Figma CEO Dylan Field sits for an informal interview at an event in Napa on All-In. He argues that design is the new code: as coding models improve, engineers are still needed but code stops being the hard part, so differentiation moves to design, brand, marketing and point of view. He also covers Adobe's $20B offer, which collapsed in 2023 after 16 months of US, EU and UK regulatory review.
Field says regulators define markets by looking backward, citing Roomba as an example of blocked deals backfiring. After the collapse he offered staff a few months' pay to leave, with the option to reapply after six months, and few took it. On Claude Design and the "SaaSpocalypse" narrative, he notes Figma grew 48% year over year and points to Cursor as proof that specialized app-layer companies can beat frontier labs. He now thinks AI only lowers the creative floor, while bold, non-consensus human work raises the ceiling. Figma labels AI-written content "written with AI." He has mixed feelings about OpenAI's math results.