The 5 phases of Figma’s community-led growth — Claire Butler
Sep 1, 2022
57:48
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Quick takeaways
Figma focused on creating technical content targeted at designers and engineers to build credibility and trust with the design community.
Figma identified five phases of community-led growth, including planting seeds, building credibility, early evangelism, empowering evangelists, and enterprise scaling.
Figma's success in achieving organic growth was realized through credibility building, activating early evangelists, and prioritizing customer feedback to provide value that outweighed any limitations or missing features.
Deep dives
Building Credibility through Content Creation
To build credibility with the design community, Figma focused on creating technical content targeted at designers and engineers. They shared deep insights about the product, such as blog posts on specific design features like grid systems. By enabling designers and engineers within the community to contribute content, Figma fostered authenticity and built trust with their audience.
The Five Phases of Community-Led Growth
Figma identified five phases of community-led growth: planting seeds, building credibility, early evangelism, empowering evangelists, and enterprise scaling. Each phase had specific goals and strategies, such as establishing trust, expanding the group of evangelists, and introducing self-serve revenue. Figma's community-led approach aimed to develop passionate users who would drive product adoption through advocacy and organic growth.
The Power of Bottoms-Up Adoption
Figma's success in achieving bottoms-up adoption was realized through a combination of factors. They focused on credibility building, activating early evangelists, and introducing self-serve pricing. By prioritizing multiplayer as a key feature and listening to customer feedback, Figma provided value that outweighed any limitations or missing features. Their approach fostered trust and allowed passionate users to embrace Figma, ultimately driving organic growth and widespread adoption.
Building relationships with early adopters
The podcast episode highlights the importance of building relationships with early adopters. By understanding their needs and engaging with them before the product's full launch, the company was able to gain valuable insights and credibility for their product. They leveraged tools like Twitter to connect with the design community and targeted specific groups within it to generate buzz and conversations around their product. This approach helped them establish a strong foundation and lay the groundwork for future growth.
Iterative product updates and building credibility
The podcast discusses the significance of launching iterative product updates to build credibility and resonate with the target audience. The company recognized that small updates, which might seem insignificant to an outsider, could have a significant impact on designers who use their product extensively. By understanding the pain points and needs of their users, and continuously improving the tool, they gained credibility among the design community. These updates also played a crucial role in building lasting relationships with early users, as they witnessed the company's commitment to addressing their needs.
Today’s episode is with Claire Butler, Senior Director of Marketing at Figma, and one of the company’s first 10 employees.
In today’s conversation, she sketches out Figma’s five phases of community-led growth — and shares tons of advice along the way for startups who also are looking to build an organic growth engine.
In the first phase, Claire covers the biggest lessons from Figma’s years of stealth mode — and how you can start planting the seeds for a community when you don’t have a fully-formed product. She also unpacks the decision to eventually emerge from stealth, after years of quietly building.
In the second phase, Claire opens up the pages of Figma’s launch playbook — from taking over design Twitter, to marketing to folks who tend to bristle at traditional SaaS marketing.
In the third phase, she shares how Figma leveraged the community to get folks to try the product, even if they weren’t going to switch over right away to designing in Figma full-time. In this phase of community-building, Figma built out its evangelist strategy and Claire shares tons of tips for generating excitement around your nascent product.
In the final two phases, Figma needed to connect the individual users that loved the product with a larger enterprise strategy. They didn’t layer in a sales team until four years after the product launched, and didn’t add a paid product tier until another two years after that. Claire explores the ins and outs of these GTM trade-offs.
You can follow Claire on Twitter at @clairetbutler
