How to build a beloved tech brand | Sheila Joglekar Vashee (CMO, Figma)

Brett: I thought we could start what you think excellent marketing is in 2026.

Sheila: is that marketing sort of sits at the intersection of product, of revenue, of users and user perception, and for Figma, like community. the job of excellent marketing, which is more true now than ever, is making coherence across all those things, making all of that work together. So clarifying for what you're building, who are you building it for? Why should they care? Making sure that that translates to how is it gonna drive growth and revenue for the business, and then also circling back to users in the community and making sure that it resonates and it feels authentic, and you're building a brand that they can also feel a part of.

the only team that sits across all of those things is marketing, and it's the job of marketing to make sure that it all works together and all of those touchpoints speak to each other because they represent your brand. And I think it's harder than ever in 2026 because everything is moving at just like insane warp speed.

But the job is still the same.

Brett: a bunch of the things that you outlined, there's multiple input drivers to them, marketing being one of them, but it could be sales and sales effectiveness. In a lot of cases, it could be product or engineering. And so how do you think about, like, disambiguating that? When you think about either input drivers or accountability for those sort of things that are highly cross-functional.

Sheila: think a trap a lot of companies get into is giving those different teams different goals. And it's easy to see why you get there actually, right? Because let's look at pipeline, for example. You could argue pipeline, there are multiple contributors to that. Some of it are the leads coming in and the quality of those leads and the volume of those leads.

Some of it is the pickup rate, some of it is, the likelihood that you're able to close a deal, and that spans multiple teams. And I think it's very easy to give marketing a goal for one stage of that process and sales a goal for another stage. I think that actually creates dysfunction between the teams, and you have to goal people on the end goal knowing that there are inputs that different teams can have more influence on at each stage.

But everyone has to be focused on the same end goal, otherwise you have adverse outcomes through the process. So goal on the same end goal, but give people a different sense of their impact on the inputs.

Brett: the decision you made in the role of CMO last year that you think was the single most important correct decision?

Sheila: Last year we had a big push to continue building around the expanded definition of design. So if you look at Figma, two-thirds of people who build in Figma are non-designers. They're engineers- Yeah ... they're marketers. And we did a push to bring those people in those functions closer to Figma while still staying committed to our core, and that is really hard from a brand perspective.

But we see that working because we are expanding the definition of what design is, and we did a big push around that. And that was important for us because it's important that we build for the people who are using Figma every day, but we also have to stay committed to the community that, you know, made us, put us at the center of the product development process, which is design.

And so I feel we were able to do both by expanding the definition of who participates in the design process.

Brett: Damn. So wha-- how did you do that?

Sheila: We did that through a big campaign on the marketing side. So like for example, we launched Figma Make last year, and that was a product that brought more people into the design process. It made it more accessible for PMs and, and others to participate in the process of, building prototypes and porting them into Figma and working f- you know, in the product.

And we did a big push to bring those people together. We held events, we did campaigns. we did a lot of thought leadership and, and, had moments with people on the ground, and that was really successful in building awareness of that product, but then also bringing Figma to more audiences in a way that felt authentic.

and we plan to do more of that.

Brett: the difference between a VP or SVP of marketing and a CMO?

Sheila: When you're a CMO, you have to think about the company and the business in a bigger way. When you're a VP or SVP, th- you have to keep that in mind, but your job is to get an initiative through. launch a campaign, do a big product push, et cetera. When you're a CMO, you have to take a step back and say, "If I'm on the board, or if I'm, sitting in like the CEO Dylan's shoes, how do I think about the effectiveness of this program overall?

Is it the right place for us to be putting our people and our time, or should we be shifting to other things?" So I think you have a broader lens, and you have to push on really the relevance across a lot of different areas

Brett: When you think about that switch for you, is it feel incremental or it feels dramatic?

Sheila: You know, for me, the, the best lesson in how to operate as a CMO was spending some time in investing because I had the objective perspective of the companies that I was working with so closely and investing in, and I was able to sit at, you know, at that level as the investor or board member in some cases and ask these questions, right?

And so it gave me a better kind of empathy, I think, for, people who sit at that level and the questions they need to be asking and, and it has allowed me to bring that into my role now at Figma and push myself and our teams internally on those questions to make sure that we're taking that broader view.

It was actually a very helpful perspective to gain.

Brett: W-w-when you think about when, you were not in the top marketing spot and you compare and contrast those two roles, does that substantially Or if, you know, you have an SVP of marketing that works underneath you and they're thinking about at some point they're gonna be a CMO, do you think about that as, like, a significant phase shift?

Sheila: The other thing is, like, when you're running a part of the org but not the whole org, you don't have visibility into everything, right? So if you're the VP on the growth side or VP on the brand side, then you have less visibility into what's happening on growth and how the pieces connect together. I think when you're sitting over everything, you have to look at the whole thing as an engine, right?

Or as a funnel, and how one piece contributes to the other. And that was probably the biggest shift for me, moving from, running some of the pieces. Like, I grew up in product marketing and then brand, owning that piece, and then taking on growth later and, and understanding how everything worked together.

That was a, pretty big learning for me and a bit of an unlock actually, because they feed each other. They can sometimes be in opposition. And figuring out how to make them work in harmony is pretty cool and pretty fun.

Brett: most common pattern when they're in opposition?

Sheila: always have what works on growth sometimes feels at odds with the brand that you want to create. You see it happen all the time because what might be most effective, have the clearest hook in a specific ad that's targeting acquisition might not feel like what you-- how you wanna present yourself as a brand.

And so those two are always in tension, and you have to find the space that allows you to build both at the same time, and that is what is hard about marketing actually.

Brett: What's like a

good example of that?

Sheila: think about any spammy ad that you've seen on TikTok or other social media platforms or even, you know, some of the search ads.

You know, some, sometimes they have, like Weird, camel case and ways of capitalizing random letters to get your attention, right? That doesn't improve the brand perception, but it gets your attention in the moment and it might make you click. Over time, that's detrimental to a company's brand, but it's effective as a local maxima for that channel.

But someone has to sit across everything and say, "What's right for us long term?" That's the challenge.

And by the way, Figma team doesn't do any of that. I just want to make sure that's super clear.

Brett: the correct-- like, so what is the correct thing?

Sheila: it's a balance, and it's a little bit of the art, right? If you think about marketing, there's a science, which is looking at LCB to CAC and ROI and the marketing mix modeling and how much spend are you putting in each channel, and the art, which is what do you want to say? How do you make it break through?

How do you make it work at every level of the funnel or, the user journey? And you have to try things out, but you also have to bring a little bit of the art into it, and that, that's where like the, the real breakthrough talent, I think, shines through. What are

Brett: we were talking a second ago about, decision from the last year, what's your general thought on what are the decisions you should yourself be making as the CMO versus the decisions that you always want someone else in the org, and if you are making the decision, it shows that there's like an org effectiveness or health problem?

Sheila: So first of all, I hire people who are better than me in all of the areas that we talked about. There are people who are far better than me on the growth side at Figma. There are people who are so much better than me on the brand side, on the comms side, every team, right? So you hire people who are better my job is to look across everything and say, "Are we load balancing in the right way?" Resources, people, time. Is it effective for moving the whole business forward along those like metrics that I talked about, right? That's how I see my job. Now, there's a million of kind of smaller decisions on a particular program or a particular, you know, push in a certain area that I might get pulled into.

my ideal state is there are people who are better than me making those individual decisions, and then I can look across everything and say, "Great, this is a balanced approach to how we want to grow."

Brett: about it more like managing a portfolio or resource allocation and that type of stuff?

Sheila: Exactly.

Brett: with sort of that lens, what does that end up looking like quarter to quarter? Like where you put like your most, cognitive energy into this, this, these types of decisions or these trade-offs.

Sheila: you always have some amount of time, resources, people put on running the business stuff, right? So I would put maybe our ongoing campaigns that are growth drivers, our ongoing product launches that show momentum, just the amount of work that is like this is what we need to do to maintain the business.

And then some amount of time and energy, probably disproportionate, that goes into what are the big bets? What are the moonshots? Like, what are the things that are gonna get us, a step change outcome that we would never have when we're running the business in an incremental way, And those could be on the growth side or those could be creative.

Like, what are the creative breakthrough ideas, the things that are totally off the charts, seem crazy when you look at them individually, but as a portfolio you're like, "Yes, these are the risks we should be taking"? Those always take a disproportionate amount of time because they're, they're out there and you need to think them through.

but you need to have them as part of a portfolio, right? Because if one of them doesn't work, you still need to hit your numbers and you still need to, like run the business. And so I try to look at that as a portfolio, but you always spend more time on the moonshot big bet stuff. That's also the fun stuff in a lot of ways.

Brett: last few years, whether it worked or didn't

Sheila: I mean, any campaign idea that we have, right? So the year before, we invested a lot behind this concept of like making and believing. Make believe was the tagline, and it was like investing in kind of creativity and imagination, but also like what it takes to actually build a production level product that your customers will love because all the best products are built in Figma.

And we put a lot behind that. We had events, we had out of home, we had videos, and like it resonated with the community. In fact, we did a big community push where we took over Times Square and we put the community, like amazing things that they had built up on, you know, in Times Square and people loved it.

and we spent a lot of time building that concept and that idea. But it's possible that it wouldn't have hit. It did and we're lucky, but if it didn't, then we would have a bunch of other things that we would explore, right? And so that, those things take time to develop, but they're the things that people remember and we've got a, a whole bunch of them in the works and that we're ready to pull out and try.

Brett: Do you think about marketing and telling the story of the company at all as it relates to the sort of, um, maturity of the business? Like do you kind of think that, you know, when you're in the early days of Dropbox you're like A cool 20-year-old, and you wake up one day and you don't wanna feel like, you know, the '90s band that in 2026 is playing their greatest hits at some retirement community.

Sheila: So yes, but what changes that is actually ubiquity, not like how long the company's been around. There's a really interesting phrase in retail, and way back in my career I worked in retail. Long lifetime ago. I learned a lot there actually because brand is so important in retail because

all clothes at the end, right, like clothes are the same.

They come from the same factories a lot of time. And there's a really interesting concept, from the CEO of Urban Outfitters at the time. It was like, "Ubiquity is the opposite of cool." If something is everywhere, and like Gap, you said, we talked about the '90s. Gap in the '90s was a perfect example of that, right?

It was on every street corner, and it stopped being cool anymore. and so like I think about that a lot actually for us because ... And, and at Dropbox also because there's something special about being the challenger, the underdog that people want to, you know, they wanna be aligned with that. They, they want to be aligned with that kind of the, the people's, challenging the status quo.

as you grow, that becomes the challenge to remain relevant. I think there are a few brands who have done that successfully. I would say the, the few that I look to, like Harley Davidson, for example, still retained this kind of aura of independence and celebrating kind of the renegades, being the rebel And so I think there are ways to do it.

And to do it, you have to align really clearly with a core audience, right? So they did a great job of that. Apple back in the day did a good job with that by really clearly stating, like, who they were standing for. And s- and for Figma, it's always been design, and it's always been practice of design, which, extends beyond just visual, right?

It's like how you think, the decisions that you make. and so for us, like, that is how we stay relevant, you know, even through, you know, more kind of usage and, widespread growth.

Brett: What do you make of of in any given cycle, there's this subset of companies that have, like this, unique momentum around them that is often disconnected from how good the um, and often overlapping. So like the early 2010s, the best example is Dropbox.

And it just sort of was kind of consuming resources or aggregating resources around it, talent and customers and capital, and kind of created this flywheel that has like this energy or vibe around it.

And in any given cycle. there's generally less than 10 companies, and they come in and out. So like in this last cycle, Figma's definitely one of them. That's your job and the company's job. but you would say Cursor is an example of this. Again, irrespective of

Sheila: Sure.

Brett: the product

is or like you kind of bottle up all of these things and you could take five great $10 billion companies, and one kind of has it, and it's a little bit, I think, unique in technology- Yeah

the way that these hot companies end up being or getting created. And it's not just one thing, it's always many things. Have you reflected on that now that you've been across a few of these companies that kind of have it all, at least in one stretch- kind of clicking together?

Sheila: I think there are always, like, technology waves. There's also the Silicon Valley clock, right? And what you often see and all these companies go through is, like, this cycle around the clock. Like you're really hot, then people-- then there's the contrarian views. Then everybody, you know, is down on you, and then there's the contrarian views, and then you're really hot again.

And every company goes through that. And sometimes it's completely divorced from the fundamentals of the business Exactly. Exactly

Brett: of these

businesses. So what's going on?

Sheila: perception and, how perception shifts over time. I think it's the dynamics that are at play in the moment and what people are prioritizing.

And sometimes it's a little bit of irrationality, frankly, And especially in, in Silicon Valley and in tech, right? A lot of people will get on the bandwagon of a, of a topic, and then, yeah, there's the contrarian view, and then they... So, so we've seen it so many times, and I think that's at play here.

Brett: if that's kind of the general cycle that happens,

how does that factor into what you think about doing in your role as a CMO?

Sheila: think for, us, it has been and always will be the community and our users and what they value most. And at the end of the day, to build a lasting business that people care about, you have got to stay eyes on goal for that And there'll be all kinds of noise around you, It's just a fact. But if you can stay really true to the people who love your product and build what they want, you're gonna have a long-lasting business. And we just cannot lose sight of that... fact.

Brett: So what is that... How do you instantiate that day by day?

Sheila: the whole company is built around that starting from Dylan, who every day will respond to people on social who are asking questions or, giving feedback on what we're building. In fact, he's so fast, I have to give our whole team... We have a whole team of people who, who focus on responding to people, this whole team of people cannot get to social responses faster than Dylan sometimes because...

And, and everything is tops down from there. He cares so much about that, and so much of our company is built around understanding how our users are feeling, what they want, feedback loops, whether it's research or s- amazing support team or even folks, you know, listening to people on social or our community and, and events and our DAs.

Our whole company is built around making sure we're giving our community and our users what they want. I think it has to be that ingrained for it to be something that you don't lose sight of no matter what's happening.

Brett: How do you think about scaling taste across the

Sheila: you know, I think there are different views on this.

Brett: One is that, like, you really can't scale it. You need a small number of tastemakers in a company. They need to be involved and touch sort of all of this stuff before it goes out. There's others that you can kind of indoctrinate. You know, 'cause one, one might say that scaling taste is about, let's say, Dylan's a tastemaker,

then what it means is having people see the world through his

eyes.

Sheila: I,

I think you, you can actually, and you develop

kind of a concept of organizational taste through being open about choices and decision-making. we can always get better at that, but I think we've-- we're-- we've done a good job of that at Figma, right? So being open about the thought process and the judgment that's applied and being open about the assumptions that are made to get there actually allows more people to understand the decision-making, and I think that is how you scale organizational taste.

And I think you can.

It's hard.

So for example, when we make decisions around whether it's product, but also on marketing, we're very open about why. What was the thinking? What were the decisions? And what got us to, whatever outcome we, we got to? And that people can follow that thinking and apply it for themselves.

Now, there always has to be some level of, okay, let's look across everything and make sure that everything is at the bar that we want. that's still hard and has to be there. But the, decision-making, making that more open and shared helps more people understand how to make those decisions.

Brett: What do you think is different about excellence as a CMO in a post-LLM world as opposed to a pre-LLM world?

Sheila: There is so much potential to scale quickly at low quality. You have so many tools now available to you that allow you to move fast and get to an outcome. The job becomes what is the right outcome? What is the right choice? What's the right thing to move forward with? And so there's less onus on coming up with one single, great idea.

There's a-- you can get to more ideas faster and more of a onus on judgment and intent and decision-making. The, the job is shifting that way 'cause there are so many options now you can explore. What's the right one to make that's gonna be the most effective? That, that's where more attention kind of needs to go.

Brett: Do you think when you think about the next couple years and who the best CMOs in the industry are, the input drivers and like what makes someone good to five or seven years ago is very similar or there is going to be a sea change?

Sheila: the qualities are, the same, right? what makes someone successful regardless of their role is curiosity and openness to change and making sure that you can take advantage of the latest tools and tech-tech-technology available to you, right? So that's still true. I think there's gonna be a divide in people who leverage the latest tools available to them and people who don't, and that will move quickly over the next not even couple years, year. And

so that kind of chasm will be created without question. But the qualities that make you successful are the same, I think. And it's just, open to evolving how you think, not having one playbook that works all the time, right? It, it-- that's never been true. And so It's like the ability to adapt and having curiosity that's gonna carry people through this next wave.

Brett: And so you don't think there's gonna be much more science in what great marketing looks like? cause you had this interesting, the, mid-2010s was interesting, I think, in marketing because there's the rise of the more technical marker, the rise of the growth function that came out of the, the, the 2008, '9 and '10

Facebook days, and this tension between kind of creative and quantitative.

And you had this whole marketing discipline that started to look almost like hedge fund trading- at least certainly in ad scale consumer. and, and it feels like there was this identity crisis and certain people thought that it was gonna go one way or another.

It almost feels like in the last few years the artistic and creative elements in marketing have been re-elevated. Maybe that's AI and AI slop. the, way that ideas are disseminated and this-- the ability to sort of tell amazing stories with video that was very different than 10 years ago on the internet.

But there's been kind of like this interesting back and forth between quantitative and qualitative or creative and instrumented marketing. And is your sense like it's gonna tilt in one way or another, or it's gonna be a little bit status quo over the next few years?

Sheila: It's interesting because you're, you're right. There was a big push on growth, growth marketing, the science behind, again, resource allocation. I would argue that even in that world, brand and taste and being able to communicate an idea clearly was still critical, right? you could have any iteration of a message across a bunch of different platforms that you could automate and test and, you

know, quantify whatever.

But, a single breakthrough idea even then was far more effective, right? And so art was still really important back then. I just don't think we talked about it as

much.

Brett: the

Sheila: a difference in where the, like, kind of the platforms are shifting. So you can-- The time that you would've spent figuring out w- how do you, fragment a message across all these different platforms, now we're looking at systems And we're like "Great, how can you build a system to get more options out there that you can decide how to fragment me-" Right?

So it's just like the platforms are shifting a little bit, but the the mix is still the same. The importance of creativity and art is still there. I don't know. I think it was always important, right? I don't think we talked about it, But even back then in the 2010s, it was important. It's as important now.

I'm not sure I agree that it ever went away in terms of importance. I just think that we didn't talk about it. And I think for n- like now it's as important as it ever was because there's gonna be so much more out there, right? So now it's gonna be-- what is at a premium is attention because there's so much information out there.

So those creative ideas will still break through and be more-- and be important. But they always have been.

Brett: Like, o-one of the things that you're getting at is, creativity

and taste, is inherently human.

And not only that, there's a subset of humans that have those sensibilities.

and then in some ways, great marketing is a little bit like great fashion designers, that you kinda have a feel for what's gonna resonate and what's gonna tell the story and

et cetera. Is it sort of your current belief that that can't be encoded in software?

Sheila: there will always be a role for creativity from humans, and whether that's applied at the judgment level and the curation level or the ideation level, there will always be a role that is stand out, that is the human touch, that is going to be what separates i- great ideas from just okay ones, right?

Because everyone's using the same tools to create ideas. They've got the same platforms and the same tools, so everything's gonna look the same. So what's gonna make you stand out? The human touch, craft, passion, creativity. That has always been true and will always be true.

Brett: it seems like Silicon Valley hasn't done an amazing job of telling an optimistic story of AI? in the past few days that I'm sure you were very attuned to, which is Notion had a brand campaign around think together.

Sheila: Yeah.

Brett: It was like this very optimistic take of that the future of AI is about collaboration.

It's not about the one person building a billion-dollar company.

And I

feel like the role of marketing in 2026 in technology is by far the most important time in history.

Sheila: agree with you on that I think there's a lot of fear around AI right now. and a lot of that is coming from what happens with any time there's a big platform shift, right? Which is there's structural displacement of jobs. I think that's what's driving a lot of fear. And

what we have to remember is that so many new opportunities are created when you have those platform shifts.

You saw that with the internet. You saw, you saw that with the Industrial Revolution, you saw it with the internet, you saw it with mobile and social. And this is bigger than those, but the same thing will happen. And I think you're right. We've not been optimistic enough. There's room for that. And there's room to recapture the joy of building and making that got us all here in the first place, that got us excited to be in technology.

There's room to recapture that and remember why we're all here. And I think the tech industry in general can do a better job of that.

Brett: Do you think a lot of marketing comms people are worried about having a too optimistic take because they don't want to be smashed by the people that are saying, "Oh, you're taking all the jobs," and all of that, and there's some like...

Sheila: I think that the there is room for us to tell an optimistic but realistic story right? Because my, feeling about the early 2010s and that timeframe that we talked about was like tech was going to be the savior, right? And I think that is easy to poke holes in generally, that's never the case that one industry does that.

I think right now we're not focusing enough on the realistic story, of what's going to happen, and there is optimism in there. And just like things happen in waves, I think we'll get there, and I think people will feel more comfortable leaning into that. But it's with, more of a realistic view, I think.

And frankly, right now- People don't yet know how to talk about AI generally. If you drive down 101, everyone's just putting AI on a billboard. They're not even really explaining what you get for it And so I think we'll learn as we better understand. it's not just productivity, it's also, other things you

get.

I would push for realism, not just optimism, right? Because it has to-- people have to feel like you're being authentic.

Brett: Do you think that the North Star for a lot of companies is just being different? That they should find a way to just be different as it relates to what their brand is and the story they're telling?

Sheila: There's always been a concept of breakthrough, message breakthrough. It's not being different for the sake of being different. just making people care. you could be different as one way to do that. You could speak to the needs people have as one way to do that.

But it's just make-- build sh*t people care about. That is the job of everyone at the end of the day. whether it's different than everything else probably will be if you can find, like, your audience that... and get really clear on their needs and serve those. But it's not about just being different. It's speaking to your audience and giving them what they need.

Brett: do you get someone to care that's not only just you need to understand your customer? Like, what, what is the formula to get someone to care?

Sheila: think this is a little bit of the art, right? So it's hard to put a for- there's not a formula like there, there is in other parts of building a business.

Brett: you're working with your team and you're coming up with different campaign ideas and they put something in front of you, and there's something going on in your brain where you're like, "Ugh, I can see this catching on. "I can see people actually caring about this." Like, if you think-- can you make that more legible?

Mm-hmm.

Sheila: think-- So there is a, an intuition that you build over time by consuming a bunch of different data points of user feedback, of market feedback, you have to consume all those data points to really understand and, and get a sense for what will be effective. And that is part of judgment. And that is part of how you siphon the good ideas from the bad ones.

Someone who's done that really well is Dylan, frankly. He just consumes so many data points across so many areas, and he's built this really good intuition, and I've learned that from him, or I'm trying to. And that is how I would explain, like, judgment and intuition.

Brett: what's different about being the CMO of a public company versus a, a late-stage private company?

Sheila: What surprised me is how little is different- actually. And the reason for that is y- you have to be tighter on process. in the sense that you've got to be able to forecast what you're gonna do for a quarter.

You've got to be really tight and clear on budget and have good mechanisms in place. And, that's not that different- Mm ... 'cause we tried to operate that way anyway. I think what is hard is that there's a lot of noise out there in the market about you, naturally. you have to stay... Going back to what we talked about earlier, you got to stay laser focused on the thing that matters, and for us, it's users and what they care about.

And trying to shut out the noise and focus on that is the thing that becomes a little bit harder.

Brett: W- What is sort of your reflection on, on going public in that a lot of people say, "Okay, there's a few reasons to go public." One is to access larger pools of capital and a bunch of financial things. but another one is it's an incredible marketing moment, and it allows you to elevate your brand.

What's

sort of your observations about that second value?

Sheila: I think that's true. The whole world is paying attention for a period of time. You get one opportunity to make a statement. For us, we made it about our community because that's what we care about. I also there is a view that for larger enterprise customers, they feel a sense of security staying with you.

You're public, you're an established company, so that's definitely true. We tried to make it the most of the opportunity to tell our story to the world.

Brett: Do you think there's a difference in marketing to the enterprise versus marketing to small business or prosumer? You gotta have this very interesting experience because it mirrors Dropbox to a certain degree. Yeah.

But like in looking at the companies from a distance, it feels like for a variety of reasons, Figma has been far more successful in that like Figma has one enterprise, Figma has one SMB, Figma has one prosumer, where Dropbox won prosumer and spent the last 10 years trying to

win enterprise and it never really happened.

Sheila: I agree. I think especially because Figma just moved on enterprise earlier. We knew that was an area that we needed to invest in. We built the team. We spent the cycles to understand what they cared about. We built the motions. We just did that earlier, so that helped.

I Dropbox was a tool for everyone, So that made it harder to be specific about what needs you were serving even as you moved into enterprise. Whereas like Figma was way more focused on the core audience. And even for prosumers, even for SMBs, it is a professional use case. And so that has allowed us to be really clear and really specific,

Brett: Do you think about different stories and messages that you want for SMBs versus mega enterprise? Or is it mainly there's an overarching narrative and maybe there's little tweaks here or there, but it's all kind of the same thing?

Sheila: the narrative and the brand is the same. Where there's variance is in specifically what they need, what their needs are. So as you're a larger organization, you care more about governance, you care more about, you know, specific admin features, et cetera. So we s- we-- the proof points are different, but what we stand for is the same, and that's nice to have that consistency.

Brett: who's on your like Mount Rushmore of sort of marketing campaigns of the last few years? Both maybe it's the, some of the things that you all worked on or just like when marketing is done in the most spectacular way possible, it looks like this, or I was so impressed by that.

Sheila: You know, my favorite marketing campaign, I'm gonna go way back in time, so this is not answering your last few years? prompt, was back in the day, the marketing around Chrome. And it was a campaign that was done I still go-- it still makes me teary-eyed to this, day. And it was a campaign-- I'm getting teary-eyed thinking about it now.

It was a campaign, it was called The Web Is What You Make of It. there's a lot of parallels to kind of the way that we're thinking about this AI wave now, actually. And it was, it was around Chrome, and it was across kinda Google products, and it was talking about users and how they interacted with those products.

There was one specific ad spot I remember, Dear Sophie, and it brought a very human lens to how you could get the most out of their web products. But it was so human, it was so visceral. It spoke to so many people, and I still look to that as an example of how you can Go back to make people care about what you're building.

I will always be a lover of that campaign.

Brett: it was that it tapped into, like, the human experience?

Sheila: The human experience with the web and how the tools available elevated, really people and their experience and their relationships. And there's so much we can learn from that with AI.

Brett: It's interesting when you say that because, like, the last year there's this genre of announcement video now

that's like the talking head in high

Sheila: Oh, it's so funny that you say

Brett: of

like every single one.

Sheila: Every single

Brett: And they all, for featuring humans, seem to lack humanity. And like, again, just an interesting recent reference point was the, this Notion video that they put out. And it, it dovetails with exactly what you were saying about the Chrome video, and it feels like so many of the things that take off- there's a soul to it, but there's this humanity to it. even though that seems obvious, almost all marketing in 2026 and '25 is not that.

Sheila: what you just described, and not specifically the Notion campaign, I think, but the announcement video is the literal opposite of

what I'm

saying, right? That's cool.

What, what is going on? I think that, like, we're still trying to figure out the humanity play here, right?

Mm-hmm. don't think we've done a good job telling that story yet. And that is what is going to, to your point earlier about optimism, that's what's gonna get people back to an optimistic place about AI. They can understand how it elevates their life. I don't think we've got quite gotten to that yet.

Brett: What else do you think about, like, in how marketing and storytelling is changing? it seems like a lot of your worldviews are that the future is more similar to the past, that the things that have mattered 10 or 15 years ago as it relates to telling your story and, and marketing still definitely hold true. Do you have other thoughts on you kind of see things moving in a different direction in certain areas?

And

Sheila: think more than ever, actually, what, like, what is evolving are the playbooks. So if you look the, you know, at the past, like, 10 to 15 years, right? The playbooks were largely similar. Like, you come in, you build acquisition funnels, you build upsell motions, you build retention plays.

it was, like, a little bit more playbooked. That is being questioned now. All of those playbooks out the window. And the way that you think about acquiring users is totally different. SEO is now like how do you have... how do you grab attention within LLM search results? The consideration phase of helping people, you know, feel comfortable with your product is now mostly third-party conversations, right?

Through social or, or other places. they don't only want to hear it from you. They want to hear it from everyone else. And so those playbooks are shifting dramatically. The core values of what it will take to be successful are the same, but the way, the how is totally different. And the people who are going to be successful are the people who can adapt.

And sometimes having too much prior experience is a bad thing because those... that stuff won't work and you have to be willing to throw it out the window and start over. But that's also what makes it fun, honestly. I'm ready to look at everything again from first principles. Been doing this job for a long time.

I want to change it and try something new. So I'm kind of excited about that.

Brett: sort of building on that, if you think about even your excellence in your job today versus fifteen years ago, twenty ten, twenty twelve, like, what's the compare and contrast about the role of the CMO today versus fifteen years ago?

Sheila: the way you described it was apt, right? Like, it was more similar to maybe not 15, maybe 10 years ago. It was more similar to a hedge fund trader and the mechanisms and the systems were kind of more clear. I think the systems are different now. There's also a little bit of a premium on disruptive energy that, maybe we wouldn't have put a premium on in the past, right?

Because the systems were so important. Actually, this is a push from Dylan that I think about all the time. I'm, I am a systems thinker. I like to come in and say, "Great. How are we... What are the processes that we're building that allow us to scale? How do we think about the 30/70," right?

Like, that's, how I think.

And Dylan had a push for me recently where he said, "But where is your disruptive energy coming from? Make sure you have enough of that on the team because that is what we need right now in the future." And I loved that push because in the past, disruptive energy is not always a good thing, right? Because you don't want things that are gonna shake this, system that you've built.

But now sometimes that disruptive energy is what is going to get you to the step change, and there's more of

a premium on that than maybe there would've been in the past, and that's a bit of a change.

Brett: so how do you spend your time in a given week?

Like what-- If you were to break down sort of the overall architecture of the week,

like where are you with exec team? Where are you with directs? What do you end up spending time on?

Sheila: I try to have regular time to check in. So we have our exec team meeting every week. We have a similar type of meeting with my leadership team, which spans both the marketing kind of comms growth worlds, but then also support and a lot of like the kind of those ops touch points.

Brett: How do you run that meeting?

Sheila: that one is more about like what are the priorities for the week?

Like what should everybody be focused on? How do we make sure our key things are successful? And then I try to also build in, like, regular check-ins and touch points on, like, key streams that matter and influence thinking. So product, what's happening on product? How do we keep up momentum? What are the key things we need to get across?

Customers, what are the main themes of feedback coming in? What should we be paying attention to? You know, do they influence maybe where we spend time? overall business, how is it tracking? How do we think about ROI? Are we on track for our numbers? Are we not? What are tweaks we need to make?

So I try to kind of balance those areas.

Brett: And those are like structured meetings or it's like async docs or

Sheila: A combination. It depends. Like, some of them are more regular meetings that we have. Some of the things like insights share outs are more async, so it kind of depends on the nature of the thing. And then I try to spend time to go deep with people too. So I try to mix in one-on-ones with people on the team, the right cross-functional folks from other teams so I can get a pulse on what's happening and make sure that I feel close to the work.

That's really important to me.

Brett: What are the, the weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual rituals that you think are most

important?

Sheila: they're built around those themes that I talked about. So you gotta have the check-ins with your kind of key leadership, but then how do you make sure that you're tracking the business and, what's happening? And the way that I do that is we have a monthly share out with the whole team. The whole marketing team and the support team does this as well.

What are the key metrics? How are you trending? That way you have a shared understanding of how the business is moving. Doesn't matter what team you're on, you need to understand what's happening, right? So that's one thing that, that happens regularly. That's a live share-out, and people can ask questions and, be briefed on really, like, what are the things we're doing that are moving

the numbers?

Brett: company or just marketing?

Sheila: we do have share-outs across the company but I do this with my team on a regular basis, right? And then our

OKRs are also based off of that. Then you have to have insights sharing at multiple levels. So we do a lot on the product side with research to understand how our particular products kind of, uh, what's the reception.

We look at things like MPS, we look at things like CSAT, but also there's a wealth of information from the support team on how are people feeling, where are their questions coming. From the social team on how is perception, what are the questions that people have or things that they're dealing with in the moment?

And we try to create forums to share that back with our team. Because again, just like metrics, I want everyone to be really immersed in how our users are feeling. We also have a lot of in-person touch points where we share out kind of those insights and whether it's course calls or, like, insights from events and things like that.

The last thing is having a regular sync on product and, you know, frankly, making sure that our own team is aware of things that are happening because you have different pockets of the team running on different things and sharing back across the rest of our team so everyone's in the know and we can stay on top of how quickly we're innovating and moving.

And so those are the three streams that everyone on the team needs to be aware of, no matter your role. And then we have monthly all-hands where we try to have a little fun. So those are share-outs, of course, on, like, key topics or, or numbers, but also we build in time for, play, for icebreakers, for games, so we can all have a little bit of fun together because at the end of the day, you gotta have fun with the people that you work with.

It's part of being effective, and moving fast and, building relationships. So we, build that into our rituals, so it's just something we always do.

Brett: has the m-marketing function had to change at all as product velocity has increased? Or is it just more cross-functional, you know, a PMM with a PM that's owning the launch of this new product and it's kind of incremental because you all have, have accelerated net new product launches

Sheila: have. We're, I mean, at the cadence of multiple have evolved Not necessarily the org structure, but how we're approaching some of these moments. We're trying to cluster as smaller teams and have multiple pods working on many different things at once, right? That's the only way you can move everything forward at the same time.

We're not perfect at it yet. We're still figuring out how to get there, but we're trying to find ways to give more people independence to move with the right kind of guardrails in place and right collaborators and make that clear so we can continue to move quickly. It's been an evolution over the past few months, actually.

Brett: like what, what's the general structure now of like the, the broader marketing org and how does that fit into,

small product launches, big launches,

sort of those type of things?

Sheila: the org is constructed around disciplines. So we'll have a product marketing team, we'll have a comms team, we have a social team. And the reason we're organized that way is because each team is excellent at what they do. But when we're activating around a product launch or moment, the bigger ones will have more people involved because every team needs to, like, play a role.

The smaller ones will have very small, nimble teams that just act and move with a smaller set of folks so we can get things shipped quickly. And we strategize, and that's what a lot of lead-- kind of leadership time that we spend together is about, like strategizing how are we effectively using our people and resources across these different moments.

Brett: you think about the role of CMO in the context of the executive team?

Sheila: It--

Brett: the discipline and bring that perspective to these cross-functional problems? Or do you think about It--

differently in some way?

Sheila: role, the way that I see it, is to represent a few viewpoints. Customers and what they care about, and so then having a span over our amazing support team really helps 'cause I've got a lot of input there.

Brett: Is that why it's structured that way for you?

Sheila: That's part of it, yeah, because it's kind of the end-to-end experience. I also it's representing a bit of the broader ex-external perspective, right?

So, like, w-where is perception? Where do we need to explain more maybe where our head is at? the, what's the role that we need to play in the world? On the marketing side, we've got so many feelers out on so many touchpoints on what's happening in the world, on social, with customers.

Part of my job is to represent that for people so internally we understand.

Brett: what are some of the things you've had to figure out in terms of being effective in that specific team? Right, like obviously one, one of the biggest differences I think about, being an, an SVP or VP is, and you were hinting at this earlier, you're generally kind of-- you're hopefully aware of the company and the business,

but your whole world is, in this case, marketing or marketing adjacent.

Sheila: it really is, like understanding the role that you play in the business and advocating for the right structural things for the company. So at a high level, if we're looking at like people or money, are we putting them in the right place as a company? And it's having that broader perspective on that. and I think also it helps you build empathy for other functions and where they're at and challenges, and that's something that you don't always get when you're sitting on a team and running one piece of something, right? You don't understand the broader perspective of what's happening on product or design or other teams.

that perspective is helpful also when directing your own team's time, 'cause you can figure out how to address challenges or partner with teams more effectively, and that's a really important role both ways, up and down, right? So you can make sure that you're showing up in the most effective way as you work with other leaders on the exec team, and you can make sure you're representing what's happening in the right way to your team so we can be most effective.

F-

Brett: Where do corporate politics come from?

Sheila: exist because people are trying to understand and make effective decisions. That, that's what I've seen. and when those decisions are obscure, there's a lot of jockeying to figure out how to get them made in your favor. I love the fact that there's very little politics at Figma because we're super transparent on the executive team also, and really open to making the right decisions for Figma.

I actually love it. I feel like it's the least political environment I've ever been in for that reason. But I think the less clarity And transparency there is, the more breeding ground there is for politics because people make a lot of assumptions about how to get stuff done.

Brett: do you think politics are more driven by the individual people who happen to be at the company or the, the culture of the company itself? Said differently, you take a given person and you- Yeah. put them in one company and you put them in could they become super political in one environment and apolitical in another environment?

Sheila: it's a little bit of both. It's a little bit of the individual and like, you know, what shenanigans are they gonna pull to get something done? I think organizationally, there's a level of tolerance that could exist for politics. At Figma, that's very low tolerance. and that comes from Dylan.

He has very low tolerance for politics, and I appreciate that. I think if there is more openness or tolerance, then there's more room for that to grow, and that depends on the individual, like how likely they are to lean into that. That makes me like my job less. Politics makes me hate work, and so I'm very happy not having that.

Brett: Do you think about this in the context of your own team and that you have to be very mindful of this, that like the default state is as the marketing org grows, it will just kind of permeate it?

Sheila: I, I do think about that. I, I'm very attuned to our organizational culture. It matters a lot to me. I really care about facts and truth, and that's why we have so many open sharing forums- on what's happening, what's the data, what's working and what's not working, so there's shared context on what's working.

'Cause then we all know the facts and, and it's less up to, like, any individual interpretation, So that's why those forums are so, and those rituals are so important to me because I abhor politics. I wanna know the truth.

Brett: when you think back on your career thus far, what are the, the sort of pivotal moments, the weeks or days or conversations that you had that have kind of led to some step function and change or evolution or you were going left and then-- like,

Sheila: Yeah.

Brett: consequential things that led you to sort of what you're doing now

Sheila: I have a few mentors that I have worked with, or either worked with or I've been adjacent to and they've sort of adopted me over time. and one of them was, the, COO that I worked for at Dropbox, Dennis Woodside, who's gone on to be the CEO of Freshworks. I still am very close to him. I really trust his opinion and guidance.

another one was, Yamini Rangan, who I worked with at Dropbox, who's now

at HubSpot. She's incredible. Another one was Francoise, who was the chief business officer at Square, and then went to Pinterest. And I was in a conversation with Francoise, and talking to her about my job and getting her advice and getting feedback and, and I was like, "You know, here, I'm weighing these quest-" I was getting her advice on something.

And she just paused and said, " Sheila, are you going to change the world in this job?" was kind of taken aback, and I hadn't thought about it that way. I don't, I'm not sure. I don't know." And then she was like, "Then why are you wasting your time?" And that was such a pivotal moment for me, 'cause I was kind of like, wow, the most precious thing here is, like, my time and what I'm spending it on.

And I got to s- I've got to spend it on something that feels worthy of having an impact on the world. And that just made me sort of see my own career moves differently, and what I prioritized and, where I went, because that's what we should all expect of ourselves.

Brett: the way through running the marketing function, how would you describe the leaps you had to make or the things that you had to figure out sort of

Sheila: There were some very instructive moments that I learned a lot from. So starting off at Dropbox, we talked about this, but the move to enterprise was hard. We learned a lot. We would go into customers and they'd say like, "Why are we even talking to you? You're a consumer toy," And so we learned a lot about how to change perception, what proof points really matter, how do you move the needle on that?

So that, that was one. I moved to Opendoor after that, which was completely different operations, heavy business. There was a really delicate balance between supply and demand because you had to create enough supply of homes and demand had to be there. And I learned so much about growth and how to think about really controllable levers of growth, and it's something I had very little exposure to because Dropbox, for a long time, growth had never been a problem. I did a s- a, short gig in investing where I learned a ton. I got a chance to meet really incredible founders and, learn to approach company building from a different lens and asking different questions of teams and where they're spending time. now in my role at Figma, I've learned so much about the importance of community and users and co-creating a product with them. So each stage I've learned so much that makes me a better marketer, and they've sort of built on each other. I kept adding a new thing or a new skill set that I feel really grateful for

Brett: Do you generally subscribe to the idea of, if you think about, growing in the marketing function, that you should work at drastically different places or that you should sort of compound knowledge? Like you- might argue that Dropbox is quite different from Figma, but there's some significant overlap relative to Opendoor.

Sheila: I don't-- no, I don't think it has to be drastically different places. I think it's exposure to different areas, right? So product marketing, growth, brand, you have to understand all of these things and how they work together. That could be at one company that you get that, or it could be across different companies.

For me, it just happened to be different companies, but I don't think it matters how you get that.

Brett: Do you think it matters if the, if the CMO came up in the world of, product marketing and brand versus came up in growth can equal-- can either be equally great in CMO or it's context dependent on the company or that type of thing?

Sheila: I've seen both work really well. It's a little bit context dependent on what's most urgent for that company at that moment in time. either flavor could work. I've seen really great growth leaders who have, brand and product nested under them, and it feeds the, the growth engine, but it's not the leading thing.

And I've seen phenomenal product marketing or brand leaders that start from a storytelling view and growth is one-- like, these channels are one way that you execute on that. For Figma, product is really kind of the center of the company, and that is, like, coming from Dylan. That's how he thinks.

So we've kind of built everything around that. Yeah.

Brett: What about on, on that point, what's unique about the CMO-CEO relationship that might be different than the CEO and

chief product officer other than their different disciplines?

Sheila: the CMO-CEO relationship, there has to be a lot of trust there, and that's true of product also. But there's so much volume of stuff that comes out of marketing, just so many surfaces, so many things, so many posts, so many content pieces, videos, and there's a really wide range of output.

And it's important that there's trust and alignment on what we were talking about earlier, which is organizational taste, judgment, because there's no way either one can have, you know, a view across everything. More important for the CMO, too. But I think there has to be a, a, a level of alignment and trust there on like, kind of that things are gonna be at the level of quality and output expected and still move the business in the right way.

and it's a little bit different than, you know, product or, other teams for that reason

Brett: What about the role of, a founder as obviously kind of the chief spokesperson of the company? Yeah. Now obviously if the, if it's a, if it's a hired CEO, they're also the

spokesperson for the company. There's something different. There's sort of like a, a moral authority. there's a linkage between what the company is and who the person is, regardless of when you look at any mature business, whether it's founder-led or CEO-led.

How do you think about that in the context of marketing, which is storytelling, and those things seem very connected?

Sheila: Oh, I mean, the CEO is the chief spokesperson, but also the chief person to deliver the narrative. There has to be extreme alignment on that level, it's gotta all stem from one thing. that's another area where there needs to be trust, but also, like, those two things need to be hand in hand because your message, your narrative, your story comes from, especially if it's a founder CEO, it is, it is them, right?

It

It's not just, like, a thing they say, it is who they are, that the company's built off of that, and the purpose and the why you are doing what you're doing comes from them. that is-- it's the origin of really everything you do.

Brett: So in this case, how is Dylan specifically involved with marketing?

we work so incredibly closely with Dylan, and we align on ideas. We will riff on messaging together. He's very thoughtful and in the details, and a lot of our good ideas come from him. this is an area where we work really closely with him, and our job is to refine that with him and then figure out how to disseminate and scale.

Sheila: But that is something that he is very close to.

Brett: Is it mostly done like ad hoc improvisational, or is like, you know, what traditional product reviews are,

the exist-- you've created a similar thing in marketing?

Sheila: We have created a similar thing in marketing, actually, and we keep it to kind of the core things 'cause he's busy, right? So the core things that we need his perspective on or get his take on. But we-- it's similar to product reviews in the way that we'll, share with him top messages, where are they showing up, get his feedback, make sure that they're aligned with his thinking, because he is so core to delivering that message.

Brett: are some of the things that he's imparted on you that's most shaped the way that you think about the function?

Sheila: Seeing the scale at which he can consume those data points that I was talking about, right? So he's reading all the reviews, he's reading all the summaries, all the social posts, all the feedback at such scale. It's amazing, actually. our teams can't keep up sometimes with the rapidity at which he responds to things.

And we've got to build systems to match that. But it's really valuable in building the judgment. And so, you know, I think we all try to emulate that.

Brett: a lot more and are kind of

Sheila: I try to be.

It's very

hard.

Brett: business. Yeah. what is it that you want the people that you work with to say about you, either when you're not in the room or after they leave the company at some point? What is it you want them to say about who you are and how you work?

Sheila: want them to feel like they did the best work of their life with me. That's what I want, because it's important for the company we're working on. It's also important for them. They have to feel like they were empowered to do the best work of their life, period. With respect to me, I hope they think that I'm open.

I hope they think that I'm kind. I hope that they think that I'm, taking risks and helping them take risks. But I think the most important thing to me for my team that we're doing the best work of our life together.

Brett: just distill that down What are you doing to enable people to do the best work of their career?

Sheila: It's giving them the room to take those moonshot bets that we talk about, right? it's building systems that they can feel that they're learning from and scaling. It's, for some, giving them exposure to how things work at scale at a world-class company like Figma. It's all of those things working together.

I think at the end of the day, it's also having fun. That's very important to me as a

human. And so In addition to working hard, we have to build in room to play and be human and have fun, and I hope that we can do that while doing the best work of our lives.

Brett: Great place then. Thank you so much.

Sheila: you. That was very fun.