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Figma (FIG) held celebratory festivities out on the cobblestone streets of New York Citys financial district this morning, and rightfully so. Your favorite designers favorite design software company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange today with an initial public offering (IPO) of $98triple its projected price of $33and landing a valuation of $19.3 billion. Last year, Figma rebranded for growth mode. It doubled its core products from four to eight, and launched new AI features to expand its user base and product capabilities to get more people into the productand stay there. Today, those product-led growth decisions delivered in a ten figure payoff. Figma, once squarely focused on professional designers, is now aiming to be the software platform for everyone on a team. The last six years I have been working on this has been focused on the singular mission of going from idea all the way to the final product and [] bringing more people into the process, Chief Product Officer Yuhki Yamashita said while sitting in a quiet conference room in the New York Stock Exchange. It’s been nice to see how design has become something that everyone cares aboutand not just designers. [Photo: Figma] Big products, big demand Figma’s IPO, which as of Thursday was 40 times oversubscribedmeaning demand for shares was 40 times greater than what was availablealso marks the most richly valued enterprise software IPO since 2021, Matthew Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, told Investors Business Daily. Not bad for a company that spent a mere year and a half regrouping from a failed $20 billion acquisition deal with Adobe in late 2023. (Adobes stock dropped 5.5 points today, at time of writing.) Much of that comes down to demand for its software. Figma says it has a total addressable market of $33 billion across the global workforce engaged in software design. Seventy-six percent of customers use two or more Figma products, an indication that cross-functional teams are a core consumer as much as designers at this point. In fact, two-thirds of its 13 million users are non-designers, like writers, marketers, project managers, and developers. And the product is everywhere: Figma claims in its prospectus that 95% of Fortune 500 companies use its software, including Google, Uber, JetBlue, Netflix, Airbnb, and Duolingo. Noting the quantity of non-designers on the platform, Yamashita asked: “How can we do more for them and meet them where they are?” [Image: Figma] A better tool Figma set a new software standard when it launched the multiplayer, in-browser app and web interface design platform called Figma Design in 2012, which provided a low barrier to entry and a super easy way for new users among community-driven professional designers to share their worksimply share a URL. That made it easier for non users to play around, and eventually buy in. [Image: Figma] It subsequently launched FigJam (whiteboarding) and Figma Slides, without much buzz, but this year launched four more products: Figma Make (creates AI-generated code), Figma Sites (creates websites), Figma Buzz (creates marketing assets), and Figma Draw (for making free-form vector illustrations), all of which elbows up against the use cases of a slew of companies: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Canva, Adobe Express. [Image: Figma] Figma’s goal is to expand on its founding purpose to become a multi-product company for multi-role creative teams. It aims to reach an expanded audience that includes developers (a third of its current user base) and other team members like project managers, who help bring design deliverables to life. Seeing an idea through to launch requires an entire team to go through that process to make the best products, and so we are trying to fill all those different gaps, says Yamashita. If we can welcome more people into te process and actually really go deep into their workflows such that they are relying on Figma every single day, that is a really great place for us to be. [Image: Figma] Among professional designers, the sentiment is that Figma is simply better than everything else on the market. Its the most powerful and complete design tool, says Pentagram partner Andrea Trabucco-Campos. Figma did establish a whole new paradigm that will be around for the foreseeable as the de facto tool for collaboration and design. He also noted the product has its limits, and doesn’t replace InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator. What differentiates Figma from its competitors who are also trying to claw their way to becoming every creative team’s everything app, according Yakashima, is its exclusive focus on the product team. Designers tend to work ahead, he says, referring to how users started created slides in Figma before the actual product existed, and that informs the company’s product decisions. Figma Slides and Figma Make provide easy entry points for non-designers because the tools are already familiar to them, but it brings them into a platform where designers already create sophisticated work, he says. That’s what we want to, you know, really encourage and capitalize on. Considering the hype at NYSE today, investors seem to strongly believe its well-positioned to do that. [Photo: Figma] Figma’s growth plan Now, as the rise of AI is causing distinct roles and longstanding processes within teams collapse, Figma offers a clue to understanding what the future of design software looks like: expansive, holistic, turnkey. Its less about design work specifically, more about workflows. We live in a world now where we have to recognize that the boundaries between roles are blurring, says Yamashita. So rather than saying, ‘hey, it’s just one kind of persona or target audience that is important,’ we have to be focused on the activity that they are doingthat activity is building and designing products. Any software company worth its salt wants to own as much of the work process as it can, soup to nuts, because thats the best way to retain users. Everyone from Adobe to Canva are trying to do this through product extensions. And Figma has plans to rapidly expand its offerings. [Photo: Figma] The company’s growth plan, according to its SEC filing, has five pillars: maintain a rapid pace of product innovation, convert new and existing users into paid (the platform has a freemium model), grow within current customers, extend the platform, and expand its international footprint. You should know that while weve built an efficient business, our primary goal is not efficiency, founder Dylan Field wrote in the filing. Our goal is to achieve long-term growth by supporting the rapidly evolving needs of designers. He adds, Expect us to take big swings when we see a chance to invest in our platform or pursue M&A at scale, referring to mergers and acquisitions. On the product side, that means continuing to rapidly build and launch products that address product teams’ ever-changing workflows. The company also plans to continue investing heavily in AI, which Field described as a possible drag on its efficiency in the short term. As Figma enters public markets, its strategic advantage over competitors is collaboration, says Yamashita. We believe the future of building is one that is collaborative and highly visible, he says… If we can help entire product teams build faster or build better products faster, then I think that is something that is valuable for everyone, right. Valuable for customers, it is valuable for us.”
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E-Commerce
In a period when retail beef prices are at an all-time high and consumers are still willing to pay, South Dakota rancher Calli Williams would love to cash in. But it’s not so simple. Williams and her husband, Tate, raise about 70 cow-calf pairs near Letcher in southeastern South Dakota, roughly 18 miles (29 kilometers) north of Mitchell. They own about 80 acres (32 hectares) and rent additional pasture. Between the drought that hit cattle country hard over the last few years, still being maxed out on the grass available to feed their animals, and with land prices rising, she said, they simply cant yet make the financial investments that theyd need to raise production. It is a goal of ours to expand, she said. Im just not sure if that will be in the 10-year plan or even longer. Biology is a barrier to expansion Farmers and ranchers across the U.S. would love to take greater advantage of the high prices, but with the U.S. herd at record lows, they cant meet the demand quickly. It’s basic biology. It takes three years to get more cowsbetween making a decision, having that gestation period, having the calf born, raising the calf until it, too, can have a calf,” said Michael Swanson, chief agricultural economist for the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute in Minneapolis. Drought has eased, but the impacts persist The Williamses’ county was hard hit by drought over the previous few seasons. Because of the lack of grass and uneconomically high hay prices, they had to sell all their young females last year that could have produced more calves for them this year, she said. Their area has caught some rain lately, though. It has improved to just abnormally dry in recent U.S. Drought Monitor reports. But Williams said theyre simply playing catch-up. Swanson said some of the main cattle areas in North Americafrom Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada down to Texas in the U.S.are just naturally prone to drought. It’s often boom or bust. Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemens Beef Association (NCBA), said a lot of cattle country has had good rain this summer, but it’s a cyclical business. Sometimes we have good times, and sometimes we dont, Woodall said. And we are just coming off what was a pretty significant negative hit to the cattle industry in 19, 20, and 21, with the height of the pandemic. So we have a lot of producers who are still trying to pay off bills from those times.” Fear of future drought is also a factor And Woodall said NCBA members are still leery. They’re asking how long the better weather will last. Were getting some good moisture now. But will it be that way in the fall? Will it be that way next year? he said. Because the last thing you want to do is pay to rebuild your herd and then just have to liquidate them again in six months to a year. Although its difficult to attribute any single weather event, such as a drought, directly to climate change, scientists say that rising temperatures stoked by climate change are increasing the odds of both severe droughts and heavier precipitation, which wreak havoc on people and the environment. When extreme weather collides with tight margins, farmers and ranchers feel the squeeze. The economics: Prices have soared to record highs Retail beef prices have hit record highs, with no relief for consumers in sight. Ground beef rose to an average of $6.12 per pound in June, up nearly 12% from 2024. The average price of all steaks rose 8%, to $11.49 per pound. And the average prices that producers receive for cattle and calves have increased from $1.51 per pound in May 2020 to $4.05 in May of this year. But herds have still shrunk The total U.S. cattle herd is the smallest it has been at midyear since the government began keeping those figures in 1973, and probably since the 1950s. There were few signs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture data released last Friday that producers have begun rebuilding herds. As of July 1, the U.S. had 94.2 million cattle and calves, down from the last midyear peak in 2019 of nearly 103 million. Critical for the future supply, 2025 calf production is projected at 33.1 million head, down 1% from last year. Derrell Peel, a livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University, said if producers were planning to grow their herds, the USDA reports would have shown them keeping heifersfemale cows that havent given birth yet. Yet consumer demand remains high While retail prices are high, consumers so far have been willing to pay them. Glynn Tonsor, who leads the Meat Demand Monitor at Kansas State University, said taste is the most important consideration when shoppers choose proteinsand beef remains the favorite. The late June report found that consumers were willing to fork out $17.62 a pound for rib-eye steaks and $8.82 a pound for ground beef. Thats more than the $7.13 theyd pay for pork chops, $6.19 for bacon, or $8.55 for chicken breasts. A major reason, Woodall offered, is that the beef industry has focused on the eating experience. The kind of beef that we are producing today is some of the highest quality, best tasting beef that weve ever produced in history here in the United States,” he said. So, things such as USDA prime graded steaks that at one point in time you could only get in a restaurant, you can now get that in a grocery store. For consumers who balk at costs, maketing specialist Peel said that pork and poultry are abundant and quite favorably priced.” Meanwhile, back at the ranch The Williamses, who are both 34, built their TW Angus business from scratch. Tate Williams started buying cattle when he was in high school, and they bought their land in 2015. They sell bulls in the spring and keep heifers when they can. They also raise steers in their own feedlot and sell the meat directly to consumers. We would really like to expand our operation,” Calli Williams said. “We have a goal of being able to pass this on to the next generation, she added, meaning their sons Jack, 7, and Tommy, nearly 4. But recalling a friends words, she said ranchers are a resilient bunch. Were optimistic that if Mother Natureshe wreaked havoc on us, whether that was a drought or a floodthat next year shell be kinder to us, she said. Or if the markets werent on our side, were optimistic that the markets will be on our side next time. By Steve Karnowski, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
A history teacher recently turned her sixth grade classroom into a museum for millennial paraphernalia and posted the results on TikTok. Judging by the comment section, millennials arent sure whether to be thrilled or horrified.
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E-Commerce
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