Transcript for Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma)

My take is that your scope is the world. Nothing should ever perceive as being out of bounds.

We lean heavily into designing and prototyping even before a project gets a green light. If you and your team do your job correctly, what does the world look like?

We have this concept called Maker Week which is our internal hackathon giving people the breeding space to like see ahead into their horizon and be wildly ambitious.

Thank you for having me, Lenny. I am a huge fan of the podcast and really excited to be chatting today.

That sounds good. I guess one thing to call out is that I think when I think about my own PM style, it's definitely not a tickle the boxes style. There are plenty of things that I'm very bad at that PMs are traditionally supposed to be great at, so you know, happy to chat about what makes sense.

It's important to have Two things, one is, of course, lean into your strengths. I think that PMing is traditionally a sort of generalist role and people fall into it in a number of ways, but more often than not, I hear people fall into it by like trying a bunch of other things and then realizing that like, oh, hey, maybe this PM thing makes more sense for me. So like for me personally, it was I have always been like a very like left brain, right brain kind of a person. majored in CS and minored in visual arts and when I worked as a software engineer I really missed the design set and when I worked as a designer I missed the technical and moving into product was a really great way to kind of straddle both and have more touch points across the product development cycle and so I think that you know based on how you fell into it, you might have different spikes and different strings of leaning into those is really important. But for the other things, it's also of course important to have a sort of growth mindset and to constantly be like conquering what comes next.

Yeah, absolutely. So. My take is that vision is everything. It is really important to create a vision that you believe in, that your team believes in, and that your company believes in. Because the reality of the product development cycle is that it's so messy, it's so chaotic. You're going to have extreme highs and extreme lows. You're going to march in a certain direction only to hear from your users that it might just be the wrong direction and totally pivot. And in order to ensure that moments like that are not discouraging, rather sort of learning opportunities for your team, it's so important to be anchored on that singular vision because then any step along the way feels like forward progress. So first, just want to underscore the importance of having that vision and that perspective on if you and your team do your job correctly, what does the world look like? In terms of crafting a compelling vision, I think that there are sort of a few aspects. The first is that you cannot go into a vacuum and come up with a compelling vision that does not exist. You have to be fundamentally inseparable from your users and also fundamentally inseparable from your team. And so I think that there is sort of this important cross-pollination of functions that is really important in crafting a compelling vision. You want to always ensure that You know, there are research insights that help you feel what a user is feeling. You want to ensure that there are like beautiful designs and prototypes that help communicate what this future world looks like. And you also want to rooted in engineering and feasibility. And you want to be constantly even in the vision phase, sharing that what you're marching after is something that is achievable and something that you can work towards. And so I think a lot of folks when they think about like visioning, they kind of think about, okay, how do we like start from scratch and learn about the user and then translate that into designs and then translate that into engineering and it becomes just like very, it's almost like linear process. And I think that to the extent that you can have this like across pollination of ideas and people working together, that leads to a really strong vision. And there's this book that I love called the Medici effect, which basically talks about how when people come from different places and you have that confluence of ideas that leads to innovation at the end of the day. The second piece is, okay, like once you have your vision, like once you have talked to your users and built up your perspective and things like that, it's like, how do you communicate it internally? And how do you help everyone around? Do you see what you're seeing? And I think something that's really unique about Figma is that it is a fundamentally very, very detailed oriented culture. And it's also a company that very much practices what it preaches in terms of the future being visual communication. And so, you know, you kind of find that where I've found that words will only get you so far. So when I put together a vision with my team at Figma, it's all about like, not just your traditional like, okay, here are pain points and then here are solutions and then here is the timeline and costing, but rather how can you bring all of those things together and how can a vision pitch effectively be like pain point solution proof point, pain point solution proof point because at the end of the day, Simply describing a product idea in words is not as compelling as seeing a testimonial from a user on top of a prototype or a mock and like really feeling the pain points.

So before I was working on the new product, I was working on the fake jam team. And I was an early member of the fake jam team. And white boarding was sort of something that really took off during the pandemic because it was the first time that people were not together in office couldn't like jam together couldn't just like throw up a whiteboard behind them physically and so there was kind of this question of like okay how do you combat these like disparate teammates and pull them together into a common space And I think that when we think about fig jam and what success might look like for fig jam, a part of it that I was really invested in was the meetings experience. And specifically what the world would look like if we were successful at bringing people together into a common space. And one of the early insights was, okay, what is like the most common meeting that takes place in a fig jam file? It's a brainstorm, right? It's like you have a bunch of people you've coming together and they're like dropping a bunch of stickies and stuff like that. And so you have this proof point of an activity that works really well inside of a fig jam file. But then, at the same time, something that's really interesting about fake gem, people often ask, oh, you guys are Figma. How do you guys use Figma as a company? And it's kind of interesting, because I feel like we use Figma, the way that everyone uses Figma. But we use Figma on steroids. Every single activity in this company is done in fake gem. It's our product reviews, our gants, shirts, and their bugbashes, and their every single thing isn't Figma. And there was this gap between like the way that we were using Fig Jam as a company and the way that the rest of the world was using it. But brainstorms were working, right? And so you kind of think like, okay, like, what's unique about a brainstorm? And you talk to use it and you're like, why does a brainstorm make so much more sense in a Fig Jam file than like anything else? And what it comes down to is brainstorms are this incredibly democratizing process, right? It's this process where ideas can come from anywhere, where it's not the loudest or the most important person in the room who's doing the talking, but it's everyone all together and you're able to elicit reactions from people who are more quiet and emitting or people who like may prefer to like ideate on their own before like coming out to everyone and things like that. And so we kind of started with this seed of like, brainstorms being this like highly democratic process. And what you see is that like in most other scenarios, meetings are a very one way, right? Like you kind of have like one person talking and like everyone else reacting. This is true of like a team kick off. This is true of like in all hands. This is true of basically like every sort of scenario. And so What we fundamentally like started marching towards was how can we create this world where the generative nature of a brainstorm is basically the norm in other kinds of meetings, right? Where a team kickoff is not just like a PM in a designer handing box to an engineer, but it's like everyone leaving stickies and everyone commenting at the same time. or everyone kind of like leaving like we have this virtual called like kudos boards inside of FIG jam where everyone will kind of like shower each other with love and just kind of like call out their teammates for what they've done over the last week or so and so like how can we ensure that like those kind of rituals are in our templates and that we're teaching people how to take any meeting and make it more democratic and then you kind of anchor on this vision around like okay what does a more democratic Workplace look like and how can we get people to like anchor around that and how can we get people to like get into the flows then we started launching features like music like voting that like really help you get into flow when you're in that pile together

definitely. I think that when you're actually presenting a vision, one of the most important things is that there is like a single artifact that the team is creating together. So I think like a common occurrence is to kind of have like the research read out followed by the design crit followed by the like product review and That's like, that's fine. That that works in a lot of instances. But then you kind of have every team member thinking that their own deliverables like what they need to pour all their energy into. And what you actually want is like for everyone to feel incredible ownership and incredible passion about this combined deliverable. So that it's like a unified team who believes in a singular set of insights.

Yeah, exactly. So we often make our decks in Figma and I think that we lean heavily into designing and prototyping even before a project gets a green light. So I think that's something that's really unique about Figma is normally you will like talk about like The market space or the opportunity of the sizing and then decide to invest versus Figma is very much like C to believe and C to feel that like emotional pull towards this is something worth investing in.

Yeah. Well, the good thing is that with AI, it's getting way easier. So true, true. A couple of weeks ago, cognition launched, which for those who don't know is a startup that made this AI agent called Devon, which can code anything for you, supposedly. It definitely took Twitter by storm and got me super stoked. And so I think something that's interesting about the current AI revolution is that it's very much like, lowering the floor to starting out and to building something, right? And so recently I was doing a chat with David Huang from Reflit, and he's the head of marketing and design at Reflit. And he was basically talking about how, if Reflit does their job right, you kind of start seeing it as your technical co-founder, anything like, You know, kind of conversely like a figma we kind of think about if we're doing our job right like maybe in the future people will think about figma as their designer co-founder right where you can kind of like go in and use it to start like bringing things into existence. So I think one is like yeah, I do think that like we're just trending in a direction and this was not true a year ago where like the floor to building something is just like so much lower. So that's like that's one piece. I think the second piece is just like go around and ask people. And so for example, for the project that I'm currently working on, I used a hackathon to pitch it and basically I built conviction in the idea like many months before the hackathon and I was kind of verbally pitching it and it was kind of like Yeah, like maybe at some point in the future we would make an investment like this. But what actually ended up happening was like we have this concept called Maker Week, which is our internal hackathon where the entire company goes on pause for a week. And I think that most people think that like, oh, hackathons are only a time for engineers to build. And I think that that's one of the biggest mistakes ever. I think that anyone can have an idea and can literally what I did was like walk around the New York office asking every single person like will you work on this thing with me and you know eventually someone says yes and then you can use that to like build momentum grow the team and build something great but I think that like never letting your own skills stop you from like going out there making a pitch and then turning that into reality is really important.

I think that One of the most important things for a PM to create for their team is momentum. You have to constantly be creating forward progress, you know, probably towards that vision that we were just talking about. But I'm a huge proponent of, you know, Jeff Bezos is one way doors to a door's framework. And I think that especially in a software company, most things are two-way doors. You can come back. And so it's so important to have an opinion and use that opinion to like anchor people around and have people react to. So I used to work at Meta before I worked at Figma and Meta basically distilled the product role into two core capabilities. One was product sense and one was execution. And when you think about product sense, it's kind of like, okay, what is product sense? It's like a really abstract term. And at the end of the day, I think product sense is just like having good intuition. And so there's kind of this question about like, okay, how do you build up intuition? And I think that it's just by like, having this insatiable curiosity and talking to users at every chance you get. So I will go to dinners and grill the people around me, unlike how they use stigma and how they use big jam. And I think when you have a conversation with someone, it's so much more powerful in terms of getting those anecdotes to stick in your head. And what actually happens is, once you start having enough conversations, Let's see, you know, you start with conversations A, B, C, then you progress to conversations D, E, S over time, you build this like almost repository or library of conversations that you can draw from as you're making product decisions. And so I think that that's a really powerful thing to lean into as you're thinking about like, okay, which path do we go down? Now there's kind of the question of like, Okay, in the absence of any external signal, right? Like, what can you do? And I think that a very common thing, especially for PMs who are younger in their career, is to think that your opinion isn't right or might not be reflective of what the user thinks. So you think, like, okay, I believe this, and at the end of the day, like, everyone has an opinion, right? I think this but like what do I know compared to like these people who've been in my company for like 10 years or like what do I know compared to like my users who are using the product and so then I think what might happen in those instances is you kind of like start from nothing right you start from zero and you're like okay, I'm gonna like build up from zero and like gather all these insights to like get to a good place and I think my take is that putting out an idea, even if it's totally wrong, is a much better catalyst for getting to a good solution, because people are much more likely to react to an idea than to nothing. So if it's like the right idea, then they'll be like, oh my god, yes, let's totally do that, right? And if it's wrong, then it's like, OK, then they will take you in a different direction. And you end up with something that's probably much more opinionated than if you hadn't put anything out there. And so it was funny, like one piece of advice that I got from you, Q, and I was like, we're working on my vision spread was like, OK, when you go into research, you want to go in with something that's like, at least a name minus idea, or you think is at least a name minus idea. Because if you talk to users and you learn something about it, that's awesome, get to an A plus, if not, like at least you're not at a B. And so I think that having that early conviction, willing to be willing to communicate it, being willing to get feedback from other folks in your team, have them react to it, then get users to react to it, is so important. But then also something that's equally important when you have high conviction, put on quote is to be willing to kill your darlings if you hear something that tells you otherwise. You need to be so strong opinions weekly held. If you've got external signal that's telling you something different, you should be ready to pivot and have that agility to do so.

I would say that speaking about weaknesses, having such strong conviction absolutely has downsides. In particular, it can, it's possible that it doesn't have the desired effect. So, for example, like, My designer who I work with, his name is Kean. He's so talented. We work like this, like literally for most of last year we had like an hour long one on one every single day and still that we're not in any time. Yes, like we like basically like work together like this. But he also told me that when I joined the company, he was like, who is this girl and why does she have so many opinions? And so I think that something that I have learned to do over time and I think that something that's like a good sort of thing to lean into if you are a PM who has strong opinions is to be very direct about how much you care about your opinions. So like now I'll do this thing where I'll be like, oh, I think we should do this. But I feel like medium confidence on it. So if you feel stronger, like I defer to you and always being like very, very, very explicit about like I feel really strongly about this or like this is my hypothesis or I do not have an opinion here. I defer to you. I think the second thing that I would mention is really that is really important in order to do this correctly is So I have like a very direct communications style. Like I will never sugarcoat anything I will never say. Like I like something but I don't like something if I'm in a meeting and someone tells me they don't agree with me. I will tell them I don't agree with them back. In return I really like it when people are very direct with me. And so I think that whenever I join a team or whenever I start working with a new person, I'm always like, I always let them know. I'm always like, I am very direct. And if you disagree with me, I want to know that. Because I think sometimes what can happen is really strongly minded PMs can go into a conversation and can. be like, oh, I think we should do X even though they actually feel of medium confidence about X. And then the rest of the room was like, oh my god, that PM feels so strongly about like doing X that I'm not going to say anything because they clearly have like so much conviction in X. And what you actually want is for everyone to feel comfortable speaking up. And so creating that culture where everyone feels comfortable giving their opinion and communicating their level of confidence is really important.

So I think that directness only works if it's too way. Um, if it is one person being really direct with another person and the other person being afraid to talk, you will end up in Probably a not great relationship where communication is only going one way and both people will be like in their own head. The person being direct will be like, why is the other person not responded to my feedback and then the other person will be like, why am I the only one getting so much feedback? You know, that's where I used to work had this phrase feedback as a gift. And I so deeply believe in this. And in order to really lean into that phrase and really embody it, I think it's really important that feedback is this constantly flowing thing, not something that happens once or twice a year when you have an official feedback cycle. And the way that I try and create this culture of constant, like direct communication, constant feedback is if you have feedback to give someone else, I think you can start by asking, hey, do you have feedback for me? And kind of taking the feedback first. So then that person feels like, okay, like maybe I have my way of seeing this situation. like let me communicate that and get off my chest and then when you give your feedback it's sort of even and then feedback in my opinion is something that you should always act on right so then to the extent that you can as soon as possible put that into effect and be like okay I'm hearing this I'm going to do XYZ in order to like combat that I think then that incentivizes the other person to do the same

When you are spearheading an idea or a product, it's really on you to have a pulse on how everyone else is feeling about that product. right and you know different products need different levels of excitement to make it out the door right if there is something that you know leadership has really strong conviction in it's important for leadership to like and the full company up, you know, like behind that vision. On the flip side, if you are yourself or pushing a zero to one idea from the bottom's up, the onus is even more on you to make sure that that project and that product is constantly propped up and that people are excited about it for it to make it up the door. And so one example is like, you know, we've been talking about this product that I'm working on and coming out of winter break this year. There's kind of this sense, or at least I always suspect that there's this sense of like over winter break, everyone forgets what happened last year. You know, it's like goes at the door because you are hopefully doing, you know, something that took your mind off work. And so at the same time, there's kind of this like sense of like, how do you create forward momentum inside of a company in January, right, when people are kind of like, slowly, you know, coming back into office, everyone's like trickling back in at different dates, because everyone took like slightly different feet here, like, how do you kind of like rally people in a certain direction? And so we have this thing at Figma called SKO or sales kickoff, which is like every year the sales team comes together. And we have a keynote and set a fire side chat and stuff like that. And we talked about what's coming for the year. And at this point, our product existed, but it was absolutely barely built. It was rough around the edges. It had bugs every day. Maybe 10 people in the company were using it. And something like that outside of the team. Yeah, it was so important to me that this product got visibility in this forum because this was the first company wide forum of the year where we were like declaring priorities for the year, right? And so it was like so important to me that this product had some sort of a moment, or you know, speaking of like, show don't tell like a demo in the context of this keynote. And so, you know, Chris, our CTO and UPRCPO, we're giving this keynote on like, What does our year look like? And I really, really deeply insisted that we should include a demo. And I think what end of happening is something like that, like a demo that wasn't meant to be a demo or that people weren't expecting, does so much in terms of driving that sense of hype and helping people see what you yourself see in the future. And what's really interesting is like, I think that hype is something that you can't really create hype for something you don't believe in in my opinion. The only way to create hype is to get people to see what you see. I think that it's incredibly important to leverage like very large forums like that, like make a week like sales kick off like, you know, we have config which is our like annual showcase to the world of what we're working on in order to get everyone to see what you're seeing. And to be like really scrappy about it and to really like be the person who's like pushing your product to its limits in the right moments. And I think what you find is that if you push your product to get visibility, maybe even beyond what like the current stage or product development merits is that you have really incredible learnings because the more that you can put your product in front of people and get them to use it, the more signal you get on how it's trending and so what ended up happening was like something that could have originally been perceived as a distraction to the team actually ended up being something that added so much fuel to the fire in terms of one giving us like product insights to inform our next steps and to getting the entire company to feel truly deeply feel excited about getting this thing out the door.

In my mind, there is like internal hype, which is how do you get buy-in and like everyone inside of the company to be like banging their fist on the table for a product to get built. But there's also external hype, which is like, how do you get your users hyped about your product? How do you get them to like really be so stoked when they're like milestone occasions for your product or milestone launches and for them to be celebrating with you? And one of the things that I loved the most when I joined the company was, you know, Figma and Design Twitter have had this, like, very symbiotic relationship where, like, each has grown with the other over time. And what really happens is, like, anytime we launch something, you have, like, all of Design Twitter celebrating with us. And one other moment when, you know, I thought it was very fun to drive hype was when I worked on Fig Jam in 2022. It was the one year Fig Jam anniversary in April and, you know, Project Anniversarys or Product Anniversarys are quite an exciting milestone within the company, right? You like bring everyone together, maybe you pop bottle champagne, you kind of like celebrate how far you've come and like what all you've learned since the launch. And we were really thinking like, Okay, like, you know, Big Jam is like awesome. Like, Big Jam isn't just any product. Like, Big Jam has a personality. Big Jam is like cheeky, big Jam is fun. Big Jam is like, has this like cute, skew morphism going on where you feel like, you know, it's your friend. And so like, okay, how would you like celebrate that moment for a friend? Like, you wouldn't really have an anniversary party. Like, you would throw it like a full-on birthday party. And so what we basically did was, at the one-year anniversary of Big Jam, I worked with the marketing team and our engineering team in order to basically kick off many launch inside of the product of a bunch of new features. And what we did was we like easter egg them through the product. And each sort of product that we were releasing inside of Big Jam was hidden under this little birthday present. And throughout the day, we sent all of our users on an Easter egg hunt of presents inside a fake jam. Not only was a fake jam getting the presents, but it was our users getting the presents. And so I think that hype as well is really tied to a motion. So to the extent that a person using a product can feel like Oh, this thing that is built in the product was built for me, not to advance the company's goals or anything like that, but to make me feel special, to make me feel happy. I think that's a really key instrument and driving hype as well. And I think that something that's quite interesting about hype and getting your users to feel strongly about your product is that every product has their own brand of delight or excitement or energy. So hype for Fing Jam is incredibly different than hype from Figma, where hype for Figma might be like this really, really like niche design capability that like unlocks this pain point that designers have been having for years and years. And then hype for Apple might be like the world's best unboxing experience or something like that. And so like leaning into a product's brand in order to figure out what is the optimal way to generate hype with your audience and form that connection to something that's really important.

Yeah. So I think it honestly depends on the product. So when I worked at Meta, I was so easy. Everyone in their mom had a opinion about the product, which was really great because it meant that anyone you met, you could kind of ask them what they liked, what they did in like, you could like relay that through the company, et cetera. Now at Figma, we have a slightly more niche audience. I think that, you know, hopefully ultimately we get to everyone. We started with design teams. Now we're thinking about like the entire product development cycle and how we can build for that. And then, you know, who knows, you know, beyond that could be anything. But I think that constantly like immersing yourself in those circles where your users are is really important. So for me, it's like, you know, anytime that I'm like catching up with a friend who like mildly works in tech or a tech adjacent field, like I will generally be asking them about like Figma. And I think what's really great is that, you know, as we, as a company scales over time, their user base gets like broader and broader. And so when we grew from a single product company with Figma, and to now a multi product company with Fig Jam, Dev Mode, et cetera, are audience exploded. And we already saw late in behavior inside of Figma, but now it's like, even more clear how wide reaching the product is. And so something that I find incredibly useful is to not just ask users of your product, what they think about your product, but to ask non-users about your product, why they are not using your product. And actually, I think that those are the most insightful conversations because I think that having a product shine and having a product do well and have great adoption isn't just about like the product being great. It's also about like the marketing and the perceptions that surround the product and potentially like the hype that surrounds that, right? And so having those conversations about like, you know, I remember having like an early conversation with folks from my previous team about like, hey, like why are you like, are you guys using fake jam and they would be like, like maybe sometimes and I'll be like, well, why are you using video? It's like literally built for you, right? And then that led to like a series of product insights that, you know, led us to like invest in a set of features that would make it much easier for a non-designer to get started out on the canvas. So we launched this kind of like placeholder experience that rather than traditional templates really like let people see the various use cases and preview the various use cases on the canvas. And so that was incredibly important. And then, you know, stigma of course is kind of like It's in this like prosumers face where it's like, you know, you talk to anyone in tech and, you know, maybe they're your talk to it all addressable market. But then there are some products I know that people work on, which are very removed from the average person, right? Like you have like, in for a product, security products, and things like that where you can't just like walk up to someone and have a conversation with them about like, you know, why aren't they using your product because that conversation might not make any sense. And so in those instances, I think that what's really important is it depends on the stage of company that you're at. If you're at an early stage company, you need to be the one going out there and having conversations with your users and just like literally like looking up your users through whatever channels necessary and like figuring out how you can connect with them. I think this is also why like founder market fit at startups is so important is because like to the extent that you can use yourself as a limit test for what user needs there are. helps you move really fast in the product development cycle. And then if you're on the larger side, I think that having a really tight relationship with your like sales team is really important and basically just like being on sales calls because You want to be in a situation where the customer pain points on sales calls are cross pollinating into the product roadmap and you also want to ensure that your sales team has visibility into like what might be coming and are constantly informing that. And so I think I've really leaning into that building that relationship between these traditionally like more siloed orgs and hopping on those calls is something that I really recommend.

The insights get operationalized in a number of ways. So first is, like, yeah, let's continue using fake Jam as an example. I think, you know, like I mentioned, like, victimize a company uses fake Jam for everything, like multiple fake Jam files are made like per day permitting, et cetera. We have this initial situation where people, outside of the company were most using fake Jam for brainstorms. And so as we were scaling our fake Jam sales team, I sort of set up like a recurring cadence with the folks in our sales team in order to understand like, okay, like, what are you guys hearing and then I would share what was coming and then I would use their input as signal as to like, what should be prioritized or de-prioritized on the roadmap and they would use my signal to understand what were the various use cases that they could be pushing with the customers. And one thing that happened during one of the meetings was I literally walked them through. This meeting, this is how I used big jam. And this meeting, this is how I used big jam. This meeting, this is how I used big jam. And what that resulted in was I actually made like a loom video walking through my like weekend fig jam. that our sales team later distributed to a bunch of companies to inspire them as to like, hey, not only can you use Beijing for this, you can use Beijing for like XYZ, you can use it for your like your team pickups, you can use it for your retro's, you can use it for like, you know, planning your mom's birthday party, you can use it for like litter planning your all hands, you can use it for sketching up the contents of what's going to go into your next deck, so on and so forth. And so it basically manifests in two ways. The first is having it in form like the prioritization of your product roadmap. And then the second is what like ideally creating artifacts that the sales team can use to evangelize the things that you are seeing and the like stepping stones to that vision that you are creating. And then the last thing is that sometimes The conversations aren't immediately actionable, right? Sometimes like the sales team has an insider has a request that is just like objectively not feasible because the team has too much on its plate. Conversely, like sometimes, you know, the team might have a suggestion for something that might be pitched to sales folks that's like, to early given the stage of the conversation. And for that, we basically have, basically stored in a sauna, basically. We create, like, we have this integration, which many companies might have, which is, like, a Slack integration where you can, like, react within a sauna emoji, and then, like, any piece of feedback that comes in from sales or from the rest of the company gets, like, turned into a task in your backlog, and then you do, like, a weekly grooming of that.

When I started out my product career, I actually joined as a RPM or rotational product manager at Meadow, which is effectively a program that brought together new grad PMs, so people who had like zero PM experience and taught them how to be PMs. And in the beginning of this program, we had a series of conversations with leaders across the company. And one particularly notable conversation was for Julie Zoo, who was the first ever intern at Meta and the VP of Design. And she was giving us feedback and advice about, you know, hydrodraft compelling product strategy, et cetera. And something she said that has stuck with me, like, throughout my entire product career is that when two people disagree about product strategy, it is because they have different assumptions because if you have the same assumptions, like there is no reason why a person should think like we shouldn't do X versus we should do Y. And so it's kind of like, okay, how does this relate to what you were just asking about like feeling deeply and caring about what you're building? I think that it's really important to not just fill the road map because it's handed to you or not just filled an idea because it's handed to you. I think that you need to understand in the event that it's like a top-down strategy, what are the assumptions that led to folks believing that that is the right idea? And then if it is you pushing something bottoms up, you need to be able to ensure that everyone else has the same assumptions that you have in your head that leads them to believe deeply or not believe deeply. And I think what's really important is that people can, you know, to Carl's point like gauge how passionate someone is about a project. And my take is that the more you believe in an idea, the more natural it is to be passionate about it.

My first piece of advice would be to not just think about the scope of what you are working on as the thing that happens to be in flight at any given moment. But to, if you're working in a company like, take a step back, understand like the vision of that company and understand your users and understand if there's like anything in that space that you are passionate about. It is quite easy to believe that the project that you're working on is your scope. My take is that your scope is the world and to the extent that you can figure out does the idea that you're passionate about, fall within your company versus fall outside of your company, that should kind of like guide the next steps in your career. And so I think that potentially like common misconception is that Founding something is just for, you know, capital of founders, but I think that anyone can found something. You can found something inside of an existing company. You can found something from scratch and There are different reasons why you would do each, right? Like the reasons why you would found inside of an existing company is if you think that there is a distribution advantage that you want to take advantage of, if there is a technical or platform advantage that you want to take advantage of, or there's also like a reality which is like, you know, it's slightly less risk. So, you know, depending on what your risk tolerance is, you can like figure out what makes sense. There are things that are harder inside of an existing company, right? It's like, harder to take an executive decision. You actually cannot take an executive decision. You need to receive by and on every single decision that you make. Sometimes it's harder to move faster. And then sometimes there are things that are just like different when you're starting inside of an existing company versus like starting something outright. So the things that are different is like building a team is quite different. Like the way that you recruit and the like set of folks that you can recruit from like that composition is quite different. And then the way that you pitch and who you are pitching to is quite different. And so I think that, you know, sometimes, yeah, it makes sense to found inside of a company and to like use that to like make your flame burn bright. Sometimes it makes sense to found out right. But I think that, you know, the first key to being like passionate about what you're working on is to like find an idea that you're passionate about.

Maybe we can do a lot or two because they're a little bit different than the other things we've been discussing, yeah.

Yeah, I can definitely talk about this two things. So hot seat is actually a tradition. I started at our first PM off site post pandemic. So this is March of 2022. the PM team was like sub 15 people at that point and we all fit around dinner table, which is no longer true today. And it was really important to me that we all got to know each other in a context that was outside of work. I think that PMing is a highly collaborative function, and to the extent that you have great relationships with all the teams that you're interfacing with, that just goes, one is it goes a long way in terms of the product, but to it makes speaking about passion, it makes your day to day so much more fun if you feel like you're working with your friends, and if you aren't working with your friends. And so we were coming out of a long and tense day session. And I was thinking about like, okay, how do we break the ice? And hot seed is like this game where you go around the table and each person gets two minutes on the clock and everyone else at the table can ask them anything. And if they want to, they can decline to answer, but we try and keep it like generally speaking like quite friendly and comfortable for folks. And so we kicked off this game and what was really interesting with earlier that day, we had done a personality test, aside note, our PM team is like, sust with personality tests, which, which personality test, by the way. The way we, we to this day say the best one was the one that we did at this off site, which is the strength's finder test. And what it basically happened was over the course of that morning, we had all kind of dug into like, like, we were saying, like, what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses, et cetera? And we had this like, really fun foundation to build on during the game of pot seat where it was like we were digging into like what about people's backgrounds made them think the way that they do today and like what random anecdote at each step in a playing catch with their dad and the feel led to how they thought about auto lay up and I think that you know being able to understand what motivates a person is so important when you're working with them and also just like in building a connection with them and so that was this like that was this moment that really brought the whole team together and something that I was really gratified to hear after is that you know since then hot seed has kind of become a tradition within the company and so all the pms went on to play it with their own teams you can show went on to play it with the exact team so on and so forth and so it's kind of become this thing but now anytime that like someone joins the team. It's like, okay, you put them in the hot seat. And then, you know, if you're meeting someone's like significant other, you like put them in the hot seat. And it's this thing that is just like totally spread, but it's a really fun way to like just get to know folks and what it would drive them. So that's, that's one of my favorites. I highly recommend the second thing that you asked about, which was the figgies. And this is basically like an Oscar-style award ceremony that was like hacked together. And so where the fees was inspired from was actually every year we have, you know, I was mentioning like SKO or sales kickoff. And on the last night of Skow, there was like this award ceremony where they appreciated all of the incredible work that has taken place in the sales and marketing org. And I saw this and I was like, this is incredible. Like we should absolutely be celebrating the product team as well when we're together. And so what I did was I basically like took our big mom board room, which is called big mom and like worked with another P.M. Uland to duck it out and like a red carpet, gold curtains, etc. And we bought like little Oscar trophies for everyone and got their names written on it and voted people in for all of these like absurd categories like most likely to name their child Figma most likely to go their career with that writing a PRD blah blah And, you know, of course forced everyone to give some sort of acceptance speech, but I think that, you know, making people feel appreciated for the, even just like the quirks and the energy that they bring to the team is something that's incredibly important and celebrating that diversity together is something that I think goes a long way in terms of making people feel close and also making people understand like maybe someone who they don't know that well on the PM team because then you kind of learn like okay like beyond them you know kind of like having this zoom background this is what you know this is what's like cheeky about them or this is what's like interesting or unique about them and so I think that culture is So important, Figma has this core value called play, which I love, which really emphasizes just that everyone should be having fun at all times and work should be fun and gathering should be fun. And I think that I personally am a huge believer in, like, In this remote first role that we live in, you also want to take advantage of those times when you're able to get together and do things that make the team feel even geographically close even when they're geographically spread out.

It's kind of interesting something that I'd heard Vishal Shah, who was the former head of product at Instagram say, is that often in companies culture is set top down, and then the innovation that comes out of that is bottoms up. And so I think in the first place, having a value like play does a lot in order to make folks feel like these kinds of things are celebrated, and time should be carved out for them.

I think culture is important in that it establishes trust between groups of people. And so I think that You know, actually earlier you were asking about passion and what makes someone feel passionate about work. And I think that realistically that passion, you know, breaks out into two things. One is like, are you passionate about the vision that you're building towards which we spoke about? The second thing is are you passionate about the people who you work with? And I think that roadmaps change products change by feeling a connection to the folks that you're working with. Make you much more durable as a team. It means that when times get tough, which they will. your gut instinct is too rally together and collaborate together to find a solution rather than to like jump ship or something. I think like personally like I'm like in love with my team they give me like so much joy and happiness on a daily basis. I was telling them the other day that like when they post prototypes in our Slack channel, like, sometimes they get little flutters in my chest, like, when you have a crush on someone. And I think that, like, having the emotional connection to your team is fun. And I think that, like, and I think that a emotional connection comes from investing in culture.

Okay, so actually I want to combat the perception that the figgies was a high production, high-cost thing. It was very low-cost. I ordered everything on Amazon and assembled it in like an hour. And so there are ways to be like scrappy and kind of making things come together. And so I was like, don't be intimidated by any idea of being like too large to take on. Just kind of like, go for it.

For this one, I could actually maybe give an example that preceded my product career, which was when I was in college, I actually founded a national design conference for students across the country. And the way that this came about was when I was in college, design was very much having a watershed moment in tech. So companies like Airbnb and Pinterest were leading an industry and they were leading not just because they like built technology and made it accessible, but because they were really using the interface layer to differentiate. So there's this point where like software had reached like a certain level of saturation where things that were not possible were now suddenly possible and now suddenly possible in multiple companies and design became this differentiator, which is really exciting. But at the same time, none of this was reflected in most schools across the country and so I went to Princeton and there was nothing that resembled product design in our curriculum and this was baffling to me because I was like there is such clear momentum you know speaking about momentum in industry about this being a profession that is like so important and so influential in building the next generation of companies yet the kind of groundwork to make that happen wasn't really there. And then I interned a Facebook and I realized that my entire class of 25 interns have very similar experiences where they too were self-taught product designers. And so that summer I actually watched a movie which was coincidentally a documentary that was coincidentally produced by InVision that featured folks like John Mayda amongst others. I was talking about had design changed the world that we lived in. I was going to rewrite the future, which I really believed in. And so I was sort of incentivized to found this conference called designation that would democratize access to a design education and bring together top students from across the country with like industry leaders. And originally my plan was to build this within an organization that already existed at Princeton. Because, you know, they had the funding, they had the resources, they had the expertise in order to kind of like make this a reality. And then what actually ended up happening was like, they too were skeptical of the business value of design and didn't think it would be possible for something like this to be funded. And so I went from, you know, building something in a situation where I thought, like, finances, expenditures, connections, et cetera, we're like totally taken care of to having none of that and needing to like build it from the ground up. And it was funny, one of the best pieces of advice I got in college was don't underestimate the power for.edu email address. And I just went like on a free, like cold emailing, like so many people, so many executives about this problem that I was trying to solve. And what actually ended up happening was people would hop on the phone with me. And a lot of the folks who I spoke to, designers who I really admire didn't know for a Jamie Myrled, et cetera. My folks who would be like, oh my god, this was such a problem when I was in college. Of course, I'll help you solve it. I can't believe it hasn't been solved yet. Ultimately, it grew into this conference that lasted many years. brought together folks from originally around the country than more recently around the world and ultimately like did live under that broader organization. But I think like having the ability to, you know, like in the absence of formal backing or something, still like chase after something and maybe pivot the way that you're thinking about it or pivot the way that you are allocating your own time, like maybe you know, certainly like speakers is not the most important thing fundraising is the most important thing or you know, building a hype landing page so that you see more legit than a like very scrappy few person student organization is the most important thing. And just being like quite adaptable when it comes to resourcing, I think it's very important.

Yeah. So you can Google Design Nation. And we have like a Instagram page amongst other things. And yeah, last year we had folks like Stuart Weitzman and Joe Gebia, who's one of the co-founders of Airbnb comes to be, which is super exciting.

Yeah, it's for a design driven college students. I think one thing to call out is that uh One of my focuses in the early years was to ensure that this is for not just like capital D designers, but like design driven students. So we also took like engineers who were very design minded and you know marketers who are very design minded, et cetera, because of that core belief that the, you know, most innovative solutions will come out of people that are kind of like operating at this intersectionality.

So it's kind of interesting because I think that there are many things that we talked about that are actually a double edged sword in practice. So let's start with the conviction piece. I think that the good thing about being high conviction is that you're able to you know, sell forward and to get people to feel strongly about something and a next step in the future. I think the downside of that is if there is less of a history of working together, there might be skepticism about like, oh, are you just pushing something because you believe in it or are you pushing something because our users actually needed it? And so in those moments it becomes really important to like constantly be highlighting user proof points. I think the second is like scrappiness. So I think I have like a very high ability to like thrive in ambiguity and to like pull things together last minute. So for example, it's like very common that I am like editing a product review deck minutes before we are about to present or that like I haven't started until the night before and then stay up until 3 a.m. to do it. And this is like somewhat fine, but then I think that other people don't always love it because they're like, hey, like, maybe let's start earlier next time. I get that. The third piece would be, um, I get very consumed by the details of something and I think in a lot of instances, this is great. Also, at a certain point, like sometimes you want to defer those decisions and so that's also like an important skill to learn.

something you believe that I also believe it just you will have things you're not good at focus on things you're amazing at and just getting better at those things and use that to achieve because it ends up being a lot more also kind of building off of that is as you scale your team it's really important to be self aware of what those blind spots are and to sort of hire for that because at a team level you want individuals to be spiky and you want team to be well-rounded

In order for a company to stay competitive, a company needs to stay entrepreneurial. If you are not constantly thinking about what's next, defining the industry standard, seeing around the corner from your competitors, you know, will get taken over that is like a reality. And so consequently, I personally love to screen for very entrepreneurial companies and companies that have that culture. And so Figma has this huge run with it culture where run with it is also one of our core values. And it's really encouraged that people can kind of just like sprint off in a direction. And that is seen not as a distraction, but rather a manifestation of the company's values. And so at the company, you know, some of our most monumental launches have come out of hackathons and have come out of bottoms up projects. So like recently this week, we had a launch of multi edit, which was like a long clamored for a feature where folks can, you know, edit things across multiple frames at the same time. That was like multi year, multi product long initiative. We have things like Jambot, which is an AI plugin inside a fig jam that has, you know, come out of an AI hackathon that we had last year. Our entire widgets platform was originally a hackathon project. And so there is this, you know, culture of celebrating things that have been push bottom is up. And so, you know, constantly thinking about, like, how can people within a company be entrepreneurial, both in terms of getting new products up to users? And in terms of improving internal processes is just like a culture that you constantly want to be facilitating and leading into.

I think that there's this, you know, interesting metaphor that you were calling out earlier about a zero to one project being like a flame. And flames are interesting because they're sort of destined to die at the end of the day. I think about the person who is pushing a zero to one idea as kind of being the keeper of the flame. And in particular, there's this metaphor that really sticks with me, which is in Greek mythology, all the gods sit on Mount Olympus. And there's this goddess, Hestia, who is the keeper of the harf. And it has her job to always keep the heart burning even when all the gods like piece out to go on their various quests. And I kind of think about the person or the team or the group people who are pushing a zero to one idea is being the like Hestias or the keepers of the heart. And it is your job to like stoke the flames and the embers if they are at risk of dying out. And it is also your job to ensure that the idea can spread like wildfire and can build that level of hype you need for an entire company or an entire set of people to be clamoring for something to get built. And so like more concretely, I think that there are three things you need to do in order to be successful at bringing an idea into existence. The first is you need to have the right idea, right? And that's the MPP. So that's the piece that you will get from having conversations day and day out with your users. The second is you need to secure buy-in for that idea. So that's the vision piece. You need to be able to rally an entire set of folks that honestly, most importantly, your leadership and your team behind an idea. And then the third is you need to be able to make it spread like that wildfire. You need to get it to a point where someone joins a company and they're like, oh, what is that flame burning there and how can I learn more about that?

So it's funny because the current product that I'm working on actually came out of a conversation or a set of conversations where I was pitching fig jam to people. So speaking about constantly having these user conversations, I think in order to have the right idea, there are two key elements. The first is you need to have that user empathy, you need to be constantly having conversations with your users, diving into what are their pain points. Not only about the product that you're working on, but general perceptions about your company, and also general perceptions about the other tools or products that they might be using on a daily basis. It's not enough to have a perspective on how well you are competing in the market, but you also need to know, like, understand of persons like full end to end tooling usage. And then the second thing is you need to ensure that what you're kind of working towards, ladders into a company goal. And so something that's very top of mind at Figma, or something that has been very top of mind at Figma has been, you know, how do we go from building for designers to covering the entire product development cycle and extending to non-designers in particular. And non-designers is kind of the like bucket term that we use for PMs and developers and marketers and so on and so forth. But how can we ensure that our tooling suite is reflective of all the different stakeholders that make the product development process what it is. And so I think that, yeah, just like constantly having the conversation with the users and also constantly being anchored around not what are you currently working on, but what is the broader company goal is something that will help you come up with the right idea.

I think the key to being successful at zero to one is to honestly have optimism that borders on delusion need to have insane, almost like reality distortion field where you don't hear the word, no, or at the very least you translated into a knot yet. And so I think that in terms of pitching, all the honest, like, my first few pitches of this idea were not successful. What basically happened was like, I, you know, kind of like both conviction and the idea by talking to users, and then I would have like ad hoc conversations with folks around the company, and I would be like, we should do this, and they would be like, maybe. And I would be like, okay, like, what am I seeing? What are they not seeing? And then what basically happened was we had a PM offset where we were talking about like strategy for the next year. And I like again, pitched this and it got like kind of momentum there, but not really. And then I think the third time when it actually stuck was at the maker week hackathon. And this was kind of an insane experience for me because I was actually hosting our hackathon. So I was kind of like working with our VP of design, Noah, in order to like spread the word about like, hey, everyone picture ideas and to constantly hackathons are interesting when they're virtual, right? Because you don't really know a people not in your officer doing, right? So you're constantly thinking about like, okay, how can you like, hype up the whole company, right? Like, how can you hype up the SF office with what people are building in New York? And how can you ensure that London stays included, even though there's like a limited time zone overlapped and things like that? And so I was like, simultaneous thinking about like, okay, how do we like kind of keep the momentum of this like hack upon running? And then also, how do I like push this idea bottoms up? And I think that something that's really important when you're making a pitch is to not be daunted by the scale if you're pitch. So for example, in this instance, the proposal was basically to introduce a new product. And building a product in a week is for all intents and purposes kind of crazy. But this is, I think we're like, the scrappingness piece comes in. you need to be willing to be very clear about where you're willing to take the hit on quality or believability and where you need to kind of push in order to make your thing feel believable. So one example of something that we did was we literally literally in order to make this new product like feel more real. And this was like maybe a two line change in code was we like swapped out the thick gem icon in our file browser to this new icon and like adding a whole new like entry point is like a lot of work and you can't do that. But like just swapping something and taking about what exists and like changing the minor things in order to communicate like what is different about your idea versus what exists today is something that you really want to lean into. And what basically happened was at the end of the week, we had this demo day. And I was like going between like introducing each of the demos to like doing the demo, and did like a little wardrobe change in between. And I think that what ended up being really great about presenting an idea like this in a company white forum, which I highly recommend, is that At that point, it becomes not just you evangelizing the idea, but your teammates and your colleagues and your peers evangelizing the idea. And that sense of momentum carries a lot of weight, I think.

I think something that's very unique about Figma as compared to other companies is we have a multi, month, plus long staging or dog fooding process. And so something that was really interesting to me was one of the first projects that I worked on at the company was we were building sections inside of Figma. We had the problem, we built it, we put something on staging and I was kind of like, okay cool, like it's been on staging like a week like now we can like launch right and that was greeted with like, no, we can't launch. And I think that leaning into that willingness to be vulnerable about your product and this acknowledgement that feedback is a gift and that fits in pieces of feedback from across the company will help your product mature and get to a place where it's ready to go out the door is really important and what's really interesting is this helps the team who's working on the product because you're getting feedback and that's the most direct benefit of putting something on staging early but the other benefit of putting something on staging early is that it makes people invested in your product. So if you think about why our beta is so valuable and why our alpha is so valuable, it's because when someone gives you feedback and then the team in charge, influence that change, you see that and you're like, I shaped that part of the product, right? And to the extent that you can get as many people in the company feeling like they shaped XYZ parts of the product, I think that's really powerful because then you kind of are ensuring that there is this constant feedback loop, and there is this constant investment in thinking about how can we collectively drive towards success? Because at the end of the day, product development is a team sport. It takes everyone to make something successful. I just think about like putting things early on staging and getting people involved in the cycle as like opening up the doors to the product development process and you know, hopefully that just like elevates the quality of the product.

If you have an insight that only you have I think on one hand, you know, you can kind of believe like, oh, other people are in thinking similar to me. They're for like, maybe I'm wrong. But I would actually flip that because I think if you have an insight that other people are not seeing, it is even more on you to get people onto the same page. And so to the extent that you can like shout from the rooftops about all the insights that you're learning, I think that in and of itself creates a more entrepreneurial culture within the company because chances are other people will see you doing that. They'll be inspired to contribute in the same way as well. I think the last thing that I would say is which is maybe an aspect that we like did not touch on is that understanding motivations is in my opinion, one of the keys to running a team successfully and driving an idea forward. For example, if you think about the composition of a product team, you have engineers, you have designers, you have researchers, data scientists, etc. Different people want to be involved in the kind of product visioning phase to a different extent. There's some people who do want a solution hand to them because for them the most exciting part of the process is to like find the technical solution in the code. On the other hand, there are other people who like find it really hard to feel passionately about a thing that they have not contributed to. And so I think to the extent that you can understand these motivations of your team, of your leadership, of your peers and constantly ensure that you are catering to the individual, as opposed to the average, that is what, in my opinion, leads to one of the highest functioning teams.

Oh, I think you have to directly ask them. So anytime someone joins my team, I like, especially on the engineering sites, I think this is where there's the greatest variance. I will literally ask like, how much do you like being involved in product decisions? And to the extent that you can take decisions in the open, that is excellent. And even if the decision is something along the lines, it's like, okay, we have four options. And you can go in with a leading point of view, but giving everyone the opportunity to like, voice their perspective and push back. If they want to, I think that that's very powerful.

Are you ready? I am ready.

I will start by saying that I am immediately skeptical if anyone who is not read Harry Potter. So, you know, if you're one of those people, go read Harry Potter. Maybe it contributes to creativity. I don't know.

No, no, no, you have to read the entire series and you have to read it in order. It's actually funny when I was in kindergarten. My mom bought the fifth book and then the person at the bookstore was like, no, no, no, no, we were like, okay, got it. And then the others that I would recommend are from a fiction perspective. I think Pachinko by Minjyn Lee is incredibly beautiful and powerful. It's like a multi-generational Korean saga. I think I'm personally just like motivated and moved by like large scale things, so to see a single story trover so many generations was very fascinating to me. And then from a more like business-y book perspective, which is maybe more what you're getting at, I think that I Honestly, like pseudo-steer clear of how two books, but one that has had like a particularly large impact on me is Creativity Ink by Ed Catel. And this is about the founding story and scaling of Pixar. And what was so interesting to me about this book was it basically talks about how you create a process around cultivating creativity. And it's interesting because like creativity is so unencumbered and processes the opposite. So that's very fascinating.

I have not. I will add that to my life.

Okay. I will go or you it.

Favorite recent TV show definitely, we severance.

Oh, movie. I recently watched Dune 2 and Dune 1 in the span of a week. It was really fun. I watched Dune 2 because someone asked me to co-host a premiere of Dune 2 with them and I was like, okay, sounds good, sounds cool, but like, I need to watch Dune 1.

The visuals were stunning. Yeah.

I like to ask people what motivates them but also people often ask me what is my favorite hot seat question which I think is kind of similar and my answer to that is that it's like highly dependent on the person and there's no go to hot seat question and I almost feel the same way about interview questions.

Speaking about hype, I am kind of obsessed with the browser company arc onboarding flows, specifically the onboarding flow. I think that they do such a good job of like, amping you up for not only like the larger chain that they're trying to make in terms of, you know, personal operating system, but of showing you to what extent their team thinks about the details of the product, where a lot of other products might cut corners. And I think their ability to communicate the ethos of their product through that is really powerful. So that's one. And then I think the second is in the AI space I'm really excited by Pika. which is video generation video editing software. I think that in my mind one of the biggest shortcomings of AI the way that a lot of people are building it today is that it's like optimized for the demo or optimized for the tweet, right? And it's basically this situation where like I think about it as like, in my mind, one of the biggest goals of AI right now is the like, deep black boxification of AI because it's not really useful to like enter a prompt and get an output that you can't interact with. Because then it's like, if something's a little bit off, what are you going to do? You're kind of stuck. But I think Pika is doing a really great job of like not just investing in the foundational video models, but also giving you the ability to manipulate that output. And so I'm excited about that approach. And I hope that more companies take you from that.

Yeah. Life is a game of expectations. And so speaking of books and movies and things like that, I will never ever watch a movie trailer or read the back cover of the book because I think It means that you're going into it with too many expectations that either tells you all the punchlines or it tells you like the foundational backstory or something like that and I think that like to the extent that you go in either with like no expectations or a low expectations that's the key to like enjoying life.

I think it was me and ShowTide.

Yeah, um, you can find me on Twitter. Um, I'm at Michika poor. It's kind of my first name and last name, slush together. And in terms of how users can be useful to me, um, so one is, you know, come to config. We will be announcing, um, but this new product, but also like so many cool things that the company is working on, a lot of very exciting AI launches, um, and more. And I think that like having the community come together is a very special moment. So, Hope to see you there, you know, cough cough, try the new product when it comes out. And I don't know, I'm always like, on the lookout for like full new products. I like to be, you know, someone who tries things out early, so to the extent that you see things send them my way.

No, yeah, it's going to be like, like, I should, you know, please have low expectations.

It'll probably be in the opening keynote, which is done by Dylan. But I'll probably give a config talk on it as well. So that's how you will know. And I'll probably tweet about it. What I was actually going to do is to release the original vision deck when it launches. So you can look after that.

Thank you for having me, Lenny. This was such a fun conversation. It was such an honor and a privilege to be on the podcast. So really, thank you so much for having me.