YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → Figma’s new products aren’t for you

Figma’s new products aren’t for you — Transcript

by ManyLearn · 6,212 words · 879 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00Config 2025 happened. I want to chat
0:02about it a little bit. So, uh, yeah,
0:04Config 2025 happened. And I'm not going
0:07to talk so much, I think, about the
0:08features or the substance of what
0:10they've I a little bit, but more about
0:13like the the market realities of what
0:15this means, I think. Um, and yeah, it's
0:20interesting. So, I think a lot of core
0:21Figma users are expecting to have uh new
0:24features um in the core tool. They got a
0:27couple of bits, but in reality, most of
0:30this was about new products and new
0:32product categories and the reason for
0:34that. So, what have we got? We have
0:36Figma draw, which is a thing, I guess.
0:39It's some brushes inside Figma. It's
0:42kind of cute. Um, it's part I think of a
0:45push in terms of like capturing more of
0:48the sort of uh free tier people and
0:50people trying to get more people to pay
0:51for it as as a tool to do things like
0:53illustration. Um, again, it's a kick
0:56towards like Illustrator and
0:59uh, you know, Affinity and all that that
1:01lot. I don't really see how this ends up
1:04super successful. Um, I know a lot of
1:06people are like, I only use Figma for
1:07everything. But in reality, it needs to
1:09be a lot of paid seats and a lot of
1:11people do only use Figma, but the
1:13reality is most of them don't. And
1:15graphic designers have an awful lot of
1:17tools. If you look at them purely as
1:18tools, Figma is really deficient for
1:21illustration. Um, and this goes some way
1:24to addressing that. But this has again
1:25this stink of throwing a thing at the
1:27wall and quick implementation. It's some
1:30some brush strokes and some online some
1:33on canvas uh filters and that's kind of
1:36it. Um, it's it's throwing some stuff at
1:39the wall. Let's go
1:41into do grid. It's a grid layout.
1:44They've written this as part of their
1:45push into Figma sites. Figma sites is
1:48directly to address the likes of Framer
1:50and Web Flow. As we know in the past,
1:52Framer was originally a competitor
1:54directly to Figma as like a UI UXy tool
1:58thing. Um quite wisely. They sort of
2:00entered that exited that market when
2:02they realized they couldn't really
2:03capture enough market share and they
2:05pivoted towards becoming a website
2:07builder. They relish the tools they had
2:09quite cleverly and they've had some
2:10success there. They've done pretty well.
2:12Um I don't love Framer as a tool. It's
2:14all right. um it serves a certain
2:16purpose and Figma rightfully one part of
2:19that market now. Um so they've quickly
2:22I've not played with this yet personally
2:24um pushed together Figma sites um to to
2:28try and start being you know a place and
2:30the idea is this is all about about
2:31consolidation right having one location
2:34where you spend more of your time as a
2:36creative problem is the tools in Figma
2:39are not mature enough and their rate of
2:41growth at the moment is not um is too
2:45rapid I guess to really allow them to
2:47mature unless they go into a quiet
2:49period and and then allow these these
2:51tools to mature uh and take on more of
2:53this market. So far, they haven't really
2:54done that with the likes of Fig Jam. I
2:57doubt they will with slides. Uh I doubt
2:59they will with dev mode, which they've
3:02marketed as a product and really is a
3:03feature. Um so the sort of throughine of
3:07all this, what I'm really trying to get
3:08at here is here we go, Figma Buzz. We've
3:11got Figma, but um Canva. The thing is
3:15the the sort of through line with all
3:16this is these are all quite quick.
3:20Um yeah, they're all quite um not low
3:24effort as such. So the grid thing is
3:26there to facilitate the use of grids
3:28because grids are part of flexbox and
3:30grids inside CSS. So they've exposed it.
3:33Um deep under the hood, Figma
3:34technically is a web application. there.
3:36Canvas has not used HTML, CSS in the way
3:39something like Penpot does, but you
3:41know, deep down it is broadly web
3:43technology. Um, they do a lot of stuff
3:45under to make it more performant and
3:47allow you to do some of the things that
3:49sort of bend the rules of what layouts
3:50do on web, but you know, whatever. The
3:52point is the through line of all this is
3:55is ultimately because they've uh
3:57saturated the core market for UX tools
3:59and also having a free tier means that
4:02they have a lot of extra users on top of
4:04that as well.
4:05um and the company is looking to
4:07IPO. Uh this is what we call portfolio
4:10stuffing. It makes you look like you've
4:12made a load of stuff and it's a really
4:14standard move when you try and sell a
4:15company um is to stuff the portfolio,
4:18make graphs go up or have speculative
4:20graphs to point at um to say, "Look,
4:22we've got all these new avenues and
4:24here's the projections we've got and
4:25here's the projections on this revenue
4:27we've got based on these things we're
4:28doing." And they're targets you don't
4:30actually have to necessarily hit. you'd
4:31have to say we've done this thing which
4:33potentially could hit these targets
4:35irrelevant of whether you do or not. Um
4:37and this absolutely stinks of that as a
4:39move. Um basically so you know um that's
4:44why I'm not really down with all of
4:45this. Figma make they've put in more AI
4:48tools to they're doing basically u vzero
4:51but inside Figma. This is kind of
4:52interesting actually. Um but also it's
4:54relatively easy to turn around. It's um
4:57some interfacing and then you know um
5:00some training on an LLM. They might even
5:01be licensing some technology from
5:05um thingamajig who's it? But yeah, you
5:08can leverage other LLM models and and
5:11give it some constraints moderately. I'm
5:13not trying to make out it's a one-click
5:15thing, but it's moderately
5:16straightforward to get an LLM and and
5:19and uh produce stuff like this. And
5:21that's just building some UI around it.
5:23So again, quite a fast turnaround, like
5:25relatively speaking, quite a fast
5:26turnaround thing. So here's what we've
5:28got. You see how there's very little
5:30mention of
5:31updates to Big Jam or to Figma slides.
5:36And here's the thing, right? What this
5:38comes down to is when you have, you
5:40know, from my last bit of information
5:42digging I did, I found the the market
5:44for like UI based tooling to be around,
5:47and it's a little bit old, these
5:48numbers, they might be off. Um, around 4
5:50million seats. So that's that's your
5:52total addressable market, right? That's
5:54the total potential numbers number of
5:57licenses you can sell. It's also around
5:59the same number of Figma licenses that
6:01are out there in the wild. Now Figma do
6:04not have 100% of the UI market. They
6:07have a pretty good chunk from what I can
6:08tell. It's probably in the order of
6:10about 65 or 70%. Which is huge. That's
6:13incredibly dominant. Um but that's not
6:16100% which means that not all of those
6:18seats are paid seats. And of those
6:20seats, um, yeah, how many are paid? We
6:23don't know. We don't have that
6:24breakdown. And they've got a lot of free
6:27seats. They want to try and, you know,
6:29uh, make buy, you know, make them buy
6:31full seats. They've done that by, you
6:33know, slowly whittling away what you can
6:35do on the free tier of Figma, which I
6:37don't really care about the free tier of
6:38Figma. It doesn't really I don't feel
6:39like tools should be necessarily free.
6:42Might not be a popular opinion in this
6:43day and age, but I think good tools are
6:45worth paying for, especially if you make
6:46money from them. Um, I'm not super even
6:49that upset about subscriptions for tools
6:51for things that you actually use and are
6:53moderately reasonably priced. It does
6:55leave you open to initification. It's
6:56all down to the scruples of the company
6:59running those products uh in terms of
7:02how they leverage those subscriptions
7:04and that revenue. The incentives and
7:07capitalism mostly mean that you are
7:08going to initify. And there's a sort of
7:10like inshitification pandemic going on
7:13where um I watched another video
7:15recently um and they put it as a case of
7:17like it starts off providing greater
7:19value to the end user slowly willing
7:21away those features to increase revenue
7:23and then when you get your corporate
7:24interests you then have to then re you
7:27know move those investment over to them
7:28which tends to you have to make a
7:31different party happy but in that first
7:32section you're delighting end users by
7:35providing them a lot of value for not
7:37much money. uh and by the time you get
7:39to the other end, you hope they've
7:40forgotten that there used to be a cause
7:42the price did more and uh they got
7:46feature updates more frequently. It's
7:48the machine. It's it's capitalism is
7:49what it does. But yeah, this all stinks
7:52to me of of a company trying to sell and
7:54stuff as value. And the other thing I
7:56found very telling is we go into obigma
8:01pricing. Uh we'll see what's changed
8:04recently. So this is I think this is the
8:06latest pricing. No, this is still No,
8:08this the most recent pricing. So, they
8:10they recently did a price increase. Uh a
8:13full seat includes uh yeah, includes dev
8:15mode. Originally, that was a paid
8:16edition, but it's not anymore. Um you've
8:19got your Figma design, which is Figma.
8:22You've got Figma draw, which is not
8:24really of any true value. If you've used
8:26it yet, it's really rudimentary. Uh
8:28Figma slides and Fig Jam. Now, Fig Jam
8:31was the big hotness. It was a first
8:32second product. it was meant to be um a
8:36competitor to Mirror. Mirror is very
8:39popular and it's a pretty big market and
8:41they want to get a foot in and you know
8:43the idea of consolidating all of your
8:45users and you've got a place where
8:46they're happy and you can build good
8:47tools and leverage technology you've
8:48already written to do new things it's
8:50very enticing and at first I thought Fig
8:52Jam is pretty cool. Um it's not really
8:54changed much. They've definitely slowed
8:57down on the feature work on Fig Jam. Uh,
8:59and also when they started moving Fig
9:01Jam seats into four seats, so standard
9:04playbook stuff would be well, you pay
9:06extra for this this feature and then you
9:08include it and they raised the prices to
9:10include part of the revenue towards uh,
9:12Fig Jam, which says to me the fact that
9:14they haven't got much. So, we've got a
9:17collab seat here which does these two,
9:19but I think you £3 a month, £3 a month
9:21has gone right. What's it what's it
9:23what's it
9:24monthly? Yeah, five5 a month. The
9:27bundling of the seats is a way of sort
9:29of, you know, I think that is telling
9:31that they're probably not selling enough
9:33big jam seats. Um, I don't have numbers.
9:37I wish I did. I could probably seek some
9:38out, but I would wager that the idea of
9:41of actually making some penetration into
9:43Mary's market has not been successful.
9:46Otherwise, you'd see a lot more
9:47development around Fig Jam. And instead
9:50of doubling down and increasing the
9:52quality of of Fig Jam as a tool and
9:54increasing the interoperability with
9:56Figma and opening up new avenues for
9:58workflows, no, they released Slides. Uh,
10:01and Slides is equally kind of halfbaked.
10:03It's kind of cool. It does some fun
10:04stuff. It's still really new. It's not
10:07very old at all. Uh, probably what a
10:08year old maybe. that's not going to
10:11meaningfully make impact on Microsoft or
10:14PowerPoint or Google Slides at this
10:16point because I think these moves are
10:18too late ultimately. Um, when you have
10:20incumbents, they're very hard to unseat
10:23and the longer you wait, the harder they
10:24are to unseat and you have to do
10:26something either significantly better um
10:29or very high value or with a lot of
10:31interrupt with your existing suite of
10:33products. But you need to build each one
10:34of those products to be mature first and
10:37then you can start grandfathering people
10:38in. That's why Google, Google office,
10:41Google what was called Google Suite, G
10:42Suite um was quite effective in the
10:45first place because they had Google Docs
10:46for quite a while. Um they had a
10:48dominant email product. They have
10:50obviously the rest of Google as well.
10:51There's a lot of reasons to be in their
10:52ecosystem. They had Android. They had
10:54all this sort of stuff. They then
10:56released Hangouts because Google push
10:58out in all directions and spend quite a
11:00lot of money. and the Google of it all,
11:02right? The killing of the tools and and
11:03and putting them out there and seeing
11:05what which lives and which die obviously
11:07annoys end users, but they end up in a
11:09lot of cases, not all cases, but in a
11:11lot of cases, they end up with the ones
11:12that actual people want to buy and use.
11:15Then when you start saying to them, hey,
11:16you know, you can have docs which are
11:18actually very very good at the time,
11:21revolutionary, right? The whole sim very
11:23similar, it's a very strong parallel to
11:24Figma. The reason why Figma became so
11:26big was because in the biggest part was
11:28the real-time collaboration which was an
11:31idea that wasn't pioneered by Figma as
11:33you believe. It was actually something
11:34from other products probably did it as
11:36well let's be real but it became really
11:38prominent with Google Docs. It was a
11:41revelation um in the 2010s the idea of
11:43Google Docs at the time if you were
11:45working on Word documents or Excel
11:47spreadsheets stuff like that. You
11:49weren't working with other people and
11:50this was a place where you could. It was
11:52also free. It was also part of Google
11:54and it was also a really really good
11:56product and it's exactly how Figma
11:58became so big in the first place. They
11:59did almost everything their competitor
12:01did. uh some things much better in the
12:03case of the the real-time collaboration
12:06and that's how they won that market as
12:08well as being crossplatform but that's
12:09really overstated in in the comparison
12:11with Sketch with these new products
12:13they're not doing that they're much more
12:15also ran uh in terms of what they are as
12:17a proposition right so Fig Jam is
12:19basically mirror but worse Figma slides
12:21is basically um Google slides but worse
12:24you see where I'm going here dev mode is
12:27something of dubious usefulness um it
12:29sounds really good on paper but in
12:30reality it's a really hard problem to
12:32solve. There's not a a toggle in a tool
12:35to solve developer handoff. Um it's it's
12:38very sexy to say, yeah, we have a thing
12:40which does this thing. It's not it's not
12:42that simple. Um I don't think it's been
12:45a great success. I imagine it hasn't
12:47been. Uh and anecdotally,
12:50um yeah, it's it's of dubious usefulness
12:52dev mode. And you know, the same goes
12:54for things like when you've got this
12:56Figma draw thing. What does it really
12:57represent? Let's look at it. So we're
12:59here inside Figma. We'll turn on draw
13:01mode. And what have we got? Let's just
13:03make a frame. And it's
13:07effectively, is it even working? There's
13:09some in white. That's why you can't see
13:10it. So, in red. There we go. It's some
13:12some brushes and some filters and not
13:16much else. And these are very
13:17reminiscent of the tools inside
13:18Affinity, actually, believe it or
13:21not. It's This is also white. But yeah,
13:24this is on par with something like I
13:26mean, yeah, these are not the best
13:28vector tools in the world. pretty pretty
13:30bang average to be honest. Similar to
13:32what you get in something like
13:33Excaladraw. Um they certainly haven't
13:35got the fidelity of something like
13:37Illustrator and it raises the question
13:39of why why are they doing this? And this
13:43goes back to my main point. These are
13:45sort of halfbaked features. Um and it's
13:47not to say I'm not being a naysayer or
13:49skeptic for the sake of being a naysayer
13:50and being a skeptic. My my thing is the
13:52reason why they're doing it. And I think
13:54with the last few years especially,
13:56they've exposed themselves as a business
13:58that's much more interested in growth
14:00than the tooling and actually serving
14:02their customers. Ironically, they
14:04escaped being bought by Adobe only to
14:06become Adobe. Um, Adobe aren't even as
14:08bad as them uh when it comes to actually
14:10maintaining their tools. Adobe do a
14:12better job of it. I know contentious,
14:15but yeah, like you know, recent updates
14:16from Adobe has been very focused on AI.
14:18At least those AI tools, a lot of them
14:20are actually quite useful. Don't worry,
14:22it's a mild uh praise of Adobe. I don't
14:24like Adobe at all as a company, but
14:27you've got to give credit where it's
14:28due, right? And they do push out bug
14:31fixes. You know, uh headline features
14:33inside Figma that have been around for a
14:34few years are still unfinished. Look at
14:37variables. I don't even know where it is
14:38in UI3. I don't use Figma at the minute,
14:40but it's around. They're around
14:42somewhere in this interface, but they're
14:44an unfinished feature. They kind of put
14:46out a table view. They've iterated on it
14:48slightly. They've done sort of cute easy
14:50win features like they've introduced
14:51this thing recently for doing um you
14:53know contrast checking stuff like that.
14:55They haven't been standing still on the
14:57product but they are not iterating the
15:00way they are because there's no
15:01incentive for them to do so. Right? If
15:03they've sold 4 million Figma licenses or
15:05they have 4 million users, not sure how
15:07many of those are paid. I imagine it's
15:09much a much smaller proportion of those
15:11users then they don't have much
15:14incentive to really put as much money
15:16into Figma as they used to. a core tool
15:18which is again one of these sort of very
15:20much 2010s era market capitalist things
15:23which means there's no incentive to do
15:24it because line need to go up. You can't
15:27just make good tool and maintain good
15:28tool. We've taken on x number of billion
15:31in venture capital funding and we need
15:32to start paying them back and also we
15:34need an exit for ourselves. What can we
15:36do? What can we leverage? What tools do
15:38we have? How can we reframe this? Let's
15:39put some paint tools right into Figma.
15:43Um, let's split out dev mode into a paid
15:45product that isn't really worth the
15:46money. Let's build Fig Jam, which is not
15:49something we're going to commit to.
15:51Let's have a look at Fig Jam quickly.
15:52Let's do a Fig Jam thing
15:55here. Uh, yeah, we've got AI generation.
15:59Great. These are very low impact. We've
16:00got some new shapes. Great. We've got
16:03the plug-in things. Have these been
16:04updated and any new ones? Not sure. The
16:07reality is most people use Fig Jam
16:09because they've either already got it.
16:10And I'm not sure how many people
16:12actually go out of their way to um make
16:15use of it in reality. It's uh it's one
16:18of those things.
16:20So that's the point. I think they're
16:23just trying to stuff the uh portfolio
16:26and they may or may not I mean I think
16:28of these products the one that's going
16:29to make the biggest impact is probably
16:30going to be figma sites because they're
16:34going up against framer and effectively
16:37that's for them technologically it's a
16:39moderately easy thing to do right they
16:40have to build well I say moderately but
16:42it's a thing that they can do they can
16:44make you know they can output HTML and
16:46work on the missing features but the
16:48actual underpinnings I imagine the same
16:50way it was for framer are already there,
16:52but Figma have significantly more
16:53resources and Figma is a better tool
16:55than Framer was when Framer pivoted. So,
16:58they'll have a good chance of of
16:59displacing that. But, I don't know the
17:00size of that market. You know, you ask
17:02your uh on the street design person who
17:06doesn't really think too much about
17:07beyond, you know, the job that they do.
17:09And they'll they'll probably say, "Well,
17:11at some point, we'll be able to just
17:13create a Figma design that will just
17:15encompass all of web development,
17:17product creation." As if it's that
17:19simple. as if it's that's they're not
17:21part of a workflow or part of a
17:23ecosystem which generates much more
17:25complicated things. We should understand
17:26it's not that simple. There's the
17:29reality of like uh sorry framer is it's
17:31really useful for landing pages,
17:33portfolio sites, stuff like that. It's
17:35really a competitor to like WordPress um
17:38on the lower level or Wix or you know
17:41those sort of things. It's not really a
17:42competitor to the royal task of
17:45replacing all software development on
17:47the internet. you listen to some people
17:48that make it sound like it is. It's not.
17:51But um and there's workflow things that
17:53are coming. I think which I think you
17:56fig being prudent here. A big part of
17:58the problem with all of these tools that
18:00they don't solve is the handoff to
18:01developers. Dev mode doesn't doesn't
18:03solve it. Um the workflow should be much
18:06more around generating markup from the
18:09off. You know, if you there's a the last
18:1110 years as the design industry has
18:13moved further and further towards
18:15standardization, right?
18:17um and and repetition and componentizing
18:20things and standard practice. You've got
18:22front-end developers who've become so
18:24much more design aware because they
18:26implement a lot of the same patterns.
18:27They spend time immersed with it and
18:28they understand it. They learn the
18:30design process. There's some front-end
18:31developers who are fantastic
18:33interpreting what you want from a Figma
18:36design who don't have as much need for
18:37those handoff features because they can
18:39intuitit what they need to do. Given my
18:41age, I'm I'm apparently I'm old now, but
18:44I've been doing this since uh the 2000s,
18:47right? So maybe like 20 years or so,
18:50coming up to 20 years, I think. And back
18:51in the day, they called us all web
18:52designers. I sound like such an old
18:54person, but the obviously the thing was
18:55back then you had a sort of a um
18:58spectrum of how technically capable you
19:00were, but you were expected to both
19:01design and execute front-end code,
19:03right? There wasn't really the concept
19:04of front end. There was there's there's
19:06building websites, right? And you either
19:08knew PHP which because all PHP back then
19:11or you knew some HTML and if you
19:13designed the website most people you
19:16know with varying degrees of you know
19:17there's there's there's complexity in
19:18this but a lot of people were expected
19:20to also execute the code as well. Now
19:23given the way front-end development has
19:25also coalesed around a series of
19:26standards you've got things like
19:28tailwind which is incredibly popular
19:30which uh is almost a deacto way to build
19:33frontends. Now again there's a degree of
19:35standardization and consistency and
19:37these tools are better than Figma for
19:41creating responsive layouts and
19:42websites. Figma is an abstraction of
19:44those tools as a layer to to make it
19:46more simple. It doesn't actually
19:48necessarily work better. That's not it
19:50prerogative. It's to make it easier to
19:51use for people who don't know how to use
19:53those tools. Now the reality is there's
19:56going to be increasingly going forward
19:58more designware developers and then
20:01probably more code aware designers and I
20:03think a lot of those roles not
20:04everywhere there's be a lot of instances
20:06where um you know it'll work better to
20:08keep those roles separate but I think
20:10given how the industry is contracting
20:11and trying to cut costs it seems natural
20:14to have companies encourage that web
20:16designer style role to exist it's
20:19actually more viable now than it was 15
20:2220 years ago because of the amount
20:23standardization, how mature both markets
20:25have become, both industries have
20:26become. So that won't be lost on Figma
20:29and that'll be part of their motivation
20:31for sites that fulfills part of that
20:33role, but also the um generation stuff.
20:36I don't hate Vzero actually. Um it I
20:38don't love it. It's not, you know, I
20:40don't like the whole vibe coding thing.
20:42It's it's stupid. But you know, the
20:43thing that I've said about AI tools for
20:45the longest time is it won't take that
20:47many jobs, but it will create a lot of
20:49very useful utilities longer term. When
20:52all the buzz has died down, I think we
20:53end up with a lot of very cool tools to
20:55make us more effective. But actually
20:56does still end up meaning that there's
20:58less jobs because people are more
20:59productive and there's squeeze across
21:01the bottom ends of lots of creative
21:02industries at the moment. Junior roles
21:04are uh leaving. But this contraction
21:06does come to to lots of industries. It's
21:08not unique. It's just our turn at the
21:11plate, right, to have this happen to us.
21:13It's happened to um scientists in the
21:15past, engineers in the past, like you
21:16know, mechanical engineering. It's
21:17happened to the finance industry. It
21:20happens all over the place. At some
21:21point, you get a lot of jobs when
21:22something's in boom period. When it
21:24starts to solidify, they get harder to
21:26enter again. And then normally there's
21:28new industries that that crop up to
21:30replace those gaps in the market for
21:31those people and those higher wages,
21:33that kind of thing. We're not at that
21:34point yet. So, it feels very hard when
21:36you're in it. But that's that's reality
21:37probably what's happening. Either that
21:39or the entire uh west collapses, which
21:41is probably equally as likely at this
21:43point. Anyway, trying to be positive.
21:45So, I think this will be not lost on
21:47Figma. of this the idea that they need
21:49to form part of this ecosystem for
21:51modern ways of working um which is a
21:54really good way forward for them but
21:57also running interference is the idea
21:59that yeah they want to sell the company
22:00and they need to stuff the coffers and
22:02they're doing it instead of by doubling
22:04down and sincerely trying to take market
22:06share I mean all of this is built off
22:07the back of being in the right place at
22:09the right time sketch built this entire
22:12specific tooling category and they they
22:15did it better in a lot of ways right
22:18They read the room really well. They
22:20came at the right time with the right
22:21product and they built a very expensive
22:24company in the back of it. Not entirely,
22:25you know, the economic conditions meant
22:27that they could accelerate things quite
22:28a lot. And they've certainly pulled some
22:30of those levers to to move faster. And
22:32now this is them paying the piper
22:34effectively for that for those boom
22:35times, which means they've got incentive
22:37to stuff this. So instead of trying to
22:39sincerely make competitors to incumbent
22:42products, they are releasing things like
22:45some paint brushes and
22:48fig and slides but but not amazing and
22:51mirror but not amazing because they
22:53can't you know they can't touch these
22:54incumbents like if you go back to the
22:57thing with Microsoft teams right the
22:59slack
23:00again revolutionary tool right having
23:03this nonlinear communication hey don't
23:05do email do this have let's repackage is
23:08the idea of a chat room effectively, but
23:10for business and then obviously Discord
23:12again has also displaced the idea of a
23:14chat room. They're the same thing. They
23:16just have a different they just
23:17presented a little bit differently and
23:18much more polished. And um yeah, Slack
23:21was huge. And then the idea of Microsoft
23:24wading in and destroying them almost
23:26overnight with Teams was kind of
23:28inevitable. Um because again, they're
23:31incumbent. They have what we call a
23:32moat, right? Um the idea is you go where
23:35the people already are and if they
23:37introduce products that are compelling
23:38enough they will steal away that
23:40business. So if you are a little third
23:42party let's say if Adobe had released XD
23:46the same time Figma had released XD.
23:47Adobe XD would be where Figma is now.
23:50It's about timing and incumbency. Figma
23:53are not necessarily an incumbent in the
23:54same way Adobe are. They have much a
23:56much smaller share of the market. The
23:59same way Slack has a much smaller share
24:01of communications than Microsoft. This
24:03is why Microsoft is also with Teams
24:05basically eaten Zoom's lunch. The only
24:07person to or the only industry company
24:09sorry to have really stood up to the
24:11onslaught of Microsoft is Google. But
24:14Google are also a multi-trillion dollar
24:15corporation who have you know these
24:18these things matter. These these these
24:19these things are indicators of your
24:21success right and you do get
24:22independence. Let's look at Mirro.
24:24Mirror could be um displaced. It's a
24:26very good piece of software right now.
24:28You've got companies like Microsoft,
24:29they've introduced Microsoft Loop to
24:31take on notion, but then it's when you
24:33build your own little moat. In the case
24:35of Miro, they've got their own little
24:36moat of the, you know, sort of like
24:38digital whiteboarding. Figma has this UI
24:40product. And then, uh, notion has this
24:43sort of free form project
24:45management/documentation notion thing
24:46going on. When you're an incumbent,
24:48you're hard to unseat. That's why I
24:50don't think something like Penpot, which
24:52is not a very great piece of software to
24:54be honest, or Sketch will ever regain
24:55the seat is the most prevalent piece of
24:57design software in this space. However,
25:00when you don't have a big enough or
25:01powerful enough product portfolio and
25:03you wait into someone else's playground
25:05and trying to cross their moat, you kind
25:07of need something very compelling to to
25:09steal that market share back. Otherwise,
25:10you're not going to do it. So, as
25:12normally a company with more established
25:14suite of things taking on whatever can
25:17we wade in, these sort of moves tend to
25:19never really uh
25:22work. And if you compare like the
25:24situation with Affinity versus Adobe,
25:26there is this sort of um and Affinity
25:28got they've done really well as a
25:29company. Um they aren't going to take
25:31over Adobe. It's that's not reality. Uh
25:34unfortunately, they make better tools
25:36and that's how they did it. They made a
25:38suite of three tools that are in a lot
25:40of ways better tangible benefit. Uh
25:44while the core ones being price, but you
25:45know that's not everything. But yeah,
25:47they've carved themselves a really
25:49decent little niche. They can exist.
25:50There's room for more than one of
25:52everything. And competition is great.
25:54The odds of Figma getting success with
25:56any one of these these these sort of new
25:58spin-off tools. The exception maybe of
25:59sites um because that's them punching
26:02down effectively rather than trying
26:03punching up. I'm certain they have more
26:05money than than Framer do. um they might
26:07have some success, so that's quite a
26:09natural fit for them. But that's why I
26:10don't really talk so much about what's
26:12in these tools. It's more about what
26:13they're doing. And the real thing,
26:14you're going to take anything away from
26:16this video of a guy talking in front of
26:19a static web page for most of it
26:21is Figma don't care about you. Uh they
26:24don't they don't care about your core
26:26product. Figma, I think, will get better
26:28over time. They will improve things, but
26:31the rate at which they have little
26:32incentive at this point, they've already
26:34got your money. Why do they need to do
26:36anything else? They can either leave
26:37themselves open to be unseated
26:39themselves or you have to just suck it
26:40up and continue and it becomes an Adobe/
26:42Microsoft situation where you have to
26:45pay them and hate them for it but still
26:47give them the money. And this is the the
26:49the phase of their existence we're
26:50entering. There is an alternative. This
26:53seems like a propaganda piece but it's
26:55not. It really isn't. I think if you're
26:58a consumer you should vote with your
26:59wallet, right? And you should, you know,
27:03if you don't like things, the the way to
27:05tell companies or anything is you take
27:07your money away from them. Um, so if you
27:10don't like what they're doing, you don't
27:11like any of these tools, you like lack
27:12of focus, if you can, and only if you
27:16can, I'm not saying ruin your day to
27:18make it better, seek moving to other
27:19tools. If enough people do it, they will
27:22change. They will they will refocus. But
27:24until you do that, they aren't going to
27:26change course because they have your
27:28money. they don't want to listen to you
27:30anymore. They will listen to new money
27:31or have other people's money. There's no
27:33incentive anymore for them to listen to
27:35you. And they've proved to have the
27:36inclination to to not want to listen to
27:38you at this point. Uh the the love
27:40period is is definitely over. Uh I think
27:42this is going to get worse before it
27:43gets better. Uh, and I expect
27:46increasingly uh slow feature roll out as
27:49they spread their resources between
27:51frankly way too many tools to try and
27:53maybe bake some of the new tools a bit
27:55better or inevitably double down and uh
27:58make the core Figma tool a lot better.
28:00But seek alternatives. Sketch is out
28:03there. Sketch is still really good. They
28:04aren't actually evil. It's interesting.
28:07You've got penot. It's not great, but it
28:09it can be. Maybe. Who knows? There's
28:12alternatives in this space. maybe also
28:15seek out some of these alternative
28:16workflows. Like I was saying earlier in
28:18this video, the idea of having
28:20development aware designers and design
28:22aware developers and those roles
28:24coalescing. I'm not saying you should go
28:27and be a developer, put down your
28:28pitchfork. What I'm saying is having a
28:31bit of that knowledge for the sort of
28:32businesses that will seek out those
28:34people. And to say that you can do both
28:36bad, that's not that's not true. There's
28:38a lot of crossover between these two
28:40roles. Uh and also other things can move
28:43around to absolve parts of those roles
28:45that aren't necessary for your time.
28:47Right? So you've always seen this level
28:49of strapation with people who just
28:51manage design systems and you got people
28:52in Figma just assembling parts and
28:55component systems. Things can move. And
28:57what I'm saying is by leveraging broader
29:00things in your skill set, you can become
29:02better at your craft. Um writing HTML
29:05and writing CSS are just other tools to
29:07lay out boxes on screens. They just tend
29:09to be maybe a slightly harder learning
29:11curve at the beginning, but actually
29:13pretty easy in the grand scheme of
29:14things. Not that distracting. And I know
29:17there's a lot of devil on the detail of
29:18all this. What I'm saying is just don't
29:20just accept the things that companies
29:21give to you that are and moan about
29:23it and not expect anything to change. I
29:26get upset when things change. You need
29:27to vote with your wallet. Um I'm seeing
29:30the big backlash against Adobe. I'm not
29:32again I'm not sure. Um Adobe's so
29:34incumbent now that I'm not sure you can
29:35ever really get rid of them. Uh, even
29:38I've recently had to pay Adobe again for
29:40some stuff after not really paying Adobe
29:42anything for a few years. It happens.
29:44What I'm saying is though is if you can,
29:45you don't like any of this and you don't
29:47want to use these new products, vote
29:48with your wallet. Uh, and if you do like
29:49them, awesome, great. More power to you.
29:51Make use of them. But there are other
29:53options out there and just try and
29:55detach your feelings about the
29:57individual tool or any sort of sense of
29:59I'm in this group. I am I support this
30:02team from the economic realities of most
30:04likely what these businesses are doing
30:07and why because that tells you a lot
30:08about the future. That is the end of the
30:10video. I hope you've uh suffered through
30:13it and if you've gotten to the end then
30:15you've gotten to the end and here we
30:16are. I'm not going to ask you to
30:17subscribe or anything like that. I don't
30:18care if you subscribe but have a
30:20wonderful day and that is the end of the
30:21video and goodbye.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of Figma’s new products aren’t for you by ManyLearn, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 6,212 words across 879 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.