Welcome and hello from New York. Dylan, it's great to see you and thank you for joining us.
We have hundreds of people logging in now. Our registration was through the roof. We had people sign up from 31 states and 27 countries. So, lots of interest, Dylan, in what we're going to talk about tonight. I can tell you from that interest entrepreneurship is alive and well at Brown. So, Dylan, as most people know, quick introduction is the founder and CEO of Figma. He took the company public in July of 2025. Figma is the leader in collaborative design and is very much on the forefront of what's happening in AI. Dylan is also a mentor through Z Fellows and an active early-stage investor. And as most of you know, Brown is a very important part of Dylan's origin story. We'll hear about that tonight. I'm Michael Zucker. I graduated from Brown a long time ago in 1980. Those were pre-internet days. I'm here to kick things off. I'm a proud member of the Board of Directors of the Brown Alumni Entrepreneurship Group, BAEG. And let me give a quick ad for BAEG. It was founded about 3 years ago. And it's really set up to do three things: inspire, connect, and support Brown entrepreneurs around the world. One of the key things we do is run a mentorship program, a one-to-one mentoring program. We are about to launch our third cohort in the fall. Look for that. Where we assign seasoned people, typically from some part of the tech world, to alumni from Brown who are doing startups. And it's been a really wonderful program expanding each year. We encourage you, for those who have dialed in, to learn more about BAEG. We're going to post it in the chat what our website is. We'd love to have you go over to our website and sign up for emails so you can learn more about us. So tonight, a little bit of housekeeping. Tonight's session is an hour. And the way we're set up is we're going to do about 40, 45 minutes where Danny Warshay, as everybody knows, runs the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship at Brown. We're fortunate to have Danny joining us tonight. Thank you, Danny, for your time. He's going to lead the discussion with Dylan. I've introduced Dylan. And then we have a special guest, Hadley Carr, who's a rising senior at Brown, also studying entrepreneurship. Hadley's going to run the Q&A process. And the way we're going to do that is please post questions into the chat. And through the magic of technology, you can vote on the questions and Hadley's going to moderate the questions to get the best questions over. So and I'll wrap it up at the very end with a couple thank yous. So, over to you, Danny and Dylan. We look forward to the discussion tonight. Thanks again.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much, Michael. Real pleasure to be here. Real pleasure to be collaborating with the Brown Alumni Entrepreneurship Group and to be supporting the Brown Alumni Entrepreneurship Group even since its origins. I am the executive director of the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship. We are thrilled to be hosting, co-hosting this event tonight. And I think as evidenced from the fact that we had I think 660 people sign up from all over the world, as Michael says, this is a real highlight of the year. It comes at the very end of the academic year. And we were I was a little bit skeptical. Is this the right time to do it? It's senior week, right before commencement. And I was proven wrong. We have a groundswell of interest. And I think that's testament to our guest tonight, Dylan, and his interest in Brown and what we're doing at the Nelson Center and the BAEG's contributions as well. So, thank you and thank you, Dylan. I want to clarify one thing. The place to put your questions is in the Q&A. There's a specific button for Q&A. And I'd encourage you to do that at any time. You don't have to follow directions, you can do it from this point forward. I suspect there'll be some common themes, and Hadley, who is a phenomenal moderator because we've had her moderate some Nelson Center events, will field those and then translate them to you, Dylan. And I said it to you just now, and I know most people know my style is to be conversational. So, we don't have to adhere strictly to the specific elements that I shared with you previously, but I thought I would start with where we are today, and then we're going to rewind and talk a little bit about your upbringing and your time at Brown and who your favorite professors were and those kinds of things. But, you are running a public company, and I'm curious, what's surprising to you about where Figma has gone and where it is today? It could be anything you want to answer. I think a lot of people are curious about what's it like to run a public company, what's it like to have advanced Figma to the point where it is now? Is there something that you want to share that is surprising and that you found surprising?
I got a good one to start off with. And first of all, what an honor to be interviewed by you. I remember seeing you back in Hazelteen's class come in as a guest speaker at some point and it made an impression, so it's great to see you again. And yeah, I am just very honored to be with this group today and tonight.
And in terms of the question, I think, so far, knock on wood, running Figma as a public company hasn't been too surprising. I think that AI is certainly surprising. Not in terms of the capabilities we're reaching. I think we were all kind of watching it develop, and if you're paying attention, you knew this would sort of happen. Sure enough, compute energy be thrown at it, capital. But the timelines are still pretty wild in terms of when particular capabilities come online or don't. It's always a little surprising when something's a bit ahead of schedule or behind. And I think another surprise is just the ways that organizations grow and the way that the cultural sort of tenants of the organization across people, joining, leaving, new people joining, preserve over time. And there's so much of I think the intention of Figma as a hub for creativity, as a hub for craft, and just what we stood for at the start of the company, and the play, and the fun of making, that I think has really persisted as a through line throughout the company, and throughout different folks coming and leaving, and then sometimes coming back in. And so I think so much of that spirit also traces back to Brown because my co-founder and I were both from Brown. And certainly the CS department culture, the Brown culture, we were just sort of like we were fish in water there, and assumed that things like curiosity and enjoying craft are things that are tenants of everyone's work. And so certainly we've tried to take many of those values through to Figma, too.
That's great. It sounds like some of what was originally attractive to you about the idea of pursuing this opportunity has persisted, as you say, a through line and you haven't lost that in the midst of dealing with shareholders and lots of employees and HR issues and finance. Do you get to spend a lot of your day working on those core elements that attracted you to this kind of thing in the first place or is it a small part of what you do? How do you spend your time now that you're the head of a public company?
Always a mix. Sometimes I'll have entire weeks focused just on building in product and other times, there's a lot of other stuff to work through and it's a mix of every week there's product elements and I'm always working on little side projects here and there to make sure I understand stuff properly. But yeah, I don't think there's a rhythm or regularity to my days right now. They're always interesting though. So, there's that.
Good. I guess if you said anything otherwise, we would worry and we would feel bad about that. Maybe your shareholders would too. If we were to ask in general because I have a feeling there'll be some specific deeper dives into AI. You mentioned AI briefly in terms of how quickly the time frames are sped up and some of the challenges related to that. But how are you thinking about AI overall in terms of either embracing it or its challenges, how do you think about AI with respect to where Figma is today?
Yeah, I mean I think that overall, just what the viewpoint is that we've had historically and how we continue to think about it is very much an embrace. That doesn't mean that you can't ignore sort of what the models are good at and what they're not good at. We learned also early on in our AI journey that the sort of worst thing you can do is try to force the model to be good at something it's not just not good at. Instead you really want to identify capabilities and then lean into those capabilities where it's really strong. And so overall, one of the areas that the models are most capable is code. And that's not to say that it's going to always do a perfect architecture or even solve a toy problem in a perfect correct way. It can overcomplicate, it can kind of make stuff up. There are many issues still. But the overall progress is so strong. And with that progress being so strong I think that especially for the prototyping use case and probably production one day too, we think that design will be the layer above code. It'll be how people are really thinking through what to do and how to create software. It'll be the way that they diverge and think through many new solutions through design. And code is very linear so I think it's well set up for that. And it'll be a mix of designer representations, code representations that you utilize in order to effectively manage your process and your creative process and explore new solutions. And I think that in a world of ever more software, what's the differentiator? Well, design is a big part of what will differentiate the best products, the best teams, the best companies. And also help break through the noise creatively. I think that in the marketing environment that will be in, it's never been more saturated already and we're going to see plenty more noise as well. And so a strong brand, really good creative work will be essential to really get a toehold in the attention economy in order to make sure that people will see your amazing product too.
You know it's interesting. My reaction to that as a professor of entrepreneurship is that it's the fundamentals you're talking about. Those are things that were appropriate and critical and important before anybody put the letters A and I together. They were probably important back when you and I first met, as you say, and will always be important. At least that's the way we teach entrepreneurship. And the power of a brand, that's brands reduce searching costs, as I always teach my students, and since like that's fundamental to the way you're thinking about it. So, it doesn't sound like it's a significant or even general departure from what you would lean on to be a successful company at any time, and you're looking back to those same old fundamentals that will carry you forward. Am I hearing you right?
Yeah, I think that said, there are fundamentals that their importance will multiply. And I would say that brand and intention, point of view, great design are some of those, and craft as well. And I would also say that what gets you there in the first place? Well, I think really good judgment. Which is so hard to quantify, to define, even. But you see it in the clarity of thinking when you're hiring people, when you're interacting with folks on the team, places where judgment is extremely clear versus it's still a bit muddy. And I think that is maybe the underrated trait right now. And perhaps in the past, like, yes, you could say that judgment has always been important. Obviously, it has. But I think that the funny thing is how people assume that the sort of problem finding aspect of entrepreneurship is so hard. My point of view is there's a million problems just laying around like pebbles on the beach. And selecting the right one might be hard. But without significant amazing judgment, I think you definitely in the past could start a company of some size and scale. And if you worked hard enough, make it work. Now, would it be like a great company that will scale and be large? That's TBD. If you don't figure out how to pivot and find your path, but I think that judgment will be what separates great products as well as great teams. And it'll be very important in the years ahead as well brand design.
I'm sure that where judgment is something that Brown students who are on right now, I hope Brown alumni like me find appealing because I think that's partly what we imagined we would be gaining when we went to a school like Brown. And even if we didn't know, we got it. And that's part of a liberal arts background that you learn how to find problems, assess them, judge their solutions, regardless of what specific technical field you might be leaning on in your case, computer science, design. But I think Brown, my interaction with Brown students and lots of Brown alumni suggest that Brown people are really good at exercising good judgment. Not 100% of the time, but in general, that's a trait I think that Brown people have because that's the environment in which they learn things when they were in school for a number of years.
Yeah. And also just the curiosity that I think Brown students have is an example of the trait that leads you to the exploration, divergent thinking that you also need in order to really find the right path ahead to break out. And Brown certainly attracts the types of people who if they so desire can become great entrepreneurs. And that said, Brown students have all sorts of interests and I think it's awesome to see them pursue all of them. There's no one path and entrepreneurship's cool but there's many other cool things too.
Well, and even within entrepreneurship, if you don't mind my injecting a little data point about the Nelson Center, this year alone we had, I know because my colleague Sheila and my other colleague Olonda counted, we had 1,695 students take our 30 courses. That's just for credit taking the courses, and then we had thousands more participate in events like this, co-curricular activities. We have our biggest number ever getting our certificate in entrepreneurship, 60, and what's great about those 60 is they represent 28 different concentrations. So to your point, they come from different backgrounds, different points of view, all interested in exercising good judgment, to use your phrase, about figuring out a problem to solve, solving it on a small scale iteratively, and then looking for ways to scale those solutions. And so what you're describing is familiar and it sounds familiar in terms of the way we define entrepreneurship, the way we teach it at Brown through the Nelson Center, and then how we send off alumni to the open arms of the Brown Alumni Entrepreneurship Group who take them from there. And as I say that, that collaboration has been really fruitful and really a wonderful thing. So what you're describing, you could probably describe in any venue and I'm sure you do, but it seems to resonate very closely with Brown's ethos in general and with the Nelson Center and the Brown Alumni Entrepreneurship Group's mission in particular.
Yeah, I think also the underrated aspect of Brown always is the open curriculum. And the chances to be at the boundaries of the intersections of different fields and to define new areas that are underexplored or even start your own class, do your own study, that's really special. And I think it's the sort of thing that people too often forgot about when I was there. And definitely I think it's where a lot of the most important ideas that we'll see in our lifetimes will come, in these new territories. Certainly for me and Evan when we started, we thought, 'Okay, how do we pick an idea?' And the way we approached that was, 'Well, what is changing about the world?' And Evan and I had talked a lot about that and we were coming from a tech background and so, instead of other great arguments to look at, like regulatory change, change of behavior, cultural change, there's many different types of change that you could look at to answer this question, but we looked at technology and we're like, 'Okay, well, here's a big list of all the pieces of technology that we think could be interesting, but WebGL and drones was at the top of the list.' And then after about a month or so, Evan said, 'I don't want to work on drones.' I was still excited. And so, then WebGL it was. And thanks to Evan's work in the CS department, his teaching of an undergraduate class, which I mean, how many undergrads get to teach a class? Isn't that a great thing about Brown? And the way he had been involved as a TA for graphics, he had a real edge and insight around WebGL. And the power of it and the possibility it can enable. And so it was like, okay, games or tools? And chose tools and we're off to the races.
You know, it's funny you say you rejected drones. It's the second example of that, at least that I'm aware of. Maybe there's lots of examples of that. Drones just get rejected. But one of the first winners of our $50,000 Brown Venture Prize competition came to us originally, very smart computer hardware guys, and they said they were interested in a solar drone. And we said, for all sorts of reasons we were helping them understand the challenges, lots of capital expenditures, and not sure about the business models. And we weren't even sure what problem they were looking to solve. Eventually they applied some hyperspectral imagery technology to starting a company called, at the time, Cloud Agonomics, now Perennial. And they've recently raised, I think, $35 million in a Series A, and they're off to the races and helping farmers optimize carbon sequestration. And so in both of those cases, I mean, who knows where Perennial will end up, but it was because they took a detour away from their original interest in drones to do something that was much more focused on solving a real consequential problem. So it's funny to hear you say that Evan was interested in drones at first because...
No, no. Well, more me, and then Evan was like, no.
On drones. I'm like, well, I'm interested in WebGL, too.
So, then we got to WebGL. But yeah, I was excited about drones. I think Evan was correct also by saying that hardware is very difficult. And it is. And also the run to bug loops for hardware are not as fast, and regulatory challenges could be intense. And we were having this conversation end of 2011. And so he was I think very wise to kind of see all the things ahead there.
Maybe if you don't mind, could you rewind even a little bit further to before you got to Brown, even how Brown was on your radar, why did you pick Brown, what did you do before Brown when you were in your free time before you ended up in college. And then, we'll move on to a little bit deeper dive into your time at Brown, favorite professors, a couple other things that maybe you'd like to share beyond your Figma origin story. But, what else would be interesting do you think for our audience to hear about?
Well, I mean I think, I grew up in Northern California, in Sonoma County. Beautiful, amazing place. I'd say that I was lucky in that I had parents that really were cool with me exploring whatever I wanted to explore. And supported that, but didn't force it. And so, early on in my life, that was acting. And I'd say that the main benefit of that because I kind of stopped when I hit puberty. I got awkward, had braces, I stopped getting roles. It was a real jump cut. But I think that I went on so many auditions that I didn't get. I was lucky to get a number of really cool roles as well, but because of the child acting experience and going on all these auditions and literally not getting selected. Sometimes it was as much of a situation as there's me and there's a kid that looks exactly like me in a room, and they're picking one of us. Beyond that, you could blame it on luck. But when you get to that stage, you're like, 'Ah, shit.' But I just don't have a fear of rejection because of that. And I think that's something that a lot of other folks seem to have and it's never been my reality. And so, I think that it probably has helped me. And going into high school, got a chance to do a lot of robotics and math. I went to a high school that was engineering focused and very project-based learning focused. Small public high school and also got to take classes at the local university to supplement. And then also got to intern at O'Reilly Media. My friend's dad was the IT guy there. And amazing person and really just helped me connect with them. Through O'Reilly got to meet entrepreneurs and meet people from tech and saw that they were like everyone else. And it wasn't like I was thinking, 'Oh, man, can't believe that person's in charge of that company.' It was more like, 'Wow, they can do it, I can do it, too.' And so hopefully anyone who's listening to me talk right now and going, 'Oh, man, what's that guy got that I don't?' Nothing. You can definitely go do whatever you want as well. And I hope that's an empowering message. I think I was lucky though to have capital at the start of Figma from the Thiel Fellowship. It was a $100,000 grant over 2 years and that made it so that we didn't have to deplete all of our savings and could eat things that were nicer than ramen, live in a pretty decent two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto. It went quite a long way back then. So, felt very fortunate to have that capital that was non-dilutive to start Figma. And that's rare, of course.
Right. And maybe you could talk a little bit more about that decision because it seems from the outside looking in that it would have been a pretty heady decision. Was it? Was it just pretty obvious that this is some path you should pursue? How did you think about that?
Yeah, I mean, I certainly wasn't even convinced that I would start a company one day, maybe 6 to 12 months prior. And so I wouldn't, this is not a story of woke up out the womb and I want to go start a company. Some people will tell you that, it's not the case for me. But I already had decided I'm going to take a semester off from Brown. I'll be a point fiver. And I had a number of internships, LinkedIn summer of my freshman year. And then the summer of my sophomore year went to Flipboard. And had a chance to go back to Flipboard as a sort of product design intern. And with that got very excited about the chances to really learn from some amazing designers. And was not qualified honestly to have that internship, but they were kind enough to let me do it. So I thought I'd go take a semester off. And then these conversations with Evan that started end of 2011, early 2012 were continuing. We're talking every week and I think it was less of like I have to start a company and more of this is the most rare and unique experience to start with Evan. He is an absolute genius. I knew that from my time with him at Brown. And I had the reference points of these amazing folks that I'd worked with in industry. People who went on to start other companies that are now public. Folks who literally invented programming languages like Java. And I was like, Evan might be smarter than them and he's a senior at Brown. This guy is beyond incredible and also high integrity, kind, everything. And so I thought even if we fail, I will learn more than I could in any other situation by working with Evan. And that made it something to seriously consider. And Evan's side, he was like, 'Eh, I've done some internships, they're kind of boring. I got full-time opportunities, they also sound kind of boring. I think it'll be too easy.' And very humbly he had the confidence, but the humble confidence of 'I know what I'm capable of and I want a real meaty challenge.' And yeah, I just loved that hunger that he always had for solving really hard problems.
I love hearing that, partly because it reinforces for all my students and former students with us right now, the importance of the team and the people and the co-founding. And, in fact, the method that I teach for analyzing an opportunity is POCD: people, opportunity, context, and deal. And it not accidentally starts with people. And that's the story you just told right now. I mean, a lot of people were curious when I told them that we were going to have a conversation and they wanted me to ask a lot of deep dive questions about the problem you were looking to solve in collaborative design and the technology was like, but I love that you are emphasizing your co-founder and that that was really what was compelling. I mean, all the rest I'm sure were compelling too, but you chose to emphasize Evan and his capabilities and I don't know if I were speaking to Evan if he would say the same about you. My bet is he would. But, in my experience seeing the trajectory of startups to real amazing success relies on exactly that. It's the people. And sometimes the problem statement changes, certainly the solution statement changes, the introduction of something like AI we're talking about before, which I'm sure we'll talk about more, but I love the fact that your enthusiasm as you reflect back on your co-founder.
Yeah, and just also be clear, the problem statement when we started was not clear at all. We saw a why now, something that was changing in the world and a new technology to build on, and we thought, okay, this is going to be relevant to some set of problems. We will work through those problems. Funny enough, as a product design intern at Flipboard, it would lead me right back to go fixing the tools that I knew were pretty broken and I knew were issues, but I didn't know yet, Evan and I were not sure how big that TAM was. And so to start, we took 9 months to go think about other stuff and to the point about the drone company, many of those explorations were helpful later on. But it was an entire 9 or 10 months before we got onto the track of what would become Figma for product designers and building tools for designers. And it wasn't initially a thought of this is this big market we're going to go tackle. Instead it was this is a tiny market and it'll be a start and we can bridge from there to something else.
Even more so then, right? Because it wasn't even like you had clarity of the problem let alone the solution, but what you had clarity on, it sounds like maybe there's some of looking backwards and realizing it in retrospect, but I'm sure there was some intuition at least about the nature of your partnership that you and Evan were really good partners or at least it looked like you would be.
No, I mean that was the thesis. Evan and let's go explore WebGL.
Imagine that, but it's true. And to them and to all students, if they're curious, I say don't pick courses, pick professors.
Because it's the quality of the person teaching you more so than what they're teaching. And the opposite is true, too. If you have a bad professor, of which there are none at Brown, of course, but you know, if you could have imagined that, that would be a bad learning experience. So it sounds like the real important chemistry was with you and Evan.
Yep. And just to reinforce that even more, like many other students before and after me, I went and as one of my projects at Brown, created along with Devin Finzer, actually, who's the CEO and founder of OpenSea.
And a former student of mine. Well, I hope he's on right now. We'll have to say hello to Devin.
And we went and made this CS32 project called CourseKick. The entire idea was to be able to see what your friends are taking, but also dig into the recommendations of what other classes have been taken together before. It's actually kind of interesting. I did a data visualization based on this CoursePair data. Based on it, you could kind of see this web of knowledge, all the different classes at Brown and how they related to each other. You see how biology became biochemistry became chemistry. And then there's this weird one, Engine 90, that was stuck in the middle without any engineering classes nearby.
Yeah, it was stuck in the middle.
To see that data visualization.
Too. I've lost it over the years. It's so sad, but it was really fun at the time to poke around and see these things that were literally in the data showing up as examples. But the more I use the system, the more I kept coming back to the best professor is the best professor. That's the reason to take the class.
Can you think of any that had a profound impact on you? I'm sure there's some.
Yeah. Anyone you want to shout out?
I know Wendy's on with us today right now actually.
Amazing. Well, she taught me how to write. I'm thankful for that.
And for her very clear and direct feedback when I came to her office hours as a freshman first semester and said, 'Why did I get this grade in my paper?'
I'm sure she told you exactly.
She told me exactly why. And then she also was a great mentor. In the CS department, so many as well. I really enjoyed my interactions with Andy Van Dam, of course, as so many of us have.
Andy may be on with us too, as a matter of fact.
Hi Andy. But Spike was another great professor who really spent time with me. I really also was grateful for even casual interactions around the department with people I didn't take classes from. Never got a chance to take a class from Sriram, for example, but we're just going back and forth online as of Friday. So yeah, it's amazing the community that I had access to at Brown. Just very grateful for it.
Well, and it was pre-Nelson Center. I don't know whether that might have influenced your teal decision a little bit differently, because now there's lots of what you were focused on and doing, maybe not at that ultimate scale, but happening within the walls of the Nelson Center. That's curricular, co-curricular, and through venture support. It's hard to think back and imagine things were different from how they were, but there's a lot of the kind of thing that you're describing happening at Brown these days under the auspices of the Nelson Center. We're thrilled that you're here today. Everybody has their own trajectory. There are students who are taking time off like you did and circling back and figuring out a way to graduate on time. And there are others who, like you, chose to move on and do other things without a full Brown experience, no worse off for it. We hope that the Nelson Center is providing really essential resources to help students of all kinds. I mentioned before the nature of the kinds of students who come in the Nelson Center. We have a lot of flexibility to define entrepreneurship the way I always have, as a structured process for solving problems. We could rip the name off the building and call it the Nelson Center for Problem-Solving, and that would in some ways do justice to what we're doing. So, have you ever thought of a different course if you hadn't left Brown and if you had stayed, or if you were at Brown these days, what it might be like?
