Building Figma with Yuhki Yamashita: Collaborative Design, AI Teammates, and Building for Builders

When product teams talk about “a single source of truth,” they’re usually describing an aspiration — a kind of digital nirvana where everyone works from the same context. In engineering, that problem was solved years ago. In design, it took a fundamental mindset shift.

Few people understand that shift better than Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer at Figma. When Figma launched in 2012, the idea of multiple people editing the same file, watching every keystroke in real time, felt radical. Today, Figma is used by more than 95% of the Fortune 500, powering collaboration across designers, engineers, and product teams worldwide.

In this episode of Building One, host Tomer Cohen talks with Yuhki about what it takes to build products for builders and what he’s learned from his product roles at Microsoft, Google, and Uber.

Tomer and Yuhki discuss:

• Why designing for product teams is uniquely powerful and uniquely challenging

• What Yuhki learned from Microsoft, Google, and Uber, and how each shaped his product philosophy

• How to design tools for non-designers without diluting power or precision

• The rise of “vibe coding” and its parallels in design

• Why Figma’s multiplayer model was a means, not an end

• How AI can evolve from a personal assistant into a true multiplayer teammate

• Why storytelling is one of the most underrated product skills

This conversation is for anyone building products, leading teams, or shaping tools, and for every builder who believes clarity and collaboration are the real drivers of great work.

Follow Yuhki Yamashita on LinkedIn.

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