Before committing to a design tool, Dylan and Evan spent roughly a week prototyping a meme generator built on their WebGL engine, and also built a browser-based photo editor that didn't make sense as a business.

“That was the darkest week of Figma”

Dylan pitched the meme-generator pivot to Evan using market-size research, but within days the two recognized it wasn't a serious enough business to build a company around.

“I’ve done the research, I’ve looked at the data…Memes are going to be way bigger than we could possibly imagine.”

Figma's October 2016 public launch drew hostile first reactions from established designers, who saw browser-based multiplayer editing as a threat to the traditional single-player design process.

“if this is the future of design, I’m changing careers,” or like “a camel is a horse designed by committee.”

Dylan attributes the backlash to an agency mindset among established designers, who wanted to work solo behind closed doors and unveil finished work rather than build in the open with a team.

“I’m the designer that’s going to be in the corner. I’m going to do this amazing work, and I’ll do the grand reveal”