No. 034 · 2012 · San Francisco

Figma

Four years in stealth. $20B on the table. Then the deal died.

Designers in a browser tab

Visit Figma ↗Download GIF
Make my startup a legend
  1. 1 2012. A Brown student takes a Thiel Fellowship.
  2. 2 Bet: pro design inside a browser tab.
  3. 3 Four years. No public launch.
  4. 4 Investors start to worry.
  5. 5 Then: everyone's cursor, same file.
  6. 6 2022: Adobe offers $20B.
  7. 7 Regulators balk. Adobe pays $1B to walk.
  8. 8 2025: IPO anyway.
Founders
Dylan Field and Evan Wallace
Founded
2012, San Francisco
What they do
Collaborative design in the browser.

The story

Field left Brown on a Thiel Fellowship to bet that professional design could run in a browser. The team spent about four years building before launching. Adobe's $20B offer collapsed under regulatory scrutiny in 2023, and Figma went public in 2025.