An in-depth look at how Figma, a browser-based collaborative design tool, has found success, as it seeks to become a platform by building out a plugin ecosystem
Companies are a sequencing of loops. While it's possible to stumble into an initial core loop that works … Tweets: @dickc , @kevinakwok , @joulee , @seldo , @brettbivens , @noelsequeira , @vcshekhar , @gritgrowthcap , @soleio , @alfred_lua , @asp_net , @mhdempsey , @adamnash , @peteskomoroch , @johnolilly , and @sriramk Tweets: Dick Costolo / @dickc : This is a great piece, as you'd expect, and it's interesting to note that both Kevin and @eugenewei show a great sense of humor in their writing. https://twitter.com/... Kevin Kwok / @kevinakwok : New essay up. Why Figma Wins - Why browser-first matters - Figma is built for design, not just designers - Intra-company network effects + bringing designers to decision making table - Global network effects, pushing progress, & how to become a platform https://kwokchain.com/... Julie Zhuo / @joulee : This is a terrific essay on Figma's competitive advantages. https://twitter.com/... Laurie Voss / @seldo : Results in Netlify's survey of developers' favorite collaboration tools had Figma second only to GitHub and for very similar reasons. https://twitter.com/... Brett Bivens / @brettbivens : This is an underrated + fundamental insight that many of the most impactful companies are built upon. → Figma — Design is larger than Designers → Nike — Athletics is larger than Athletes → Instagram — Photography is larger than Photographers Those who harness it win. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Noel Sequeira / @noelsequeira : This is brilliant and sums up why Figma's a generational company (and why Adobe should take it very, very seriously). The x-side / x-team network effect in SaaS is not talked about enough - it can be incredibly powerful if done well. (This alone warrants a long-form post.) https://twitter.com/... Chandra Vattikuti / @vcshekhar : Hands down, the best Product article you want to read this weekend .. So much good content on Product now a days. The young PM's are so lucky to have so much good stuff to soak in .. Way to go @kevinakwok https://twitter.com/... GGC / @gritgrowthcap : New @kevinakwok essay is, of course, excellent But - equally important - the picture captions are EXCELLENT https://kwokchain.com/... @soleio : “The core insight of Figma is that design is larger than just designers. Figma made companies realize that non-designers should and could be more involved in the design process and how crazy it is that other design tools aren't built with non-designers in mind.” https://twitter.com/... Alfred Lua / @alfred_lua : Positioning is often seen as a marketing task but it is tied very closely to product. The positioning is only effective if the product can back it up. But at the same time, having a clear positioning (who and why) helps companies build better products. https://twitter.com/... Thomas Bandt / @asp_net : Excellent read. It's probably about time for us to get rid of Sketch + Zeplin + Dropbox... https://twitter.com/... Michael Dempsey / @mhdempsey : Kwokchain breaks down Figma's shift from product to platform, and drops this lovely sentence in the process: “Like wet clay, the choices they make eventually set and become the underlying substrate that defines how the entire ecosystem grows.” https://twitter.com/... Adam Nash / @adamnash : This long read by @kevinakwok on why @FigmaDesign wins is excellent. What I love most about it, is that it reflects the incremental product thinking & execution required to build this type of bottoms-up giant. https://kwokchain.com/... @peteskomoroch : “As more designers use Figma, they pull in the non-designers they work with.” Getting users to touch and activate non-users is one of the most powerful things a startup can do, and is extremely hard to get right in the enterprise. https://twitter.com/... John Lilly / @johnolilly : You'll want to set aside a fair bit of time to read this new piece from @kevinakwok on @figmadesign. There's a TON of great & insightful thinking in it. (And grateful for Kevin's work on the original diligence with me, too!) https://twitter.com/... Sriram Krishnan / @sriramk : Another amazing essay by @kevinakwok. His thinking on loops is required reading for anyone working on product or strategy. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Kevin Kwok's essay frames Figma as proof that 'companies are a sequencing of loops': the first loop was browser-first collaboration, which pulled non-designers into product design work and spread the tool seat-by-seat through organizations. That loop had already compounded into serious capital — a $40M Series C at a $440M valuation in early 2019 — before this piece argued the next loop was the plugin ecosystem, turning the design tool into a platform others build on.
The argument landed: within a year Kwok extended it to a direct assault on Adobe's franchise, showing how Figma and Canva were winning on two different flanks (collaborative product design and marketing design respectively), and by mid-2021 Figma raised at $10B, quintupling its valuation — roughly twenty-fold above its 2019 post-money.
First-order effects
- Plugin developers get a distribution surface inside every Figma document, so the tool's value stops being set solely by Figma's own feature roadmap.
- Adobe now competes against a rival whose file lives in the browser and grows more valuable as third parties extend it, rather than against another desktop application.
Second-order effects
- The same playbook Kwok describes for Figma — collaboration spreading beyond the core user — is what his earlier analysis of Slack found lacking: filling cracks between apps does not create the central-workflow lock that owning the design artifact does.
- Non-designers entering via shared documents expand the buyer base beyond design teams, pressuring pricing models across the design-tool market toward per-organization rather than per-seat licenses.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, design software follows the structure Kwok later identified in TikTok's network effects: ecosystems built on remixable, interconnected work are hard for rivals to clone feature-for-feature, so competition shifts from matching functionality to bootstrapping a parallel ecosystem.
- Platform status also raises exit stakes — the 2024 redesign with generative AI tools and paid add-on features shows the platform layer becoming the monetization layer, not just an adoption engine.
The trend: Collaborative design tools are converting workflow adoption into platform economics, with plugin ecosystems and network effects replacing standalone feature competition.