From Peter Pan to billionaire CEO: How Dylan Field led Figma to the biggest IPO of the year

Imagine a movie: a small actor from the California countryside falls asleep on stage in the middle of a Peter Pan play and does a Windows XP commercial. He solves algebraic equations at age six, drops out of an elite university to build a startup, and becomes a billionaire. The final scene is an IPO on a wave of fame and global recognition. This is not a fictional hero. This is Dylan Field, CEO and co-founder of Figma.

The future symbol of the Millennial generation was born in 1992. It was obvious from childhood that Field had both creative and logical skills. On the one hand, the child solved algebraic problems already at the age of six, on the other hand, he played on stage. He did stunts for the play on Peter Pan (though he fell asleep once on stage), starred in Windows XP commercials. He'll later say it came in handy when he created the Figma graphics editor: "The energy of theatrical improvisation, where each actor picks up on the previous actor's lines - you want that for people working together on the same platform".

Bored with his high school classes, Dylan began spending time with a janitor. And, as in "Good Will Hunting", it turned out that this janitor was passionate about math and physics. It was he who first showed the teenager the world of mathematical proofs and made him realize that there were far more interesting things outside of the school curriculum. Such as set theory, for example.

In 2009, Field chose Brown University to study computer science and find himself. "Programming is a Muggle way for me to master magic," Field admitted. In 2010, he ended up at LinkedIn, where he spent four months doing data analytics and managed to catch the eye of Jeff Winner, LinkedIn's CEO. "We have an incredible intern working for us, I'd like to keep him, but the kid wants to make his own company," Winner said.

As one of the top students, Field made it into the KPSB Engineering program, which provided internships at successful technology companies. The program led him to Flipboard, a company that created an app with a personalized news feed. He interned there twice - in 2011 and 2012. First, he worked on a recommendation service so that users would see relevant news. And, of course, visualizing big data. In 2012, he started working closely with Flipboard's design team and got frustrated with how clunky their image editor was.

Corporations treated the yesterday's schoolchild as a valuable prize: recruiters kept an eye on him, and top companies and venture funds discussed among themselves who would get the prodigy. In 2008, business had learned to collect big data, but was in great need of people who could analyze that data. Companies were looking for people "with the brain of a mathematician, the skill of a programmer and the eye of an artist." Field called it a happy coincidence that companies needed exactly what he loved - math and statistics. In 2011, he planned to start a company that would specialize in big data. And he joked that he could support himself just by attending headhunter presentations.

For all his talents, Field wasn't a closed and withdrawn math geek or an aloof tech programmer. While still in high school, he interned at O'Reilly Media, a publishing house that hosted Foo Camp and Strata, where Silicon Valley's best geeks gathered. It was there that Field got to know everyone. Business Insider dubbed Field a superstar when he was just 20 years old.

The turning point came in 2012. Field applied for the famous Thiel Fellowship - Peter Thiel was then giving $100,000 to gifted students willing to drop out of university to start their own business. Field wrote in the "What do you want to accomplish in the next 10 years" section of the questionnaire: "I hope that in 10 years I will have created a breakthrough, profitable company that will make a significant contribution to the world." When similarly asked about his plans for the next three months, he said he would "go to Israel and work on Barack Obama's campaign staff" (he never worked for Obama).

In his scholarship application, Field wrote an essay about why chocolate is disgusting and stated drone software as a project he wanted to work on. That's how Field won his $100,000. But he was talked out of drones by his partner, Evan Wallace, an assistant professor at Brown University nicknamed "Computer Jesus." Field would later write "we couldn't come up with a drone idea that wouldn't hurt people or violate their privacy. In retrospect, I regret writing this - as someone who cares a great deal about privacy struggles, I don't want this technology to exist in the world." With Wallace, they settled on WebGL (Web Graphics Library) technology - it allowed them to work with pictures directly in the browser without having to install a heavyweight graphics editor like Adobe. Field was impressed by the success of Google Docs: a text editor with the ability for multiple people to work simultaneously on a single document was a game changer. That's how Figma came to be, and it changed the way designers around the world work.

After just one year in business, in June 2013, Figma raised $3.9 million in investment. In 2015, when Field turned 22, Forbes included him on its "30 Under 30" list - which includes people under 30 who have achieved recognition in their field. Four years later, Field said in an interview, "There were a lot of people we wanted to hire, but they didn't want to meet with us beforehand, saying, 'I don't want to work for a 20-year-old.'"

In 2019, the startup's investors included big players Sequoia Capital with $40 million, followed a year later by Andreessen Horowitz with $50 million, Crunchbase cites data.

On September 15, 2022, Adobe, a major player in the graphic design market, announced its takeover of Figma for $20 billion in cash and stock. The design community accused Figma of betrayal, recalling Field's old tweet, "Our goal is to be Figma. Not Adobe." The market was convinced that Adobe would destroy a potential competitor, as it had with other startups: "Who used Fireworks, Behance, Frame.io after the Adobe takeover?"

The deal was blocked by European and British regulators, stating that the merger would lead to a monopoly in the market and further development of software for designers would slow down. On December 18, 2023, the companies announced the termination of the deal, Adobe paid Figma $1 billion in fines.

Two years after a failed deal, Figma enjoys 95% of Fortune 500 companies. From $4 million in 2018, the company's revenue has grown 100-fold to $400 million by 2024. Wall Street has braced itself for Figma's IPO.

Figma went public on the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025. The company raised more than $1.2 billion and its market capitalization exceeded $56 billion: the listing was the largest of the year, Saxo Bank noted. The stock jumped 250% on the first day, from $33 to $115.50. Two weeks later, the excitement subsided, the stock fell 34%, the company'svaluation as of August 14, 2025 was $39.93 billion - almost double what Adobe offered in 2022. Field became a billionaire - on the first day after the IPO his fortune exceeded $6 billion.

In a letter attached to the standard IPO shareholder form, Field asked to prepare for long-term investment because the company intends to spend aggressively: "AI spending may be a drag on our efficiency for a few years, but AI is key to how future design processes will evolve [...] The impact of AI will go far beyond the Figma platform. During the Internet boom of the late 90s, the prevailing philosophy was "Make it and they will come." Today it's the opposite - it's easier than ever to create an MVP (minimum working version) and design is no longer an afterthought. Design is no longer just about form and function. Design determines whether you win or lose."

Analysts usually don't make stock predictions until 25 days after the IPO. Barron's writes that Figma will likely need shareholders who favor aggressive growth. And there are some - Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, bought 60,000 shares of the company, for one of the company's ETFs. Forbes wrote on August 8 that even after the sell-off, Figma's stock price was more than 40 times its projected revenue in 2025 (we're talking about the P/S multiple). Adobe, by comparison, had a P/S multiple of about 7.5. Investors have very high expectations of the company, which leaves no room for error.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor