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Technology's daily show (formerly the Technology Brothers Podcast). Streaming live on X and YouTube from 11 - 2 PM PST Monday - Friday. Available on X, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
You're watching TBPN. Today is Wednesday, 05/07/2025. We are live from the dojo of design. The grid iron of grid and the Valhalla vibe coding. That's It is Figma config twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1:We are here in San Francisco In a at Moscone. In a pod. Are podding in the We're very
Speaker 2:excited about it.
Speaker 1:We're excited to be here. Did you expect the scale of this event?
Speaker 2:No. The sheer magnitude.
Speaker 1:I mean, I met I met Dylan camping years ago. He's not the most boisterous of CEOs. He doesn't walk around with a swagger of someone who takes over San Francisco with something that is absolutely Potentially future man. Don't know if we can go to that camera and show just the scale of everyone walking around. But he was on stage, I mean, it felt like there were it was the Super Bowl of design.
Speaker 2:It did. It felt like stock of generative AI. Yeah. Many people have saying this.
Speaker 1:The gladiatorial games. Feels like Woodstock moment. Like a Roman Colosseum moment.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Like something you see in Gladiator, but for designers and vibe coders.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:But we're very excited. There's so many many different builders, designers, other, you know, SaaS companies. Yep. And, yeah, I wish we could honestly be out watching a lot of the keynotes. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we're gonna be in here talking with some of the people doing keynotes, and we have somewhat of a live audience here. Yeah. We're in in a basically, in a fish bowl.
Speaker 1:It's great.
Speaker 2:And so, if you're here at config, just come by.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Hit us.
Speaker 2:Say hello. Wave. Anyway. We're very excited to be here. And we have a stacked lineup of guests for the day.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So we're gonna run through some designers,
Speaker 1:some venture capitalists, some friends of the show, all sorts of people. Some people we just met a few minutes ago, who
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Stopped by, took some pictures, and we said, hey, come on the show. So we're gonna be doing some interviews over the next few hours, hanging out, talking about Figma, talking about what they're launching today. Should we kick it off with what they launched and then maybe we can go back and do some history on Figma? Yeah. Found some interesting data points to share.
Speaker 1:I thought it'd be interesting to take people through since that's the business side, this is not a business conference. They're not pitching the company. Yeah. They're pitching the product. New products.
Speaker 1:We focus on the business and technology side. Yeah. And so I thought it'd interesting to go through some of Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I can talk briefly Yep. About the new products
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:That are launching today. Absolutely massive. And then we get into we should really run through the backstory Totally. Of the company, early years Yep. Of Dylan Field.
Speaker 2:There's some crazy Dylan Field lore lore
Speaker 1:The lore
Speaker 2:is that will break down. But the things that are launching today. So, the big one, I already posted about this, Figma Sites. Yep. It sounds like what it is.
Speaker 2:Yep. I've wanted this feature since the very first day that I ever used Figma
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:College. So, if you've ever designed a website in Figma, you usually hit this point where you're like, great, we have a beautiful website. Now we want to turn it into a functional website that anybody can visit. And at that point, you would have to go off platform and build your own site or host it elsewhere. Now you can effectively design a site and publish it all within Figma.
Speaker 4:Yep.
Speaker 2:And it's basically taking the time from design to live site down to effectively zero. Right? Publishing in the platform. So that's one of the ones I'm most excited about.
Speaker 1:And there's always like a tension point there with the designers and the engineers where
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The designers want a pixel perfect design, they export Yeah. You know, this amazing PNG usually. Yeah. And then the front end engineer's like, well, I got close enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They have to completely rebuild Yeah. So this
Speaker 2:is a game changer. Yeah. It gives more and more control to the person that's actually designing the website. Yep. And enables them, yeah, effectively to go allows the designer and the user in Figma to ship, even if you're not a designer.
Speaker 2:Yep. I'm not a I'm not a classically trained designer. I basically learned design through using Figma Yeah. Back in the day. And this just is so effectively just empowering, right?
Speaker 2:So I don't I don't have to make something myself and then wait wait for somebody to to dev it out.
Speaker 1:How do you think about this product positioned in terms of, like, enterprise versus prosumer? I could imagine this is all part of a funnel to get individuals like yourself who are doing work in design, and then they publish their site, and then as they scale, they stay on Figma until they're massive. Yeah. Or do you think this is something that will be vended into enterprises for even huge sites?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you imagine at a certain point, there's going to still be, you know, that fine grained control that comes from building something from scratch. But even for front end landing pages, marketing pages, all these things, it was always better to have something that was a little bit more whizzy wig, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Something that you just No, think I think you just look at the journey of a company, right? Yep. If if this is something that you can use, if you just have an idea for a company, something as simple or you're creating an event, you want to get something out there, this allows you to go in Figma, design something in a few seconds Yep. Publish it and get it live.
Speaker 2:And so that can be the starting point for a company and
Speaker 5:I Yep.
Speaker 2:And and you can, I imagine, grow on it? Yep. You know, the the access for Figma sites will be rolling out after today, so, you know, I haven't been able to use it directly yet, but it's it's very kind of like everything else with Figma, imagine it'll be super intuitive. Yep. But, yeah, over time, you know, companies of all sizes from, you know, one person freelance operations to, you know, companies with thousands and thousands of people, I'm I'm sure will be using this product
Speaker 1:You have to imagine it's it's amazing for agencies that want to just share a link with Yeah. The client. And say, hey, here, we're like, we're here's our iteration. We built we built to you a design in Figma, but you can actually just go play with it at this URL as opposed to needing to go into Figma, and there's all these different tools, and even if you're in the view only mode, you're still kind of as a client saying like, well, I'm in a design software. This doesn't feel like the final product.
Speaker 1:It allows an agency. So, yeah, we stuck
Speaker 2:some the agency's I mean, the the amazing part of where design is going Yep. Or generative AI is going Yep. That it takes the it takes the time from rough idea in your head to real product. Yep. You know, in in this case, in the form of website.
Speaker 2:It's just compressing that, right? Mhmm. So the second product that they're announcing is Figma Make. Yep. Allows you to turn natural language prompts or imported designs into working prototypes or apps with AI.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So this is what you're alluding to on the sort of vibe coding side. Yep. You can go in and effectively prompt your way to working products and prototypes. And again, this idea of taking, effectively compressing the time from that initial spark of an idea to something that you can actually use, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And we've talked, we talked with Kari from Linear on the show a week ago, a couple weeks ago Mhmm. About this idea that with with engineering costs dropping dramatically, everybody's expectation is let's not just, you know, let's not spend, you know, hundreds of hours planning and iterating, spending all this time iterating if we can get, basically get to something that's maybe even 70% as good as what the final product will be. Yep. So that we can feel it, use it, and really evaluate it from there.
Speaker 2:The third product, Figma Buzz. Yep. This allows you to create visual assets at scale without compromising brand consistency with built in AI. This is an obvious one. Often time, historically Yep.
Speaker 2:I've built sort of like brand brand books, brand identity guides in Figma. Yep. And then, you know, any number of people on the team are gonna go in there and sort of distort it
Speaker 1:and Yep.
Speaker 2:Put it into different assets.
Speaker 1:Even for us, like, post like a silly meme or something like, we wanna overlay the TBPN logo on a paparazzi photo, for example.
Speaker 2:And it's different every time.
Speaker 1:And it's different every time. Yeah. I'm actually I use like a different app on my phone for that and then don't have version control if our as our logos evolved Yep. They're still using the old logo and stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The idea with Stigma Buzz is any any person in an organization can come in and generate assets for a variety of needs, whether you need to generate an email for retention marketing, an ad for Yeah. Meta, if you need to generate, you know, temp, you know, design for some type of event Yep. You can do that all within Figma.
Speaker 1:I do wonder how much that becomes just a true consumer product because you can imagine something that
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is designed for these brand assets can also be used to make, you know, a invitation to a wedding
Speaker 2:or
Speaker 1:something like that. And a lot of those, like, you know, consumer products that you wanna go in and not just have a blank canvas Yeah. But you wanna be able to build off a template, make something look nice, then export it. Like, you you you could imagine that this allows them to go even further, I guess, down market into the the consumer who might wind up making a design software choice in the future.
Speaker 2:Totally. I mean Yeah. The the line between consumer and prosumer and b to b enterprise is just like blurring.
Speaker 1:I mean, the story of like Gmail, right? Yeah. Like, you get everyone on Gmail account, eventually they're gonna walk into the enterprise and say, I I wanna use Gmail at work. Yeah. Then Google Workspace.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden Google Workspace becomes a huge business.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, I expect this to be big in, you know, the enterprise specifically. Yep. If you have, you know, hundreds, thousands of people Yep. Yep. Yep.
Speaker 2:At your company Yep. Then you wanna keep assets consistent. Yeah. If you are a creative director, VP of design, or CMO Yeah. There's nothing more frustrating than watching people sort of take the brand and just kind of do their own thing with And so this provides guardrails.
Speaker 1:And also, it's like uniquely empowered by generative AI. The example that they have is this national park kind of invitation, and then they're able to publish this template and then have a different design for every animal that you could find in the national park. What Ryan Peterson did with those Chatuchipiti images in Chatuchipiti. He made a poster for every single Flexport location and was able to Oh, right. To, oh, Flexport Sydney.
Speaker 1:It has this beautiful like Sydney background. And so, you can imagine that that's normally so much grunt work, even just to go find the stock image that Yeah. Fits with that. But all of a sudden, you have a, you know, you're you're creating a template that can then have the eastern gray wolf, and the alpaca, and all the different Yeah. Elements that you'd want to actually have a flow of assets as opposed to just like, okay, I made one.
Speaker 1:Now, just as much work to make
Speaker 2:the second one. Totally.
Speaker 1:It's just as much work to make the third one. Instead, you're thinking of this like higher level abstraction, and so you're getting way more leverage out of whoever's on that project, right?
Speaker 2:%. Cool. The last product, Figma Draw. This is a product that allows you to express yourself with enhanced vector editing and illustration tools right in Figma Design. So this is a product people have wanted forever, much like the others, and historically, people would have to go outside Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Of Figma to do this sort of like more complex illustration work, and so now you can do that in house. And so, again, Figma is a company that historically wants to spend the necessary time to make truly great products. And so, again, the full suite here are things that, again, the users and the people that are here at config have been asking for for years. And so it's really making a statement to come out and launch these four massive products. So we should talk about some of the early history.
Speaker 2:Should we dive in there?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I just wanna make sure that John Lapour is ready because we could maybe bring him and do that if there's a gap later in the Yeah. Go. But if he's ready to go, let's bring him in. Welcome to the stream.
Speaker 1:You so much for joining us. Go Grab some headphones. Good to see you. Good to meet you in person.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:Great to meet. What's happening? What's fellas?
Speaker 4:How's it going?
Speaker 2:Not too much. Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3:Podding in the pod. Welcome to config, man. Yes. This is wild. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is this your first one?
Speaker 3:This is my first time coming here. It's massive. I I knew it was a big deal Yeah. But my face was melted when I got here. The street Totally.
Speaker 3:Shut down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a block party.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You kind of expect it with Apple, because they've been doing these these big releases for decades now. Yep. But it's not every year that we see a company graduate to this scale. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so it's really shocking in that way. And then, course, I was talking to Jordy about this, like, Dylan is not the type to be like, oh, it's all about me. Gotta throw this massive thing. Just kind of clearly happened. Because there was demand and there's partners and there's lots
Speaker 3:of It's a community
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 3:Too. Like, it's a epic Yeah. Scale community.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. So can you give us a little bit of background, introduce yourself for the stream for those who might not know?
Speaker 3:Sure. So my name is John Lapour. I'm the co founder of a practice called Black Box Infinite. Cool. The so I'm here at Figma to present in about an hour upstairs on the mezzanine stage.
Speaker 3:And I'm gonna be talking about my weird little corner of the world Mhmm. Which is this bizarre journey that I took towards working in tech and product design Mhmm. Which actually started through working in film. Yeah. And I had this background of making the fake gadgets and technologies that you would see in science fiction superhero movies Yep.
Speaker 3:And things
Speaker 1:like Is that specifically like FUI, like futuristic UI or or product design that would be done by the art department?
Speaker 3:So, for me, it started as FUI Cool. Which was typically implemented into the film as a visual effect after the fact. But also started evolving into, like, really rich world building and creating deep technology concepts that might affect the plot of the story and help to move the narrative along in any of these films. And I love that space. I thought it was a really fascinating world to work in.
Speaker 3:And then I got really excited because at a certain point, pretty early on, real world tech brands started popping up and saying, hey Early. Can you help us close the gap between these aspirational visions of technology that we see in film that sometimes are just they're they're just sort of, you know, beautiful images on screen or stuff that like doesn't make sense if you know anything about tech. Like real tech doesn't say access denied from one side of
Speaker 1:server to another. System beat is being hacked. Yeah. There's a hacker and all the code is spewing out. Oh, they're in my computer.
Speaker 3:Yep. But you get to do these other fun things where you're like, you find yourself prototyping different concepts
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That are a little more applicable to the real world. And so, two years ago, I started my practice because we had hit this inflection point where it felt like the real world technology was not just like catching up to science fiction, but in some ways, it's fully surpassing it. Yeah. Right? And science fiction is still just showing us the same glowing blue Yep.
Speaker 3:Leapy bloops. And there's this whole other world of things that you can get into. And so, what I'm gonna be talking about is this concept of what it takes to design a positive future. And how you do everything that you can to not get too caught up in the science fiction
Speaker 2:Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Of it all,
Speaker 3:especially No,
Speaker 2:I've talked, I mean, if if you wanna change the future, one of the best ways would be to travel back, you know, maybe to the fifties and make a bunch of, you know Yeah. We were talking about positive science
Speaker 1:fiction, solar punk over cyber punk. Yeah. It doesn't always have to be, you know, these dark, you know, glows. Sometimes it can be a more, I don't know, grounded in nature vibe, even for the future.
Speaker 3:I mean, we we know that the near term is gonna be pretty disruptive Sure. On a technological perspective or landscape. Yeah. But we also have been seeing nothing but the future portrayed as like mega dystopian. Always.
Speaker 3:Totally. Like, it's the darkest shit imaginable all the I refuse
Speaker 2:to watch the new Black Mirror.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm just not gonna put it in my brain.
Speaker 3:It's You know, and I mean, it's I I still love that stuff. Yeah, I enjoy it, and I I appreciate cyberpunk aesthetics. Yes, cool.
Speaker 1:Mean, we got some cyberpunk going on here.
Speaker 3:But we we shouldn't be making our real products our real experiences, you know, they shouldn't be influenced or driven by that Yeah. Because it's like Yeah. Yeah. That would look perfect after the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, it's like, well, in order to get there, we have to live through the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Exactly, So,
Speaker 3:maybe we could avoid that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm I'm interested to know, back on the FUI thing, what was the typical software stack back then? Was it a lot of like After Effects and like, were you getting into like Cinema four d and Houdini? Yep. I went to SeaGraph a couple years ago and there was ton of cool FUI projects, but and then I wanna know like how has that evolved as we get into more generative projects and there's just so many more things you can do. Even even robust tools are more accessible just because you can search for what you want to do easier.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely. So you nailed it when I started out with this stuff. It was after effects. Yep.
Speaker 3:It was cinema four It's Houdini and Blender. And Blender and, you know, a lot of these traditional platforms. Yep. And even even when not working in film, our team finds ourselves using some of those tools and those approaches just to kind of like pre prototype Yep. Certain concepts or ideas.
Speaker 3:But also, I'm seeing now there's a lot more new tools and approaches and of course, there's all the generative stuff. Yep. There's, you know, designing things, but designing things while you're in VR or in Apple Vision Pro or So that you have this sense of scale.
Speaker 1:Yep. And you
Speaker 3:get this very different way. I've obsessed with Vision Pro since that Cool. Came out just as this thing where
Speaker 2:How many how many hours a week have you used it since launch?
Speaker 3:I so, I know we're Not not not that I
Speaker 2:know we're not I'm legitimately interested. I'm not trying to do a gotcha, but I'm genuinely curious around, you know, is it is it an hour here or there sporadically? Or It is it is at
Speaker 3:times like it's a very intentional choice to be like sprint.
Speaker 1:You pull that tool out of
Speaker 3:the tool chest. Get it out of the drawer. Yeah. Totally. Blow a little bit of the dust off of it.
Speaker 3:Yep. Totally. You know, put it on and go in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I also find particularly being creative Yeah. In that space.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It for me, it reminds me of like the first time that I ever started using three d tools Yeah. Or learning how to design on a computer because like, it's almost like I've got the world's fastest three d printer Yes.
Speaker 2:In front
Speaker 3:of me that can just like, you know, I I was designing swag for our company and making, you know, a design that goes on a hoodie and then viewing the hoodie at human and immediately being like, oh, well now that I see it, like
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. In my space, like as if it's hanging on a hanger in front of me, I'm gonna change this, I'm gonna tweak this, I'm gonna adjust
Speaker 1:There's something about being in that virtual world that just makes the blank canvas more accessible. Like, I remember I I had this was before Apple Vision Pro, think I had a Quest and went into one of the the modeling softwares there you could kind of just three d draw whatever you wanted, exported as OBJ, brought it into Houdini and then it was so much easier to to kind of tinker with and add, like, all the details on top, as opposed to having to start fresh with just, like, a blank canvas.
Speaker 2:To me, so much of the excitement that I have around, specifically, Gen AI Yeah. Is taking the timeline from that high level idea down to genuinely feeling what the end product could be like. Maybe it's not a % what what it will be, but but yeah, it's just it's once you can see something and interact with it, whether it's a digital product or, you know, even, again, like some type of three d render in VR Yeah. Is just
Speaker 3:And and coming from a background in animation, the process would be, you know, you set your key frames, you set everything up, and then you hit the render button And then you wait. Wait. Then and then you're like, I'm gonna play the render now. Yep. And then you watch it, and you're either excited Yep.
Speaker 3:Or you're like, there's 15 things I gotta change right now, but it's gonna be even better, you know? Yep. And Yeah. It's a real it's really interesting that sort of feedback loop that you And now that feedback loop is getting almost Yeah. Having things be more, you know, the the notion of spatial computing, it makes things a bit more intuitive or just natural
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:At a certain point. We our practice got on everybody's radar early last year because we put together this prototype for what it would be like to watch Formula One race.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. We you did that?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Oh, that went super viral. I saw that. Amazing. I had no idea it was you.
Speaker 3:It went unbelievably That was black for us. Yeah. It it was it was a wonderful experience for us. Yeah. But it also it inspired a lot of people that are working in the space.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And there was a a few different groups of developers who jumped in Totally. And started making their own prototypes Yeah. Based on So,
Speaker 1:that was basically spec work for you. Weren't It was totally paid
Speaker 3:by f one for that. No. Was totally speculating That's incredible. Project just because we were really passionate about this Yep. 3,500 array of sensors Yeah.
Speaker 3:And amazing tech. And we were super disappointed that, like, when we saw the first demos of it, it was, like, cool. Put on this insane hallucination machine and use it to view A two d a rectangle space.
Speaker 2:Your inbox with 2,000 unread leggles.
Speaker 3:Look at that PDF, you know, and That's And I just felt like, there's so much more that you could do with this. And so, that experience, and if you're a racing fan, there's a fully There's so much. Fully functioning beta of
Speaker 1:it. Yeah. That's terrible.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. And it changes the way that you experience this stuff. Totally. And you put it on and you do like feel like Iron Man. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But you also feel like, oh, this is like, this is so obvious. Like, of course, this is the way that we interact with things like this. So, I'm just stoked that there's all these different things that are happening with these paradigms where we're still in the, like, Apple Newton days of all of these things, whether it's spatial, whether it's AI, and it's gonna enable some amazing things that we we can't even accurately predict until these until we've been living with
Speaker 1:these Yep.
Speaker 3:For a while.
Speaker 1:Can you talk a little bit about the reception of AI in Hollywood in the film industry? Like, we were talking about how it takes a day to render. I remember when Redshift came out, we started rendering things on the GPU instead of the CPU. That was like a 10 x increase in speed. Everyone loved it.
Speaker 1:Now, we've now, we're like, oh, we're almost going too fast because it renders instantly. Yeah. And obviously, there's job displacement issues, but in general, are there pockets of cautious optimism?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the only other context that I would add there is, I think an interesting thing has been happening where historic you know, good renders have always been expensive. Mhmm. Truly great renders have always been extremely expensive
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:In
Speaker 2:context. And I think there was this idea, maybe, you know, starting a couple years ago, about what's gonna happen to the sort of craft of generating these types of assets. And the thing that I've seen happen is the okay, you know, okay renders are now available almost at a push of a button. They're not actually three d assets. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But the people that I know that are, you know, truly, you know, elite at the craft are actually busier than ever now. Because companies need to, in some ways, separate themselves again from from the sort of average. But I'm curious what you're seeing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I I wanna be as cautiously optimistic as possible. But there are there's also a a tremendous amount of stress. Yeah. Across particularly the visual effects and animation community.
Speaker 3:A little less so than in digital product design, but I Yeah. Feel like there's a point at which that will start to catch up here as well. For me, these tools, there is something sad about this idea of like this tool is going to do the craft for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. For the people that Sometimes what's enjoyable. I mean sweat Any of the people
Speaker 3:here love The craft. That aspect of it. And they they like the vision and creating, you know, following through on that vision to create an amazing end result. But so much of that comes from the craft and Yeah. Applying yourself to that.
Speaker 3:And there's not, you know, there's not a lot of this work where people are just like, oh, I wish, you know, someone else could do all of this stuff for me. Yeah. There is still, you know, significant portions of this that people just love and enjoy. So, I think that's interesting now. I'm really curious about some of the models and some of the processes for figuring out how the creatives can have a little more control and a little more real time manipulation and basically, you know, are just closing up that feedback loop.
Speaker 3:And the other thing that's amazing to me is as soon as even in, you know, 2022, first gen mid journey stuff, the only people that could make really good stuff with it were professional creative directors. Totally. Whose jobs it was to give Yep. Clear Yep. In, you know, very articulate direction Yep.
Speaker 3:To achieve their goals and had, you know, the vocabulary Totally. Wisdom and now, you know, study art history if you wanna be great at prom. Yeah. Like, you find these cheat sheets of like, hey,
Speaker 1:these are all the different and
Speaker 3:whatnot. So, it's it's wild and it's interesting, you know. I'm I'm excited because things will, you know, we'll we'll get to the endpoint just faster and faster and everybody becomes a production studio
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Of of sorts. And it and it does reinforce, you know, the need for a clear and articulate vision. But, yeah, you know, I just wanna make sure people can still hold on to the craft. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are you excited about any of the kind of other product unlocks downstream? Like, was I was with my son. I he made like this, like, little Lego thing. I was able to take it, Studio Ghiblet, and then but but, like just showing the image was one thing, but when we printed it out, it was like, this is something you could hang on the wall. And I feel like like you kind of reinject that creativity once three d printing gets really good or or some sort of manufacturing.
Speaker 1:And I know you've you've done like product design in many ways. Is there are are there things that you're excited about bringing, you know, yes, this one aspect of the work is collapsed, but then there's other ways to instantiate the the vision.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think three d printing is really really epic, really exciting. Yeah. I mean, at some point, it's also just gonna be like, oh, and your humanoid robot Yeah. Let itself out of the box and will craft whatever you instructed it to build.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's the next FigmaConf
Speaker 3:or what, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's 2026.
Speaker 2:Oh, humanoid. Humanoid.
Speaker 3:So, I bring that up partially because we've been some stuff with some of the leaders in the humanoid robotics space around like, how do you create like a face
Speaker 1:Oh, sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. For these things, which
Speaker 1:is Some of them are so dystopian. It's
Speaker 3:very bizarre.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna name names, but some of them
Speaker 3:are really wild space, and it's
Speaker 2:so What can you share at a high level around what what you think the inevitable face form factor is for humanoids? What's your optimistic vision?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's like uncanny
Speaker 2:I always think about
Speaker 1:Photo real or like the azimuth, just like cute little
Speaker 5:happy faces.
Speaker 4:So I
Speaker 2:think about the example of, you know, you get up, you know, let's say you get up at 04:30AM, you have an early day, you walk out to your kitchen and your your, you know, humanoid is, you know, doing some dishes or something like that. Sure. And what's the face that's that's not gonna, you know, I think over time Gonna be anything, but what's what's gonna be pleasant versus jarred? Yeah.
Speaker 3:So, I I even have a tough time imagining what's the ideal future because I've been so obsessed with, well, what should it be today? Mhmm. Because they're already here. Sure. And I I feel really strongly that today, it should not have eyes a Yeah.
Speaker 3:It shouldn't be this thing that's developed to, like, approach you and be like, tell me, why do humans cry?
Speaker 2:You know, like, should
Speaker 3:it should just it should be very crystal clear.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm a tool. I'm a really expensive, like, forklift or piece of industrial equipment. Yeah. And just, you know, tell me what to do. Yeah.
Speaker 3:You don't have to say please and thank you.
Speaker 2:Should it even have a head?
Speaker 3:You know, yeah. Should it even have a head? I mean, either's you know, and I could go on forever about, like like, why why even humanoid? You know? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Why why work to those limitations of the human body and and whatnot. But it's a it's a fascinating space. There's a ton of things that you have to unpack and even just right now, the priorities are just like safety. Yeah. Making sure that, you know, nobody gets hurt or people can predict what a humanoid robot is going to do.
Speaker 3:Did you see the video that
Speaker 2:Yes. Came out of China a couple days ago where the humanoid just goes AWOL. Well, was in China.
Speaker 4:I saw
Speaker 1:the Yeah. I saw the crazy kind of like
Speaker 2:something not Exactly. It didn't seem like Yeah.
Speaker 1:Probably wasn't trying to attack,
Speaker 2:but you see went It
Speaker 3:was absolutely terrifying. It's like it's like having yeah. It looks like it's throwing a fit and It doesn't look happy. And now I can all I can imagine is like that's the that's the the scariest Black Mirror episode. Totally.
Speaker 3:It was the thing that was like loading the dishwasher. It didn't even mean to kill you. It just was like, I can't stop swinging my arm at Yeah. 90 miles per hour.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's wild. Yeah. Anything else you're excited to check out while you're here? Any other partners you're talking to?
Speaker 3:Oh, man. You know, there's many amazing people. There's a ton of wild talks that I wanna check out. Mhmm. I've been spending a lot of time bumping into some friends that are in the automotive industry.
Speaker 3:Oh, I've done a ton of work in that space as well, which is like probably the digital experience that needs the most Yeah. Un fucking
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. Most people just plug in their phone and then they get this very basic, like, Apple hasn't really refreshed CarPlay
Speaker 2:and The positive is that manufacturers are realizing that people love analog buttons.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:Analog. The problem is they're realizing that today. Yeah. Which means that products will be available in about seven years. So, that's how long it takes to go
Speaker 1:for There's some manufacturers that are putting they figured out how to put buttons on top of the touch screens. Have you seen Yeah. That's kind of a funny, like, hack, because they're like, we just really wanna do one big touch screen, but somebody wanted a volume button, we'll just glue that on and it'll be capacitive, so
Speaker 3:just Yeah. And it's yeah. It's got like a little, like, sausage inside of Yeah. So that it activates
Speaker 1:the Yeah. Touch screen, basically. Such a funny thing. Well, anyway, thank you so much for stopping Thank
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Good luck with the rest of your config.
Speaker 3:Good luck with your talk. You nervous? I'm stoked. I'm excited. I love doing that Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm nervous about walking around because there's just so many goddamn super people everywhere. Yep. And that that
Speaker 2:Not enough time.
Speaker 3:Yep. That gets me into
Speaker 1:my We
Speaker 4:were at
Speaker 1:a conference last week and one of our friends said he shook so many his hand so many hands, his his hand got bruised. Crazy. Awesome. Stay healthy. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Enjoy.
Speaker 3:Have a blast while you're here. Yeah.
Speaker 1:To you soon.
Speaker 3:Alright. Take care.
Speaker 2:Bye. Great to hang.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's fascinating. We have our next guest coming into the studio. I I love the the motion design DNA moving from film and television into the real world, we're finally able to instantiate some of the stuff. And you do and you do see it pop up in in real world devices, but it feels like Hollywood is always the best at defining some kind of new UI paradigm Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then actually bringing it.
Speaker 2:Hey, what's going Hey. Great to meet. Nice to meet you.
Speaker 1:Great to meet you. I'm John.
Speaker 2:Hey. Excited excited to have Well, for show.
Speaker 1:Free to throw on those headphones if you want. Yeah. It'll make it little bit own voice. But let's kick it off with a little introduction of yourself, who you are, what you do, why you're here, how you're enjoying the day, for those who don't know you.
Speaker 6:Sure. Yeah. I'm Elliot and I am a designer and author. I'm here speaking tomorrow, I can relax Nice. I just had to enjoy it.
Speaker 6:I've just seen one of my very old friends do a fantastic presentation on stage. His name's Dylan Field? Tim Van Damme. Oh, Yeah, they just announced some amazing stuff and it's great to be Amazing.
Speaker 1:So what's your talk about tomorrow?
Speaker 6:It's about typography. Typography in design systems.
Speaker 1:Very cool.
Speaker 2:Okay. Us give us the full backstory. I I you I mean, I'll go out on a limb and say you're you're the the godfather of type. It's a little bit dramatic, but I'd certainly have had a massive I'll take it. I'll it.
Speaker 2:Thanks. On Type Online. Yeah, would love would love to kinda hear the the full journey.
Speaker 6:Cool. That's that's kind of you to say. Thank you, man. Appreciate that. Yeah.
Speaker 6:I mean, I've I've been super lucky to kind of work in the type industry for many years. I did a bunch of stuff with Adobe Fonts. I'm now actually doing some more stuff with Adobe Fonts and Google Fonts as well. And I like to kind of balance things like writing about typography and about design with actually being handled in the tools as well. And and, yeah, it's been it's it's been great to just get to get to share that with everyone.
Speaker 1:What is the structure of the industry? I imagine that there's the big players, Adobe, Google, like you mentioned Yeah, who are buying lots of fonts, but then there's also companies that need whole fonts for their own brand systems and their design systems, I'm sure. So, is that kind of the shape of the industry or is there another player that's really important? I mean, How would you break it down?
Speaker 2:It's the independent firms that make some of the fonts that you use and interact with Yeah. On a daily basis, even some of the fonts that I'm I'm sure we use at at TBPN. Yeah. But would love to understand the market
Speaker 6:structure. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, those indie foundries that you mentioned are kind of, you know, the backbone of the industry, really, because even you've got folks like Adobe, for instance, that library is made up of a bunch of different foundry And so they are not owned by companies like Adobe. They are independent practitioners.
Speaker 6:A lot of the time, they are one person bands a lot of time. You know, super super indie. Obviously, you've got folks like Monotype as well who do own large libraries.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And they have they have their IP. But the the type industry is really just made up of of a huge number of independent foundries who are then use those distribution channels like Adobe Fonts Mhmm. Etcetera, to get stuff on there. Monotype have My Fonts as well, which is also another big And the differentiator there, I suppose, is like Google Fonts, they are open source. Yeah.
Speaker 6:And so they tend to not exist elsewhere. Although Adobe Fonts does as One
Speaker 1:second, we're gonna pull in Gary Tan. He's just stopping by.
Speaker 2:Gary, great
Speaker 1:to see you. How you doing? I know you gotta get out of here Good to see you.
Speaker 2:Busy man. It's great to see you.
Speaker 1:How's your Figma config been?
Speaker 6:Oh, it's been sick. Yeah? All I wanted to say was keep mogging, guys.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Always Always mogging.
Speaker 1:We'll see you, Gary.
Speaker 7:Hope you well.
Speaker 2:I'm sure, you know, you do you familiar with Gary?
Speaker 6:I have not encountered Gary.
Speaker 4:He's
Speaker 2:the of Y Combinator, also quite an accomplished designer, a bunch of the logos Yeah. Of of some the biggest companies.
Speaker 1:Anyways, good friends are I wanna know more about the the business model of working with Adobe. Is it like Spotify? Where like you put your stuff up and then the more it gets used, the more you get paid? Or is it more of like a one off deal? Is
Speaker 6:it selling a The the yeah. Usage is is Big piece of it? Shared to the So the successful fonts that get more usage. Okay. They they get more money.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is it at the level where people are trying to, you know, pay influencers to use their fonts to promote them, go trending No.
Speaker 2:Mean, it's so from my perspective How
Speaker 1:mature is the industry?
Speaker 2:From my perspective, I mean, you can see this sort of hype cycle with individual fonts where, you know, one, you know, oftentimes, you know, one designer will leverage a font in a really unique way, and then three months later Everyone has to use it. Sort of an explosion of sites using that.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, you know, we've even had We've had people that have been maybe a little bit too inspired by what we're doing at TBPN actually, you know, find the font that we use for our logo and sort of use that for our Yeah. You know, it's all, you know It'd be frustrating. A fair game on the internet.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it's I mean, you can never predict how that stuff Sure. Takes off as well. Is foundries obviously try and look at trends and see what's doing well and sometimes try to replicate that. But sometimes if something blows up and there's no real reason, it comes from maybe someone using it or whatever. Some foundries have done very well at that.
Speaker 6:I know some type designers who've struggled for many years and slogged away and they've released one thing and it blows up and
Speaker 2:they can a hits business. Buy a house, you know? Yeah. It's a
Speaker 1:hits business. It's just like music. It is like Spotify. Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's amazing. Exactly. Are there specific eras of font design, typography design that you think of as you tell the story of how typography has evolved over the last, like, I don't know, fifty, hundred years or something?
Speaker 6:I mean, it's driven by technology a lot when you think of, like, the move from metal type, wood type, photo type setting, early digital type. When you look at, like, sort of what we know as fonts these days Sure. You know, you got the eighties sorry, the nineties when folks like Fontshop really pioneered that, originally making them available on, you know, actual physical disks and then, obviously, online, and that would really radically change things. And you had web fonts come along in around sort of, what, sort of '20 02/2009, '2 thousand '10, which before that, couldn't use anything on your websites other than, you know, Georgia, Ariel, Donna, Times New Roman, you know. And people forget that that was, you know, a pretty huge thing for web design.
Speaker 6:And I was I was a web designer exclusively at that time, and it was a kind of a wild time to to be working on the web and with all this sort of new stuff that we had to play with.
Speaker 2:How how is the industry reacting and responding to generative AI? I mean, I I haven't played around with any tools around type myself, but I imagine we're not far away from somebody kind of saying, hey, I like these three fonts. Generate me something net new and Yeah.
Speaker 1:It is kind of odd that ChatGPT when they generate images, they can now do text pretty effectively, but they're not using an actual font, you know, library. Like a source. Yeah. Yeah. Source is kind of just creating its own on the fly.
Speaker 6:Yeah. I mean, like everything with AI,
Speaker 4:it's
Speaker 6:Yeah. It's just changing day to day. Yeah. There are definitely some experiments going on. There are some, like, entirely AI generated fonts Mhmm.
Speaker 6:Font generators, which have mixed results. Yeah. But, yeah, there are some tools, you know, which will generate images, and as part of that, if text is part of that, there is some recent huge leaps been made in that. Like, the designer Jessica Hish has been posting a bunch of stuff, some experiments she's been doing with ChatGPT, where she you know, she's a very accomplished lettering artist, but looking she's looking at what ChatGPT can actually put out, and it's actually you know, the the progress is incredible. It's now its ability to to actually do some half decent lettering is is, you know, it's it's super interesting.
Speaker 6:When when you look at a few months ago and you'd be lucky if you even have, like, the right words spelled correctly, you know, or the
Speaker 2:that was always that was the the most quick way to identify if something was AI generated was just how badly all the text was botched. Exactly. But it's certainly yeah.
Speaker 4:It's it's
Speaker 1:Getting getting uncanny. We're pushing past the uncanny valley now. It's it's Yeah. How think the
Speaker 2:what do you how do you expect kind of the business models of the industry to evolve? I imagine I I can see it going, you know, the the way of of fashion to some degree where, you know, maybe in the future you can get kind of a factory a factory font that was just generated, but but there's something about, you know, typography that's almost soulful, you know, and you you discover, you know, something you can just see, you can feel, you know, the the attention that was put into it. Do you where do you expect the kind of how do you expect kind of the industry to evolve and and kind of the business models to evolve as as, you know, assuming I think we can safely assume that generative AI will be, you know, twice as good at type in a year. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 6:Maybe more. Yeah. Mean, totally AI generated fonts are coming for sure. Like, it's it's gonna be a thing. And it is interesting for the business because, at least in in The US, you can't you can't copyright a design.
Speaker 6:You can trademark a name. So, you know, things like Helvetica are always gonna be trademarked and known by Monotype, but you can't copyright the outlines. So, you know, it's interesting. Models can learn from all of the type that's out there. Also, type byte's very nature is very systems based.
Speaker 6:There are there's plenty of, like, maths in there and metrics and things which are, in a sense, easy to easy to replicate. I mean, my my hope, personally, is as a creative person and a and a great supporter of all type designers out there, I hope that there will always be a market for people who want to make type and have something very bespoke and something that we've got a lot of feeling and love put into But for sure, AI fonts are coming, and I think it's going to massively disrupt the industry in the same way that all those previous technological advances also changed the font
Speaker 5:industry. Give
Speaker 1:us some spice. Most overrated font, most underrated font, take some shots.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I don't know. You can go way Let
Speaker 6:let's see. Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, there
Speaker 1:I I Maybe meta commentary. But what what does the community typically say is overrated?
Speaker 6:I mean, the community tends to people like free stuff, right? So a lot of people use use stuff from places like Google Fonts that provide fonts for free.
Speaker 7:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And it's great. There were some superb quality stuff in there. They've done a lot of work recently to really improve the technical quality of their library. Yeah. But it's important to remember that when you're using something for free, obviously, lots of other people are also using it for free.
Speaker 6:Yeah. So to get that differentiation, still the kind of easy hack is to effectively to to pay for a font, whether that's through a subscription service like Adobe Fonts or just buying the font outright from the Foundry. So, that's always a good way to get something that's super unique.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Well, you so much. I think we have our next guest.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is great. For stopping by. Well, thank
Speaker 1:you for Good luck with your talk tomorrow.
Speaker 6:Thanks so much. Hope you get to We'll
Speaker 2:to see you on the internet.
Speaker 6:Alright. See you then.
Speaker 1:Thanks, guys. Cheers. It was great. And we have Andrew Reed coming into the studio next. Second time appearance.
Speaker 1:I'm sure he is doing deals out there, writing term sheets on napkins, finding the next Figma.
Speaker 2:There he is.
Speaker 1:How you doing, Andrew? What's going on? Welcome. Am
Speaker 5:I live?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You're live. You can throw on the headphones, talking to the microphone. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Good to meet you in person. There we go.
Speaker 5:Thank you guys for having me.
Speaker 1:What's going You might be able to adjust it, but you should be No, it's perfect. Okay. Great. Yeah. How how's it been?
Speaker 1:Is this your first config or have you been coming for a long time?
Speaker 2:This is my
Speaker 4:fifth. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say very very bad investor if he's just like, oh, guess now that tick was a big deal, you know, I guess I'll Yeah. Show
Speaker 5:up. I remember back when we got standing ovation for the font picker. Know, the first the first of two standing ovations for the font picker. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:No, mean, today today feels monumental just just given the scale of the event, but but also the launches, the people that were stand you know, you know, doing a standing ovation for the font picker. I'm sure they're here today seeing, you know, the four massive launches. Yeah. And, yeah, it's it's massive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, what what was the precursor to config? Were were there like little user group meetups? You hear about that with like the story of Instagram where like Yeah. Kevin would like go running with the early group, there were only a hundred people on the service, but he still was doing that customer development.
Speaker 1:Do you remember kind of the the arc of how we got here?
Speaker 5:Well, me, so, yes. Well, I remember predating our investment in Figma Mhmm. We were involved with GitHub,
Speaker 1:which was
Speaker 5:Oh, Web Universe, which was like of the same sort of a vibe and actually very similar venues.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:It was the open source developer ecosystem.
Speaker 4:Yep.
Speaker 5:And I remember sitting through some of those universes back in the mid twenty tens and thinking like, I'm never gonna be involved with a company that can do something like
Speaker 2:this. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Know, just having, like, the true vibrant community, like, people actually wanna show up. Yep. I was like, that was a cool thing to be involved with. And then, like, I go to the first config and it was in a room that's, you know, like, the size of the maker studio thing now. And, you know, it was just like buzzing.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And I remember whenever I come to config, like I really feel like I'm cosplaying, you know? Yeah. Like, I like making websites, like, know, some say I apply like a design like creativity to my Excel sheets.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That's an artist.
Speaker 5:Let's say I'm I'm an artist in Excel.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 5:It's funny. I'm so used to
Speaker 2:Used
Speaker 2:to,
Speaker 5:I
Speaker 2:go
Speaker 5:to these events with with my daughters, like, for school and stuff. Yeah. And they're you know, there's always like a long line of people for for face painting. Mhmm. And there's plenty of face painting supplies, but there's only like two or three people who can actually do face painting.
Speaker 5:I see where you're going. I always walk around here like, man, like, everybody here could be the most amazing face painter. You know, it's like, you know, I could just bring my my kids in Yeah. In a face paint
Speaker 2:and have them Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:On on the topic of like these annual releases, Brian Chesky recently said like part of founder mode is like, even if you're a company that can do non waterfall, more agile development, more iterative releases, it helps to get on an annual cadence. Not talking about Figma specifically, but is that something that you think is correct advice for big companies, small companies? Is it going to become increasingly popular because the Airbnb, Brian, the like like the Chesky memo kind of shook Silicon Valley. I know Ryan Peterson at Flexport was like, we're doing that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:At the same time, people have been looking at Apple and saying, hey, AI is moving too fast, Apple. You can't wait to launch your next thing Yeah. For a full year.
Speaker 2:Works well with that.
Speaker 1:Should be dropping software updates every single month and just telling us, okay, you've improved it. So there's a little bit of like a balancing act there, but what like, what do you think of the overall trend of these an annual kind of agenda setting events versus something that's like you you kind of blend the two?
Speaker 5:Yeah. I think I think as software and technology has gotten easier to create Mhmm. It has just gotten so much harder. And as as there's more companies that have gotten started and there's more venture capital Yeah. And like, I remember back when you could, you know, you get a TechCrunch article written about your product launch and it would Yeah.
Speaker 5:You know, you drive all this sign ups and Yeah. This amazing thing. And it's just so much harder to stand out now. Yeah. There are so many companies launching amazing stuff
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Constantly. Yeah. Just as a, you know, like the Red Queen dynamic, like, just to stay in place, you have to be doing usability improvements, AI upgrades, etcetera, to your product every single week Mhmm. Just to, like, kind of maintain Not
Speaker 2:fall behind.
Speaker 5:Exactly. Yeah. Then I think as it relates to, like, genuine product launches, you know, I think and you know, even for the stuff that's launched today, there's an alpha, there's a beta, right? So there's Yeah. You kind of have to do the user testing in sync with this.
Speaker 5:But yeah, it's pretty freaking cool to show everybody the things that you spent a year working
Speaker 1:on Yeah.
Speaker 5:And rally your team around a deadline, you know? Yeah. And like knowing the Figma team, like, this date has kind of been in the back of everyone's heads for a very long time. Yeah. Well, and it's
Speaker 2:such a it's such a, you know, we we can kind of be understated, but but Dylan and the Figma team are making a huge statement coming in with, you know, sites, make, buzz, like these are you know, they can come out with a v one now, but the the you know, my my expectation is they become, you know, very, very significant pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, obviously you're here to support Dylan, but has Figma grown into a type of ecosystem where there are other potential power loss startups building in on around? Because you see that with a lot of companies. I mean, Zuck was just talking about it with like Facebook ultimately becoming a platform at a certain point. There's been a lot of companies that have built from the Shop eyes.
Speaker 1:Obviously. Is there story around like the broader design ecosystem that's taking hold? Or is the venture capital community still just kind of like like laser focused on fig Figma by itself?
Speaker 5:I think Figma has supported and enabled a broad network of plugin developers for a long time. And I think a lot of the power of Figma, you know, comes from what Figma enables, but also comes from the ecosystem around it. That applies to things like templates. Right?
Speaker 1:Like Yeah.
Speaker 5:And to these plugins. Yeah. So I think Figma, from a architecture standpoint, Figma was a platform before it became the the platform. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 5:And I do think it is the center of a community and a center of a community of products.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:Mhmm. And I love the the mission of, you know, trying to eliminate the gap between imagination and reality.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:You know, these are not just face painters. Right? They're like the most creative people in the world Yeah. Who also love technology. Yep.
Speaker 5:And I think for people with minds like that, allowing them to do so much more, that's like one of the coolest things a company can do.
Speaker 1:How do you think about design trends in the decks that you get pitched? I mean, if Figma launched a deck designer, obviously, just design is becoming more accessible, it's becoming more affordable. And also, I feel like there's a little bit of just a meme in Silicon Valley that, hey, like, if you're going out for series a, it's not unreasonable to spend 10 k, 50 k Yeah. On design for your deck. At the same time, that can totally be like band aid on a bullet wound if you're not actually building a great business.
Speaker 1:So I imagine as a as an investor, there's a little bit of like, don't fall for the pretty design, but we've seen trends where, I mean, for a while, there were like a ton of direct to consumer companies that were just getting funded. Was like Yeah. Oh, you you went to the exact same brand thing that the Warby Parker guy Yeah. Whatever.
Speaker 5:No, it's funny. I remember this is gonna definitely date me. Yeah. You know, we used to print out all these decks. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Right? You would like, you know, get the deck and you Yep. Just hit print. Then I remember
Speaker 1:It started being black. No.
Speaker 5:And then for the first, so we With black backgrounds? For the first, I'm gonna send this clip to Joe at Loom. Yeah. Joe and Vinay from Yeah. For the first board meeting for Loom, they did like a 30 page deck in like dark mode squared.
Speaker 5:Right? It was like the the level of dark gray versus modestly less gray in these stacked bar charts was impossible. And I I I came into the board meeting with this printout and it looked just like basically like a bunch of black pages. We've already lost like $400 on this investment because we have to burn through our entire printer ink and I can't figure out what the hell is going on in our business, you So anyway, we switched that one to light mode. But I do think like presentation, you know, it's like anything in business, you know, at its course, like the Don Valentine thing is storytelling, right?
Speaker 5:Yeah. And visual storytelling is imperative to fundraising. It's imperative to sales. And I think having the right set of assets to tell your story, it really matters. I actually do think, like, spending the money to create a presentation that really captures your idea, your ethos, what you're trying to build is, like, totally worth it.
Speaker 5:And, you know, there's also the flip side that, you know, you can do it in the Times New Roman, you know, like Yeah. You know, the the Spresatura presentation, you know, or like so you can go that path, like look how little we tried
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Or you can do the Yeah.
Speaker 1:Really good. Every once in a while, you see a deck from someone who's like coming out of an enterprise and has like deep, deep institutional knowledge and they're probably gonna build something really cool, but they just don't understand design or even how to speak Silicon Valley's language at all. And you're like, okay, I gotta like, you know, actually read through the read between the lines.
Speaker 5:No, the worst is when you the ones that are and as a, you know, I used to work for Goldman Sachs. Yeah. You know, as a former banker, I I I love my investment banker friends. Yep. When you get the all of a sudden, it's a series b company Yeah.
Speaker 5:And they hire the
Speaker 2:is that, you know, Dylan and it's Evan. Right? Yep. Dylan and Evan, you know, spend years, you know, basically in obscurity building this, like, you know, product, you know. Today, if a founder was building a SaaS tool and they were three years in and, you know, didn't have, like, a a product that they were letting people actively use, I think most investors would would write it off.
Speaker 2:I've I almost feel like there it it almost ended up being an anti lesson, you know, that sort of four year period of obscurity, because they were using they were pioneering the use of WebGL for, you know, browser collaboration. And have you ever found yourself kind of like pushing back on founders that are like, well, Dylan and Evan spent, you know, four years getting their products
Speaker 5:I exactly what you mean. So I think it's a little bit like, you know, for for Dex, you can either do the we really didn't try it all or we made it look beautiful. Yeah. I think with companies similarly, you can do the we're gonna iterate constantly in the market and find our way to product market fit or you can do the we have a concrete vision and we're gonna build what we wanna build. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And when we launch it, it's gonna work. I think the in between area where you're just like slowly maneuvering off of your initial course, like that's Yeah. I think the really The unhappy path. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And I think, I mean, we've done so many retrospectives on and like analyses on what are the commonalities between the big outlier Mhmm. Big outlier companies. And the reality is, if you look at most of Silicon Valley history, the length of time it took you to get from nothing to a million dollars of revenue is basically uncorrelated with Yeah. How fast your company grows. But the how fast you go from one to 10 is highly correlated.
Speaker 5:So basically, it's like, you know, you're trying to coil a spring, you know? And Sure. Most of the companies that really make it go very fast out the gate, but take a variety of times to get Yeah. Into
Speaker 1:most the most recent example probably OpenAI. Literally a non profit for a decade and then all of a sudden a billion in like a couple months. Do you think that there's like Well, actually, one more Yeah.
Speaker 5:Figma lore story. I've never seen I just this is a Doug Beyonce story. So I think, you know, like Yeah.
Speaker 2:The Of course.
Speaker 5:It's time to give Doug his his So when we were doing our Figma investment, it was this was January 2019 and I was an associate, I was like, do my best to to position ourselves and I thought, you know, we have we're totally gonna do this investment, you know, like, Dylan Dylan loves us. And
Speaker 1:I was But just in
Speaker 5:case I'm gonna bring Doug in to, like, you know
Speaker 2:Bring in the big dog.
Speaker 5:And so Dylan and Evan are coming down to our office in Menlo Park. We had already given them a term sheet. Sure. And we're just, you know, trying to them how much we love them.
Speaker 1:Is that the term sheet in that photo?
Speaker 5:Yeah. The one that got like, you know, someone did the CIA analysis to figure out all the No, you see. We did the reverse That was a yeah. That was my bad to our comms team. And we're about a, you know, about to the meeting and Dylan and Evan both into Brown and Brown's one of our LPs.
Speaker 5:And we have all our all of our conference rooms at Sequoia named after our LPs. And, you we when we were gonna do this meeting in the MIT Conference Room And then, you know, I was just like, yeah, it's a a much nicer conference room than the Brown Conference Room. Then Doug was like, no, we're doing this in the Brown Conference Room. And like, ten minutes before the meeting, he moves the meeting to and then he goes into our system and shows he prints out a page with like all of the amount that Brown had invested in our various funds over the years and how much we had returned back to Brown. Wow.
Speaker 5:And sits down, you know, we talk about Sequoia and all the stuff that we're doing. He puts this piece of paper out and Brown is where Dylan and Evan met. It's where a lot of the early work at Figma kind of began. Yep. And I was
Speaker 1:like, this guy freaking rocks. Wow. That's good extra stuff.
Speaker 5:I was about to be just like hanging in the MIT Conference Room with no plans. So, anyway, that's the The playbook. It's crazy
Speaker 1:to actually go that extra step.
Speaker 2:You have fun at Brown? Well, we played a part.
Speaker 5:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Switching gears a little bit, are you surprised at how Gen AI seemingly came for image creation before product design in some ways. Like, yes, you can use Gen AI to generate, you know, screens of various products, but you would think that that would be a lot of the product designers I know are still, you know, doing this sort of handcrafted work to design, you know, flows and features and things like that. And meanwhile, if you wanna generate an image of the three of us sitting in a podcast studio, you can do that instantly.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I've been I'd say I've been generally surprised at the order of things that have come out of this generative AI ecosystem in general. Right? Like, remember I remember back when people were, you know, self driving truck wave and there was all this concern about blue collar jobs, you know, and everyone should learn how to code and you fast forward five years.
Speaker 2:I said, well,
Speaker 5:that was a very seemingly poor take, you know,
Speaker 1:in hindsight. Same thing with radiologists. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They almost all have their jobs still.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And who is it? Was it Hinton or I forget, was someone big machine learning foundational researcher was saying, like, stop training them.
Speaker 5:Yeah. It's the the As
Speaker 1:soon as
Speaker 5:it happened. Yeah. The, you know, how stuff and I think it ultimately it's kind what was saying about creativity earlier. I genuinely think it's not because of a difficulty of the problem or some underlying architectural thing. I think it's just like, know, like look at the image editing models that came out of amazing diffusion work.
Speaker 5:Right? And that just happened at a point in time because of the creativity of a group of people. Yep. And it's amazing. Right?
Speaker 5:And I think that same sort of thing, you know, bottoms up creativity creating massive technology innovation. Like, that has been the story for this whole wave, I think that will continue to be the story. And I think predictions from people, you know, who are the spreadsheet types are gonna consistently be proven wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you think that there's a Dylan Field out there right now, kind of grinding in silence for four years and then we'll come out with something disruptive? Or or does that does that pattern not even work in the age of the Internet? Well, Sequoia's Probably already gonna check-in.
Speaker 5:Well, Dylan is interesting. It's like, haven't you guys known Dylan for a long time? Yeah. You know, like, Figma was grinding for a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:But it's not like they were grinding in true silence. Like, Dylan and Evan were in seven Evan, you know, absolute genius. Yeah. Dylan, very engaged in the ecosystem. He's a Teal fellow.
Speaker 5:Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We were wondering about those early rounds because it seems like going back to 2014, '20 '15, like doing a $20,000,000 series, even a $4,000,000 seed round. Yeah. Like, that's not easy even if you're a hot company. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah. I I don't know.
Speaker 2:But Yeah.
Speaker 5:They were and they were, you know, they were engaging actually, like, interestingly, so many of the people who I've run into already today were Yeah. People who were, like, the early users of Figma when it was still a developing product.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 5:And those peoples, you know, they they didn't hear about it and wanna try it and Yep. You know, sign up. Like, are that's customer development. Right? Like, Dylan was, like, one of these true grassroots growth people in addition to the, you know, like, the the kind of product Product mind.
Speaker 5:Visionary. Exactly. And building this community, it's like everything that is magical in the what's that John Collison? The John Collison tweet around like it's a museum of passion projects, right? Like, this community doesn't just happen, right?
Speaker 5:Like, starts with a spark and I think that spark really is Dylan. Like, I remember there's a guy named Stileo Cuervo who's the first product designer at Facebook.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:He now does some investing. He's an amazing, amazing guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And I remember he told me about Dylan, you know, back when Figma wasn't even around yet. And he was just like, guy's gonna be amazing. And it's funny. He's interested in me, like, four people and one was Dylan and then one was Guillermo from Vercel. Oh, wow.
Speaker 5:So, like, he's an Oleg. No more opt in.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean?
Speaker 5:If you got somebody, send them my way.
Speaker 2:Yesterday. Yeah. On on the note of you you said Dylan kind of creating this spark of community. I think that when people, when startup founders talk about community, it's almost it's almost like a meme because usually the first context that they're using it in is like, oh, we should have a dinner. And it's like, to me, like a community is not like getting a room at a nice restaurant and just like getting people to show up and eat free food.
Speaker 2:Like, this is a community of people that have traveled from, you know, basically every, you know, bunch of different continents Yeah. All the way here taking time out just to be immersed with this group. And it just feels like community is ultimately created at the product level to some degree. Yeah. Like, you can kind of like
Speaker 5:Well, that's I completely agree with this. And to me, like, I was thinking about this this morning. I wish everyone could have seen the keynote. Like, it was so awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Watching a rock
Speaker 5:star. Like, the room the the room was it's so big. So many people in that It's massive.
Speaker 2:It's I didn't like, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 5:But then you're like it's like 9,000 people, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:It's like, you know, imagine seeing a slide with 9,000 monthly active users, right? They're nothing. Yeah. You know? But 9,000 people is a lot of people, right?
Speaker 5:To me, it's the like, your users aren't just numbers, your users are people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Right? And the nucleus of this community are people who travel from Southeast Asia to be here, travel from Europe to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Travel from Africa to be here.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:And that core 9,000 Mao has such a loud voice and the ability to, like, really propel a company forward. And if you put those 9,000 MAO into a room, it looks like that. Right? Like, it's it's enormous. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And finding the ability to get that level of Nucleus, think is like it's a product thing, right? Yeah. You don't just buy them dinner.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know you can't talk about public companies too much, but I'd love to know if you have any interpretation of what's going on with the Mag seven right now on as far as like an opportunity for startups like today. What what what was the news with Google? They traded down based on
Speaker 2:Apple might not something services basically came out and said that for the first time, searches in Safari like shrank month over Yeah. And
Speaker 1:that's It just seems like there's general chaos in big tech, whether it's Google may potentially splitting up or, the pressure on Facebook for Instagram, it just feels like that could be fertile ground for startups. Yeah. At the same time, a lot of people have been saying artificial intelligence, it just reads as a sustaining innovation, not necessarily a disruptive innovation. But what are you like, what is the level of optimism around the next generation of founders right now, given what's going on with these, like, very well run companies that are often in founder mode or have amazing management teams and fortress balance sheets? I think
Speaker 5:I forget whose law it is that you as a company ship your org chart, you know?
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know. I know
Speaker 5:that one. I'll be looking up afterwards.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Whatever. Reed's Law now.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. Reed's Law two.
Speaker 8:Reed's Reed's
Speaker 5:Law two. The I think the idea that AI will be a sustaining innovation, I think it's probably it's probably like far enough along now to call that like mostly wrong so And I think it comes from that grassroots creativity combined, you know, small number of people, especially with AI, can do so much. I think that's one of the things that I was thinking about listening to the Figma keynote is, like, you know, if the origin of Figma were was specific, you know, verticals inside of companies, designers, developers, marketers, content people, legal, you know, coming together and collaborating to move this, like, very complicated process from idea through to Yeah. Deployment. Now, any one of those people can basically do all of those jobs.
Speaker 5:I think that's like that's something that we are like definitely seeing.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 5:And so smaller people can do so much more and you aren't encumbered by shipping your org chart because you are the org chart. Right? Yep. Like, it's you can just put out amazing experiences and I think some of these big companies, what you see is, you know, they'll have amazing models or products or ideas, but they just don't even let you find them, you know? It's like the Yeah.
Speaker 5:The notebook lm thing, right? Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that was sick, right? And then, now what?
Speaker 1:The fact that we're using past tense for a breakthrough Google product is
Speaker 2:so And
Speaker 5:it was six months
Speaker 1:ago. I know. It's
Speaker 2:funny because
Speaker 1:It should be past tense. Should be like, yeah, it's still great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's probably somebody
Speaker 5:of a sudden, you guys are in trouble. Know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's probably some app in the app store that's just notebook Oh, kind of on Clone that's like doing 10,000,000 of ARR. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Has we we we were talking about this idea that like, you know, there's the rapper, the ChatGPT rapper meme and then the the recent news of OpenAI acquiring Windsurf. I was debating this with Jordy, like, it kind of game on for rapper m and a? Maybe that doesn't affect how you're underwriting investments at Sequoia. But do you think that there are other venture firms that see a multi billion dollar outcome as something that changes how they underwrite? Like if the m and a markets at that level are open, does that change the risk on nature of early stage venture maybe in like the mid market or or do you think
Speaker 5:it should just be business as usual? I so I got a lot of questions that were similar to this Mhmm. After we mutually called off the Figma deal with Adobe. Yeah. And some of that, you know, how does this change your underwriting of an investment?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:It's like, I don't know what this administration's gonna do, let alone the
Speaker 4:next one.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Right? Like, in the gestation period for these companies is sufficiently long that, like, what's going on today, I don't think really we'll be able to change Mhmm. Your investment criteria today.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Now, what you do with your companies might change, right? Whether it's, you know, you're looking to buy or buy smaller companies Mhmm. You have things that you're gonna end up selling to bigger companies. That relates to the actual investment criteria, at least for Sequoia. Know, we are looking for the big outlier companies, one of ones, you know, the future aircraft carriers.
Speaker 5:But obviously, you know, you pay attention to the news and obviously you pay attention to what the administration's going do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was thinking about it more just from this this idea that if, like, foundation model companies aren't necessarily going to steamroll the application layer, even regardless of the administration, just this idea that foundation model companies, it feels like they need dance partners in a lot of different areas. We saw this Yeah. With the X and XAI merger, social p Who are we talking about about, like should Anthropic buy Snap? And I'm just wondering if there's more
Speaker 5:Are you guys having you guys are Sonya on, I think, on Friday? Yeah, on You should talk to Sonya
Speaker 1:about Okay, we'll talk
Speaker 5:to about that. In that present she had a presentation based on this exact topic.
Speaker 1:Okay, great.
Speaker 5:And I could, you know, try to copy and say what she said and do a poor job or she
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. What were the other takeaways from I mean, I assume you went to AISN? Oh, yeah. What were the big takeaways? Other than we found out that Jensen Huang's jacket is Ferragamo.
Speaker 5:Oh, we did find that out. I know.
Speaker 1:It's leaked. It's leaked. From us.
Speaker 2:It's sold out everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's sold out everywhere.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Shout out Alfred. That was a great trade.
Speaker 1:Oh, Yeah. He did the Jersey swap.
Speaker 5:Jersey swap. Well, you're a legendary legendary Jersey swap. It's legendary. Man, that's
Speaker 2:Hang it hang it in the halls.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I would just leave it. Yeah. Frame I would Yep. Like ossify it somehow, put it on a,
Speaker 4:you know
Speaker 5:It's great. Yeah. I think I think Alfred's jacket was
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's the state of the Sequoia merch team? Have you guys explored anything as unique as a jacket?
Speaker 5:Well, was thinking for this one, you know, we this is all of a sudden we have we can we can somehow turn into a statue and then Yeah. Can just that's like an operating profit. Can sell that for
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know Totally. You can see a lot of Sequoia merch floating out there. You guys are pretty hold it close
Speaker 5:to Very subtle.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Subtle. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 5:Versus the
Speaker 1:But anyway, other takeaways from AI sent. Who's interesting?
Speaker 7:What was same I think it was
Speaker 5:vibe wise, it was no. It's so much so much smaller than this room.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah. But I think vibe wise, was really amazing. We held we held it for a few years now. Yeah. Predating, I think, GPT three.
Speaker 5:Yep. And it's been, you know, a lot of the same sort of people, right? Yeah. Like the people who started working on this early, really passionately are still the ones who are kind of at the bleeding edge. Yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is there more focus on like energy, scale, data center build out, or like new algorithms? Because a lot of people are scale pilled, scale's all you need. Yeah. They're enriched Sutton. And then on the flip side, there's some folks that are saying like, hey, maybe we're actually topping out.
Speaker 1:That seems like a really foundational question.
Speaker 5:Yeah. We had a little bit of both. We we had a little bit
Speaker 1:of both.
Speaker 5:And I think I think the practical reality is the answer is just yes, like both.
Speaker 1:Just both. Yeah. Of course. Why not better algorithms at higher scale?
Speaker 5:Yeah. It's it's going to be both. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Something that I've been trying to dig into more is like when are we going to see other models scale up to the size of like the big transformer from the models. Yeah. Like, It feels like we're getting there with diffusion, certainly not there with robotics, even though some of the robotics companies are now saying like, hey, we have the end to end models. We have, you know, big big data sets.
Speaker 1:And but they're not yet talking about, hey, we're building the massive data set. Yeah. We're doing the hundred k h one hundreds or anything. That seems like a really critical, like, discussion point, especially for, yeah, like, where where where the next applications go, because it does seem somewhat specific. It doesn't feel like I I was talking to one, the founder of Etched, and he was saying like, he was saying like, no, I actually think, like, you will just be able to train a robot to walk by having it read every book on walking.
Speaker 1:I was like, I don't know about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I read the book on walking.
Speaker 1:I read every book and but but there is something there where it's like, if you're training a humanoid robot, like, why not just feed it all the data possible
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Including all the images and all the videos and everything. Yeah. Just the more it knows, the better. And
Speaker 5:Yeah. Great. And I will tune in later today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:We'll see you. See you Bye. Peace.
Speaker 2:Thanks for
Speaker 1:coming. Bye. Always a fun time with Andrew Reed from Sequel.
Speaker 6:The best.
Speaker 1:Legendary investor. One of the greatest to ever do it. And we have our
Speaker 2:next guest Still cooking.
Speaker 1:Still cooking.
Speaker 2:Excited for the next forty years.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm bummed we couldn't make the AI Ascent thing. It would've been very good, but we had a lot of a lot of travel going on. Lot of birthday. Lot of birthday.
Speaker 5:Anyway There's a lot of event, but Fantastic.
Speaker 2:What's going on? Hey. Thanks for coming.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the stream. Would you mind kicking us off with an introduction for those who might not know you? What's your name? What's your company name?
Speaker 2:And your camera, by the way, is over there, but you can just chat with us here. Okay.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Yeah. No. Marty Ringline, CEO, co founder of Agree.com.
Speaker 1:Great. And what is agree.com?
Speaker 7:It's a better DocuSign.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 7:The best part is it's totally free.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Free e signature for everyone. But what makes it really special is we've combined invoicing and payment. Okay. At the end of most signatures, somebody has to pay
Speaker 5:someone Yeah. We just brought it all together.
Speaker 1:Okay. When I hear when I hear free, I I I think, am I the product? What's going on? Are you selling my documents to foreign countries or something?
Speaker 7:We So we operate like a fintech, Right?
Speaker 1:Okay. We monetize That makes sense. Payments. On the payment side.
Speaker 7:Yep. So operates a lot like Stripe.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Sure. Can't tell you how many times I've I feel like it's mostly with home services where I'm paying, like, for pest control and I'm, like, signing I'm I'm, you know, I'm like signing something and then I'm like, okay, like I'm ready, you know, again, I'm ready to pay and then it's like, oh, well, like, Zelle, you know, Zelle me or whatever. I'm just like, really, like, this should be should one. What I'm curious what what markets have you guys really focused on initially? Just
Speaker 7:at Figma. Designers, agencies Mhmm. Freelancers, solopreneurs are obvious ones. Mhmm. But the b b to b SaaS sales, especially in tech startups, they're just moving so fast.
Speaker 7:The growth trajectory is there. And then I think you pointed out something that's really interesting where if I say you have net 45 to pay, I think most of us think, oh, I'll pay on the forty six day. I'll stretch it out as long as I can. But usually, we want what's on the other side of that transaction so bad. We wanna pay quicker.
Speaker 7:We I want my pest control done. I want my roof fixed. I want my contractor started. I want my SOC two compliance quicker. So, like, delaying the invoice just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 7:Right? Yeah. Wanna go from execution of agreement. I want to pay quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Don't stop that. That's such a manual process right now. Everyone takes executed agreement, they send it over to finance. Somebody finance manually creates an invoice, manually sends it over. It's just it's kind of weird in 2025.
Speaker 2:Yep. I gotta ask, how did you get the domain?
Speaker 7:Yeah. So it was always agree. We knew that that was that was the word. But one day, we're pitching and my co founder says to me at the end of pitch, the investor miss said, he said agree.com. Oh, that could be a He's
Speaker 2:got a nice ring to
Speaker 7:it. He's like, hey, did you ever go to agree.com? He's like, no, what if it's a porn site? So we go, it's clear that it hasn't had love in a number of
Speaker 1:years. Sure.
Speaker 7:But I I see, I know there's a privacy policy, and a privacy policy is gonna be a legal entity.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. We
Speaker 7:track it down, I find the owner of that entity, and then it was four months of pestering and wooing and Mhmm. Because he's a high net worth individual. He didn't he didn't need to let it go for Sure. The money that we paid.
Speaker 2:Did he make you Of course. Give you some equity?
Speaker 7:No, no. We did all cash. Okay. But we did I did have to eventually sell him on the vision of the dream.
Speaker 4:Sure.
Speaker 7:Be a part of the story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it'll be used for good.
Speaker 7:And I will never not do one of these interviews where that question won't come up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8:And he
Speaker 7:will be like, yeah, I was at the
Speaker 1:beginning of this meeting. Great. Probably early.com guy, I imagine, sat on a bunch
Speaker 7:of He picked it up a few years ago for like 75 k at an auction.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. Domain. Cool. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 1:What's the go to market been like? I imagine that there's some sort of like, almost like viral loop where somebody sends something and then they get a chance to sign up and then you grow from there? Is there like a positive viral coefficient with this?
Speaker 7:Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's one where I pitched it just like that in the pre seed. Didn't realize how fast it would kick in and then like how substantial that would be to us. Mhmm.
Speaker 7:So we launched the product September 4. In a month, there was a thousand users.
Speaker 5:Wow.
Speaker 7:Hey, not bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Thirty days later, 10,000 users. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I was like, wow.
Speaker 7:Okay. That's impressive. And then seven weeks after that, it doubled to 20,000. But when I looked at those users, a third of them, they came to us. Their origin story is someone sent them to docs to sign on
Speaker 8:the platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 7:They signed, they're like, oh, let me give this thing a shot. So that's kicked in. That's been awesome. So we'll always talk about our customer, but then our customer's customer is vitally important to us. And then now, yeah, the go to market's just we see the same thing on the invoicing side, which is more the customer base itself is the biggest distribution engine.
Speaker 1:How big is the company? I imagine it's like several thousand. Are you in tens of thousands of yet in terms of just employees? Oh, No. We're run one of these businesses, typically, it's 5 figures of employees, typically.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone likes to remind that DocuSign's seven thousand
Speaker 1:That's how many it is?
Speaker 7:It would I I chat GPTed. It would take four Titanics to fit all the employees of But we're we're a team of eight and I think this is what you're Eight people. Yeah. Well, it's what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Not 8,000. The impossible.
Speaker 7:That's right. Look
Speaker 2:at you guys and they're like, we don't know how they do it. We don't
Speaker 1:know how they do it.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. Payments too? We need to double. Yeah.
Speaker 7:Everyone always wonders what is what are they
Speaker 1:all doing over there? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do actually do you actually have a I'm curious if you have a read. I I was always surprised that after, you know, Twitter was able to lay off, you know, such a huge amount of the workforce, I wasn't surprised that didn't inspire other similarly drastic cuts. Have you been are you surprised in general at some of these more scaled enterprise companies that that they that they haven't tried taking a leaner approach yet?
Speaker 7:I think the one of the secrets behind some of the b to b SaaS in Silicon Valley is that there are an enormous amount of humans Mhmm. That power what we think is technology. Mhmm. And there's some companies where you can tell between, like, December 21 and January 1
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:The servers have gone down or
Speaker 1:something Yeah. That what Oh, no.
Speaker 7:The humans are gone. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 1:They're out the office. This is a service as a software.
Speaker 7:That's right. That's right. And so, I think for some of these organizations, you need a huge customer service staff, a huge support staff to make it all work. Because they're they're pushing buttons and pulling levers behind the scenes. Yeah.
Speaker 7:And so they the tech deck is just so enormous that they they can't scale back even though they know they need to. And I think this is what we're seeing with AI. We know smaller teams can do more, they can do it faster. Now, how do they start automating their workflows with agentic AI or whatever tools they might be putting into place?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:So you so you're here specifically pitching designers and studios. Who is the current customer avatar that you're going after at config?
Speaker 7:So at eight, we gotta do everything and anything to build the brand.
Speaker 1:Sure. So I'm I saw some flyers that were just hanging out
Speaker 7:here. A stack
Speaker 1:of them out I saw stack of flyers. Was like, oh, he's doing it. I've got an official partner.
Speaker 7:Copy cart out front
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 7:That I push and I make cold brew
Speaker 1:coffee. That's great.
Speaker 7:People, me, my co founder, Will.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 7:But this conference is going on. Right? Yeah. Thousands of people here. Totally.
Speaker 7:May at Moscone West. Yeah. Turns out Stripe Sessions is right across
Speaker 2:the street.
Speaker 7:Same dates within the same block radius. My ICP is Why would I not be here? Yeah. So what I do yeah. I'm here handing out cards, knocking on doors, giving out free coffee, whatever it takes.
Speaker 7:But just build that brand, get them to know what it is. Because for us, it's an amplification. Yep. A big announcement just went out about our seed round. Yep.
Speaker 7:And so, now we're doing interviews like this and just want people to be like, oh, agrees everywhere. It's not everywhere. It's just everywhere that I know you're looking and you're listening and you're reading.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Break down the round for us. How how did it come together? Who's in?
Speaker 7:Yeah. So it was exciting because we
Speaker 2:raised That was yesterday.
Speaker 7:That was yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. So this is perfect timing. We had closed 3,000,000 pre seed in March of last year.
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 7:We launched in September. And then once those viral loops started hitting and there was there was some interesting traction. Mhmm. And so we had a number of investors start reaching out to us towards the end of the year, expressing interest. We were gonna go to market with around either right before the summer or right after the summer, but then a few folks asked to preempt.
Speaker 7:Just say, hey, let's just let's just do it now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So
Speaker 7:we thought, let's formally go to market on January 6, and then it closed in two weeks, which was wild.
Speaker 5:There we go.
Speaker 7:Yeah. So it was beyond our own expectations, and then we just made the big announcement yesterday.
Speaker 2:It's great to get it out. That's great. I'm curious I'm curious, with some of the early pushback from investors, there's always pushback even if people are generally bullish. You're just like, why hasn't anyone done this before? Doesn't this already
Speaker 1:This feels pretty counter positioned against against DocuSign, right? Because like, it would be a massive up ending to their business model.
Speaker 2:It it their pricing model. No, no, no. I know it's I know it's highly I know it's highly disruptive, but but, you know, if if if you look back somewhere around two years ago, it it felt like a lot of traditional SaaS and we were like out of new traditional fintech and SaaS ideas,
Speaker 1:but Yeah.
Speaker 2:The thing that became obvious is if you just, you know, brought a new approach or a disruptive, you know,
Speaker 1:pricing model or idea deadly serious.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 7:So so the biggest pushback was this is too obvious. Yeah. Why doesn't this exist?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7:So and that was a great because I'm like, glad you asked. Yeah. Because what I'll always say in the pitch at that point is this the last time we'll ever actually talk about DocuSign. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Because this
Speaker 7:is about payments.
Speaker 4:This is
Speaker 7:about pay tax. This is about AR automation.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 7:And it becomes very clear that the second question they shouldn't ask me is like, what if DocuSign did this? DocuSign can't become a payments company. Mhmm. The real question I'd have is what happens if Stripe across the street decides they wanna do e signature?
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 4:Sure.
Speaker 7:That would be disruptive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting
Speaker 7:to me. If they decided that owning the contract as a source of truth to revenue was Yeah. Really impactful to financial and CFOs, that would be really interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, hopefully, they're not listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 7:Well, the problem is you still have
Speaker 2:to be really right now. We're live.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They're busy, so that's right. Watching backstage. We know John and Patrick are on stage. They can't be watching this right now.
Speaker 1:It's great. What was your background before this?
Speaker 7:Yeah. So long time entrepreneur, had a had a start up back in 02/2007, then it got acquired by Twitter in 2000, cool. Had a few exits, a few other start ups in between, but most most pertinent to this one is me and two of the folks that worked with me even at that first company. We started up a fintech that got acquired by Brex. Oh.
Speaker 7:And Brex brought us into build out expense management. Sure. Specifically, invoicing bill pay.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 7:And this is like right before we all meet our friend ChatGPT. But before the GPT three beta goes out, and the best technology we have at the time to scan and parse invoices is called OCR Optical Character Recognition. Brexit's position was spare no expense. Mhmm. Use the best technology.
Speaker 7:It's Google. It's 87% accurate and reliable. Like, just not great for financial services. It means we still need human in the loop.
Speaker 1:There are
Speaker 7:human beings pulling levers, pushing buttons.
Speaker 4:Yep.
Speaker 7:But that June, when we get access to the g p The whole world's freaking out. Gen AI, Gen AI. Yeah. Turns out, you put generative AI on top of OCR, it closed that 13% error gap Very fast. Almost instantly.
Speaker 7:Yeah. So we knew that, oh, legal documents. Yeah. Huge, because the generative nature of generative AI, right, it's context aware.
Speaker 5:Yep.
Speaker 7:So it can read the document and start to infer and imply things and fill in those gaps. That was huge unlock for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Were you at Twitter post acquisition for a little bit?
Speaker 7:Yeah. I was at No. No. I was only at Twitter pre IPO.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 7:And I was only there I I did my my year.
Speaker 1:Your year. Yeah. What was it like working there?
Speaker 7:It was awesome. But I always talk about it as as equal parts frustrating and fascinating. Yeah. Because the site's still going down. They're still fail well.
Speaker 1:Oh,
Speaker 7:wow. But it was fun for us. It's a 40 characters. It's still no photos, no videos. They they just acquired
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 7:Tweetie two. So they didn't even have their own yet. Yeah. They just got TweetDeck and Tweetie two, so they're starting to get their own app. But this was the mantra of let's be mobile first.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Yeah. And so we're watching them for the first time figure out what happens. Crazy. Because that famous photo of when the plane lands in the Hudson. People forget,
Speaker 1:that's a tweet pic. Sully.
Speaker 7:Yeah. But that's not Twitter.
Speaker 4:That's a
Speaker 7:tweet pic on Twitter. Wow.
Speaker 2:Twitter doesn't have Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow. You're very, very decentralized back then. Now, you can't even link it out to anything.
Speaker 7:Oh, It's completely different. Yeah. It's like have
Speaker 2:a product for everything. You can't put agree.com in a post.
Speaker 1:No. I know.
Speaker 4:It hurts us. It
Speaker 1:hurts Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure. Are you finding any luck with, like, the the world of venture capital and and startups sending safe notes around on a group.
Speaker 7:So this one made it easy on the pitch. Yeah. I didn't have to explain the pain. Yeah. All VCs are like, yeah, this is a miserable experience.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure, I
Speaker 7:hate moving money with my bank.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 7:I I don't like working with DocuSign. DocuSign's not a bad company, but people get a visceral reaction. Yep. It's like Microsoft Teams or Jira, nobody likes DocuSign. Yeah.
Speaker 7:And so, when we told them that the way you invest in startups, it'll be your workflows will be better. Yeah. It's like, that's an
Speaker 1:immediate different product on the fintech side because it's a more of like an investment wire than just a payment?
Speaker 7:It's different in that to monetize the way just to benchmark against Stripe invoicing and billing. They take point 6% blended, point four or point seven.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1:you don't want to take point 6% on, like, a VC investment.
Speaker 7:The psychological moment for people is $50,000. Okay. If it's a $30,000 SaaS charge and you take point six, nobody really even notices Sure, sure, from millions. 50 thousand but Oh, interesting. On our 7,200,000.0, I'm not paying point anything of Yeah.
Speaker 7:But there is a place in fintech where people take a point six.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Because what do I do with the 7.2? I don't spend it right away. I put it into a bank, then it go a row bank, if I can plug them. No, it goes they've just been so great to us. But That's awesome.
Speaker 7:It goes into a treasury account. Mhmm. I make, you greater than 4% interest on it.
Speaker 5:Got
Speaker 7:it. You know what the rows, mercury, brexas take?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Point 6%. Okay.
Speaker 7:Yeah. So the agree act two, what's coming out this October, the agree October, the agree count by default will be a treasury. Yeah. So we want founders doing their safes on the platform. We want all the money flowing through it and then it would just make sense just to leave it in agree.
Speaker 7:Don't don't move it to another bank. Because I didn't have a treasury. I had to go to Roe and I had the checking, but then I had to create a treasury on top of that.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:That makes no sense. Cool. Well, our next guest is here, miking up. Anything else you wanna share with the stream?
Speaker 7:Just love having you guys in. Hey, today, we always say it's the last day you'll ever pay for DocuSign. We
Speaker 5:go. What a I feel like you're gonna get
Speaker 1:a season at some point, because I I feel like I can't wait
Speaker 7:to tweet that season.
Speaker 2:There's something
Speaker 1:don't wanna get season of about, even if they are building a direct competitor or something, they're usually pretty hesitant about saying it out loud for a variety of reasons, Just inviting brave.
Speaker 2:Bold all 7,000. It's time,
Speaker 7:though, if you happen to hit the blue bottle on Second Street Mhmm. There's a billboard that's going up right as we see
Speaker 2:Oh, there we go.
Speaker 7:All it says is today's the last day you'll ever pay
Speaker 4:for documents. Very nice.
Speaker 7:Just one
Speaker 1:block from HQ. Putting the heat
Speaker 2:on it.
Speaker 7:I'm poking the bear. We're gonna see what happens. Poke the bear. Thanks for
Speaker 1:having Congrats
Speaker 2:on the new round.
Speaker 7:Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Good to meet you. That is bold. Well, hopefully he's buying billboards on adquick.com. We are, of course, sponsored by Ad Quick. Of course.
Speaker 1:We should tell
Speaker 2:you about all of stuff. It's interesting. I feel like it's the the treasury functionalities feel like it makes sense potentially for if you're like an SMB. Yeah. But if if you're a startup that raises through like a DocuSign like product, are you gonna leave
Speaker 1:Money in that corporate treasury? Yeah. You probably wanna pay your employees, do all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know. Anyways, I'm bullish on the product overall.
Speaker 1:Good to
Speaker 2:meet What's happening?
Speaker 4:You too. Hi.
Speaker 1:Hi. You can throw on headphones if you wanna hear yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Whatever you Are we twins? Yeah. We're brothers. No.
Speaker 2:Technology We're not related actually. Not actually related. Yeah.
Speaker 4:You guys look so much alike.
Speaker 2:That's funny. It'll be easier. You can you can adjust.
Speaker 1:We are live. Would you mind introducing yourself and what you do for the stream?
Speaker 4:Jeremy Hindle, production designer. I designed Severance, Top Gun Maverick, Zero Dark 30, a couple things.
Speaker 2:Just a things.
Speaker 1:Just a couple.
Speaker 2:Why don't you go say a few more? Just because the first few are so impressive.
Speaker 4:It's And a few thousand commercials. Yeah. And Detroit. A few other movies. I have a new Catherine Bigelow movie coming out
Speaker 1:Oh, cool.
Speaker 4:In the fall on Netflix. Awesome. Nice. We're just finishing that up now.
Speaker 2:Where where are you based normally?
Speaker 4:Los Angeles.
Speaker 2:Nice. Cool. So are we.
Speaker 1:Talk me through I never worked there.
Speaker 4:I moved I moved from Toronto Nineteen Years ago Okay. To work in LA. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow. Why even when you moved, it was already
Speaker 4:It's just so there's so much shooting abroad. I mean, it's good for like certain certain projects like Zurich Thirty, you need to always gonna need to travel. It's just now that there's just, you know, other than
Speaker 1:Severance feels like something you could film in LA. So, no. So we shoot out in
Speaker 4:New York because Ben Stiller lives in New York. Okay. Which is awesome. Yeah. So we're not going too far.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's nice. It's great to be in New York and Yeah. A lot of the cast live there and the crew are amazing.
Speaker 1:Do you agree with the criticism that Los Angeles and Hollywood should have done more to prevent Oh
Speaker 4:my god. Yeah. It's been bleeding for years. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The the the interesting thing that the the tariffs on foreign films news came out Sunday and I forget the guy's name who was kind of spearheading that John Boyd? Saying like, these other countries, you know, was like the the local state and county leadership in LA have to take some responsibility for creating an environment where, you know, it's just like economically unfeasible.
Speaker 1:Do you think that was just hubris by the elected officials in Los Angeles and Hollywood to say, oh, we don't need to compete with Atlanta because we're Hollywood? Honestly, I don't know
Speaker 4:why they I mean, I think, honestly, the tech a lot of tech moved into California into Los Angeles.
Speaker 1:Oh,
Speaker 4:sure. And I kinda think that might have distracted me. Oh, interesting. I'm not
Speaker 5:sure they
Speaker 4:were paying attention.
Speaker 1:Tax revenues are
Speaker 4:coming in. You know, they saw that and I don't know, but if if like the studio system, but and all the prop houses, they've been closing for the last five All the best ones are gone. They went bankrupt. A lot of them through COVID. Yep.
Speaker 4:And then a lot of them hung on till the last year, but they're all closing because no one's shooting in California. It's it's the stage is, I think it's I've heard 40% empty.
Speaker 1:I mean, we we're No,
Speaker 2:we've been looking for a new so we've been looking for, like, a new studio space, and we we found a space that we like, but Everything's empty. But Yeah. But it was shocking negotiating. We we would tour a space, be completely empty, then we'd start the negotiation process, and they would have these, even the spaces, you know, maybe the way that the management or however they're capitalized, but they would start throwing out numbers, and I'm just like, you realize I've been in this space, and I know that there's no one there. Right?
Speaker 2:And I'm like I know. You're kind of who's your who's who's your backup offer?
Speaker 1:Because Yeah. And then, of course, like, everyone who's ever been involved in the building management ownership, they're all of a sudden flying in to see you for just touring one little stage, and you're like, okay, this is a big deal for you.
Speaker 4:No, there's something wrong
Speaker 5:for Yeah.
Speaker 4:Think it's just, you know, most countries, there's it's so like, I did a movie in Australia. It's so incentivized. Totally. It's not because what a lot of these countries are giving is above the line. All the money is the above the line.
Speaker 4:It's actors, directors. Yeah. That's the big money.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And the places like California don't do that. New Jersey's starting to do that now.
Speaker 1:Is that just tax incentives or actual
Speaker 7:But it's, well, it's
Speaker 4:a tax incentive for crews and shooting and post production, but not always. A lot of places don't cover the cost, you know, if an actor's twenty five million dollars, they don't cover that part.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But now New Jersey's covering that part Wow. Which is for Netflix. Like, certain people have their own deals.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The state of New is giving a tax write off for for that?
Speaker 4:Like a certain part of above the line. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's a a bigger because a lot of them are capped at like half a million.
Speaker 4:Sure. It doesn't save you much when someone's getting 30,000,000 on a movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know? And see, you have two or three of those people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's the big chunk of money that it's a lot. And I mean, crew wise, for most people I know, everyone's making the same money they made ten, fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It hasn't changed much. So it's just how
Speaker 2:Even if even if you've progressed a lot in your career in terms of doing
Speaker 4:You know, I still think what I make, I still probably make the same as Rick Carter would have made twenty years
Speaker 1:ago. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:The same number. Wow. And the currency is not even close.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:But it's a good number. I'm not complaining. But it's not what peep it's it's the same number.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's wild. It's interesting. And they still will. That's, you know, it's but it hasn't caught up in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4:And I'm not asking. I have a nice life. It's more I just like to be home sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, take me through the production design workflow on a project that we might be familiar with. Start with, like, is there location scouting involved? Photographs? Are you sketching things?
Speaker 1:Are you in a particular software? Like, what is your I
Speaker 4:mean, basically, severances, you know, it's it was I when Ben sent it to me, was two scripts. There's only two scripts Mhmm. For the first ten episodes. Sure. And tonally, it was it was really nothing there.
Speaker 4:It was very funny Mhmm. And it it was a great concept. Like, this People will want to be severed. It kind of scares me. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I could go, well, I know half of my friends want this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:If they could get it. And but it didn't have a look to it. Sure. So I wasn't it read like The Office. It was budgeted exactly like The Office.
Speaker 4:Shoot in a location, great cast, Adam was already attached to it. Yeah. You know, it could have been Parks and Rec. It was the same sort of tone, like that feel. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:And I was like, but I don't really it's not my thing. I wanna do cinema. I wanna do something really visual. Said, well, what do want do? And I'm like, give me a couple days and I'll put a look book together.
Speaker 4:I didn't know him. I just put a look book of what I thought it would look like. I'm like, if you want to do this, I'll I'll I love this. I had an idea that I really fell in love with and he loved it, you know, and it was sort of conceptually like the outside was always gonna be was like, it should always be winter. It should always be really sad outside.
Speaker 4:Yeah. We have to kind of accentuate it. It was Yeah. And then when we go underground, it has to be, you know, very particularly designed and also all the technology should be all the tropes that I, as a kid, grew up with that if you came out in the outside world now and told somebody you worked at this CRTC screen Yeah. With a trackball, you no one it wouldn't make any sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:It had to be things that made no sense to anyone outside the world, especially young people. They'd never even see my son doesn't even know what it didn't even know what it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:He's twenties, but he still doesn't know what trackball is really.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So I was trying to like that's the initial part is really conceptually what does the world look like? Yeah. And then I start I really always start everything with a researcher. And I, we just bang stuff out for a while and then I start with research with a concept artist.
Speaker 1:How much of moving from a a look that's similar to The Office, which is very docu style to something cinema where you wound up is driven by actual budgetary choices versus just picking the right tools out of the same tools.
Speaker 4:We didn't have any on service. We just abandoned that thought. Okay. Like, the cinematographer Jess and Ben and I, we were like, what do we wanna make? Yeah.
Speaker 4:And we just made it. Okay. The budget exploded. It really did.
Speaker 1:Really? But drives that because you you you people think about like, oh, we're filming with Cooke lenses or Arri Alexa and it gets expensive.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But on the production side, you know, not to degrade it, it does feel like it's desk. How how expensive can it be?
Speaker 4:Well, it's it's it's five stages of set. Sure. A lot of it's a lot it's volume. Sure. Like, it it a lot of shows, like, say, Parks and Rec, it's one set
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:For the entire show. Yep. The entire every Speaking
Speaker 8:of a
Speaker 2:lot of sets
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:The rehearsal. Yeah. That's a lot of sets.
Speaker 4:A lot.
Speaker 2:It's a Yeah. I mean, every new scene is like Like
Speaker 4:the amount of sets and then the amount of actors that come in the amount of it takes to shoot all those sets and pre light and camera test, it all
Speaker 1:just And the lighting probably gets more expensive as you're
Speaker 4:going for
Speaker 1:a more cinematic look. Yeah. Right? As opposed
Speaker 4:to just because we have set the, you know, the birthing cabinet in season two. Yeah. We built it. It's only in one scene. Wow.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But it's a particular scene that it's that's it's destroyed. We'll never it doesn't exist anymore. Wow. So, you start to you have to offset, like, how a of shows are, you know, like Law and Order is designed to Mhmm.
Speaker 4:The sets are standing sets. It's a courthouse. It has Yeah. And then the only sets are the only other ones are locations. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Ours are whatever we want. Yeah. And also, all the locations, like, they have to be places that we've never seen before. Yeah. Like, go to shoot in Utica.
Speaker 4:We shot in Newfoundland. We're Mhmm. We're all over the place because I I can't have somebody know that train station. Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I can't know it. And then we all You're trying
Speaker 2:to take a take a location that's unique and maybe hasn't been, you know, popularized before and build on top of
Speaker 4:it. Absolutely. And then we do a lot of visual effects after. We augment and alter it because it's really about creating a world that everyone doesn't know they don't know where it is. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Like, we're always I always say, we're in Poland for all I know. Like, nobody knows.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I don't want people to know we're in Upstate New York. There's nothing identifiable really that people could pick. Yeah. And it's not it's the intention is really just for people to go down that rabbit hole. It's not to really trick them.
Speaker 4:It's just it makes it believable. Versive. Yeah. They can't go, well, I hike there all the time. It's just
Speaker 1:Can you talk about previs? Or is generative AI playing a role? Is everything Do you interface with storyboard artists? What does that look like as you're trying to go from just this idea on the page, which you said was very blank, to something that you need to get to the point where you're like, this is exactly what we're
Speaker 4:Basically, what I do is I I concept everything. And we do iterations, like, sometimes probably 50 times to the way we like the set looks, the way we all think it should shoot. Sure. Like Jess, the DP and and now she's one of the directors on Severance Yeah. And Ben.
Speaker 4:It's really the three of us that just run with it when we're in shoot mode. Yeah. And it's really they they both storyboard like crazy together. Like we we're really tight and very opinionated. We we ride each other like crazy.
Speaker 4:We argue all the time. Mhmm. Yeah. But in a really passionate collaborative way, we have we're like, there's zero egos. None of us have an ego about it.
Speaker 4:It's just passionately, what is the best thing? Like, if it's not perfect, we don't shoot
Speaker 1:it Yeah.
Speaker 4:Ever. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you ever feel like the materials that you're working with to build a particular piece of furniture, for example, actually matter beyond just how they read on camera? Is there something about a heavy desk that actually brings out a better Oh, yeah. Even though you could just make everything out of balsa wood or something?
Speaker 4:Well, it's like the desk, the main desk, like, you know, it was just it just the script said four desks, large room. Yep. And I was like, wait, this it has to be this is like the it's I kind of treat it like a spaceship. Yeah. It's like the control room of Star Trek.
Speaker 4:Right? Yeah. You know, it's like you need one thing to set the tone of every if everyone buys off on that set, they'll believe anything after.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So I'm like, the desk has to be let's let's build this desk that's very interactive. They're like five year olds. We treat them like once they're they're birthed into the Audi on the on the boardroom table, which Dan calls the womb Yeah. Of the office. Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's the birthplace. Yeah. You go to this work and you're really five years old, you don't know anything. Yeah. You just start to work at this computer.
Speaker 4:I'm like, let's make it really playful, like, let's treat it like, kinda like a playground.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And but I want them to able to jump on it. Like, want Zach to be able to jump on it. I want it has to be structurally insanely strong. Yeah. And we just think of everything so that that way there's they they're not impeded by anything.
Speaker 4:Whatever they wanna do, safety first, go do it. What it's just amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Did you I'm assuming you made the you you created the activation. Where was it in New York? It was in the middle of
Speaker 4:That's so marketing for Apple is amazing. Yeah. That's all marketing.
Speaker 2:That's all Okay. Interesting.
Speaker 4:They are amazing.
Speaker 2:And that the one in Based on based on?
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's all based on what we do and then they they're but they're really interesting how they take it to the next level. That one worked out really well. Well, it worked not in a good way, but the fires so the premiere was canceled because of the fires in LA. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So that was happening at the same time. And all the actors were gonna be we were all gonna be at the premiere. They all just jumped on a plane and went to the event. So it would have just been like, you know, people cast to be there, but they all showed up. That's amazing.
Speaker 4:Unknown to everyone. I didn't I wasn't there. I didn't know they
Speaker 2:were going. Is And the casting director like the the the just the imagery, there's so many different images from Severance that have become iconic and and in some ways just got outsized attention on the internet just because they were have you to
Speaker 4:the Apple website? Is it still? If you click on it, it's the first computer they saw. I don't know if they still have it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Or IKEA started making a desk. Like in Austria, issued it first. Yeah. It's on the cover of IKEA.
Speaker 2:It's like Yeah. But but so is is it the work that you're most proud of in your career? Or or is there is there something else that maybe didn't get the same level of attention that that you I mean,
Speaker 4:I love the process is the best part. Yeah. I mean, Top Gun was hilariously fun. Seradoc thirty was amazing challenge. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Like, Yeah. They're all it's about for me, it's the experience of it's a year or two of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. The people I'm with, like, I'm so particular who I work with. It's like Yeah. Yeah. You better be they better be interesting because why are you gonna spend your time with them?
Speaker 4:Yeah. That's really for me what it is. When it goes out into the world, what people make it is, I mean, is exciting to watch. Yeah. But not unlike Top Gun was Well, I
Speaker 2:I had You you must appreciate, you know, product design is is is really hard. Right? Yeah. There's there's no doubt about that. But somebody can have an idea for a product and within, maybe call it, 10 to an hour, they can have something that looks somewhat like the end state with with you must not have a lot of sympathy for that given that.
Speaker 2:When you're like, oh, we need to design this entire scene and we're gonna need to import you know, wood from Uh-huh. You know, this this region and Yeah,
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that is just a very
Speaker 4:different Well, it's also AI's a funny one because we don't use any AI. Nothing. But Well, no, because I I mean, my biggest problem is I don't need ideas. I just need money to make stuff. Have some My ideas just fall out of me,
Speaker 5:like Yeah.
Speaker 4:And the older I get
Speaker 2:So you want like, the more I have you want humanoid robots that can, you know Or printers. Assemble
Speaker 4:I really just want, you know, support. Yeah. Yeah. Know, really, just want artists that we can we're making art
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Which is amazing. It's it's not actually, a robot wouldn't work for me. I need the person who has an opinion, like, have this amazing sculptor who does all the sculptures. He's full time.
Speaker 4:I've never had a full time sculptor. Wow. I could go Panko make let's make this. Let's make a bust. Let's make this piece of art.
Speaker 4:Yeah. He makes it in a day. Wow. Yeah. And it's and it's all in his head.
Speaker 1:It's creative. That has that human power.
Speaker 4:And it has, like, yeah, it has Totally. His heart and it has Yeah. I love that. It's not We're the necessarily what I wanted. It's I want what they want too.
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure. Rick, put
Speaker 2:that in there. Where there's so much doom and gloom in The world. The movie industry. No, not the world. I actually
Speaker 1:Not here. World in config. It's great.
Speaker 2:Very config. No, but but specifically in in entertainment, you know, filmmaking.
Speaker 4:It is pretty gloomy these days.
Speaker 2:It is gloomy. Yeah. But clearly, there's amazing work being made. There's all these new tools that people are gonna have access to or already have access to that make variety, you know, different parts of the process easier? Where where are the bright spots to you?
Speaker 2:What what what gets,
Speaker 4:you you I miss the John Hughes movies. I miss scripts. I I'm so tired of seeing guns. I really am. If I was seeing the poster with a gun on it.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I just I find it really sad. Yeah. And I really I miss John Hughes. Like I my kids know them all and most people know them, but there's nothing to really take like adolescence is is an interesting thing for young kids to watch because it's about real life.
Speaker 4:But it would be nice to also give them something that's to look forward to that's like Yeah. How to fall in love for the first time. Like Yeah. The things that I find young generations are not getting, they're literally getting I love John Wick, it's fun, but they can't all be John Wick.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I know it is.
Speaker 1:We do have a of John Wickes.
Speaker 2:You talking the need for positive science fiction. Right? You can still have a you can still have a dramatic storyline.
Speaker 1:But not dystopian. Not cyberpunk necessarily. Right. Maybe solarpunk
Speaker 4:or Like ours I think ours is funny because it's really still a love story.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. He loves her outside and he fell in love inside. Just about love. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's really all we all want. And it's the hardest thing to figure out how to have Yeah. And how to let you be vulnerable. It's not something that's being allowed these days.
Speaker 1:Can you talk about production design in the context of a film where there's gonna be a lot of shoot shots on location? Like, I mean, I imagine that the nature of an aircraft carrier plays into the design, production design, even when you're on a sound stage. Mhmm. And there's less things that you have full control over. But how did you think about that in the context of Top Gun or or Zero Dark 30, similar where, you know, there's a certain grounding in the real world that you need to pull into the rest with the lighting design, but also the production design.
Speaker 4:I mean, honestly, I I I think we can do anything. Really? We built the Somme Bin Laden compound. It's the size of whole whole area. It's massive.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 4:I'm like, why wouldn't we build
Speaker 1:it? Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. It was 300 people laying bricks for six weeks, just nonfused. Wow. Just it
Speaker 8:was a
Speaker 4:factory line. It was amazing. All these Egyptian That's remarkable. Bricklayers. It was incredible.
Speaker 4:Like, I we built the JED on Top Gun. Like, if Yeah. I just don't think you can't do
Speaker 1:it. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I have zero understanding of no or Yeah. Why not. Like, I always go, why not? And they go, why?
Speaker 4:And I'm like, I said, why not?
Speaker 2:Doing it.
Speaker 1:Showbiz. What about CGI, like, sub extensions as as a tool? Amazing. Are you reaching for that more? Then how does that change your process?
Speaker 4:We use it a lot in severance. We use it a lot. I use it on everything. Yeah. It is, and I do a lot of cleanup now.
Speaker 4:Sure. Because you're shooting so much faster, you're prepping so much faster. It's a great tool that doesn't allow you to waste your time stressing over it that I can't do this in three weeks
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 4:But I can do this and then I'll do the rest after. Yep. Yeah. It's more economical and it's way less stressful. But it the hardest part is the production and the studio producers, it's hard because that bag of money hasn't been put aside until people are just starting to like, I'm like, put it away.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Let's commit to this amount of money and leave that money, but
Speaker 2:How much of how much of your process is a dance with the, you know, whoever's funding 90%. Project where where you're just trying to understand you're like dancing with a bowl, right? You know, where you're like, you know, trying to figure out if I if I push the budget, you know, 15%, maybe they'll be fine. But if I take it, you know, 22%
Speaker 4:You know, you kinda can read a room like anybody, like Yeah. You know, and I love just I'm I'm just like, let's just talk to them. Let's can I just how about I just pitch let them see
Speaker 2:it? Yeah.
Speaker 4:And then if they say no, they say no. You get a nose a lot and you have to adapt, but you have to keep pushing. It's it's just a battle. Filmmaking really is a war. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And it's a war till the end and every it's just how it works because and I under I respect their job. Like Yeah. We can't all go rogue. You have to be responsible. But you have to they do hire me Yeah.
Speaker 4:To trust my instincts. And if you don't do that, you don't make good art. Yeah. You can't.
Speaker 2:How confident are you film is, you know, television, it's a hits business. How confident are you, you know, mid mid during your process around what what the, you know, commercial, you know, commercial or just reception of a project will be? I have
Speaker 4:no I've I've I honestly have for a long time I did commercials because I couldn't pick a movie because I was terrified. Is this gonna be good? Sure. And then I had a friend of mine who's done a million movies.
Speaker 2:Well, you have to just kind of said,
Speaker 4:just let go. Yeah. You have to let go. Just pick the people you love to work with and forget about it. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Because, you know, he did, you know, silence with Marty and, you know, that movie didn't do well. It's a great movie though, but you don't know And you can't bleed over it for the rest of your life. You've got to do another one and another one and you just can't predict what people are gonna like. And honestly, you just you have to not care. I couldn't care less.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You'd love to care, like, wouldn't we all love to care to make everyone happy? But I don't know why people like anything. And I think once you just give up on that and just look, they want what you want. If you are a visualist, they mostly want what you want.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I have a conspiracy theory I want to run by you. Someone was posting, this is just a random person on on the Internet, but they said that Apple is preparing people for a world where we're using virtual avatars in the in the Apple Vision Pro by using a more high key lighting style in shows like Severance and Ted Lasso. Do you think there's anything to that?
Speaker 4:No. I don't think I've ever none of us have ever even heard
Speaker 1:of it. Yeah. Does seem odd that it would bleed over,
Speaker 5:but Our goal
Speaker 4:is really we are we when I like Justin Bannon and I really wanted to make a movie Yeah. A ten hour movie Yeah. And another ten hour movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's
Speaker 4:great. Because everyone has a huge like, I have a 40 inch screen at home. Yeah. I like to live a projector now. And you can buy one for $500 projected on your It's still amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think most people have the you know, a lot of people have the potential to see it bigger than watching it on their phone, which a lot of people producers say, yeah, but everyone's watching on their phone. I'm like, I don't agree. Yeah. And I think some of these shows could be shown in theaters.
Speaker 4:I think you could go back the other way. We just screened Severance episode 10 at the Dolby Theater a couple weeks ago Mhmm. For 3,000 people and it was like the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Speaker 5:3,000 people in
Speaker 2:one How
Speaker 4:would you amazing. Incredible.
Speaker 2:How would you fix the theater industrial complex because the the the sort of % tariffs on foreign films plan involved governments, basically subsidies to help theaters, like, fix their bathrooms, or at least that was what was put out there. And I was like, I'm gonna go out on a limb and I and I don't think the reason our theaters are are suffering is because they haven't had a new toilet in, you know, twenty years.
Speaker 4:I honestly, I don't I don't I think everybody just wants, like, companies want this guarantee they're gonna make money. They gotta take a risk.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You know, so you fail. I'm sorry. I fail all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:It's what we do. Humans are failures works and sometimes it doesn't. It's like so you have like, their odds are still gonna be good. Like, we'll look at what people will watch. And if there are like, I couldn't believe how many people came dressed up as characters.
Speaker 4:Like, they could screen on a weekend all 10 episodes and I guarantee you, the like, the dome, if the Ark Lake was still open
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 7:Would be packed. Yeah.
Speaker 4:It would be sold out. You could sell it out for weeks. Yeah. Like, I I do believe that because I see what these kids wanna see. And I have a 25 year old daughter.
Speaker 4:She had every Friday night, she had severance dinner night with her friends. Amazing. Everybody was doing it. It's like, that's what Rocky Horror Picture Show was like when I was
Speaker 1:a kid.
Speaker 4:Yeah. That's there was we had those experiences. Yes. People want them and they want to walk out and talk about them. Yeah.
Speaker 4:They don't want to watch at home and then look to the left and to the right and then go back on Instagram.
Speaker 1:There's gonna be so much laundry TV, right?
Speaker 4:Like, it's fun to to communally watch something and then talk about it and Yeah. Hang out on the street, like, and Yeah.
Speaker 1:On that note, do you have a take on You guys have to get it back.
Speaker 4:That's the thing is you have to you have to demand it.
Speaker 2:Sure. Well, John John or anyone's is the movie nights.
Speaker 1:Actually movie nights with all my friends and I just texted He just gets 20 in Los Angeles, I get 20 tickets. I text everyone in my phone who's in town, say, hey, do you wanna come? And then if people don't show, I just refund the tickets.
Speaker 4:Great. Amazing.
Speaker 1:And and just put together a huge I love that.
Speaker 4:It's just
Speaker 1:an activity to go out. Better than going to the bar with your guy friends. Not really that into sports. I've always been more into movies.
Speaker 4:But I think that's the thing is I don't think that they're look, baby boomers obviously lived too long. They're still controlling how we live. Then there's, you know, my age. Yeah. And there's not a lot of like, there needs to be a lot more control for you at your age that's really controlling a lot of this Yeah.
Speaker 4:And demanding that this is what you guys want. They still think they know. Yeah. The 65, 70 year old guys, they still think they have the answers. Like nobody wants to go out.
Speaker 4:No, you don't want to go out. You're 70. You want to sit at home. You loved COVID. Yep.
Speaker 4:It's like 25 year olds don't want to sit at home. They want to you go to Paris, the movie houses are packed. Yeah. Every little theater's jammed all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You will go if they're I've
Speaker 2:actually been surprised. I mean, we're a technology and business focused show, but I've been surprised to not see more attempts at, you know, I'm surprised there isn't like a sweet green of theaters. Right? It's something that's like Yeah. Well designed and Yeah.
Speaker 2:Has healthy snacks and food. And it's
Speaker 4:like It's to the food. Isn't it awful?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Mean, that's a big part of it. It's I haven't eaten movie theaters. Play was done a
Speaker 1:little bit in LA and But these are so A
Speaker 2:lot of them, end up focusing too much on avant garde film and
Speaker 1:all That's
Speaker 2:true. You just wanna, you know, if they were just playing
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I I do feel like, yeah, mixing in the hits and and creating these, like, big re release moments can be good for kinda getting back people back in
Speaker 4:the Like, look at Top Gun. People saw it five, six. Oh, yeah, totally. It was amaze was exactly how I grew up.
Speaker 1:You had to see it in
Speaker 4:the theater. And I loved it. And it's like, I There's also There there Why can't there
Speaker 2:be more of So here here's another funny The the concept of scarcity could be interesting to implement. It's like, you figure out a way to say, hey, we're gonna pull this film off the internet everywhere for a year, off all streaming I mean, that was the
Speaker 1:way it was.
Speaker 2:And then we're gonna No, but then we'll
Speaker 1:You see
Speaker 4:it in
Speaker 1:the nine months, you have to wait. Now it's on demand the next Now
Speaker 2:you can do it. Take take a movie, pull it off every everywhere
Speaker 4:for year.
Speaker 2:Bring
Speaker 1:it If
Speaker 4:you guys wanna I would I hope someone starts an app and I'll I'll give the idea away for free. Do one that doesn't track you or focus to you.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:You have to be it's like going to Blockbuster, walk around and find it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. Interesting. Just get And non algo.
Speaker 4:It's awful. Yeah. There's so many good like, go to or join the Criterion Collection, which not a lot of people do. Yeah. There's a billion amazing films on there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And and start watching them. They're if they're available, you just have to get off some of the, you know Yeah.
Speaker 1:We gotta get him the Criterion Collection. He hasn't seen any movies. Seen everything. It's so cheap
Speaker 4:doing at $10 a month. I know. Yeah. I love it's same price of a coffee a tip.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We gotta get him through that. So we're actually going into a production design session, building a new studio.
Speaker 1:What are the common pitfalls where we could get stuck in quagmire? We've been looking at big news desks. We're thinking about putting some TVs behind us for, you know, graphics and displays. It'll be a pretty basic set, but we do want it to have to be more opinionated than just one newsroom, please. We want something that that speaks to a more modern brand, but we have a little bit of this, like, you know, we wear suits even though we're tech people and there's a little bit of that.
Speaker 1:But where where would we get stuck? Where are the peep who are the people that we need to be talking to to really nail this project?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because I don't think it's whoever did CNN's set. Those those sets are so old.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, honestly, this is a fun set. Yeah. Do this do this as at large. Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's cool. I mean, I think the cool thing is to make it really what it's real. Yeah. Those sets are they're just designed for this they're all they care about is their logo.
Speaker 1:Yep. So boring. Totally.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Like, make something like, look, I remember Letterman. Letterman was hilarious. You throw that card through the window that didn't exist and you heard the sound effect, like,
Speaker 2:just make
Speaker 4:it just make it fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Like an interactive, cheap. Yeah. It doesn't have to be expensive. No one cares. Yeah.
Speaker 4:It's just make it fun.
Speaker 2:Fun is fun is key.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Like, I I
Speaker 2:Back at our home studio, we have a range of exotic sound effects that
Speaker 1:Yeah. We build the sound board, but we also have props. We have a tinfoil hat for when we're talking about conspiracies. We have a crystal ball I love this. That we pull out.
Speaker 1:Have bottles of champagne and books and You already did we've kind of built this whole library. Come back and Yeah.
Speaker 2:Come back and hang with us. I
Speaker 1:totally will.
Speaker 7:I live
Speaker 4:in Studio City. Oh, fantastic. Perfect. Just go to CBS Radford. It's the best.
Speaker 1:CBS Radford? What's that?
Speaker 4:It's where they shot it's Laurel it's Laurel and Ventura.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. Yeah. Maybe we should check that out.
Speaker 2:They Well, this other
Speaker 4:city Where they shot Parks and Recs, where they shot Yeah.
Speaker 2:The think, okay. Gilligan's Island. Yeah. I mean, everybody. The other thing CBS is is a place where We were looking
Speaker 1:at Television City.
Speaker 4:Oh, I don't know that.
Speaker 1:It's another CBS lot. Yeah. Bill Maher films there.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But we were touring it and it was pretty empty. But it was very cool. Mean, was it was the real deal.
Speaker 2:Did you dox Bill Maher?
Speaker 1:I think that's public.
Speaker 5:No one
Speaker 1:wants to go there anymore. No. I mean, there's like seven layers of security you get in that building. Fine. It's all good.
Speaker 1:It's a live studio audience. People go in all the time.
Speaker 2:Right. Right.
Speaker 1:Anyway, are there any Are are there any new trends that you're tracking in in production design or or kind of advice for up and coming folks who want to get into the industry? Is it, like what is the path? Because I imagine you don't just call up a studio and ask for your first job. You you need to build a resume of some kind, but it's kind of hard in the TikTok age to do anything related to that.
Speaker 4:I know it's funny. I tell all my kids for like, all their friends. Yeah. You just have you have to do what we did. You have to knock on Knock on doors.
Speaker 4:Like, my son's graduating from LMU right now. Yeah. Yeah. He's interviewing for these jobs that have five positions, 8,000 applicants.
Speaker 1:Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's What's he wanna do?
Speaker 4:He's in marketing and wants, you know, marketing for somebody like event planning
Speaker 1:Sure. Sure.
Speaker 4:Or film promotion or he was work he was interviewing Connect us. Agencies. Connect us. Yeah. That's hiring.
Speaker 4:Yeah. We're hiring. No. It's really it's amazing, but that's what they're up. And the other thing is, they're all having to do these stupid Zoom interviews.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. You can't Oh, That's really You can't not I tell Sam, don't take one. You need to know if you like them too. And you'll know their chemistry. If you I find Zoom interview is a waste.
Speaker 4:It's like, I don't know. I can't get a vibe from them. But at the second I sit with you guys, I'm like, I get their vibe. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And you wanna hang out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4:And you know who you don't wanna hang out with.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And that's what's being lost. That's the art of I think that whole thing is just chaotic bullshit. Is there and really lazy since COVID. A lot of
Speaker 2:you No. I go super quick. It's typically one call, ten minutes.
Speaker 4:Come hang out.
Speaker 2:Let's meet up in person.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And meet up at coffee shop. Really, can just tell there's, like, there's a million things. There's style, there's Totally. They look at you.
Speaker 4:Do they shake? I don't know. I feel like the etiquette of a human, you need to meet. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are there any particularly underrated films from a production design perspective that you go back and you Playtime.
Speaker 4:Playtime. It's the one I reference all the time. Jack Tatis Playtime. It's a Franz Coppola still talks about it.
Speaker 2:It's Yeah.
Speaker 4:It's what you know, Metropolis is gonna be another one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're bombs.
Speaker 4:Like, Playtime is a masterpiece. What It's my biggest reference for Severance was was there's artists, like there's cardboard cutters as people in the back. Wait till you see the airplane. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I had some. Just wait till you see it.
Speaker 1:Okay. Awesome.
Speaker 4:And it's it's he it was all his own money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He went bankrupt.
Speaker 4:And nobody watched it. And it's like now, there's books it's a it's one of the greatest films ever made and sometimes that takes fifty years. Yeah. Sadly, he's not you know, he doesn't see it. Doesn't see it.
Speaker 2:But Wait. So when is when is Metropolis actually released? It's out. It's out. And it bombed.
Speaker 2:Right? Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But It was long.
Speaker 2:I think people will it be appreciated in the fullness of time or or just
Speaker 4:You know, I think sometimes it takes twenty years for people to want to watch. Maybe it's too close to us. It's about us. Yeah. And we don't really like watching about ourselves.
Speaker 4:Right? It's we don't like what we're doing to the world. So I think in twenty years, the people will People Your kids will be like
Speaker 2:People I just didn't watch
Speaker 4:this.
Speaker 2:People like but but in a weird way, people
Speaker 1:You ever seen
Speaker 2:people like White Lotus because it's it's like watching their own family vacations. Yeah. It's like
Speaker 4:Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2:But that's different different dynamic.
Speaker 1:Yeah. White Lotus feels like being at a luxury resort and just eavesdropping on everyone and their lives are far eavesdropping. You're doing great.
Speaker 2:More than eavesdropping.
Speaker 4:I know. You're sitting there the whole time going, God,
Speaker 7:I'm so lucky. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I like this. Yeah. Exactly. I'm here.
Speaker 4:I'm eating this same food, but look at these freaks.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Look at these freaks. That's great. Yeah. Anything else you're tracking or watching these days?
Speaker 1:Have you seen the studio?
Speaker 4:I did, yeah. Okay. I don't I don't
Speaker 1:Do you think it rung true? Because for me, as an outsider, it felt like it was this great introduction. It felt honestly like the world of Silicon Valley and Venture Capital with with like episode two, he he he is giving notes that he shouldn't. Yeah. And then episode three is he has to give a note, but can't bring himself to.
Speaker 1:And and it showed that, you know, it's not just a there's not just a blanket rule. Studio exec never gives notes. No. Sometimes they do have to and that that kind of back and forth was really
Speaker 4:I mean, I think it has to be true because they're all Seth's experiences. He's regurgitated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 4:And I have friends who have, you know, pitched me. I I don't do I don't have that sort of relationship with studios.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So but a lot of my director friends who've pitched and pitched and they and they laugh, they know, they're like, oh my God, that's that guy. Yeah, That's it's based on real people.
Speaker 1:Yeah,
Speaker 4:yeah. I think it's hilarious. I don't know if other people get it. I don't know because it feels very filmy. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, sometimes he's doing Woody Allen that cracks me up. Yeah. Like the one episode four, I felt like Manhattan Murder Mystery. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know, he's I I get what he's doing. He's just trying to be fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Is cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's like the most expensive item you've ever had to procure during a production build? Has there ever been any moment where it's been like, this is really high stakes? Yeah.
Speaker 4:The jet for top gun. The jet for top gun. It took me a lot of time. How did that work?
Speaker 2:Mean built it. Right?
Speaker 4:Yeah. And everyone kept saying, no, no, it's just gonna be
Speaker 1:But you build it out now
Speaker 2:you get why the f 35 is a trillion No,
Speaker 4:it was only I think it was about 3,000,000 all in Wow. To build, but it's only it's not it obviously doesn't fly, but No. To build a prop, that's a lot of money for
Speaker 1:a Yeah. Does it go on some sort of robotic arm
Speaker 4:or something? Yeah. But we also built it to be real real at China Lake and Tom see I wanted Tom to be able to touch it. Yeah. See it, interact with it.
Speaker 4:Yeah. He gets in it. We tow it out. Yeah. All the way till it takes off is all real.
Speaker 4:Wow. And I'm like, I'm just a believer everything should be real. And, you know, I there's some feedback where was like, well, we can do can do so change into post later.
Speaker 1:I'm like,
Speaker 4:I joke, we're not gonna change it. We love it. Yeah. We make it
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's it.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 4:And it's you have to find certain directors that can commit to that too. Yeah. A lot of directors want to change it. So producers are like, we're not going pay for this. It's going to change anyways.
Speaker 4:We didn't change anything.
Speaker 1:There's a unique dynamic with Tom Cruise specifically, correct? Because he I've heard like he even has his own insurance, so he can do stunts, but can you unpack like
Speaker 4:what's I mean, work with him. So when we did the cockpit, like we built you basically, you know, when you did something like that, especially with Tom or you have to build plywood versions. So you build it to make sure because Tom's an amazing pilot. Mhmm. So we built it in this wooden cockpit and with the wooden windows and a template and he's like, it's not comfortable, guys.
Speaker 4:We gotta make it comfortable. Like, yeah, know it's a plywood. But he's really he's he's really adamant. He's gonna be in there a lot. It's gonna be really comfortable.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And
Speaker 4:Ron, who was the aircraft designer I was working with, he's done about five movies with Tom. He got he got it all. But Tom is very specific where he likes buttons. Like, he moves things Oh, that's cool. To where they want that where he is if he was a pilot, that's where he is a pilot.
Speaker 4:Yeah. He is a Yeah. He want it I would put it there.
Speaker 1:That's a
Speaker 4:So it so it's all so when he's in that mode, he's perfect because it's so custom to him and it and the inside cockpit, we we did it with Skunk Works. We had a whole deal with Skunk Works. Really? I was out there. Joe and I were there all the time.
Speaker 4:We co designed the cockpit with them. There are components. There's buttons in there that are $23,000,000 that are from prototypes. Wow. Only 10 people know what they are.
Speaker 4:Wow. And they're nods to those They're not for us. They're
Speaker 5:but Yeah.
Speaker 4:They would bring them into us in these little boxes and we'd put them in and then, you know, and it's just that part's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's such a little touch, but you know it just goes a little bit further. It's that finishing, that last 1%. Yeah. Takes 90% of the time.
Speaker 4:What is and for me, it's it's, you know, in Severance, a lot of the actors say it to me. It's like, they look around the room and like, there's so much we won't see. And I'm like, but you're seeing it. Yeah. They're using it.
Speaker 4:And it's it's not just for the audience to
Speaker 1:see it Yeah.
Speaker 4:They feel if they walk into this bonkers set and it's all feels real and there's things to do, they just get lost like you naturally would. Yeah. So it's just the way you have to design. A lot of people say, we won't see that. It's like, I don't even know what that I just don't ignore it.
Speaker 2:It's creating a world.
Speaker 4:And it's hard as in a lot of designers, they will cut it out. They'll be like, oh, yeah, they won't see it. It's like, you don't know that. And every director, like Catherine Bigelow, everything's a three sixty.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You don't give her a half set. Yeah. It's like because if she if you do, she will shoot that other half. And it'll be in the movie. And it'll be Like, you have be wrong.
Speaker 4:You gotta do the whole thing. Yeah. See? But you just have to be She
Speaker 1:wants to be immersed.
Speaker 4:Our job is to create a world that actors feel real in. Totally. And then when you watch it, you believe it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Should there be an Academy Award for production design? There is. There is? Yeah.
Speaker 1:But does it happen during the main event? It does?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah. My friend Patrice won for Dune last year.
Speaker 1:I don't
Speaker 4:know who won this. I can't remember. Yeah, that's a big award.
Speaker 1:I thought there was there's one category that I I think it's This
Speaker 4:will be an Emmy. You go.
Speaker 2:I hate to cut this interview short.
Speaker 1:This is really fun.
Speaker 2:No, I love it. Super enjoyable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 4:I'll happily do it again for you guys. Yeah.
Speaker 1:This will
Speaker 4:be great. You'll be in my home. I'll I'll drive my best foot down to busy guys.
Speaker 5:Oh, fantastic.
Speaker 2:There we go. Can drive it drive it on to the set. Do a Don't
Speaker 4:go West Side. It's too damn.
Speaker 1:No. No. We're we're we're going to Hollywood. Nice. We're bringing media in to Hollywood.
Speaker 4:I'm going to Hollywood.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Alright.
Speaker 2:Bringing media back to Hollywood.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, thank you so Cheers.
Speaker 2:Great hanging.
Speaker 1:It was great. I gotta watch Playtime. 67 comedy drama. Never seen it.
Speaker 2:Bye, guys.
Speaker 1:Later. Bye. Yeah. What a delightful conversation. Not someone that we normally have on the stream, but we need to do more Hollywood.
Speaker 1:We should do a whole Hollywood day. Welcome.
Speaker 2:Hey. Hi. How you doing? Welcome to the show. How are It's great to have you.
Speaker 8:Great to be here.
Speaker 1:Really, really chill day, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super relaxing.
Speaker 1:Super relaxing. Plenty of time to just come hang out on a podcast.
Speaker 2:Quiet. And let's adjust that microphone so it's it's towards your You can just adjust the mic, I think, will be enough.
Speaker 1:There we go. That's Would you mind introducing yourself for the stream? Tell us who you are, what you Sure.
Speaker 8:Hi. I'm Nairi Hordajian. I'm the chief communications officer at Figma, which basically means I'm lucky to work with this amazing design community on events and how we engage them all around the world, including How
Speaker 1:are how have the comms been different this year than in years past?
Speaker 8:You know, I think that the launches really set the tone for how we bring the community together at config every year. And, you know, we were just so excited about the launch slate this year. New Yep. Taking us from four to eight. Yep.
Speaker 2:We had Andrew Reed on from
Speaker 8:Oh, good.
Speaker 2:From Sequoia earlier, and he said that a few years ago, they were giving Dylan a standing ovation for Font teacher. For a font picker. And to see this year, it's, you know entirely. Make site, you know, buzz.
Speaker 8:Oh my god. I remember in 2022, it was a dark mode.
Speaker 2:Dark mode. Was like,
Speaker 1:oh my god. I was so excited, but now
Speaker 8:it's like, it's just been really amazing to see the response so far already, and we're excited to see them, the community play with the products, get feedback and keep iterating.
Speaker 1:Do you think about who you're communicating with as specific customer avatars or cohorts, or is it all just kind of one big happy Figma family? And yeah, if you put on the headphones, you'll just be able to hear yourself a little bit better.
Speaker 8:Better.
Speaker 1:A little more authentic podcast mode.
Speaker 7:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, in terms of in terms of the types of communities that are here, obviously, there's there's consumers who might use Figma just to design a wedding invitation or birthday card, and then there's all the way up to an enterprise that has probably hundreds of seats, if not more. Yeah. Do you think about communicating to different groups in different ways, or is it kind of just a big celebration of the broader Figma community? Yeah.
Speaker 8:I mean, Figma can be really good for figuring out your wedding seating, so don't want to discount that use But in general, we're really serving people who are making software.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 8:So going from idea to product and all the tools that they need to be able to do that. And, you know, obviously, the product design community is a huge part of that. But over the past several years, the way people are building has changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 8:The entire process has become more blended, interdisciplinary. Today, you heard from an engineer, a product manager, designers, and they're all just working together to build, to go from idea to product, and AI is changing that. And so, we really think of serving that entire development. No.
Speaker 2:It's crazy. The entire org chart can now make things.
Speaker 8:Yeah. Totally. You Which
Speaker 2:is insane. Like, the idea that that someone at in legal could create a marketing asset or or, you know, some type of material for hire, you know, it's pretty unheard of.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Even even just like a one off internal tool
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Could be built.
Speaker 2:Can you talk about kind of the pressure, you know, around Figma? A lot of companies say they have a community, but they really just have, you know, an audience or a customer base. But, you know, something that feels very obvious here and even online is that Figma's community is a real community. Right? You have people coming in from Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, like, all all descending here, and and you don't get that without, you know, people.
Speaker 2:And these aren't, you know, some people are coming on behalf of a company. Other people are like a one person studio that's just like, I'm spending my own money to get here because I need to be there. Can you talk about how how you've approached, you know, comms specifically at Figma, that when you send an email, people are gonna open it and they're gonna care a lot about what they're hearing. And I just feel like that's very different than even some big important companies where they're just sort of this monolithic organization and, you know, people are gonna buy their stuff, you know, whether regardless of how they feel about, you know, the company.
Speaker 8:Totally. Well, you know, a lot of that goes back to the very earliest days and, you know, I think because BigMa was in the browser and suddenly made Design Collaborative, it completely changed how designers worked. Completely. Like, radical change in their day to day. And so that we we always try to bring it back to the product solution that we're offering.
Speaker 8:But, know, we think of config as being an event for the community by the community. It always has been that way since the first one back in 2020, right before the pandemic. That predates my time at Figma. But the talks are by the members of our community, the, like, activations, even some of the other events that are being sponsored and put on by people who are just here gathering. So Yeah.
Speaker 8:For us, the way we think about it is just to maintain authentic relationships with people. We ask for a lot of feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 8:Sure, on the event, but also on product. And so, we're just trying to have a really open and engaged dialogue with folks. You know, we're happy that they tell us when they like things. We're also glad when they tell us what they don't like.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 8:Last year, we had a lot of overcrowding at config. On the one hand, that was like, you know Not An interesting problem to case,
Speaker 1:Shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 2:Like, more of a Coachella.
Speaker 8:Yeah. Was it was not easy folks to get in and around, and so we heard that, and I think it feels like much more roomy and spacious this And so just trying to make the experience always feel as authentic and connected as
Speaker 1:we Well, keynote was still standing room only, I noticed. Yeah. But, you know,
Speaker 8:it's We maxed out the number of chairs we could
Speaker 5:put in
Speaker 7:there, I Of
Speaker 1:course. Go Can you talk about the trade offs between batching these four product releases into one big event versus splitting it up? You could imagine, like, quarterly releases. There's obviously trade offs there. In the age of the Internet, there's a lot of demand on companies to just, hey, as soon as it's done, give it to me.
Speaker 1:I want it now. Even if it's rough around the edges, let's iterate. We get At the same time, you're becoming more of like the Apple like annual release and there's something beneficial from a comms perspective about concentrating all the energy and attention to really break through with one big day of the year, because you can't really dominate the Internet every day, even if you're the best in the business.
Speaker 3:That's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But yeah, how how do you think about it? Was it ever a trade off, or do you just love the annual release cycle?
Speaker 8:Honestly, we really look at the roadmap and let the roadmap kind of dictate what will end up at config and what ends up outside of config. We're not necessarily on a big annual release a year. Obviously, config is a catalyst for a bunch of stuff. We've never launched four products in Yeah. Launch ever.
Speaker 8:And, again, going from four to eight. So, for us, it's not set. We really we believe in the philosophy that you just said of, like, get product into users hands fast, even if it's not, you know, like, even if it's early
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 8:And learn and keep iterating faster from there. Because, you know, our philosophy is that design is product development are always iterative, always living, and so you're constantly gonna be tuning it. And the faster you can get it to users, the better. Dylan always tells the story of the early days of Figma, where, you know, they didn't ship for Yeah. A few years.
Speaker 8:He talks about that as being something he would do differently if he could go back again and advice he gives to their Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's we were talking about this with with Andrew too. It's just so much part of the lore of, you know, just basically, you know, building in in relative obscurity and then just coming out and and and how most I do think that that's that that made sense in the context of building novel functionality in the browser and the super complex product. But now that there's a platform taking that kind of iterative approach
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 8:Yeah. You learn faster, the more people get their hands on it.
Speaker 1:Can you walk me through some of the other, like, comms best practices from amplifying an event like this? Like, obviously, we're here having fun kind of in the new media streaming, very different world, but I imagine that there's, like, a series of press releases that go out and how how do you work on getting coverage across, like, is the what is the market map of, like, getting attention at Yeah. Ligament's level?
Speaker 8:Well, because this is an event foreign by our community, a lot of what we do is really about that direct and owned communication and the owned channels across social especially. And then, of course, like, the other events that are, you know, the constellation around config. Like, we had a Day Zero block party outside on Howard Street yesterday called Config Commons that was so much fun, like great music, great vibes, people really warmed up. But I'm
Speaker 2:sure people joined not knowing what it was tried to join Yeah. Not knowing what it was for, but just being like, looks like Totally. That looks fun party.
Speaker 8:Exactly. But, you know, one of the things that we like to do is just have fun with how our brand shows up. Yes, Figma is a b to b SaaS company, but we have a consumer patina to our brand. Okay. And we get to lean into that, which is so much fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 8:Yeah. And unique, I think, within enterprise software. And so, you know, we changed our social handles to be called config crave, which I don't know if you all follow pop crave on Twitter, but, you know, the demois, the pop craves, all these stan accounts that sort of get to feature Yeah. Celebrities.
Speaker 2:And for us, I'm so Even this morning, there was a bunch of really funny posts.
Speaker 8:Yeah. I saw that. Tracy Celebrities here are our our community. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 8:We wanted to feature them, and we just are always looking for ways to do that authentically and have a little fun. You saw the I think we talked about the auto
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 8:Big pal CGI video. Yeah. There's this like Pretty funny.
Speaker 2:Godzilla Yeah. Auto. It's it's amazing.
Speaker 8:We like to have fun and bring that vibe while also like sharing clear factual information. What's launching? When can you get your hands on it? So it's really a balance to do it all.
Speaker 2:It's the hardest thing. Clarity while trying to get max attention.
Speaker 1:Makes sense.
Speaker 8:I mean, this is your first config.
Speaker 1:Tell me
Speaker 8:what you all think.
Speaker 2:It's it feels like it feels like being at Coachella.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Really does.
Speaker 2:Feels like being at a music festival.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's
Speaker 2:massive. So so fun to have you here. And and it's and it's so great that the diversity of different types of creatives that we've had on the show just today is so fascinating. The last one was was like production sort of stuff.
Speaker 8:Isn't he awesome? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 8:He's so fun.
Speaker 2:Incredibly. He's gonna do
Speaker 8:a great talk later today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm very excited for that. We didn't even get to like how does he use Figma at all or Oh, doesn't. He's just speaking about design broadly.
Speaker 8:Yeah. We just think Pretty cool. You know, someone in our community Yeah. Tweeted at us. Yeah.
Speaker 8:You know who I wanna hear from my config? That's cool. The production designer from Severance. Yeah. And we were like, let's make it We've got you.
Speaker 2:No, you just tell like the dedication to the craft Yes. And the process that everybody, even if you have nothing to do with production set design
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like, I wanna apply a lot from our conversation, not just to our set, but how we do the Yeah. And a lot of it just resonated. Personally, I'm just excited to go make my first Figma site, so.
Speaker 7:What are you
Speaker 8:gonna make?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I I want like, I have so many different I have so many different ideas at both at TBPN of just like what it enables, just that like speed of iteration. I think that the most frustrating thing for me was always hitting a wall on on no code Yes. Like low code software Yeah. Like web development tools where I don't have an engineering background and it would just be so frustrating to like make something in Figma and then get to the point where I'm like, okay, now I have to wait Who
Speaker 8:do I give it to? Find
Speaker 2:yeah, I've gotta find like the right developer and they're like, okay, I can get to it in like a week. And then they're like, you do it in two days? Yep. And then it's like, you really want it like that day?
Speaker 1:There's so many of these ideas that are effectively like memes. Like they're one off web pages that
Speaker 8:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Don't do not merit any sort of real budget weeks of engineering time. Like, we wanted to do venture capital radio, VC radio, and so when you go to
Speaker 6:Yes, funny.
Speaker 1:A specific VC firm's web page, it plays a song that identifies with that fund, and so
Speaker 8:That's so really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Go to Andreessen Horowitz, American Dynamism's gonna play like Free Bird or something. Yeah, because they
Speaker 2:have couple Yeah, but there's this ideas of
Speaker 1:It's like, that's not something that you would wanna actually spend some developers time on, but
Speaker 2:you can just buy Yeah. But like, ephemeral apps, websites, this idea of apps as meme, as like memes, right, of like The
Speaker 4:internet used to be
Speaker 5:like this.
Speaker 1:Back when it was just an HTML page, you would just kind of hack something together and then stumble upon, would drive some traffic. And then we kind of went into the social era and everything has to be either an image, text or video.
Speaker 5:But Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, my hope is that something will break through and people will be able to build more interactive stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We talked about this. I want to enable, you know, we have a bunch of brand assets at TBPN and Yeah. People will remix them and use them in different ways. And sometimes I look at an image, I'm like, oh, this is like hilarious.
Speaker 2:I, you know, I wanna reshare it, but like the logo It's not quite right. Yeah. Right. So
Speaker 1:Manage all that.
Speaker 2:Maybe figuring out a way to make buzz.
Speaker 8:I was gonna say, you can use buzz for that too. Yeah. And then see what people make for you.
Speaker 5:Yeah. That would be fun.
Speaker 8:Meme meme you guys.
Speaker 5:Yes. Be Gotta
Speaker 2:be getting memed.
Speaker 7:Yeah. For
Speaker 2:sure. All the time.
Speaker 8:Rise of the meme.
Speaker 2:Love it. How are you feeling for you guys are headed to
Speaker 8:London.
Speaker 2:London.
Speaker 8:We are. Last year, right after config s f, we took config to Singapore.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 8:This year, it's London.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 8:Excited. We have
Speaker 2:Is it a lot of the same, like, set effectively, is it a separate set out there?
Speaker 8:We are bringing the inflatables.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 8:Are easier to Yeah.
Speaker 1:Pack up.
Speaker 8:Collapse, pack and ship. Synth the synth can't come. It's too expensive to ship, unfortunately. That It's a you know, in general, in another, like, raw space where we can bring our own scenic and make it feel like Figma. Yeah.
Speaker 8:It's a smaller venue. It's about, you know, for a couple thousand people.
Speaker 1:Is it configuring like a full time job now for Figma? Like, does the planning for 2026 start next week, basically?
Speaker 8:It already has.
Speaker 1:It already has. Wow.
Speaker 8:It already has. We have to walk and chew gum Our
Speaker 2:figs are measured in centuries.
Speaker 8:It's You know, I think Yeah. There are great moments in company lives that rally everybody together, and they differ for every company. Yeah. And for us, this is one of them on an annual basis, everyone on the product team, on the sales team, on the marketing team, and we have a lot of fun with it. And for, you know, it's just really important for us to show up and be present with our users and our community, and make sure that they know how much we appreciate their feedback and how much we're working to ship for them.
Speaker 2:Totally. Yeah. Anything else? We need your help at some point finding, apparently, Dylan was in a Windows XP commercial when he was a kid. Oh, do you have do you have that?
Speaker 2:I
Speaker 8:think I well, there's that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 8:There's Dylan on the Today show after he became a Teal fellow with his mom.
Speaker 2:No way. That's another good one. We get The
Speaker 8:third best is in the early days of Figma when it was really small, they were trying to recruit this intern to come work at Figma. She was really into k pop. So Dylan and the early team filmed a k pop music video for her. That's like really hardcore recruiting for an intern. It must not have been very good.
Speaker 8:She declined the internship. No way. But those are some good videos from the early days I can share with you.
Speaker 2:She will, I'm sure, always regret that decision.
Speaker 4:Maybe that's hilarious.
Speaker 8:Wish her well. We wish her But that came that video was so good. We showed it at our ten year.
Speaker 1:That's like the equivalent for, like, an intern is, like, when the, like, the NBA general commissioner, like, team team coach goes to, like, the parents and sits them down, says, hey, we want them to join the join the team or something Yeah. Or, like, college recruiting.
Speaker 2:Even more than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Even more. Brutal.
Speaker 8:Did a lot of child acting.
Speaker 1:There's so there's so much good lore around that. Like, Eric Lyman has that video of him speaking fluent Chinese on some game show. Don't know if you've seen Oh, it's fantastic at Ramp.
Speaker 8:Is he a fluent speaker?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So so he's he was over in China for, I I don't know, a semester, maybe a couple years or something. Went on a game show, he's telling all these jokes and like getting a uproarious applause Yeah. From everyone.
Speaker 1:It's remarkable. And then, of course, Scott Wu at Cognition has that video of him doing, like, the most complex math imaginable as like a shot.
Speaker 2:In his head.
Speaker 1:In his head.
Speaker 8:Yeah. What are what about the what do you all have in your
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 8:In your closet.
Speaker 1:In That's
Speaker 8:tough. That's something You
Speaker 2:know, videos.
Speaker 8:Meme those.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 8:For 2025.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think if I when when was my there's probably a video interview from, like, my first company years ago, but I don't think it was too embarrassing.
Speaker 2:Okay. I don't have anything embarrassing. The one, I my mom was a was a graphic designer and Yeah.
Speaker 8:Oh, cool.
Speaker 2:So my earliest memories doing design in a business context were working with her. These were like the the Photoshop years and I have like pictures. So I had a skateboard company when I was 12 and I have pictures of me, like, holding up, you know, the finished product. But they're, I I it was so funny because at the time, I I actually really remember how, like, single player the product was. It was, like Mhmm.
Speaker 2:You know, files and, like, versions and whatever. Mhmm. So, I
Speaker 1:I I remember some of my friends in high school made like a student film and I was tall. I'm still tall, but they made me play the dad, which is hilarious. And I was a terrible actor.
Speaker 2:You had to wear a suit?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I I did actually wear a suit. It was very, very embarrassing. Anyway
Speaker 8:I do feel a little underdressed compared to you two.
Speaker 1:Mean, we're overdressed. Look at community. This is Oh, you
Speaker 2:should have this
Speaker 1:is not exactly the Goldman Sachs technology media and We were
Speaker 2:in LA. We had a meeting Monday and we we showed up to Melkin, not for the event, but meeting Yep. Somebody there and we didn't have our suits on. I had a suit on. Oh, you had
Speaker 1:a I didn't have a jacket, but Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, a jacket doesn't
Speaker 1:we were at Hill And Valley right at home. Right at home. Yeah.
Speaker 8:Everyone. I mean
Speaker 1:That was all of us Silicon Valley people putting on suits for the first time in years.
Speaker 8:Yeah. Yeah. And all the DC people.
Speaker 1:But here here we kinda stick out. Fortunately, everyone's been very nice and I think they're they're having fun.
Speaker 8:I don't miss the bad suits from Washington.
Speaker 1:No. No.
Speaker 8:Not my
Speaker 1:No. The joke is that you know you're at Hillen Valley when everyone has their business cards in their suits from the last time they were there because they only go to DC once a year for Hillen Valley. That's funny. Anyway, we're we're we're getting a hard stop,
Speaker 2:so we're we're gonna in four minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thank you so much for hopping on.
Speaker 8:Guys, thanks for to
Speaker 2:be clear, I think we're getting booted from, like, for some reason. Otherwise, we'd keep mean, we we
Speaker 1:got another four hours in us.
Speaker 2:We got always another four hours. Honestly, we're not used to being on couches. It's
Speaker 1:like It is a little bit different.
Speaker 8:Comfy? You can do a longer Well, tough.
Speaker 2:Could I think
Speaker 1:we can Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I think we could easily put up another twelve hours.
Speaker 1:Easily. Easily. Anyway Next time. Well, thanks
Speaker 2:for making much having us.
Speaker 4:Don't you
Speaker 8:meet us in London next week?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. The international travel, we have yet to take the show on the road internationally. We've done Miami. We've done DC, San Francisco now.
Speaker 8:Okay.
Speaker 1:So checking the boxes. We'll get out. Okay. We'll get out there.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Well, thank
Speaker 4:you so much for having us.
Speaker 1:Do you know where the next next config is? Or is that not gonna It's not It's not gonna happen.
Speaker 2:News
Speaker 8:on this show. Love to.
Speaker 1:Maybe, I don't know, where where Saint Tropez or
Speaker 2:Sure. John just wants to wants it to align with twenty twenty six summer plans.
Speaker 8:Exactly. Sorry. Sorry, John.
Speaker 2:Lake Como, maybe I'm on Geary. I'm on Geary.
Speaker 1:Yeah. For a more
Speaker 2:intimate setting.
Speaker 8:I think we may not be the right, you know, company conference for those locations. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, Singapore is very nice.
Speaker 8:London is fantastic. Know, you should maybe Cam Lyon needs to have TBPN.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That'd be great.
Speaker 8:That's what you need.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cam Lyon would be great. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That'd be fantastic.
Speaker 8:I feel that for you.
Speaker 5:Anyway. Okay.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 2:Will Talk soon. We'll we'll see you after the after the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Anyway, this has been a fantastic stream. Thank you for watching. We really had a lot of fun being here at FigmaConfig twenty twenty five. Had a lot of interesting conversations.
Speaker 1:Really took us on a world tour. World tour. Having Sequoia partner and the designer of the of Not every day that you see a technology and business show do both. We're doing it all. We're men of many talents.
Speaker 2:So how many guests do we have tomorrow, by the way?
Speaker 1:I think we have, like, six. We can give everyone
Speaker 4:a kind
Speaker 1:of a run through. Think gonna
Speaker 2:be closer to seven. Seven. Do we wanna do we wanna leak it? I think it might I I I generally I don't I I don't wanna go
Speaker 1:But but we but we are we are hoping to get some great people from the government as well as our first our our first post game of a major public company post earnings. Earnings.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which we're very excited about. And so we're gonna be digging into that, kind of cutting our teeth in the post earnings game, which we wanna get more into. So Tomorrow. It's absolutely stacked. Tomorrow.
Speaker 1:It's stacked. We we have to get back to LA actually right now because we have
Speaker 2:to prep because we're we're going wall to wall tomorrow. It's by far the most stacked show
Speaker 1:I'm excited. It's gonna be a big growth moment for the So Anyway, thank you so for We will talk
Speaker 4:to soon.
Speaker 2:To Goodbye.