This week on the First Round Review, Figma’s CPO shares how the design juggernaut has thoughtfully expanded its product suite, building new tools for new personas that have become just as beloved as the core product.
Lessons in Product Scaling and Storytelling from Figma’s CPO
Yuhki Yamashita has a simple way to gauge if a new product will make someone go, “I want that!” before launch day: Can its value be distilled in a screenshot?
This useful test presses product teams for simplicity. The more time you spend iterating on a product, he points out, the harder it is to step back and evaluate how well it speaks for itself. Screenshots are a forcing function to distill what will be most impactful for users into one single visual, especially for a product launch.
“If you’ve been involved in the evolution of the product, you can empathize with how you got there,” he says. “But users don't see that evolution — they’re coming fresh at a screenshot with no context. If you have to explain what's going on, that's an indication that you haven’t made the value proposition simple enough.”
That’s just one of Yamashita's many product storytelling techniques. He previously led product management and design at Uber, and in his current tenure as Figma’s CPO, he’s overseen the company’s evolution into a multi-product shop, heading up strategy for the launches of FigJam, Dev Mode, and Figma Slides.
Yamashita has charted a career in product devoted to the 1 to 10 stretch of a startup’s life: finding a path toward steady growth after clinching product-market fit. In this exclusive interview, he opens up about how Figma decides which new bets to pursue, rallying the right resourcing to build them and launching to great fanfare. Here’s a snapshot of his tactics:
- Watch how users are hacking the core product. FigJam, Figma’s collaborative whiteboarding tool, was born in the dark days of the pandemic — when Yamashita and his team noticed that people were hanging out virtually in Figma. “We thought, ‘Okay, we should capitalize on this,’ because whenever your users are hacking your product in a fun way, that's really great inspiration.”
- Bring in outsiders to deepen understanding of new user personas. When Figma set out to bring a new type of user into the fold — developers — Yamashita knew it’d be tough for the existing product team to fight their long-nurtured instincts of building for designers. So they brought on fresh talent to build Dev Mode (via an ‘acquihire’ of a startup building a Figma spinoff for developers). “It was important to bring on people who could advocate for that perspective and challenge core assumptions — and through that debate, you build the best product.”
- Don’t be afraid to ruffle some feathers. Product launches are an effort in storytelling. And in Yamashita’s view, “Every good narrative has a little bit of tension.” Perhaps no Figma launch sparked online chatter better than the core product — which contended that people should huddle in the design file at the same time, and at the time, that was controversial.
Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing!
-The Review Editors
Recommended resources:
-If you want more of Yamashita’s product wisdom, check out his advice for nailing product reviews (created with Figma Slides).
-We’re co-hosting a summit for future founders building in NYC this May, featuring speakers like Datadog’s Olivier Pomel, MongoDB’s Dev Ittycheria and Flatiron Health’s Zach Weinberg. Apply to attend here.
-How to build a sales pipeline out of self-serve.