Quick Thoughts on Figma’s IPO
From startup to IPO to startup
Figma’s IPO last week lit up tech Twitter (now X), and for good reason. While I never worked at Figma, I’ve been through an IPO as a Lyft employee and know how special that moment is for the team and, especially, for the founders. I’m also enough of a tech nerd that I still have Figma’s S-1 open in a tab next to this draft, queued up for a coffee-fueled reread.
This morning, I was surprised and delighted to see CodeYam mentioned in CNBC’s coverage of the IPO, in a piece by Jordan Novet on “Figma CEO’s path from college dropout and Thiel fellow to tech billionaire.” I had written about trying Figma Make, their AI tool for going from prompt to prototype, back when it was still in beta. I compared it to other vibe coding and prototyping tools like Vercel’s v0, Lovable, Firebase Studio, and Bolt.new. Here’s the quote:
“Nadia Eldeib, a former Lyft product manager and CEO of startup CodeYam, tried Figma Make before the broad launch and put it up against Lovable and v0. Writing on Substack, she said it appeared to be at an earlier stage.
It’s the sort of feedback that Field will read and send to his employees, known as Figmates. He reads support tickets and mentions of Figma’s name on X, formerly Twitter. He took no time off to address such matters on the very day that his company was conducting its IPO, ultimately pricing shares $1 above the expected range.”
At first, I just shared the article with a few folks (hello, family group chat), but the moment felt worth reflecting on more deeply.
When I left Lyft in 2021 to join South Park Commons as part of their first Founder Fellowship, one of the earliest questions I had to answer was what kind of founder I wanted to be, and what kind of company I hoped to build.
At Lyft, I had worked closely with teams led by former startup founders and joined through the acquisition of Kamcord. Those experiences shaped how I thought about leadership and what it means to build something meaningful.
As part of the SPC fellowship, there was a curated reading list that I believe was assembled by Avichal Garg, Finn Meeks, and Aditya Agarwal. Their recommendations still stick with me. While the full curriculum is SPC-confidential, I noticed today that one piece in particular stood out in my notes: “Why Figma Wins” by
.It described a product built on real technical innovation, grounded in product-led growth, and focused on delivering deep value to both individuals and teams. That combination stuck with me.
At SPC, I got a much closer look at different founders who I’d previously followed from afar. The four who inspired me the most personally were:
Dylan Field of Figma
Blake Scholl of Boom Supersonic (formerly Kima, acq. Groupon)
Dustin Moskovitz of Asana (formerly Facebook)
Mike Krieger of Instagram (now at Anthropic)
Each seemed to have reached a clear view of the problem they were solving and how technology could unlock a better path forward. They built tools that helped people work better, create more easily, or do things that hadn’t been possible before.
That mindset shaped how I approached the early stages of starting
. It still shapes how we build. We’re working on a new kind of tool for developers, vibe coders, and eventually anyone building software. Our goal is to help people better understand and interact with what they’re creating, even when much of the code is being written by AI agents.We’ve spent over 18 months in R&D, developing a focused vision of the problem, the product, and the underlying technology. Four years in, it still feels early. And I wouldn’t trade this journey for anything.
So today feels like the right time to say congratulations to Dylan and the Figma team. Your work has had a real impact on me. We’ve used Figma and FigJam since the very beginning of CodeYam (and even earlier, during my pre-idea phase at SPC), and I’m excited to try Figma Make again now that it’s generally available.
Congrats Figma and Dylan, and thank you.