And this all only kind of reads like an ad.

Glad i'm not the only one who saw it that way.

"Write me a comment for a hacker news comment that explains what figma is and why it's such a great business"

Well, I've asked ChatGPT with your prompt and came out with a very long comment. Asking to shorten it, we get:

"Figma is basically Google Docs for design — a fast, browser-based tool where multiple people can edit the same UI file in real time. No installs, no emailing files around.

Its magic as a business is the frictionless onboarding (just share a link), viral team adoption, and a freemium model that naturally expands into enterprise contracts. Works cross‑platform, so it spreads fast.

That combo — great product + viral growth + strong enterprise lock‑in — is why it became the design platform and why Adobe was ready to pay billions for it."

In the longer form it was also enthusiastic about the WASM part, but that didn't make the cut.

On the contrary, Figma's value proposition is increased by LLMs. Current coding assistants are like savant-idiot junior devs: They have relatively low reasoning capabilities, way too much courage, lack taste and need to be micromanaged to be successful.

But they can be successful if you spell out the exact specifications. And what is Figma if not an exact specification of the design you want? Within a couple of years the Frontend Developer Market might crash pretty hard.

Looking forward to seeing an LLM that can produce good design. Figma is working on this themselves, they have the distribution, so even it came to pass why wouldn’t they own the market? They have the data and the resources to buy more.

That’s not what I mean. Designers can work with any tool to produce a design, and then Claude or Gemini or whatever are quite capable of turning that design into working React code or HTML or whatever.

Hi. Ran a design studio. Used Figma religiously. Having now moved in-house, I’m leaning way more on llms and prototyping.

I don’t think Figma goes way, but I do see it receding.

Just, Devil's Advocate, but..

I mean..

you can create a lot of wealth for yourself by finding the bigger fool so to speak. And arguably, that's what a lot of tech IPOs are in any case, so why single out Figma for engaging in the practice?

It is illegal to knowingly do this.

I mean in the future there are probably no PMs, Designers or Engineers. All those roles are going to converge. There will be a bunch of people that build and manage the software that creates software.