- Dylan Field cofounded Figma in 2012 with a Brown University teaching assistant. Since then, Field has led the company to meteoric success and a historic IPO.
Fifteen years ago, Dylan Field was a freshman computer science student at Brown University. On Thursday, the company he started in college and now runs, Figma, made its blockbuster debut on the New York Stock Exchange, marking the largest U.S. venture-capital-backed tech IPO in four years.
Figma’s stock surged 250% on its debut, making it the largest first-day pop for a billion-dollar tech IPO and cementing its status as a bellwether for a resurgent tech IPO market. Demand was so intense that many hopeful investors received only a handful of shares, while trading was temporarily halted due to volatility.
Closing at $115.50, the IPO instantly catapulted Figma’s valuation to nearly $68 billion—more than triple Adobe’s failed $20 billion acquisition offer for the company just two years ago.
The multibillion-dollar company, however, began with an idea thought up by Field and cofounder Evan Wallace, who was a Brown teaching assistant at the time. The duo explored the potential of new browser technologies and began brainstorming ways to democratize creative design through software. But it wasn’t until 2012, when Field was awarded the prestigious Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 grant for young entrepreneurs willing to leave college that he and Wallace dove headfirst into what became Figma, the popular web-based design tool used for user interface and user experience design.
Field, now 33, was always a high achiever, especially with technology. At age three, he taught himself to use his family computer, and his interest in robotics began early in childhood. In the early 1990s, Field also worked as a child actor, starring in several commercials, including one for Windows XP. But ultimately his academic successes landed him at the Rhode Island Ivy League school and several competitive tech internships.
The Penngrove, Calif., native held several part-time gigs while studying at Brown, including a nine-month stint as a research assistant at Microsoft, a four-month data analytics internship at LinkedIn, and two internships at aggregation software company Flipboard—first as a software engineering intern and then a product design intern. His second Flipboard stint was part of the Kleiner Perkins Fellows Program, a highly competitive program that places selected students with companies in the Kleiner Perkins portfolio.
It was through his LinkedIn and Flipboard jobs that Field secured seed investments for his entrepreneurial ventures and eventually propelled himself to billionaire status by 33 years-old. Both his LinkedIn manager Peter Skomoroch and Danny Rimer, a general partner at Index Ventures who recognized Field’s potential during a Flipboard board presentation, helped the young founder finance his start.
“Here was this 19-year-old, who had a lot of clarity about what he wanted to do—democratize the world of design, and provide tools to everyone,” Rimer told Fortune in 2023. “He had this ambition of dropping out of university to go after this crazy idea, where it’s clear that he’s not going to be able to come up with a product for over two years. In the world of move-fast-break-things, here were two folks [Field and Wallace] who were saying, ‘We’re not going to have anything for two years, so we hope you’re comfortable with that.’”
Other early Figma investors included Phoenix Court and Greylock Partners.
Index Ventures ultimately led Figma’s 2013 seed round with a $1.7 million investment. And in the following 12 years, the fund reportedly invested $86.5 million in the company.
Much like Rimer predicted, it took Field and Wallace until September 2016 to launch the product publicly, after years of meticulous planning to create the so-called Google Docs for graphic designers. By 2018, the company was valued at $115 million, a figure that skyrocketed during the pandemic. In June 2021, Figma’s valuation was $10 billion. That same year, Wallace left the company.
In September 2022, Adobe announced plans to acquire Figma for $20 billion, a deal which would have made Field—then just 30 years old—a billionaire several times over. But regulatory roadblocks killed the deal in 2023, and as part of the cancellation, Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion breakup fee.
Figma and Field soldiered on, despite the failed acquisition. The company’s 2024 revenue reached $749 million, up 48% from 2023. And in the first quarter of 2025, revenue grew 46% year over year. Figma, as of early 2025, has 13 million monthly active users, and 95% of Fortune 500 companies use the software.
Now, as Figma closes its first, astonishing chapter as a public company, Field shows no sign of slowing down. “We know this is just the start,” Field wrote in a statement after ringing the opening bell. “This is a vision that will play out over many decades and I believe Figma’s most innovative days are ahead.”
Figma declined a Fortune request for comment.
