what you all think. No, it's insane.

2:13:32

It feels like a It feels like being at Coachella. It really does.

2:13:36

It feels like being at a music festival.

2:13:37

So, um, it's so fun to have you here.

2:13:40

And And it's And it's so great that the diversity of different types of creatives that we've had on the show just today is so fascinating.

2:13:47

The last one was was like production sort of stuff. Isn't he awesome? Yeah, it's great. He's so fun.

2:13:53

He's going to do a great talk later today.

2:13:55

Yeah, I'm very excited for that.

2:13:57

Um, we didn't even get to like how does he use Figma at all or what his but he's just speaking about design broadly.

2:14:03

Yeah, we just think, you know, someone in our community Yeah. tweeted at us.

2:14:07

You know who I want to hear from Fig, the production designer from Severance.

2:14:11

And we were like, we've got you.

2:14:13

No, but but you can just tell like the dedication to the craft process that everybody even if you have nothing to do with production set design.

2:14:22

It's like I want to apply a lot from our conversation not just to our set but how we do the show, right?

2:14:29

And a lot of it just resonated.

2:14:31

Um personally I'm just excited to go make my first Figma site.

2:14:36

So what are you going to make? I don't know.

2:14:38

Oh, I I want like I have so many different I have so many different ideas at both at TBPN of just like what it enables just that like speed of iteration.

2:14:47

iteration. I think the the most frustrating thing for me was always hitting a wall on on no code like low code software like web development tools where I don't have an engineering background and it would just be so frustrating to like make something in

2:15:05

Figma and then get to the point where I'm like okay now I have to wait yeah I've got to find like the right developer and they're like okay I can get to it in like a week and then you're like can you do it two days and then it's like you really want it like that day. There's so many

2:15:19

There's so many of the these ideas that are effectively like memes like they're oneoff web pages that don't do not merit any sort of real budget or weeks of engineering time like we wanted to do venture capital radio VC radio and so when you go to a specific VC firm's web page it plays a song that identifies with that fund and so that's really you go to Andrea Horowits American Dynamism is going to play like Freeird or something. Yeah.

2:15:44

Yeah, but there's this idea of it's like that that's not something that you would want to actually spend some developers time on, but you like ephemeral apps, websites, this idea of apps as meme as like memes, right, of like the internet used to be like this back when it was just an HTML page.

2:16:02

You would just kind of hack something together and then stumble upon would drive some traffic and then we kind of went into the social era and everything has to be either an image, text or video.

2:16:10

But, you know, my hope is that something will break through and people will be able to build more interactive stuff.

2:16:17

Yeah, we talked about this.

2:16:19

I want to enable, you know, we have a bunch of brand assets at TBPN and people will remix them and use them in different ways.

2:16:25

And sometimes I look at an image, I'm like, "Oh, this is like hilarious."

2:16:28

I, you know, I want to reshare it, but like the logo right maybe figuring out a way to make Buzz.

2:16:35

I was going to say Buzz for that, too.

2:16:38

And then see what people make for you. Yeah, that would be fun. Meme meme.

2:16:42

You guys ones got to be getting me'd all the time. Rise of the meme. Love it.

2:16:45

How are you feeling for you guys are headed to uh London. London. We are.

2:16:49

Last year right after Config SF, we took Config to Singapore. Okay. This year it's London. We're excited.

2:16:58

Um we have Is it a lot of the same like set effectively or is it a separate set out there?

2:17:04

We are bringing the inflatables. Yeah. Okay. Those are easy to Yeah.

2:17:07

pack up, collapse, pack and ship.

2:17:09

The synth, the synth can't come.

2:17:12

It's too expensive to ship, unfortunately.

2:17:14

But, um, it's a, you know, in general in another like raw space where we can bring our own scenic and make it feel like Figma.

2:17:21

Um, it's a smaller venue.

2:17:25

It's about, you know, for a couple thousand people.

2:17:29

Like a full-time job now for Figma.

2:17:31

Like, does the planning for 2026 start next week?

2:17:34

Basically, it already has. It already has. Wow. It already has.

2:17:36

We have to walk and chew gum.

2:17:38

Our configs are measured in centuries. Um, but it's fun.

2:17:43

You know, I think there are great moments in companies lives that like rally everybody together and they differ for every company and for us this is one of them on an annual basis.

2:17:54

Everyone on the product team, on the sales team, on the marketing team and we have a lot of fun with it.

2:18:00

And for, you know, it's just really important for us to show up and be present with our users and our community.

2:18:08

Um, and make sure that they know how much we appreciate their feedback and how much we're working to ship for them. Totally. Yeah.

2:18:13

Uh, we need your help at some point finding apparently Dylan was in a Windows XP commercial when he was a kid.

2:18:21

Oh, do you have Do you have that?

2:18:25

I think I Well, there's that.

2:18:25

Yeah, there's Dylan on the Today Show after he became a teal fellow with his mom. No way. Another good one. We got to get these.

2:18:35

The third best is in the early days of Figma when it was really small.

2:18:39

They were trying to recruit this intern to come work at Figma.

2:18:41

She was really into K-pop.

2:18:43

So Dylan and the early team filmed a K-pop music video for her.

2:18:50

That's like really hardcore recruiting for an intern.

2:18:52

It must not have been very good.

2:18:54

She declined the internship.

2:18:56

But those are some good videos from the early days I can share with you.

2:18:57

She will, I'm sure, always regret that decision. We wish her well. We wish her well.

2:19:03

But that came that video was so good.

2:19:05

We showed it at our 10 year.

2:19:08

That's like the equivalent for like an intern like when the like the NBA general commissioner or like team team coach goes to like the parents and sits them down and says like, "Hey, we want them to join the join the team."

2:19:18

Or something or like college recruiting. Even more than that. Yeah. Even more brutal.

2:19:22

Uh yeah, Dylan did a lot of child acting.

2:19:24

There's so there's so much good lore around that.

2:19:26

Like Eric Gyman has that video of him speaking fluent Chinese on some game show.

2:19:30

I don't know if you've seen this.

2:19:32

Oh, it's a fantastic at ramp. Is he a fluent speaker? Yeah. Yeah.

2:19:36

So, so he's he was over in China for I don't know a semester, maybe a couple years or something.

2:19:41

Went on a game show is telling all these jokes and like getting a aorious applause from everyone. It's remarkable.

2:19:47

And then of course Scott Woo at co Cognition has that video of him doing like the most complex math imaginable as like a child in his head. His head.

2:19:55

What are What about the What do you all have in your Yeah, I don't know. We those up. That's tough.

2:19:59

That's something meme those totally for 2025. Yes.

2:20:06

I'm trying to think if I when when was my There's probably a video interview from like my first company years ago, but I don't think it was too embarrassing. Okay.

2:20:12

I don't have anything embarrassing.

2:20:14

the um one I my mom was a was a graphic designer and uh Oh, cool.

2:20:21

So, my earliest memories doing design in a business context were working with her.

2:20:26

These were like the the Photoshop years and I have like pictures.

2:20:30

So, I had a skateboard company when I was 12 and I have pictures of me like holding up, you know, the finished product.

2:20:36

But the like I I it was so funny because at the time I I actually really remember how like single player the product was.

2:20:44

It was like, you know, files and like versions and whatever.

2:20:49

So anyways, I I I remember some of my friends in high school made like a student film and I was tall.

2:20:56

I'm still tall, but they made me play the dad, which is hilarious.

2:20:59

And I was a terrible actor.

2:21:01

Oh, you had to wear a suit. Yeah.

2:21:03

Yeah, I did actually wear a suit.

2:21:05

It was very, very embarrassing.

2:21:06

Anyway, I do feel a little underdressed compared to you, too.

2:21:08

Well, I mean, we're overdressed. Look at the community.

2:21:12

This is not This is not exactly the Goldman Sachs uh technology meeting.

2:21:16

We were we were we were in LA.

2:21:18

We had a meeting Monday and we we showed up to Milin, not for the event, but meeting somebody there and we didn't have our suits on. I had a suit on.

2:21:25

Oh, you had I didn't have a jacket but Well, jacket doesn't count.

2:21:29

And then we were at Hill Valley and we felt right at home. Right at home.

2:21:33

Everyone that was all of us Silicon Valley people putting on suits for the first time in years. Yeah.

2:21:38

And all the DC we fit right in.

2:21:40

But here here we kind of stick out.

2:21:40

But uh hope fortunately everyone's been very nice and I think they're they're having fun.

2:21:45

I don't miss the bad suits from Washington.

2:21:46

That's not my know the joke is that you know you're at Hill Valley when everyone has their business cards in their suits from the last time they were there because they only go to DC once a year for Valley.

2:21:55

Uh anyway, we're we're getting a hard stop.

2:21:58

So we're we're going to stop in four minutes. Yeah.

2:22:01

But thank you so much for hopping on guys. Thanks for to be clear.

2:22:03

I think we're getting booted from like for some reason otherwise we would keep podcast. Yeah.

2:22:10

I mean, we we got another four hours in now.

2:22:12

At least another four hours.

2:22:14

Honestly, we're not used to being on couches and it's like is a little bit different. Comfy comfy.

2:22:17

We could I think we can I think I think we could easily put up another 12 hours easily. Easily.

2:22:24

But anyway, well, thank you for having us.

2:22:26

Why don't you meet us in London next week? We could. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

2:22:29

The international travel.

2:22:29

We have yet to take the show on the road internationally. We've done Miami. We've done DC. San Francisco now. Okay. So, check in the boxes. We'll get We'll get out. We'll get out there. Amazing.

2:22:38

Well, thank you so much for having us.

2:22:39

Do you know where the next next config is or is that not really? Okay, let us know.

2:22:44

Come back with breaking news on the show.

2:22:48

Love to maybe uh I don't know where where Sanrope or Sure.

2:22:51

Uh John just wants to wants it to align with 2026 summer plans. Exactly. Sorry, John. Lake on Giri.

2:23:01

I'm on Giri, you know, for more intimate settings.

2:23:03

I think we may not be the right, you know, company conference for those locations, but um I mean Singapore is very nice. London is fantastic.

2:23:12

Um, you know, you should maybe Cam Lion needs to have TVPN. That's what you need. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cam Lion would be great. That'd be fantastic. I feel that for you.

2:23:19

Anyway, thank you so much for tuning in. We will talk soon.

2:23:23

We'll see you after the after the show. Thank you so much.

2:23:25

Uh anyway, this has been a fantastic stream. Thank you for watching.

2:23:29

We really had a lot of fun being here at Figma Config 2025.

2:23:31

Had a lot of interesting conversations.

2:23:34

Uh really took us on a world tour having a having a Sequoia partner and the designer of uh of the of Severance.

2:23:41

Um not every day that you see a technology and business show do both.

2:23:46

But we are men of many talent.

2:23:50

So how many guests do we have tomorrow by the way?

2:23:51

Uh I think we have like six.

2:23:53

We can give everyone kind of a run through.

2:23:54

I think it's going to be closer to seven. Seven.

2:23:57

Do we want to Do we want to leak it?

2:23:57

I think it might I don't I don't want to go.

2:24:01

But but we but we are we are hoping to get some great people from the government as well as uh our first our first post game of a major public company earnings call post earnings which we're very excited about.

2:24:16

And so we're going to be digging into that kind of uh cutting our teeth in the post earnings game which we want to get more into. And so stick with us. It's absolutely stacked. It's stacked.

2:24:24

We we have to get back to LA actually right now because uh we have to prep because we're we're going wallto-wall tomorrow.

2:24:33

It's by far the most stacked show we I'm excited.

2:24:36

It's going to be a big growth moment for the show together.

2:24:37

So anyway, thank you so much for watching. We will talk to you.