Figma is a startup valued at more than $2 billion dollars.

Co-founder and CEO Dylan Field is a Forbes 30 under 30 list alum.

This is a story about the messy reality of building a startup and the myth of overnight success.

Building Figma was messy

Dylan is really open about it:
• The company idea was originally around drones
• He questioned dropping out of Brown after "the worst week of Figma"
• John Lilly passed on their seed round, saying "I just don’t think you know what you’re doing yet."

Dylan dropped out of Brown University to become a member of the Thiel Fellowship in 2012

He and co-founder Evan Wallace (Dylan's friend and former TA) began work on what started as a Drone company,

But ultimately became Figma.

From @zoink's Thiel Fellowship application:

Evan convinced Dylan not to build in the drone space

Partly because they “couldn’t come up with a drone idea that didn’t hurt people or violate their privacy.”

So what next?

They turned to a 3-D demo of a ball in a pool of water that @evanwallace built years before

It may not look like much,

But it showed that you could have real time graphics in the browser.

They figured they could use this technology to build the entire creative suite.

They started building what they called “Photoshop in the browser”

But Photoshop has tons of use cases.

So they built a series of disconnected projects:

•Poisson Blending on the CPU
•Image Cutting
•Color Lines
•Photo Editor
•and wait for it...

The team spent a week building a meme generator

Dylan calls it "the worst week of Figma."

Was it really worth dropping out of @BrownUniversity for this?

The team lacked focus

Everyone in the company had a different vision for what they were building.

Investor John Lilly passed on the Seed round.

He was honest with Dylan.

He told him, “I just don’t think you know what you’re doing yet.”

One day Dylan sat down everyone at the company to decide on a focus

They killed off several features including:
• animation
• 3D design
• photo editing
• paint

They chose interface design.

They got everyone on the same page with a shared vision and purpose

They were able to move faster.

@johnolilly eventually led the Series A.

Dylan calls him a "key force in Figma.”

The process of building a startup is never straightforward

But like Dylan said recently to @danielgross

"Life is pretty good if you're building things you find interesting.

Keep building and exploring.

You may end up in a place you never expected."

WOW this thread blew up!

If you enjoyed it, follow me for more stories about the messy realities of building a startup.

I'll share openly about the ups and downs as our small team builds http://usejournal.com