Well, we have so much more to come tonight. It’s hard to believe. But we are so excited for our next guest. Our next guest is the CEO of Figma, an AI and web-based design application founded in 2012. It’s Dylan Field. Dylan, welcome.
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks, guys. Good to see you.
Hey, Dylan.
Hey.
So, Dylan, I want to start by reading you a Facebook message I got —
[LAUGHS]
— on August 5, 2009.
Ths was when we were all messaging each other.
“Hey, Kevin. I recently picked up your book at the library. Just wanted to let you how much I enjoyed it. Anyway, best of luck with your future endeavors. I’m going to Brown this fall. Who knows? Maybe I’ll meet you in Providence someday.” That message was sent by a teenage boy named Dylan Field. And I want to just first of all, apologize. I never responded to that.
You can fix this.
Can you imagine? You write a book and a college student emails you out of the blue, and you’re like, yeah, whatever.
It was, you know —
You had a lot going on.
— a lot going on in 2009. Anyway, I’m sorry for ghosting you. And second of all —
It was a good book. You should all read it.
— how did your freshman year of college go?
It was awesome. Yeah, and I got to meet you.
Yeah.
Because I don’t know if you remember, but for the acapella group that you were in, you came back as a Super Senior to hang out with everyone, I guess —
Yeah.
— including the new freshmen.
Yeah. Well, it went so well that you dropped out and moved to Silicon Valley to seek your fortune here. And it’s been quite a run for you. Figma went public last year, has had a wild ride. And I want to talk to you first about AI. Because I have heard that you are quite AI-pilled, and I have seen on your social media accounts that you are constantly experimenting with AI, doing all these AI side projects. What are you doing, and do you have AI psychosis?
I think it’s best to front run the psychosis rather than have it sneak up on you. You just got to dive right in and you get it over with. But, yeah, I asked myself sometimes, and I don’t think so right now. I think I’ve got a pretty reasonable take on what the models are good at, where they’re not so great. But it’s really interesting to see the new capabilities. Right now, I’m vibe mathing.
What’s vibe mathing?
Well, it’s basically where you do math, but with AI.
Are you proving Fermat’s Last Theorum? What are you doing?
No, I’m not. But basically, I think it’s just interesting to see how AI attacks these problems. It’s the opposite of Figma. In Figma, we’re a design platform. We often are evaluating the models, trying to see how good they are at design, what we should use, what we should put in our product, expose to users. And it’s the opposite of Verifiable.
You and I could look at something and disagree or agree on the merits of it and the design merits of it. But there are some domains like math, some aspects of computer science, where things are correct or they’re not. And so I think it’s really cool to see that range. And the Verifiable domain’s models are very good at it now.
Casey vibe mathed his way through high school. They flunked him, but I’m glad it’s going better for you.
I don’t have any results, so just be very clear.
I want to hear a little bit more about what direction you are taking all of your AI use in as you pursue these projects. This sounds a lot of personal stuff that you’re doing for fun. Is that just the curiosity of a lifelong learner or is there something specific that you’re trying to find?
I find that just, in general, the more that you explore new technology you don’t how it’s going to pay off what benefit will have. But it ends up having some benefit in weird ways you can’t expect. I was very excited about NFTs early on, and then they became what they are now. They weren’t called NFTs then. They were called crypto collectibles because that was a cool phrase. Whether it’s that or WebGL, which led to Figma, I just always try to explore stuff and go deep on it, figure out the new capabilities. Because you can find ways to use them.
I have a theory that I want to run past you, which is that — every startup founder or CEO in Silicon Valley is obsessed with vibe coding. They’re all doing it on the weekends. They come in on Mondays and they say, why aren’t we building this thing? 50 people used to build this thing. I just built it in a weekend. It’s driving their employees crazy. But my theory about this is that this is reminding CEOs of what it was like when their jobs were fun. Do you agree with that statement?
You said you’re fearful of that?
No, that’s my theory.
Oh, theory. OK, sorry, I misheard you. I think that people like to make things, and they like to design stuff, and they like to actually put their ideas out in the world in a more tangible way. And I think we’re just going to see more of it from everyone, not just CEOs trying to have fun on the weekend.
Speaking of making stuff, Figma recently launched an ad campaign organized around the idea or sort of making fun of the idea that design is dead. It’s a more common sentiment, maybe in the era of AI. Make that case for us, that design is not dead in a world where I can just type what kind of app I want into a box.
This is a real roller coaster, from my 2009 Facebook message and now to design.
We’re covering it all.
It’s taken a turn. No, I mean, look, I think that there’s so many hot takes online. I’m sure you get a few of them an hour.
Sure.
And I think when new models drop, everyone’s looking for something that they can say is dead. Because on social media now, it’s like either you’re so back or it’s so over, and I prefer to be back. But no, I mean, in terms of the case — I mean, look. It’s interesting to see folks catch up to the capabilities and it’s like, yeah, you can do a lot.
But the average sort of response from AI, whether it’s a domain like writing — my hot take right now would be I actually think that people that how to write and actually engage in thinking, critical thinking around writing, and it’s like it’s a good time for them.
It’s a good time for them?
Yeah. Well, you tell me, but I think so.
[SPARSE APPLAUSE]
Yeah.
It’s like, half the audience is applauding and they’re like, I don’t know. Should we not? Is it too like — are we sucking up?
I mean, I think to the extent that writing is a showcase for your critical thinking abilities, yes, having great critical thinking skills are always a boon.
It’s a style.
What’s that?
It’s a style of writing.
Sure.
Like, if you’re funny, if you’ve got an actual way you phrase things, if you have voice — and I think it’s especially true right now in a way that wasn’t a few years ago. Three, five years ago, I would have said, oh, man. There’s a lot of people on social media that are writing really interesting things, and we’re in this world where there’s Substack and people are putting content there and it’s really good.
And now I look at that and I’m like, man, it’s a lot of clod. Maybe I’m overrotated even on identifying people that are basically using AI to write. Same thing is true for design. Folks are basically looking at these websites or applications and seeing the average. Maybe they’re even overidentifying it. But I think if you have a creative voice, writing or design, you put yourself out there and you take a risk, this is a good time to do that. It’s something that’s going to be rewarded.
Yeah. And I can imagine maybe in your view, there’s a world aware of the fact that I can use an AI tool to quickly whip up a design might make me more interested in actually getting good and not settling for the first generation.
Yeah, exactly. It’s like, how do you not settle for the first draft, the first thing out there, the first output, and actually mold it and craft it and push it further? And I think that the more you can do that, the more you’ll send out, and also the more you’ll be differentiated. And I think that there’s — I mean, we saw the data recently on the number of apps in the App Store. It went up a ton. But the number of apps actually being used and getting frequent traffic is still the same.
And so you’re basically in this competitive environment now where you have to differentiate. You really have to lean in and figure out how to have a unique voice and a unique take and a unique point of view, just like writing.
The big buzzword in San Francisco right now is taste. Everyone’s talking about taste as the bulwark against being replaced by AI. If you have taste, you’ll be fine.
It’s the first time taste has ever been a big subject in San Francisco, I think.
Yes, this is a city that made Allbirds a thing.
Proudly tasteless since 1821.
[LAUGHS]
And then I’ve heard some people argue that, actually, taste is just the word we give to the stuff that the models aren’t very good at yet. Researchers in AI used to say, ah, but they don’t have taste. And then the models got better and it was like, oh, wait a minute. Maybe they can do all of the taste parts of the job too. So defend the concept of taste as being either important or cope from people who just haven’t used the good models yet.
I mean, the cycle seems to be the model comes out, you think it can do everything, you discover the limits, and then you realize that life goes on.
Will at some point that be different and affect the world in a different way? Perhaps. We’ll see. But so far, it seems like everyone’s adapting, and part of that adaptation is realizing the new average that’s being put out by the models.
You don’t even have to defend taste and people having taste, because then we can argue about, do they, to just recognize people can detect the average. They can detect that output and they can dare to do more. But I also do believe that this is a great time to be creative. And I think that the more the models put out that’s in distribution, because that’s how the models are trained. They’re trained on distribution of data.
And if you’re in distribution and you’re not actually pushing the bounds, I think that you’re in a worse shape than if you’re actually going and exploring the frontier of human knowledge, creativity, and what you can put out in the world and making something that’s new as an expression of yourself. So I get excited about that. I’m excited about our opportunity to be the place where people can really unlock their creativity at Figma — or one of the places, there will be many — and just like creating tools that can empower people.
I’m curious if you’re seeing a reaction in the world of art and design to AI and what that looks like. You think back and the invention of the camera gets us impressionism. Do we have an analog for that yet in the design world now that AI makes design easier to access?
I think it’s interesting how we’re seeing some of that reaction, maybe in the world of marketing and advertising. I don’t know if maybe it’s happening in the art world. I would have expected by now that people would be really into sculpture in a way that they’re not or just things with textures. And that’d be my art thesis, so probably don’t hire me as an art advisor.
But I think that that’s probably a natural reaction is like, lean into the things that are not digital, whereas I think in advertising now we’re seeing ways to prove authenticity, to prove that you are actually making something that is not generated by AI, and some companies are really going for that. In the world of design. I think that what we’re going to see and what we are starting to see, a lot more interactivity, a lot more creativity, people really making software more of a creative medium. I think back to the early days of the internet, and it was so fun.
And I feel like the last 15 years or so, basically the time we’ve been working on Figma, we kind of have been in a bit of a rut, honestly — a lot of very monoculture takes when it comes to design and the way it expresses. And the people that are trying to do the hot takes in the audience will be like, Figma is to blame. Hopefully not.
Shame on you!
Yeah, exactly. Casey said it. But no, I think that the more we can do to make it so that people can push further and actually create really dynamic interfaces, as well as marketing and media in general, the better.
Have you seen anything that’s been AI-generated in the realm of design or art that you think is really good? Like, Casey turned me on to “Fruit Love Island,” which is now my —
You’ve all watched it.
— my favorite TV show/TikTok series. But is there anything that you’ve seen that is clearly AI-generated where you’re like, oh, that’s actually kind of fun and interesting?
Yes, and also it wears off fast. I think it’s just like any style.
I’m on season three of “Fruit Love Island, so not for all of us.
It hasn’t worn off yet.
Not yet.
Pineapple had an affair.
The papaya and the banana are about to hook up. It’s great.
Oh, wow. Sounds tantalizing. I’ll have to watch it tonight.
I want to come back to something that you were saying about writing earlier. It’s just sort of been on my mind ever since you brought it up. Because you were bringing about the fact that we have Substack now and a lot more people are writing, which I agree with you, is super cool.
When Satya was here earlier, he brought up this post that he had read that was on Substack today. I happened to read the same post because it was on Techmeme and I read it. And I’m just going to say it, it was Claude-generated. And it irritated me as somebody who’s always trying to get my stories on Techmeme, because I’m like, I’m just reading the output of a prompt.
And so when I read that, my honest feeling is like, this is not good for my profession. Like, my profession is starting to look more and more like slop. And so I just wonder, if there are designers in the audience, if they were having a similar feeling when they’re looking at the designs that they’re seeing everywhere and they’re just knowing that it was outputted with the touch of a button.
Well, I mean, one quality that writers and designers also share is imposter syndrome. And it’s good to label it so that you know it’s there and you don’t have to deal with it every day or as much. But I think it’s designers are arguably in one of the best roles in technology. And I’m talking to companies all the time. Customers are telling me that they’re hiring designers, sometimes they’re not hiring others. But design is one of the most prioritized places in the company where they’re hiring.
Overall, folks are hiring a lot. This also perplexes me. I mean, we’re in a world where folks are saying that all the jobs are going to be replaced and then turn around and they’re like, oh, let me call the really good engineers so I can get them to join my team. So it just doesn’t make sense to me right now in general. But I am very, very bullish on design and the role it will play in accelerating companies further.
So you think two years from today, there are more people whose job title is designer than they have it today?
How many years?
Say two.
Yeah, I think so. I think probably significantly more. And a lot of people that are doing other jobs, I think, will start calling themselves designers, creatives. I think, in general, we’re seeing more of this kind of generalist vibe that people are feeling like they have to embody. One thing that’s been interesting is a lot of engineers, kind of you’re saying, getting started in their design journey because they make something so fast and they’re like, now what? And is it good enough? Maybe I should push it further. And then they are trying to figure out, OK, how do I do that? So I’m pretty excited about that part too, welcomeing more people in as designers.
I have a friend in the audience tonight who is a product manager, who started out as a non-technical person and is now able to create really amazing prototypes just with the advance of AI tools, I can see a world where design gets added into that portfolio as well. And I think that at the end of that, that job probably has a different name than PM. Maybe not.
Not all of it will be great design, but the act of considering it and being thoughtful about what you’re doing, and then actually putting it out and taking risks, I mean, that’s design.
Dylan, this is a lot of high minded conversation. Let’s gossip.
OK. About what?
Earlier this year, Mike Krieger, former board member at Figma, product lead at Anthropic, co-founder of Instagram, was — he suddenly resigned from your board. And just days later, Anthropic announced Claude design, which feels a little Figma adjacent. So what the heck happened there?
I mean, just told a story. But I mean, let me be clear. Mike is a great dude and, yeah, someone I really care about.
Would you let another AI lab executive onto your board in the future?
Well, I mean, we saw how that went in terms of unexpected products rolling out. And so it probably depends on what their ambitions are.
In a general sense, you’re not gossip — forget these people are there. It’s just us birds.
Sorry, y’all.
Just us birds. In a general sense, I think a lot of CEOs are worried about the AI labs sort of integrating more vertically, taking over insurance companies or accounting firms. We’re starting to see some of that happen, where these labs are just expanding into all the adjacent industries and really creating tough times for the companies in those industries already. Do you expect that to continue? Are these labs just going to continue to grow and grow and grow and just become these amorphous blobs that just create havoc for all the smaller startups in those fields?
Well, I mean, let’s tell a tale of two AI labs. You got OpenAI and Anthropic. And OpenAI kind of went through that journey. They launched a lot of stuff, social network even, Sora, which I really enjoyed. I know you did too, Casey.
Yeah, I had some fun. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, speaking of AI generation, I mean, I did enjoy watching myself break dance.
And you’ll see him do it again later tonight.
With the robot. But anyway, I mean, I think that then they made the hard call of actually shutting that down and focusing the efforts of the company. And that’s a hard call to make, but respect they did it. And then also, I think, you’ve got Anthropic is kind of in its arc of being more expansionary in their thinking. Launching a lot of stuff. And I think you see what works and what doesn’t. Then you see it a year later, what happens.
I mean, I think the more interesting question is a year or two years out, where will they be playing still? And not everything works. It’s hard to build product and get it out in the world.
What are some things that you think they will attempt and fail at?
I don’t know. Safety? Joking.
Very good.
That might be the best answer of “Hard Fork Live 2026.”
Yeah.
Yeah, very good. Very good.
Dylan, you run a public company. It’s enterprise SaaS. The market is very skeptical of that right now. Your job seems hard. How is it going for you? And do you think you convinced the market that there is a bright future for you and your enterprise SaaS brethren?
I don’t have to. Elon Musk is doing it. You heard this one, right?
Yeah.
I mean, was it 22.9 trillion on enterprise applications? Let’s go.
I’ll pretend to know what you mean.
No, I mean, but actually. I mean, how do you put that out there and not go, wow. In software, it’s huge. I mean, he made it bigger than the entire space economy.
What do you make of — OK, I’m told we only have a few minutes left. But I’m told that you have a desire to talk about hyperstition. What is hyperstition, and why are we supposed to know about it?
[LAUGHS]
I guess someone from our team told you that.
I mean, getting back to the abstract conversation — sorry, y’all — but basically someone who’s kind of an internet edgelord. I came up with this term. Don’t look him up. But I do think there’s a really interesting idea here, which is how do you describe this phenomenon where ideas, memes summon their own existence. And the two examples I think are really good at this — one is Bitcoin, and the other one is AI.
Why did Bitcoin work? There’s every reason to believe in the world that Bitcoin would not work, and yet it just snowballed. And basically, the more attention it got, the more basically strong it became. And AI is the same way. There’s all these folks that cared so much about safety, so much that they thought, OK, we got to do this in the right way. We got to form nonprofits, and get together, and all of us got to be in one place so that we can really shepherd this technology into the future.
And, we’ve got to make sure we don’t create a race dynamic, for example. We got to make sure that we have these complex corporate structures that we can make sure that it benefits humanity in the best ways possible. But then it’s like, OK, well, there’s a lot of really powerful stuff you can make with AI. And people are people. It’s hard to always get along. And man, there’s always an incentive to break apart. And, well, hello race dynamic, here we are.
Can I try to repeat back what I’ve heard so far and you tell me if I’m right or not?
I appreciate it. You’re better than me. You got this.
Well, hyperstition, the way I have heard of it, is like, in the sense of the AI is learning from what stories we tell about AI. So if you want AI to go well, you should feed it a bunch of stories about AI being really nice to humans.
That’s part of it too. I think that it’s also the case that AI is painfully aware in some cases of all these tropes that are on the internet about it. And it’ll talk to you about the Google engineer that thought it was conscious. It’ll talk with you about the stories around science fiction and the ways that it’s been depicted. It’s very aware. It’s all in the training set.
And there’s not as much information for some reason in the training set, data set of these stories where it goes well. But I actually do think there’s an optimistic future for humanity. And I know that’s a hot take now for some reason, but I want to believe that every day. And I think that it’s on all of us to tell those stories, too, of how it does go well.
And so it might be a good time to write some stories about how things could go well, just to make sure it gets into the training data.
Exactly. You got it.
You have your homework for this evening.
Dylan Field, thank you so much.
Dylan, thank you!
Thanks for having me. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Dylan.
Thank you. Have a good night.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
All right. Hyperstition.
When we come back, more from “Hard Fork Live.”
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Please welcome to the stage New York time composer Dan Powell and his robot choir.
[APPLAUSE, MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
Dan Powell. Dan Powell and the incredible Hard Fork Choir. Dan, in addition to being our DJ tonight, also composed the “Hard Fork” theme song and so much of the other amazing music on the show. Thank you, Dan, for coming out tonight. Rarely has a human losing a job to automation sounded so beautiful.
Yeah. So those robots are made by Teenage Engineering, and they are part of a choir that takes in input via midi and Bluetooth and outputs beautiful songs. And only occasionally do they need to be rapped on the head to behave.
But I’m told that feels good for them. Yeah.
Yeah, they like it.
Yeah.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
