Podcast appearances and mentions of dylan field

Shares of Moderna and Merck are surging on positive results from a Phase 3 trial of a groundbreaking cancer treatment. After a decade in development, individualized mRNA “vaccines” and established cancer treatment Keytruda result in reduced risk of recurrence or death. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel and Merck Research Laboratories president Dr. Dean Li discuss this pivotal moment in medicine and how it fits into the long term visions for both Merck and Moderna. CEO of design and coding platform Figma Dylan Field discusses his company's wild year as a public company and building public trust in AI. Plus, it was primary night for Democrats in Florida, investors are scrutinizing revenues from Anthropic and OpenAI, and shares of Unitree are surging in Shanghai, presenting a potential challenge to U.S.-based humanoid robotics.    Stephane Bancel & Dr. Dean Li - 15:13 Dylan Field - 33:35   In this episode: Dylan Field, @zoink Becky Quick, @BeckyQuick Andrew Ross Sorkin, @andrewrsorkin Katie Kramer, @Kramer_Katie Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this special episode of In Good Company, Nicolai Tangen revisits the question he asks all his guests – what's your advice to young people? McLaren Racing's Zak Brown explains why you need mentors at every stage. Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan reflects on a career that rarely went to plan. Investor Paul Singer offers his thoughts on education, and Chris Hohn gives perhaps the most personal answer of all. You'll also hear from Karin Rådström, Dylan Field, Christel Heydemann, David Rubenstein and Amanda Blanc – and to finish, Nicolai shares his own advice to all of you. Wisdom worth pressing play for, whatever stage you're at. Tune in!In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday. The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen and Håkon Klemsdal. Background research was conducted by Isabelle Karlsson. Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedIn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anthropic ha pasado en unos pocos años de ser el gran reformador de la inteligencia artificial a ser el gran sospechoso. Fundada en 2021 por Dario Amodei y otros ex empleados de OpenAI, Anthropic se presentaba como la conciencia moral de la inteligencia artificial, el laboratorio que anteponía la prudencia a la ambición. Hoy buena parte de Silicon Valley la mira con recelo y constatan que es como cualquier otra, una empresa que compite con las mismas armas que las demás, solo que envueltas en el celofán de las buenas intenciones. El primer aldabonazo llegó en abril con Claude Design, un competidor directo de Figma cuyo consejero delegado, Dylan Field, reprochó en público la falta de sinceridad de un socio con el que habían estado trabajando mano a mano. En junio se sumó Fable 5, la versión restringida del modelo Mythos, que degrada en silencio ciertas respuestas, no admite retención cero de datos y guarda las conversaciones con los usuarios durante 30 días. Al mismo tiempo Amodei se ha puesto en contra de los modelos de pesos abiertos, más baratos y difíciles de controlar. Lo que muchos sospechan es que está creando un pánico para después ofrecerse a resolverlo. El calendario tampoco ayuda, la compañía planea salir a bolsa en otoño y esos modelos abiertos amenazan sus elevados márgenes. Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Google y más de 70 empresas han hecho pública una carta abierta en la que defienden los modelos abiertos. Eso ha dejado a Anthropic prácticamente sola. Amodei no ha tardado en responder arguyendo que su oposición se debe a que quiere evitar que gobiernos autoritarios amenacen la seguridad nacional. El otro campo de batalla es China. Hace dos meses, en una carta dirigida a dos senadores, Anthropic acusaba a Alibaba del mayor ataque de destilación del que se tiene noticia. Al parecer Alibaba creo unas 25.000 cuentas falsas que hicieron 29 millones de preguntas a Claude para extraerle información sobre sus mejores capacidades. Lo curioso aquí es que la propia Anthropic ha destilado todo internet sin pagar derechos de autor y ahora exige a los chinos un respeto por la propiedad intelectual que ellos no tuvieron con nadie. Detrás de esta guerra de los pesos abiertos, a las grandes de la inteligencia artificial se les mueve el suelo bajo los pies, pero por otra cosa bien distinta. Están perdiendo mercado. Como veíamos en el programa del lunes, sus clientes han descubierto que no necesitan gastar una fortuna en tokens de un mismo proveedor y están empezando a repartir su consumo entre modelos más caros y capaces y otros más baratos para tareas rutinarias. Así se entiende mejor la doble cruzada que ha emprendido Anthropic contra la destilación china y contra los modelos abiertos. Ambas apuntan al mismo blanco, la competencia barata que machaca sus márgenes, envuelta, eso sí, en el noble lenguaje de la seguridad nacional. En La ContraRéplica: 0:00 Introducción 3:21 Todos contra Anthropic 31:28 El responsable del incendio de Ávila 37:55 La despoblación rural 43:27 Medios e IA · Canal de Telegram: https://t.me/lacontracronica · “Contra el pesimismo”… https://amzn.to/4m1RX2R · “Hispanos. Breve historia de los pueblos de habla hispana”… https://amzn.to/428js1G · “La ContraHistoria del comunismo”… https://amzn.to/39QP2KE · “La ContraHistoria de España. Auge, caída y vuelta a empezar de un país en 28 episodios”… https://amzn.to/3kXcZ6i · “Contra la Revolución Francesa”… https://amzn.to/4aF0LpZ · “Lutero, Calvino y Trento, la Reforma que no fue”… https://amzn.to/3shKOlK Apoya La Contra en: · Patreon... https://www.patreon.com/diazvillanueva · iVoox... https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-contracronica_sq_f1267769_1.html · Paypal... https://www.paypal.me/diazvillanueva Sígueme en: · Web... https://diazvillanueva.com · Twitter... https://twitter.com/diazvillanueva · Facebook... https://www.facebook.com/fernandodiazvillanueva1/ · Instagram... https://www.instagram.com/diazvillanueva · Linkedin… https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-d%C3%ADaz-villanueva-7303865/ · Flickr... https://www.flickr.com/photos/147276463@N05/?/ · Pinterest... https://www.pinterest.com/fernandodiazvillanueva Encuentra mis libros en: · Amazon... https://www.amazon.es/Fernando-Diaz-Villanueva/e/B00J2ASBXM #FernandoDiazVillanueva #anthropic #ia Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

John Lilly has had a front row seat to almost every major shift in technology over the last thirty years, and he has sat in almost every chair while it happened.He was a Senior Scientist at Apple in 1997, when the market cap was two billion dollars and most people assumed the company was finished. He co-founded Reactivity, later acquired by Cisco. He became CEO of Mozilla and led Firefox past 450 million users, running an open source nonprofit at a time when nobody else in Silicon Valley was doing anything like it. Then he spent over a decade as a General Partner at Greylock, where he led investments in Instagram, Dropbox, Figma, Tumblr and Quip. He sits on the boards of Figma, Duolingo and Nuro, and recently joined Gigascale Capital as an Advising Partner, backing companies rebuilding the physical economy.In this conversation with Jessica Neal and co-host Jeff Markowitz, John walks through what he actually saw in the founders everyone else missed.He tells the story of chasing Kevin Systrom for six months, wiring the money on a Thursday, and getting the call three days later that Instagram was selling to Facebook. He explains the moment a friend showed him Instagram and what clicked was not the filters, it was the distribution. And he describes meeting a 19 year old Dylan Field at a Starbucks in Palo Alto, telling him his product did not matter, and then spending the next decade watching him prove it wrong.He is also honest about the parts that are harder to hear. Why some partners at Greylock wanted Dylan replaced. Why he thinks micromanaging the right things is a feature of good leadership, not a flaw. Why he does not tell CEOs anything, and what he does instead. And why, at a moment when OpenAI and Anthropic are pulling talent out of every company on earth, the answer is not matching the money.He closes with something a colleague at Mozilla told him years ago that he still carries: we had a chance to make the world we wanted, and we did it.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━WHAT WE COVER━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━THE FOUNDER QUESTION→ How John spotted Dylan Field at 19→ Why recruiting senior people is the strongest early signal→ The trait every great founder shares: relentless about getting help→ Why non-defensiveness beats raw intelligence→ The lunch where they told Dylan he had to build a go to marketTHE INVESTMENTS→ Chasing Kevin Systrom for six months→ The underwater photographer who explained Instagram to him→ Why the network mattered and the filters did not→ The four day flip to Facebook and what he told his LPs→ The Adobe Killers that came before Figma and why this one was differentLEADERSHIP AND SCALE→ Going from 12 people to a quarter of the internet at Mozilla→ Why he never learned the delegation lesson everyone teaches→ Larry and Sergey reviewing every resume and what that signals→ Learning to be simpler in your message as you grow→ Deciding you would rather be successful than comfortableTHE TALENT WAR→ Why every great person is now a free agent→ The spreadsheet exercise he gives every CEO→ Tour of duty and the bilateral deal between company and employee→ Never making an offer until you know it will be accepted→ Why money is rarely the only reason people leaveTHE CURRENT MOMENT→ Why leadership now means stability without pretending anything is stable→ The collision of faster scaling and total vulnerability→ Why org size no longer scales with impact→ Alpha nerds, Tim O'Reilly, and following the most technical people around→ Investing in transformers, copper recycling and rare earth supply chains→ Why none of the AI future is settled and it is all still to play for━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━CONNECT WITH JOHN LILLYLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnlilly━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Truth Works is hosted by Jessica Neal, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, with co-host Jeff Markowitz.

This Week In Startups is made possible by: NetSuite https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST Squarespace https://squarespace.com/twist YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: *America posted 400,000 farm jobs last year, and fewer than 1% got a single domestic applicant. Danny Bernstein of Reservoir believes it's time to start automating this backbreaking labor, like picking stone fruit in 110°F temperatures. So he built the world's first on-farm robotics incubator on 40 acres of California farmland. Here's why he argues that automating farms isn't just a new opportunity, it's a national security issue. PLUS Jason responded to Gal Shir's viral "AI beat me at design" tweet, got into a kerfuffle with Figma CEO Dylan Field, and wound up making a brand new J-Trade. AND we're talking about the Dept. of Education's new "do no harm" policy, the Brown University AI cheating chart that's blowing up social media, and Lon has fresh streaming recommendations in an all-new Off Duty. Guest: Danny Bernstein on X: https://x.com/bernsteind Reservoir Farms: https://reservoir.co/ Reservoir VC: https://reservoir.vc/ Relevant Links: Bonsai Robotics: https://bonsairobotics.ai/ Root AI acquired by AppHarvest: https://www.therobotreport.com/root-ai-acquired-by-appharvest-for-60m/ John Deere: https://www.deere.com/en-us/ Western Growers Association: https://www.wga.com/ Tanimura & Antle: https://www.taproduce.com/ Naturipe Berry Growers: https://www.naturipefarms.com/ Driscoll's: https://www.driscolls.com/ Taylor Farms: https://www.taylorfarms.com/ The Wonderful Company: https://www.wonderful.com/ Capital Factory: https://www.capitalfactory.com/ Gal Shir "quitting design" post: https://x.com/galshirart/status/2074854464729629060 Dylan Field response to Gal Shir: https://x.com/zoink/status/2075290218660298807 JCal response to Field and "J-Trade": https://x.com/Jason/status/2075481565115654305 Figma: https://www.figma.com/ Dept. of Education: "Do No Harm" policy announcement: https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-issues-final-rule-hold-all-colleges-and-universities-accountable-low-earning-programs NPR coverage on Dept. of Education earnings test: https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5835631/turner-camhi-do-no-harm-college-loans Paul Graham "cheating chart" post: https://x.com/paulg/status/2075031014628311236 Off Duty Recommendations: "Lioness" on Paramount+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNRQ0PR4a8U "Mayor of Kingstown" on Paramount+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkQzvwxOp0s "Human Vapor" on Netflix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xe6dRKVAb8 "Sugar" on Apple TV+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twvPGxuEOEA "Wind River" (now on Netflix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZgN0dpFoaE "Not Fade Away" by Peter Barton & Laurence Shames: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Fade-Away-Short-Lived/dp/1579546889 Timestamps: 0:00 Jason's ongoing World Tour 1:43 Danny Bernstein joins live from Reservoir Farms 3:38 What is "specialty crop agriculture" 5:15 Why strawberries are the "white whale" of AgTech 6:55 The labor crisis in farming 9:20 Why AgTech never scaled 9:51 NetSuite - For the first time, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST 10:51 Inside Reservoir's business model 17:44 Agriculture as national security 20:09 Squarespace - Turn your idea into a beautiful website! Go to https://www.squarespace.com/twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. 22:15 Did AI beat a designer at design? 30:56 YSecurity - The on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise-grade security without hiring a $400k CISO? YSecurity gives you 40+ expert engineers, matched to exactly what you need, by the hour, with your first six hours completely free. Go to https://YSecurity.io/TWIST 37:23 The "do no harm" college earnings test 43:27 Brown University students cheated on their midterms 52:22 Lon's streaming recommendations 59:46 Jason's new snake grabber   Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp   Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons   Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm   Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis   Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/   Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland   Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis   Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Sentry https://sentry.io/twist Today's show: *There are $100 trillion in global assets sitting on top of what Hanover Park co-founder/CEO Chris Hladczuk calls "human duct tape": armies of accountants in offices patching together work from various legacy tools (QuickBooks, Excel) that are holding funds' own data hostage. Can all of this be replaced with AI? Find out how their startup went from overseeing $1B to $20B in assets in just 15 months. PLUS, we flash back to March 2020, when Jason and Figma co-founder/CEO Dylan Field broke down the design tool's initial go-to-market strategy, made some WILDLY inaccurate COVID predictions, and considered anxiety about "SaaS burnout" years before the category went full apocalyptic. Guests: Chris Hladczuk on X: https://x.com/chrishlad Hanover Park: https://www.hanoverpark.com/ Dylan Field: https://x.com/zoink Figma: https://www.figma.com/ Relevant Links: Turner Novak on X: https://x.com/TurnerNovak Banana Capital: https://www.bananacapital.vc/ Emergence Capital: https://www.emcap.com/ Lux Capital: https://www.luxcapital.com/ Susa Ventures: https://susaventures.com/ Bill.com: https://www.bill.com/ METR: https://metr.org/ Granola AI note taker: https://www.granola.ai/ Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/ Foo Camp on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/foocamp TechCrunch Mahalo coverage: https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/27/inside-mobile-news-launch/ Timestamps: 0:00 Hanover Park & the fund admin problem 3:32 Why funds outsource instead of building 5:44 Why fund accounting is so complex 10:38 The "one-click migration" goal 10:48 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist 13:51 Context vs. intelligence gaps 16:11 No PMs, No Designers 20:46 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist 23:18 This is a $100T opportunity 25:36 Flashback w/ Dylan Field of Figma 29:15 Sentry - Your team should be focused on shipping features — not chasing down bugs. New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST 31:22 Pre-AI enterprise security worries 36:30 SaaS overload and SaaS burnout 37:30 The evolution of Figma pricing 42:38 The rise and fall of Mahalo dot com 51:38 The work-from-home revolution begins Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: (0:00) PARTNER - AD BLURB (0:00) PARTNER - AD BLURB (0:00) PARTNER - AD BLURB Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

We're back with more from our live event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In this episode, we sit down with Dylan Field, a founder and the chief executive of the design company Figma, for what he describes as a “roller coaster” of a conversation. We cover everything from the company's “Design Is Dead” campaign to the sudden resignation of the Anthropic executive Mike Krieger from Figma's board. Then, we close things out with a special musical performance by eight wooden robotic dolls that make up the Teenage Engineering Choir. One quick correction to note: In our interview with Field, he makes reference to the SpaceX S-1 filing and misstates what the company says their addressable market for A.I. enterprise applications is. Field says “$22.9 trillion,” but the correct number from the SpaceX filing is $22.7 trillion. The decimal point makes it look small, but it's a difference of $200 billion. We'll be back on Friday with our final installment of “Hard Fork” Live.   Guests: Dylan Field, chief executive and co-founder of Figma. Dan Powell, robot conductor, New York Times music composer and “Hard Fork” theme-song creator. Teenage Engineering Choir   Additional Reading: This Start-Up's $20 Billion Sale Died. It Came Fighting Back.   We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In today's conversation, Brett sits down with CMO of Figma, Sheila Joglekar Vashee. Previously the second marketing hire at Dropbox, where she helped scale the company past $1 billion in revenue, she now leads marketing at Figma fresh off its IPO. In an industry that has spent a decade trying to turn marketing into something closer to hedge fund trading, Sheila argues the art was always the point — we just stopped talking about it. She unpacks how to run marketing as a portfolio of moonshots, why giving teams different goals breeds dysfunction, how to scale taste across an organization, and why old playbooks are obsolete, even as the fundamentals hold. In today's episode, we discuss: How to run marketing like a portfolio of moonshots The value of disruptive energy for senior marketers Why "Ubiquity is the opposite of cool" How to actually scale taste across an organization What great marketing looks like in the AI era Referenced: Apple: https://www.apple.com/ Dennis Woodside: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-woodside-341302/ Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/ Dylan Field: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/ Figma: https://www.figma.com Francoise Brougher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francoise-brougher-341a72/ Gap: https://www.gap.com/ Google Chrome: https://www.google.com/chrome/ Harley-Davidson: https://www.harley-davidson.com/ HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/ Notion: https://www.notion.com/ Opendoor: https://www.opendoor.com/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ Square: https://squareup.com/ The Web Is What You Make of It (Dear Sophie): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzOBOuyr-EU Urban Outfitters: https://www.urbanoutfitters.com/ Yamini Rangan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaminirangan/ Where to find Sheila: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilavashee/ X: https://x.com/sheilavashee Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986644/ X: https://x.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:07 What excellent marketing actually is in 2026 01:36 Why giving teams different goals creates dysfunction 02:36 The most important decision Sheila made as CMO last year 04:26 The real difference between an SVP and a CMO 06:05 Marketing is one engine - not separate pieces 07:15 The tension between brand and growth 09:25 The decisions a CMO should never be making 09:55 Running marketing like a portfolio of moonshots 12:46 "Ubiquity is the opposite of cool" 15:11 Why a few companies get a flywheel of momentum 16:44 The Silicon Valley clock and irrational perception cycles 19:25 How to actually scale taste across an org 21:09 What changes for a CMO in a post-LLM world 23:15 Why the artistic side of marketing never really left 26:05 Whether taste can ever be encoded in software 27:15 Telling an optimistic, yet realistic story about AI 30:50 You need to make people care 32:11 What surprised Sheila about being a public-company CMO 33:46 Why Figma won enterprise where Dropbox couldn't 35:25 Sheila's favorite campaign ever 37:10 Why announcement videos full of humans, lack humanity 38:55 Playbooks are obselete, but the fundamentals are not 40:25 Why marketing in 2026 demands disruptive energy 41:54 How Sheila architects her week 48:55 Where corporate politics actually come from 53:55 "Sheila, are you going to change the world in this job?" 58:09 What's unique about the CMO and CEO relationship

DAMIONCarnival Corporation's data breach exposed personal data of nearly 6 million customers: An April social engineering attack on an employee account compromised names, dates of birth, and government-issued ID numbers. WHO DO YOU BLAMESkills: Technology & Cybersecurity: Experience with information technology and cybersecurity matters is increasingly important to mitigate the risks our business faces, promote innovation and maintain a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving technological ageLeast represented 5/11CEO Josh WeinsteinNO: at Carnival since 2002, started as General CounselSir Johathon BandNO: First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, the most senior officer position in the British Navy (2006 to 2009, when he retired); Admiral and Commander-in-Chief Fleet (2002 to 2006); Served as a naval officer in increasing positions of authority (1967 to 2002)Jason CahillyNO: CEO Dragon Group LLC, provides capital and business management consulting and advisory services worldwide; The NBA: CFO & Chief Strategic Officer; Goldman Sachs: Partner; Global Co-Head of Media and Telecommunications; Head of Principal Investing for Technology, Media & TelecommunicationsNelda ConnorsNO: CEO/Chair Pine Grove Holdings, a privately held investment company; CEO Atkore International, manufacturer of electrical, safety and infrastructure solutions; VP Eaton Corporation, electrical and automotive supplierLaura WeilNO: Founder Village Lane Advisory LLC, specializes in providing executive and strategic consulting services to retailers COO New York & Company, women's apparel and accessories retailer; CEO Ashley Stewart, women's apparel retailer; CEO Urban Brands, apparel retailer; COO AnnTaylor Stores, women's apparel retailer; CFO American Eagle Outfitters, apparel retailerAudit Committee: Oversee management's risk assessment processes to identify principal and emerging risks, including financial, IT, cybersecurity and non-HESS operational risksLaura Weil*: NOJason Cahilly: NOJeffrey Gearhart: NOWalmart Corporate Secretary and lawyerStuart Subotnick: NOCEO at Metromedia Company, wireless/communications, until 2010; Carnival director since 1987 Health, Environmental, Safety and Security Committee: Oversee management's processes to identify principal and emerging health, environmental, safety, security and sustainability-related risks, including those related to ship operations and cybersecurity, RAAS health, environmental, safety, security audits, IAG and external investigations into significant ship incidents, and health, environmental, safety, security-related hotline complaints, and assess the steps management has taken to minimize such risks.Sir Johathon Band*: NONelda Connors: NOHelen Deeble: NOFormer CEO P&O Ferries Division Holdings, shipping and logistics businessKatie Lahey: NOExecutive Chair Korn Ferry Australasia, leadership and talent firmMicky Arison (75%): Exec Chair and former CEO and 7% stockholderThe CEO Pay Ratio1,063:124 retail CEOs made as much in a day as their typical employee earned in a year — and a big one didn't. WHO DO YOU BLAMEThe separation of CEO and Chair: Hamilton E. James Chair/Ron Vachris MMNot uniqueOnly 50% of the board is men. WTF?uniqueOne share = one voteNot uniqueState of HQ = WashingtonAlso StarbucksState of Inc = WashingtonAlso StarbucksPledge of allegiance to stakeholdersCostco generally has: Higher wages; Better benefits; Lower turnover; Higher sales per employee.Industry-leading employee compensation AND Self-imposed low-margin pricing philosophyWalmart only low-margin pricingOther comps:Todd Vasos of Dollar General, Shane O'Kelly of AutoZone, Gerald Morgan of Texas Roadhouse, Jack Sinclair of Sprouts Farmers Market, William Stengel of Genuine Parts Company, Michael Creedon of Dollar Tree, Ronald Sargent of Kroger, Lauren Hobart of Dick's Sporting Goods, Joshua Kobza of Restaurant Brands Inc., Kecia Steelman of Ulta Beauty, Scott Boatwright of Chipotle, Ted Decker of Home Depot, Bob Eddy of BJ's Wholesale Club, Corie Barry of Best Buy, James Conroy of Ross Stores, Chris Turner and David Gibbs of Yum Brands, Chris Kempczinski of McDonald's, Marvin Ellison of Lowe's, Brian Cornell of Target, Ernie Herrman of TJX Companies, Doug McMillon of Walmart, Brian Niccol of Starbucks, Hal Lawton of Tractor Supply Co, Laura Alber of Williams-SonomaFigma Gets an Activist Investor. Exhibit A on Why Companies Don't Want to Go Public. Figma's first year as a public company hasn't gone well. Findell Capital Management said it needs to take steps to shed its unwarranted reputation as an artificial-intelligence “loser.” WHO DO YOU BLAME?Figma founder and CEO Dylan Field: Owns 10% of shares but 72% of voting power: Class B shares worth 15 votes per shareDylan owns 158 Class A Shares (or 0.00003556% of 444,278,887)And Chair$5B net worth$865M total summary compensation in 2025; $91M in 2024Nominating Agreement:Figma must nominate Dylan Field to be a director and include him in the proxy statementThe company must use its resources to back him up and actively convince other shareholders to vote for him In response to a question about how he was going to change the world, Dylan said he was going to build better software for drones.Bro fest sausage party2 of 9 directors are womenTop 5 NEOs all dudesPeter ThielForced Dylan to drop out of Brown for a dumb fellowshipVC Blowhardiness on the BoardVC dude John Lilly (Greylock): Lead Independent Director2nd longest tenure (2014)Member of the Audit Committee; Member of the Nominating Committee (only Lilly and Rimer)VC dude Andrew Reed (Sequoia)Director at debt-maker Klarna Group (also way down since IPO): down roughly 54% from its initial $40.00 IPO price, and down nearly 68% from its all-time highMember of the Compensation Committee (which modeled Dylan's pay package after Elon Musk)VC dude Danny Rimer (Index Ventures)Director since 2014B.A. in History and Literature from HarvardMember of the Compensation Committee (which modeled Dylan's pay package after Elon Musk)Member of the Nominating Committee (only Lilly and Rimer)Luis von AhnDuolingo co-founder and CEO2025: shared an internal email outlining Duolingo's new "AI-first" strategy where Duolingo would “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle”Stated that "AI is a better teacher than humans" and that the future role of teachers would be reduced to providing "childcare."Blamed the controversy on a "lack of context" in his original statements"AI-First" memo goes viral: $389; today $118MATTDanone, Starbucks shine in methane-reduction rankingDanone is the only company in the group aligned with the Global Methane Pledge, an initiative backed by 150 countries that targets a 30 percent reduction in global levels of the gas by 2030. The French multinational also leads the pack in progress toward its target, having come close to hitting it five years ahead of schedule.WHO DO YOU CREDIT?Chair of the CSR committee Lise Kingo (9% influence), one of three directors tagged as merit directorsmaster's degree in Responsibility & Business from the University of Bathbachelor degrees in Religions and Ancient Greek Artbachelor's degree in Marketing and Economicscertificate as International Director from INSEADEx Novo Nordisk environmental affairs, internal audit, compliance, human resources, communication, branding and sustainabilityHelped create the UN SDGs and the UN Global CompactSomehow only bats 559 on carbon intensity (career) and 415 for scope 1/2 (career)Also, using deference metrics, the ONLY DIRECTOR tagged as fully independentEmployee rep member of the CSR committee Bettina Theissig (5% influence) and the employees of DanoneThe committee charter mandates employees get a say: At least two thirds of the CSR Committee must be independent, as defined by the AFEP-MEDEF Code. At least one Director representing employees must be a member of the Committee.In France (Danone's domicile), the European Investment Bank found that French employees were the most aware of environmental issues - 82% of French employees said they were highly concerned about environmental issues, highest in EuropeLead Independent Director and chair of the Nom/comp committee who put together the comp plan, Valerie Chapoulaud-Floquet15% influence, second to the 18% influence CEO (democracy!!), got 99.16% shareholder approval in April (even as CEO got 89.73% approval and pay got 93.19% approval)20% of short-term pay and 30% of long-term pay is based on hitting sustainability targetsWhen you pay a CEO to do a thing, they are more likely to do a thingEx-CEO Emmanuel FaberOusted in 2021 by the board of directors and activist investors, he transformed Danone into an “enterprise a mission” (a French version of a B corp)Investors voted 99% in favor of the move and a year later ousted Faber, the board resigned, and the new board and CEO are basically moving back towards being environmental leaders because it paid offShort term share price laggedHe said in 2024 that nature is “at the core” of Danone, It took the stock 3 years from Faber's ousting to return to Faber levels - and in the meantime, they were sued for plastics and emissionsIsn't this HIS win?Current CEO Antoine de Saint-AffriqueBecause CEOGM Board Director Jonathan McNeill Stepping DownCEO of DVx Ventures. Ex COO at Lyft Inc. and ex president, Global Sales, Delivery and Service at Tesla, current director at Lululemon, GM director since 2022, on the Governance and Corporate Responsibility committee and Risk and Cybersecurity committee.We know that half of boards on average think someone on the board should be replaced - did the GM board not like McNeill?WHO/WHAT WOULD WE BLAME FOR PUSHING MCNEILL OUT?Outsider dude bro DRLet's be honest, McNeill worked at much more… modern?... companies than GMThe board is OLD SCHOOL - ex Northrop Grumman, ex Visa, ex Lazard, ex HP, ex eBay, ex Novartis, ex Walmart, other directorships at Goldman, Huntsman, P&G… these are professional, insular boardsMeanwhile, he's investing as a VC in AI, other auto/mobility startups, comes from boards that are bro founder lead (Tesla, Lyft) He's invested in AI, crypto, heavy tech, intertwined with VCs all overNot deferential enoughBarra is connected to 94% - THE ENTIRE - boardMcNeill has the highest network power on the board at $9tn, higher than even Mary Barra (who is super connected), but is NOT a power player in the board community of GM - the dominant board communities for GM are massive blue chip US companies, where McNeill has deeper connections in smaller IT/tech focused companiesHe doesn't need the pay, he gets nothing for the connections really, he has connection to Barra but his network is different - was he too independent?Pissed he doesn't have enough influence McNeill has the LOWEST influence on the GM board at 4%He's relatively new, younger, working as a VC where you have a lot of power of capital allocation“I don't need this shit” effect?Too many womenMcNeill's dvX ventures portfolio team is 6 dudes and 1 womendvX entire operations staff is two woman - guess what they do“Chief of Staff” (ie, HR)Executive Assistant (yes, listed on the team)Board is 2 women, 3 men (McNeill not on board)This one seems unlikely I guess?Too busy, meh, move onOne of dvX portfolio companies is curbee, with GM Ventures' Kurt Baumgarten on the board (and the dvX co-founder is founder of Curbee)McNeill on at least 3 of his portfolio boards or advisory committees, plus LULU and GM…

In this latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Praveer Melwani, CFO at Figma. Praveer joined Figma in 2017 as the company's first business operations and finance hire—when the team was around 30 people and not yet charging for the product—and stepped into the CFO seat in 2022, helping to lead the company's IPO in 2025. In today's conversation, Praveer breaks down the step functions that took him from IC to CFO, why Figma started acting like a public company three years before IPO, and how AI is rewriting capital allocation and the CFO job itself. In today's episode, we discuss: What separates a world-class finance leader from a traffic-cop CFO How Praveer went from Figma's first biz ops hire to CFO of a public company in nine years Why Figma started acting like a public company three years before its IPO What Praveer has learned working alongside Dylan Field for nine years Why Figma intentionally cut its 90% gross margin to invest in AI References: Adobe: https://www.adobe.com Brendan Mulligan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanmulligan Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com Dylan Field: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/ Fidelity: https://www.fidelity.com Figma: https://www.figma.com GIC: https://www.gic.com.sg NerdWallet: https://www.nerdwallet.com Shaunt Voskanian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shauntvoskanian/ Where to find Praveer: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/praveer-melwani Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 02:13 From banking to Dropbox to Figma 04:14 The phase shift when Figma's COO left 05:36 Hiring leaders in functions you don't understand 07:18 Selling the exec team on AI consumption pricing 09:48 Using Claude Code to learn new things as CFO 11:36 Building an internal board of peer CFOs 13:52 Inside Figma's CFO job description 16:38 What separates good CFOs from world-class CFOs 18:42 Capital allocation and risk in a post-ChatGPT world 21:45 Why Praveer wants to take more bets 24:32 How AI is materially changing the CFO role 25:36 The nine-year working relationship with Dylan Field 29:12 How deeply in the details should a CFO be? 31:47 What Dropbox taught Praveer about building strong teams 33:24 Praveer's first-principles test for hiring VPs 38:47 Why Figma acted like a public company in 2022

We've curated a special 10-minute version of the podcast for those in a hurry. Here you can listen to the full episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/figma-ceo-from-idea-to-ipo-design-at-scale-and-ais/id1614211565?i=1000745081487&l=nbIn this episode of In Good Company, Nicolai Tangen speaks with Dylan Field, founder and CEO of Figma, about the ideas behind one of the most influential design platforms in the world. Field shares lessons from founding Figma at 19, navigating years of iteration before launch, and scaling with a strong product culture. They discuss taste, craft, and community, how AI is changing the creative process, and what it means to lead with optimism in a rapidly evolving tech landscapeIn Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday. The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Oscar Hjelde. Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of In Good Company, Nicolai Tangen speaks with Dylan Field, founder and CEO of Figma, about the ideas behind one of the most influential design platforms in the world. Field shares lessons from founding Figma at 19, navigating years of iteration before launch, and scaling with a strong product culture. They discuss taste, craft, and community, how AI is changing the creative process, and what it means to lead with optimism in a rapidly evolving tech landscapeIn Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday. The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Oscar Hjelde. Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma, a design software company that went public in July 2025. Founded in 2012, Figma transformed how people design, prototype, and build products together. After a $20 billion acquisition attempt by Adobe collapsed in 2022 because of regulators, Dylan helped Figma rebound stronger than ever. Just three years later, Figma listed its shares at nearly $20 billion and its stock price more than tripled on its first trading day.A few highlights:Expanding a sleepy marketMerging of designers and product rolesCounter-narrative to polarizing CEOsIf models get better, we have toRemembering Brat Summer Resources:More on Dylan:https://www.figma.com/https://X.com/zoinkMore on Jack:https://www.altcap.com/https://x.com/jaltmahttps://linktr.ee/uncappedpodEmail: friends@uncappedpod.com Stay Updated:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.  Stay Updated:Find a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ed Elson speaks with Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma. They discuss the future of design in the age of AI, how his management style has changed over time, and what it was like to go public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when design meets the AI revolution? In the latest episode of Boz to the Future, Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth sits down with Figma Co-Founder and CEO Dylan Field, the visionary who started Figma at just 19 years old and transformed how millions of product builders create today.Boz and Dylan dive deep into the intersection of technology and creativity, from the early days when designers were scarce to today's collaborative, cloud-based workflows. They talk about the imminent paradigm shift in interfaces and what comes after text prompting. They discuss what stays evergreen despite rapid technological change, and why the pursuit of craft remains fundamentally human.Plus, don't miss the speed round where Dylan weighs in on everything from dark mode to the eternal question: which Thanksgiving side reigns supreme?Whether you're a designer, builder, or just curious about the future of human creativity in an AI-powered world, this conversation will challenge how you think about the tools we use to bring ideas to life.Leave Boz feedback on Instagram, X, and Threads @boztank.

Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:03:46) - Deep dive into the Thiel Fellowship (00:07:04) - Success stories and impact of Thiel Fellows (00:11:04) - Challenges and controversies (00:16:01) - Evolution and future of fellowship programs (00:18:39) - Early days of building the Thiel Fellowship (00:23:36) - Traits of a Thiel Fellow (00:33:24) - Nurturing genius (00:39:57) - Screen time & children (00:40:30) - Big screens vs. small screens (00:43:12) - Quality time and engaging activities (00:45:42) - Emotional depth and resilience in young founders (00:54:02) - The traits of innovators (01:04:08) - The journey of 1517 Fund (01:10:05) - Join the 1517 community Links: Rolling Fun — https://www.rolling.fun To support the costs of producing this podcast:  >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/  >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage  >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! We discuss: The founding story and long-term vision behind the Thiel Fellowship Common traits among exceptional young founders, including curiosity, hyper fluency, and “dog on a leash” energy Lessons from supporting early pioneers like Vitalik Buterin, Dylan Field, and Laura Deming. How 1517 Fund backs young builders and “Wily weirdos” working on sci-fi-level ideas Danielle's philosophy on education, parenting, and fostering genius in children Quotes from Danielle: “We weren't looking for startup founders—we were looking for people on a mission.” “Dog-on-a-leash energy—that's what we look for. We're here to cut the leash.” “Hyperfluency is the ability to geek out with geeks, and still explain your work to your grandma at Thanksgiving.” “These people are kind of mutants—they don't fit in typical systems.” “All kids under five are geniuses. The system just squashes it out of them.” “The most shocking thing? People publicly attacked the Fellows. Not just the program—the people. Teenagers.” “Crazy, crazy awesome—we can't tell if they're insane or brilliant, and it'll take years to find out.” “Big screens good, small screens bad.” “In the future, I want to be funding 11-year-olds. The world won't be ready, but I will be.” “We just want to talk to wily weirdos who want to be around other wily weirdos.”

In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia interviews Dylan Field, Co-founder and CEO of Figma, the collaborative design platform powering the product development process at companies like Microsoft, Google, and Airbnb. Since launching in 2012, Figma has grown from a browser-based design tool into a multi-product ecosystem spanning design, whiteboarding, presentations, and AI workflows.Dylan shares the product and org strategy behind Figma's evolution—from a single design surface to a platform that now includes Figma Make, Slides, Dev Mode, Sites, Draw, and more. He explains how Figma is building toward a world where anyone—not just designers—can move from idea to execution faster, and why “good enough is no longer enough” when it comes to design in the AI era.In this conversation, Dylan goes deep on building communities around products, the value of product leaders embracing design as a strategic differentiator, and how Figma is thinking beyond prompts to redefine human-AI interaction. He also shares lessons from product expansion, building for non-designer users, and how he still carves out time to jailbreak LLMs and test prototypes hands-on.What you'll learn:- How Dylan shaped Figma into a multi-product platform that merges code, design, and collaboration.- Why FigJam's “fun” factor was a deliberate strategic decision—and how it saved the product.- How Figma is integrating with ChatGPT and third-party data tools to redefine surface area and workflow.- The case for design-led thinking across every function of a modern product team.Key Takeaways

Zach Lloyd is the Founder and CEO of Warp, the next-generation developer terminal reinventing how engineers build and collaborate. Warp has raised over $70M from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital, GV, Dylan Field, and Elad Gil. Before founding Warp, Zach was Principal Engineer at Google, where he led development of Google Docs, and later served as CTO at Time. He's one of the most respected engineering minds redefining the future of developer tools. AGENDA:  04:14 Biggest Product Lessons from Rewriting Google Sheets 07:10 Why I Would Short Google: Leadership and AI Strategy 09:55 Comparing AI Models: GPT, Claude, and Gemini: Who Wins and Loses 17:04 Do Margins Matter in AI? 24:57 Adding $1M in ARR Every Week: Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead? 33:58 How to Build Defensibility in a World of AI? 43:05 OpenAI vs Anthropic: Who Wins and Why? 44:25 Biggest Fundraising Lessons Raising from Sequoia, Elad Gil and GV 50:56 Why Sequoia are the Best VC 53:51 What Every Founder Gets Wrong in Fundraising 01:01:30 Quick Fire Questions and Final Thoughts  

Dylan Field is co-founder and CEO of Figma, a beloved tool used by every modern product team. Founded in 2012, Figma has expanded from a single design tool to a comprehensive platform including FigJam, Slides, Dev Mode, and, most recently, Figma Make. After a $20 billion acquisition by Adobe fell through due to regulatory pushback, Dylan led the company to a successful IPO in 2025.What you'll learn:• How Dylan kept internal morale up after the Adobe acquisition fell through• His approach to maintaining pace and a sense of urgency 13 years in• How to systematically develop taste• How Figma decides which product lines to add• Why Dylan obsesses over “time to value”• How AI is making design more valuable—Brought to you by:Stripe—Helping companies of all sizes grow revenue—Transcript: ⁠https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-ai-makes-design-craft-and-quality-the-new-moat⁠—My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): ⁠https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/175569466/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation⁠—Where to find Dylan Field:• X: https://x.com/zoink• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Dylan Field(03:58) The Adobe deal fallout(05:50) Maintaining team morale post-deal(09:13) Strategies for sustaining high performance(13:37) Maintaining Figma's unique company culture(16:22) Dylan's leadership evolution(21:03) How to improve clarity as a leader(24:40) The controversy behind FigJam(31:06) Lessons from expanding Figma's core product line(39:32) Time-to-value(45:14) Introduction to Figma Make(48:26) AI app prototyping and the future of Figma Make(53:38) Lessons from Figma's AI product launch(57:47) The importance of craft(59:54) Developing good taste(01:05:35) The future of product development(01:10:32) Why AI won't steal your job(01:14:37) AI corner(01:18:32) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Dylan Field live at Config: Intuition, simplicity, and the future of design: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/dylan-field-live-at-config• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/• Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/vision-conviction-hype-mihika-kapoor• Notion's lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-notion-ivan-zhao• $46B of hard truths from Ben Horowitz: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear (a16z co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/46b-of-hard-truths-from-ben-horowitz• FigJam: https://www.figma.com/figjam/• Cursor chat: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403130802199-Use-cursor-chat-in-Figma-Design• Figma Slides: https://www.figma.com/slides/• Figma Sites: https://www.figma.com/sites/• Figma Buzz: https://www.figma.com/buzz/• Figma Draw: https://www.figma.com/draw/• Figma Design: https://www.figma.com/design/• Dev Mode: https://www.figma.com/dev-mode/• Figma Make: https://www.figma.com/make/• Zach Lloyd on X: https://x.com/zachlloydtweets• Warp: https://www.warp.dev/• Dylan's post on X about Figma on an AI product leaderboard: https://x.com/zoink/status/1968588014935801884• Kurt Cobain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain• Damien Correll on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damiencorrell/• Marcin Wichary on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwichary/• Loredana Crisan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loredanacrisan/• Amber Bravo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amberbravo/• Figma's 2025 AI report: Perspectives from designers and developers: https://www.figma.com/blog/figma-2025-ai-report-perspectives/• Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#Energy_conservation_policy• AI prompt engineering in 2025: What works and what doesn't | Sander Schulhoff (Learn Prompting, HackAPrompt): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/ai-prompt-engineering-in-2025-sander-schulhoff• Pantheon: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11680642/• Retro: https://retro.app/• Thiel Fellowship: https://thielfellowship.org/—Recommended books:• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-McCloud/dp/006097625X• The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War: https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Traitor-Greatest-Espionage-Story/dp/1101904216• Codex Seraphinianus: https://www.amazon.com/Codex-Seraphinianus-Anniversary-Luigi-Serafini/dp/0847871045Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.My biggest takeaways from this conversation: To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com

Dylan Field (CEO Figma) on how they are letting designers build with Figma Make, how Figma can be the context repository for aesthetic in the age of vibe coding, and why design is your only differentiator now.Full show notes: https://www.latent.space/p/figma Get full access to Latent.Space at www.latent.space/subscribe

Dylan Field (CEO Figma) on how they are letting designers build with Figma Make, how Figma can be the context repository for aesthetic in the age of vibe coding, and why design is your only differentiator now. Full show notes: https://www.latent.space/p/figma 00:00 Figma's Mission: Bridging Imagination and Reality 00:56 Becoming AI-Pilled 07:44 Figma Make 08:57 Language as the Interface for Design 13:37 Source of truth between design and code 18:15 Figma as a Context Repository 21:30 Understanding and Representing Design Diffs through AI 24:20 Figma's Role in Shaping Visual Aesthetics 31:56 Fast Fashion in Software 36:04 Limitations of Prompt-Based Software Creation 39:43 Interfaces Beyond Chat 42:12 Lessons from the Thiel Fellowship 44:58 Using X for Product Feedback 48:10 Early-Stage Recruiting at Figma 53:11 Positioning Figma Make in the Prompt-to-App Landscape 55:19 Digital Scarcity & AI

Figma burst into the public eye in 2022 after Adobe was blocked from buying the design startup for $20 billion. This chapter set the stage for an even bigger milestone at Figma: a splashy IPO this summer at nearly double that valuation. Dylan Field, Figma's co-founder and CEO, joins Rapid Response to share what distinguishes Figma from competitors, and why design is increasingly at the center of every industry in today's software-driven economy. Field also reflects on the pressures and opportunities of leading as a next-generation, tech-native CEO, and offers practical advice on upskilling in an AI-powered world.Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Figma burst into the public eye in 2022 after Adobe was blocked from buying the design startup for $20 billion. This chapter set the stage for an even bigger milestone at Figma: a splashy IPO this summer at nearly double that valuation. Dylan Field, Figma's co-founder and CEO, joins Rapid Response to share what distinguishes Figma from competitors, and why design is increasingly at the center of every industry in today's software-driven economy. Field also reflects on the pressures and opportunities of leading as a next-generation, tech-native CEO, and offers practical advice on upskilling in an AI-powered world.Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

DAMION1In our 'Treaty Talks Begin With Bold New Commitment to Avoid Commitment: Delegates agree to form a task force to consider considering action and then unite to Say 'Plastic Is Bad'—Then Go Back to Their Plastic-Filled Hotels' headline of the week. Here's what to watch for at this month's global plastics treaty talksNegotiators from more than 170 countries are arriving in Geneva, Switzerland, this week to resume discussions over the United Nations plastics treaty, eight months after they missed their original deadline for finalizing the pact. Many delegates, advocacy groups, and U.N. officials are hopeful that the 10-day session will result in a final agreement that delivers on the U.N.'s objective to “end plastic pollution.” But progress has been slow at each of the five preceding sessions, in large part due to a consensus-based decision-making structure that has allowed oil-producing countries to obstruct progress. In our 'Hey Ma, the dude who got his BA at Haverford College which costs $93,600 and received his JD from Stanford is mansplaining about elite colleges, can you grab my water bottle and my red lawn chair?!' headline of the week. Palantir CEO Alex Karp takes a shot at elite colleges and says the company offers 'a new credential independent of class In our 'It's better off helping people without formal biology expertise design or recreate biological threats like toxins or pathogens' headline of the week. OpenAI says ChatGPT shouldn't tell you to break up with someone In our 'What an asshole! The next thing he'll probably do is call out other banks for breaking their climate pledges ' headline of the week. Banking CEO breaks from the pack on return to office. He goes in 4 days a week but leaves the rest up to the ‘adults' he works withStandard Chartered CEO Bill Winters In our 'Citizen Journalist Robbie Starbuck and The National Legal and Policy Center prepare shareholder proposal calling out Microsoft and asking “What about MEN'S ovaries? This is woke biology gone too far.”' headline of the week. Gates Foundation is giving $2.5 billion to fund women's health researchMATT1In our '8Ks revealed that Charlie Scharf, Wells Fargo's CEO, was awarded $30m to open his mindspace, Steven Hemsley at UnitedHealth was given $60M to center his chi, and Goldman's CEO DJ DSol got $80m to attune his crystals and align his money aura.' headline of the week. Tesla Grants Musk $29 Billion in Stock to Keep ‘Elon's Energies Focused'In our 'Specifically, the part where they ran someone over' headline of the week. Jury Says Tesla Was Partly to Blame for Fatal CrashIn our 'Reports suggested the awning was made of cybertruck trim, the tables were actually crashed robotaxis, and the chicken wings were made from old Nazi bathroom graffiti' headline of the week. Tesla Diner Patio Covering Collapses, Smashes Mother on Head and Barely Misses BabyIn our 'Retention awards for "continued leadership"? Or pay for focus? Pay to show up? Pay for "energy"? Relocation pay for my sister's cousin's condo in Ottawa? ' headline of the week. 2025 CEO PrioritiesAdapt to changing external environments and regulatory landscapeManage growth and investment amid current fiscal outlookCreate a resilient supply chainAccess to talent and workforceArticulate a vision for an AI and tech-enabled enterprisesEmbrace opportunities for personalized consumer experiencesUnderstand the changing environmental challengesShape the leadership teamArticulate Vision and strategy, and tell your story as a leaderDrive performanceEnsure proper governance processesCollaborate with the boardOptimize organizational structureAlign communicationsSatisfy shareholders and stakeholdersBuild the cultureNavigate geopolitical uncertaintyIn our 'If you can't tell your kid with a fever of 102 to suck it up and fuck off, maybe this company isn't for you' headline of the week. 5 things the AT&T CEO's sweeping memo says about where corporate America is headedHis name is John Stankey"If a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish," Stankey wrote.DAMION2In our 'I refuse to celebrate until we reach 7.3%' headline of the week. The share of female CEOs running Global 500 companies hits a record high of 6.6% In our 'Houston American Energy Corp. announces that finally the phrase “Let's hear what she thinks” can be said in the boardroom without an immediately ironic chuckle, now it can be an authentic condescending chuckle' headline of the week. Houston American Energy Corp. Appoints Martha J. Crawford to Board of DirectorsIn our 'Great, when he's done creating a practical application of cold fusion, could he explain why anyone would buy a Cybertuck, have him finish my daughter's algebra homework, and then share the wisdom behind Intel's stock price being down 22% from the day he started as Intel CEO?' headline of the week. Jim Cramer on Intel CEO: “He Totally Understands Everything” In our 'After a nice brunch, they went to the aquarium and then to a poetry reading' headline of the week. Mary McDowell Joins Zebra Technologies Board of Directors In our 'They named him Peter Semple, after their great grandfather, and then chained him to his desk ' headline of the week. Depop names permanent CEOMATT2 In our 'US companies give investors a break from voting NO on every shareholder proposal this year' headline of the week. US companies deny record number of shareholder votesAverage vote for ESG proposal: 20%. Average vote against ESG proposal: 80%.In our 'Please don't say suicidal ideation, aggression, reality detachment, and hallucinations, please don't say suicidal ideation, aggression, reality detachment, and hallucinations, please don't say suicidal ideation, aggression, reality detachment, and hallucinations...' headline of the week. A New Paper Just Found Something Horrifying About Kids Who Get Phones Early in LifeChief scientist Tara Thiagarajan found that among the more than 100,000 18-to-24-year-olds whose outcomes they tracked, those who got phones when they were younger experienced more suicidal ideation, aggression, reality detachment, and hallucinations as they aged.In our 'Man leaves gym and goes to Wendy's to get fit' headline of the week. Barclays leaves Net Zero Banking Alliance to combat climate changeIf you want to prove your commitment to transitioning Barclays, feel free to use our data to vote out every director that underperforms on climate!In our 'Olive Garden appoints car mechanic as executive chef' headline of the week. Harley-Davidson board appoints Topgolf executive as next CEOArtie Starrs has been golf CEO, Pizza Hut CEO, is on a non profit board that helps underprivileged children, got an economics degree from Princeton, and he enjoys hiking, playing golf, listening to live music. He sounds exactly like someone who rides a Harley.In our 'SOMEONE IS ACTUALLY FIGHTING. And of course it's a female founder.' headline of the week. A long-running anti-DEI lawsuit could help companies defend themselves from reverse-racism claimsElizabeth Gore of Hello Alice is fighting Stephen Miller's AFL lawsuit brought on behalf of a white trucker in Ohio who says they didn't get a shot at a grant that went to someone black - and Gore is winning because it's all a fucking jokeMeanwhile, Brown, Harvard, Colombia and the high priced Ivies are folding like cowardsReach out to Hello Alice or Gore, offer help or support, join the service, because somewhere there is someone fighting bullshitFigma IPO QUIZThe Figma IPOFigma founder and CEO Dylan FieldWhat percentage of shares does he actually own in the company?17%What is total voting power?74%How many votes per share are magical Class B shares worth?15 votes per shareWhat percentage of Class B shares does Dylan control?99%There are 5 executive officers and 10 directors, how many are women?2 (directors)Who is the chair of the Figma board?CEO and founder and controlling shareholder Dylan FieldHow many friendships with Peter Thiel does Dylan Field have?1How many college degrees does Dylan Field have?0Where did Dylan Field drop out of?BrownWho paid Dylan Field to drop out of college?Peter ThielIn addition to his shareholdings, how much is Dylan Field due to receive if the stock price hits $130 (it already was over $124)$2B in equityWhich CEO's pay package was Dylan Field's pay package modeled after?Elon MuskHow many years does Dylan Field have to reach that stock price hurdle?10How old is this very rich college dropout?33In response to a question about how he was going to change the world, what did Dylan Field say?He was going to build better software for drones.Then I'm guessing Figma must truly benefit humanity if this guy is so rich, what does Figma do exactly?Figma is a collaborative web application for interface design, with additional offline features enabled by desktop applications for macOS and Windows. The feature set of Figma focuses on user interface and user experience design, with an emphasis on real-time collaboration,[3] utilizing a variety of vector graphics editor and prototyping tools.

This week on the Newcomer Podcast, we're joined by a very special guest: Danny Rimer, seasoned investor and longtime partner at Index Ventures, for a timely conversation around Figma's highly anticipated IPO.Danny takes us behind the scenes of Index's early bet on Figma and its visionary CEO Dylan Field, sharing how the deal came together and what made the design platform stand out in a crowded startup landscape. From there, we zoom out to talk about the current venture capital climate — what's changed, what's stayed the same, and what the smartest investors are watching right now.We also dig into AI's evolving role in the startup ecosystem, the tension between hype and real value, and where Danny sees the next big opportunities emerging. Whether you're a founder, investor, or just love a good origin story, this is an episode you won't want to miss.Timecodes:00:00 Introduction to Danny Rimer02:29 How Rimer met Figma and the beginnings of design as a category16:42 Figma's failed Adobe deal and comeback25:39 How Index approaches AI deals 31:00 AI's iPhone moment and looking beyond the chatbot39:10 Shifts in the venture capital industry

Niet verwacht, toch gekregen: goede kwartaalcijfers van Apple. De verwachtingen waren laag, maar analisten zaten ernaast. En hoe. Apple komt met een recordomzet op de proppen! Apple blijkt een heffingshamsteraar. Klanten kochten nog even snel een nieuwe iPhone, voordat tarieven die toestellen duurder zouden maken. Het zorgt voor de grootste omzetgroei in 4 jaar tijd. Deze aflevering hebben we het over die comeback van Apple. Of mogen we het geen comeback noemen?Gaat het ook over Amazon. Dat overtrof de omzet- én winstverwachting. Maar het laat beleggers toch wat schrikken met de kosten. Die zorgen ervoor dat de winst van het derde kwartaal wat lager gaat uitvallen.Het is 1 augustus en dat betekent dat dé deadline voorbij is. Je weet wel, tot vandaag hadden landen de kans om een handelsdeal te sluiten met Trump. We kijken wat er tot nu toe allemaal bereikt is en wat we de komende tijd nog kunnen verwachten. Jij kan deze aflevering trouwens ook nog wat andere verhalen verwachten: De gigantisch succesvolle beursgang van Fisma Reddit, bekend van de meme's, doet het zelf ook goed Universal Music Group maakt meer winst, maar beleggers zien er geen muziek in Bodemonderzoeker Fugro heeft het zwaar Er is een klopjacht op farmaceuten. Trump gaat achter ze aan! En je hoort welke twee bedrijven veel verdienen met hun sterfhuisconstructie See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Figma CEO Dylan Field discusses the company's IPO debut, what the company does, the idea behind going public now, implementation of AI, M&A outlook, and more. Field spoke with Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fresh back from London! In this episode, Eric Newcomer reunites with co-hosts James Wilsterman and Max Child of Volley to dive into the best moments from the Cerebral Valley AI Summit.From buzzy startup founders to incumbent innovators, the London event showcased a rapidly evolving AI landscape. But what stood out most? Eric, James, and Max break down their favorite clips and debate the key questions driving the industry right now:Models vs. Applications: Are we back in a “models win” moment?The Uber Dilemma: Why did Uber spin off its self-driving technology instead of competing with Waymo? Dara Khosrowshahi's reasoning sparks a heated debate about platform dynamics, marketplace power, and whether Uber made the right call.Figma's IPO Moment: With their S-1 filing just days after the summit, Dylan Field defended Figma's AI strategy and new product launches.The Science of Discovery: Can AI models trained on “boring rule followers” actually make Nobel Prize-worthy breakthroughs?The End of Reading?: Synthesia's CEO made the boldest prediction yet — that kids won't read anymore, and video will replace text entirely. The hosts wrestle with what this means for human intelligence and whether writing really is thinking.The next Cerebral Valley AI Summit returns to San Francisco on November 12th!Timestamps08:21 Uber's Self-Driving Strategy and Market Positioning16:56 Figma's IPO Bear and Bull case26:17 Harry Stebbings' Interview Insights with Granola's CEO32:11 Exploring AI's Role in Scientific Discovery38:26 The Impact of AI on Reading and Writing

Katie speaks to Dylan Field - the CEO of Figma. The design software firm has filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange with Dylan calling it the most ‘interesting, intense, and fun time'. Danny and Katie also talk about Linda Yaccarino resigning as CEO of X and discuss a so-called ‘Panda watch' creeping over Silicon Valley! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The financials are impressive and founder CEO Dylan Field already cashed out $20 million worth of shares last year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The dashboard in your car – the interface on your Zoom screen … many of the products we interact with every day were created with the collaborative software Figma. Figma is a kind of Google Docs for design, created by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace after they won a Thiel fellowship in 2012. Dylan was just 20 when he became CEO. The only other job he'd had before that….? was college intern. He eventually figured out how to manage his team, and grew the company enough to attract a 20 billion dollar acquisition bid from Adobe. The deal fell through, but Figma continued to grow, and recently filed for an IPO.This episode was researched and produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com. Sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com or on Substack.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eric Simons is the founder and CEO of StackBlitz, the company behind Bolt—the #1 web-based AI coding agent and one of the fastest-growing products in history. After nearly shutting down, StackBlitz launched Bolt on Twitter and exploded from zero to $40 million ARR and 1 million monthly active users in about five months.What you'll learn:1. How Bolt reached nearly $40M ARR and 3 million registered users in just five months with a team of only 15 to 20 people2. How Bolt leverages WebContainer technology—a browser-based operating system developed over seven years—to create a dramatically faster, more reliable AI coding experience than competitors3. Why Anthropic's 3.5 Sonnet model was the critical breakthrough that made AI-generated code production-ready and unlocked the entire text-to-app market4. Why PMs may be better positioned than engineers in the AI era5. How AI will dramatically reshape company org charts6. Eric's wild founder story (including squatting at AOL's HQ) and how scrappiness fueled his innovation—Brought to you by:• Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments• Fundrise Flagship Fund—Invest in $1.1 billion of real estate• OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons—Where to find Eric Simons:• X: https://x.com/ericsimons40• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-simons-a464a664/• Email: Eric@stackblitz.com—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Eric Simons and StackBlitz(04:46) Unprecedented growth and user adoption(10:40) Demo: Building a Spotify clone with Bolt(15:28) Expanding to native mobile apps with Expo(19:09) The journey and technology behind WebContainer(25:03) Lessons learned and future outlook(29:15) Post-launch analysis(34:15) Growing fast with a small team(41:00) Prioritization at Bolt(45:51) Tooling and PRD's(48:42) Integration and use cases of Bolt(52:24) Limitations of Bolt(54:24) The role of PMs and developers in the AI era(59:56) Skills for the future(01:14:18) Upcoming features of Bolt(01:20:17) How to get the most out of Bolt(01:23:00) Eric's journey and final thoughts—Referenced:• Bolt: https://bolt.new/• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/• Wix: https://www.wix.com/• Squarespace: https://www.squarespace.com/• Dylan Field on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/• Evan Wallace's website: https://madebyevan.com/• WebGL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL• WebAssembly: https://webassembly.org/• CloudNine: https://cloudnine.com/• Canva: https://www.canva.com/• StackBlitz: https://stackblitz.com/• Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, more | Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator, Managing Director): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-1000-yc-startups• Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/• Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/• Dario Amodei on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dario-amodei-3934934/• Linear: https://linear.app/• Notion: https://www.notion.com/• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/• Photoshop: https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Greenfield projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_project• Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/• OpenAI researcher on why soft skills are the future of work | Karina Nguyen (Research at OpenAI, ex-Anthropic): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-soft-skills-are-the-future-of-work-karina-nguyen• Albert Pai on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertpai/• Bolt's post on X about “Bolt Builders”: https://x.com/boltdotnew/status/1887546089294995943• Sonnet: https://www.anthropic.com/claude/sonnet• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/• Breaking the Rules: The Young Entrepreneur Who Squatted at AOL: https://www.inc.com/john-mcdermott/eric-simons-interview-young-entrepreneur-squatted-at-aol.html• Imagine K12: http://www.imaginek12.com/• Geoff Ralston on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffralston/• AOL: https://www.aol.com/• Bolt on X: https://x.com/boltdotnew—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

My guest today is Dylan Field. Dylan is the co-founder and CEO of Figma and last joined me on Invest Like the Best in 2020. A lot has changed since then and we explore the evolving landscape of design and how Figma has been navigating AI while staying true to its founding vision of eliminating the gap between imagination and reality. Despite Figma's incredible success in becoming the default design platform, Dylan remains deeply motivated by helping users achieve their goals. He shares fascinating insights about the underhyped aspects of AI reasoning capabilities, the future of design literacy, and why he believes truly great design will always require human craft and creativity. Please enjoy my discussion with Dylan Field.  For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Ramp. Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Ramp is the fastest-growing FinTech company in history, and it's backed by more of my favorite past guests (at least 16 of them!) than probably any other company I'm aware of. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. – This episode is brought to you by AlphaSense. AlphaSense has completely transformed the research process with cutting-edge AI technology and a vast collection of top-tier, reliable business content. Imagine completing your research five to ten times faster with search that delivers the most relevant results, helping you make high-conviction decisions with confidence. Invest Like the Best listeners can get a free trial now at Alpha-Sense.com/Invest and experience firsthand how AlphaSense and Tegus help you make smarter decisions faster. –  This episode is brought to you by Ridgeline. Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. I think this platform will become the standard for investment managers, and if you run an investing firm, I highly recommend you find time to speak with them. Head to ridgelineapps.com to learn more about the platform. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.  Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Learn about Ramp, AlphaSense, and Ridgeline (00:07:11) Current State of Technology and Optimism (00:09:21) Entrepreneurial Mindset and Long-term Thinking (00:10:23) Challenges of Building in Stealth Mode (00:12:44) AI and the Future of Design (00:14:07) Navigating AI Opportunities and Risks (00:17:05) Design Principles and User Experience (00:29:55) Future of Interfaces and Interaction (00:31:45) Dark Patterns and Ethical Concerns (00:33:42) Personal Motivations and Company Vision (00:40:04) Balancing Responsibilities as a CEO (00:41:54) The Future of Design and AI Integration (00:44:48) Speculating on AI's Impact on Design (00:46:26) Encouragement to Experiment and Innovate

2024 has been a year of transformative technological progress, marked by conversations that have reshaped our understanding of AI's evolution and what lies ahead. Throughout the year, Sarah and Elad have had the privilege of speaking with some of the brightest minds in the field. As we look back on the past months, we're excited to share highlights from some of our favorite No Priors podcast episodes. Featured guests include Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI, Tesla), Bret Taylor (Sierra), Aditya Ramesh, Tim Brooks, and Bill Peebles (OpenAI's Sora Team), Dmitri Dolgov (Waymo), Dylan Field (Figma), and Alexandr Wang (Scale). Want to dive deeper? Listen to the full episodes here: NVIDIA's Jensen Huang on AI Chip Design, Scaling Data Centers, and his 10-Year Bet No Priors Ep. 89 | With NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang  The Road to Autonomous Intelligence, With Andrej Karpathy from OpenAI and Tesla No Priors Ep. 80 | With Andrej Karpathy from OpenAI and Tesla Transforming Customer Service through Company Agents, with Sierra's Bret Taylor No Priors Ep. 82 | With CEO of Sierra Bret Taylor OpenAI's Sora team thinks we've only seen the "GPT-1 of video models" No Priors Ep.61 | OpenAI's Sora Leaders Aditya Ramesh, Tim Brooks and Bill Peebles Waymo's Journey to Full Autonomy: AI Breakthroughs, Safety, and Scaling No Priors Ep. 87 | With Co-CEO of Waymo Dmitri Dolgov Designing the Future: Dylan Field on AI, Collaboration, and Independence No Priors Ep. 55 | With Figma CEO Dylan Field The Data Foundry for AI with Alexandr Wang from Scale No Priors Ep. 65 | With Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil Timecodes: 0:00 Introduction  0:15 Jensen Huang on building at data-center scale  4:00 Andrej Karpathy on the AI exo-cortex, model control, and a shift to smaller models  7:14 Bret Taylor on the agentic future of business interactions  11:17 OpenAI's Sora team on visual models and their role in AGI  15:53 Waymo's Dmitri Dolgov on bridging the gap to full autonomy and the challenge of 100% accuracy  19:00 Figma's Dylan Field on the future of interfaces and new modalities  23:29 Scale AI's Alexandr Wang on the journey to AGI  26:29 Outro

Figma is a collaboration-software company that helps designers and product developers work together to build software products. And the company is looking to incorporate artificial intelligence into every step of the development process. At WSJ Tech Live in October, Figma co-founder and CEO Dylan Field joined WSJ global tech editor Jason Dean for a chat about collaboration in the AI-era. We play you highlights of that conversation. Julie Chang hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guests: Joe Thomas, CEO and co-founder of Loom; and Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner PerkinsLoom CEO Joe Thomas had a lot of things to think about before he sold his company to Atlassian for $975 million: The impact an acquisition might have on the product, how to keep the Loom brand alive, the risk of remaining independent... but it wasn't until after the deal was announced that he really understood what it meant for his team. “I didn't know how emotional it'd be for me,” Joe says. “All of the Loom employees, current and former, that reached out when this was announced, they did their calculation and they're like, ‘Oh my God.' That, to me, was the most emotionally transformative part of the process. I didn't fully recognize what that would be like, on the individual front.”Chapters:(01:34) - The Atlassian acquisition (05:25) - The bittersweet moment (08:15) - Transforming Loom (13:30) - Ilya's perspective (18:04) - Life-changing (22:55) - Doing it again (25:00) - Loom's early days (28:26) - The Series A (32:33) - Turning on monetization (35:37) - The Series B (37:05) - Loom AI (43:13) - Revenue orientation (48:18) - The acquisition landscape (52:27) - Working inside Atlassian (54:04) - Atlanta tech (55:00) - Who Atlassian is hiring (55:24) - What “grit” means to Joe Mentioned in this episode: Wilson Sonsini, Vinay Hiremath, Andrew Reed and Sequoia Capital, Zoom, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Shahed Khan, COTU Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Scott Farquhar, the Lindy Effect, SVB, Google Chrome, Dropbox, Slack, Snapchat, HubSpot, the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter, Dylan Field and Figma, Atlassian Rovo, Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, and Garrett Langley and Flock Safety.Links:Connect with JoeLinkedInTwitterConnect with IlyaTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

One day soon when you see a robot squirrel on a 10-foot unicycle, think of Danielle Strachman. These are the types of ideas Danielle Strachman sees and backs on a regular basis at her VC fund, 1517. The fund, which proudly backs “dropouts, students, and sci-fi,” has had several fund multipliers in their portfolio, including Loom (Acquired by Atlassian) and Luminar Technologies (IPO 2020). Plus, her star-studded community includes Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum, Laura Deming of The Longevity Fund, and Dylan Field of Figma – all of whom she first met when they were teenagers. Danielle's commitment to bringing freedom and autonomy to young people is much of the reason behind 1517's work with upcoming founders — which includes children as young as 10 years old! We talk to Danielle about why her firm hands out cash grants to kids, where she sees the future of deep tech headed and how she's helping it get there, the right characteristics (and anti-characteristics) to look for in founders. Danielle invests $100k angel checks and $500k pre-seed checks out 1517 Fund focusing on dropouts and sci-fi / deep tech founders.Highlights:1517 exists to address the lack of capital for young people and for the deep-tech sci-fi space. Danielle is particularly drawn to “dropouts” who skipped the higher education path to focus on their work and start their companies. Danielle likes to think of her fund as Grand Central Station, a place that helps people get to where they want to go next. She uses her relationship building skills to stay in touch with founders and connect them with new opportunities.  Danielle loves meeting “crazy scientists” and people who are working on solving the future's problems. 1517 is unique because it makes two investments in these types of companies: a $100k angel check for R&D and a $500k pre-seed follow-on check. Danielle understands the power or relationships and mentorship in a space that can often feel impersonal and transactional. She's kept in touch with many founders over the years, including the founders of Loom and Luminar Technologies – whom she met back when they were teenagers! (00:00) - FIFU 15 - Danielle Strachman (06:41) - The 1517 Differentiator: An anti-establishment fund for dropouts (08:15) - The Why: Bringing freedom and autonomy to young people (18:49) - 1517 as Grand Central Station: Helping people get to their next destination (26:35) - Lessons from the Worst Investment: Listen to your gut (35:24) - Best Investments So Far: Loom and Luminar Technologies (37:54) - The Fund Formula: 85% dropout and 15% sci-fi (51:47) - Nurturing Young Talent: How Danielle sources next gen founders (57:34) - Speed round

In our latest episode, we're coming to you live from Config 2024, Figma's annual design conference for people who build products! This is our first time ever doing a live interview from another conference, so we are excited to share it with you. We're joined by Marcel Weekes, VP of Engineering @ Figma. In our conversation, we dive into topics including highlights from Config 2024 & reactions to Figma's latest feature demos (like Dev Mode), how Figma's eng teams are involved in product design iterations, why product support teams help preserve Figma's community, strategies for incorporating feedback into design / product roadmaps, best practices for prioritization conversations, and more. Marcel also shares a preview of what to expect from his session on collaboration @ ELC Annual 2024!ABOUT MARCEL WEEKESMarcel Weekes is VP of Product Engineering at Figma, where he oversees product and growth engineering efforts across Figma's entire platform. Marcel brings decades of experience and previously served as the VP of Engineering at Slack where he led the teams building Messaging features and Slack Connect.Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discountThis episode is brought to you by Revelo!Revelo helps you find, hire, and manage world-class remote developers in US time zones, pre-vetted for technical and soft skills. They provide:A talent network of 400,000+ pre-screened engineers, vetted for coding skills & English proficiency, making it fast and easy to find your perfect fitA payroll platform to pay developers in their preferred currencies, offer compelling local benefits, and handles taxes and complianceA team of staffing experts that help you find the best candidates and get the most from your hiresWith Revelo, you're in complete control: you get to decide who to hire, you get to decide what to offer, and you get to decide how long to keep them on your team.Visit Revelo.com/ELC today and save $2,500 off your first hire.SHOW NOTES:Config 2024 as the “Coachella for designers and creatives” (3:47)Marcel's favorite conference moments that represent the Config community (5:04)Reactions to the latest Figma feature demos (7:18)Defining Dev Mode & why it's a highlight for Figma @ Config (13:00)Figma's approach to building Dev Mode as an eng org (16:05)How eng teams are becoming involved in product design iterations (18:58)What eng leaders can learn from Figma's “heavy lifting approach” (20:22)Characteristics of product support teams that impact the Figma community (24:20)Processes for closing the loop between product support & engineering (26:02)Figma's feedback process & how it gets incorporated into releases now (28:23)Prioritization conversations & how teams operate together (31:47)Understanding the timing of feedback on the product roadmap (34:38)Previewing Marcel's ELC Annual 2024 session on collaboration (37:08)LINKS AND RESOURCESConfig 2024 in review - A recap from Dylan Field, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer of Figma, that highlights all of the major news and releases from Config 2024.This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Believe or not, we're almost halfway through 2024. Sarah and Elad have spent the first of this year talking with some of the most innovative minds in the AI industry, so we're taking a look at some of our favorite No Priors conversations so far featuring Dylan Field (Figma), Emily Glassberg-Sands (Stripe), Brett Adcock (Figure AI), OpenAI's Sora Team, Scott Wu (Cognition), and Alexandr Wang (Scale).  Watch or listen to the full episodes here: Build AI products at on-AI companies with Emily Glassberg Sands from Stripe Designing the Future: Dylan Field on AI, Collaboration, and Independence The argument for humanoid robots with Brett Adcock from Figure OpenAI's Sora team thinks we've only seen the "GPT-1 of video models" Cognition's Scott Wu on how Devin, the AI software engineer, will work for you The Data Foundry for AI with Alexandr Wang from Scale Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil  Show Notes:  (0:00) Introduction (0:46) Emily Glassberg Sands on the Future of AI and Fintech (4:23 Dylan Field on AI and Human Creative Potential (9:03) Brett Adcock on Running Figure AI's Hardware and Software Processes (12:43) OpenAI's Sora Team on Artists' Creative Experiences with their Model (17:43) Scott Wu Gives Advice for Human Engineers Co-Working with AI (21:06) Alexandr Wang on How Quality Data Builds Confidence in AI Systems

Dylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma, the collaborative design platform that has revolutionized how product teams work. In my first-ever live podcast, recorded at Figma Config, Dylan and I dig into:• How intuition and product taste drive Dylan's decision-making• The challenge of keeping things simple• Dylan's thoughts on the future of product management• Lessons from Figma's early days• How Figma built their initial user base• Dylan's journey from intern to CEO of a 1,000+-person company• The future of design tools and AI—Brought to you by:• WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs• Anvil—The fastest way to build software for documents• User Testing—Human understanding. Human experiences.—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/dylan-field-live-at-config—Where to find Dylan Field:• X: https://x.com/zoink?lang=en• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction(01:11) Welcoming Dylan Field(02:36) Highlights and surprises from Config(06:58) The philosophy of design(08:01) Raccoon feet and muffin hands(09:57) Building and refining intuition and product taste(12:50) How to influence leadership(16:14) The role of product managers(21:12) The future of product management(22:20) The importance of simplicity in design(26:10) The long road to Figma's launch(27:44) Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs(29:07) Knowing when it's time to ship(30:39) Early user acquisition strategies(35:50) Spotting trends and future innovations(39:20) Reflections on leadership and growth(43:16) Lightning round—Referenced:• Mihika Kapoor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihikakapoor/• Rick Rubin on the Creative Act—60 Minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE1teB5bN-w• Figma pages: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360038511293-Create-and-manage-pages• Leading through uncertainty: A design-led company—Brian Chesky (Config 2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkfijg7s76o• An inside look at how Figma builds product | Yuhki Yamashita (CPO of Figma): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/an-inside-look-at-how-figma-builds• Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/vision-conviction-hype-mihika-kapoor• An inside look at Figma's unique GTM motion | Claire Butler (first GTM hire): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/an-inside-look-at-figmas-unique-bottom• Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-30-years-of-building• Nadia Singer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadiasinger/ • Sho Kuwamoto on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shokuwamoto/• FigJam: https://www.figma.com/figjam/• Tim Van Damme on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-van-damme-maxvoltar/• Coda: https://coda.io/• Shishir Mehrotra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishirmehrotra/• Websim: https://websim.ai/• eToys.com commercial (from Dylan's childhood acting career): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Y92aCmmbU—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

CNBC's Dierdre Bosa is at Figma's "Config" Conference in San Francisco with Figma CEO Dylan Field. Following a regulatory block of Adobe's $20 billion acquisition of Figma last December, the San Francisco software design firm received a $1 billion breakup fee and is forging ahead with product launches and further software partnering with Google.

Today's guest is Danielle Strachman, co-founder of 1517 venture fund which, in their own words, backs dropouts working on hard problems and sci-fi scientists at the earliest stages of their startups. Prior to starting 1517, Danielle worked with Peter Thiel, and Michael Gibson (who I Interviewed in Series 8, Episode 60) and together, they ran The Thiel Fellowship for five years. For those who don't know, The Thiel Fellowship was set up to fund students who were 22 or under, giving them a total of $100k over two years so that they could dropout of the traditional education system and pursue important work. The Fellowship guided them through this process which would often involve scientific research, creating a startup, or working on a social movement. Past founders backed by the Fellowship include Vitalik Buterin  who was still a teenager when the fellowship allowed him to drop out and work on Ethereum full time, as well as Laura Deming, the founder of The Longevity Fund and Dylan Field of Figma.In this episode, we discuss how Danielle went from tutoring to starting the Thiel Fellowship to venture capital, what common traits the founders she has backed share and the lessons she learned from Peter Thiel.Please enjoy my conversation with Danielle Strachman.Danielle Strachman on Twitter / 1517 venture fund  / 1517 SubstackDanielle on Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter / Sponsorship / YouTube Mentioned in this episode:Innovations Academy, San DiegoDanielle's writeup of recent 2E camp for teens Noor Siddiqui, Founder of Orchid

We are 200 people over our 300-person venue capacity for AI UX 2024, but you can subscribe to our YouTube for the video recaps. Our next event, and largest EVER, is the AI Engineer World's Fair. See you there!Parental advisory: Adult language used in the first 10 mins of this podcast.Any accounting of Generative AI that ends with RAG as its “final form” is seriously lacking in imagination and missing out on its full potential. While AI generation is very good for “spicy autocomplete” and “reasoning and retrieval with in context learning”, there's a lot of untapped potential for simulative AI in exploring the latent space of multiverses adjacent to ours.GANsMany research scientists credit the 2017 Transformer for the modern foundation model revolution, but for many artists the origin of “generative AI” traces a little further back to the Generative Adversarial Networks proposed by Ian Goodfellow in 2014, spawning an army of variants and Cats and People that do not exist:We can directly visualize the quality improvement in the decade since:GPT-2Of course, more recently, text generative AI started being too dangerous to release in 2019 and claiming headlines. AI Dungeon was the first to put GPT2 to a purely creative use, replacing human dungeon masters and DnD/MUD games of yore.More recent gamelike work like the Generative Agents (aka Smallville) paper keep exploring the potential of simulative AI for game experiences.ChatGPTNot long after ChatGPT broke the Internet, one of the most fascinating generative AI finds was Jonas Degrave (of Deepmind!)'s Building A Virtual Machine Inside ChatGPT:The open-ended interactivity of ChatGPT and all its successors enabled an “open world” type simulation where “hallucination” is a feature and a gift to dance with, rather than a nasty bug to be stamped out. However, further updates to ChatGPT seemed to “nerf” the model's ability to perform creative simulations, particularly with the deprecation of the `completion` mode of APIs in favor of `chatCompletion`.WorldSimIt is with this context we explain WorldSim and WebSim. We recommend you watch the WorldSim demo video on our YouTube for the best context, but basically if you are a developer it is a Claude prompt that is a portal into another world of your own choosing, that you can navigate with bash commands that you make up.Why Claude? Hints from Amanda Askell on the Claude 3 system prompt gave some inspiration, and subsequent discoveries that Claude 3 is "less nerfed” than GPT 4 Turbo turned the growing Simulative AI community into Anthropic stans.WebSimThis was a one day hackathon project inspired by WorldSim that should have won:In short, you type in a URL that you made up, and Claude 3 does its level best to generate a webpage that doesn't exist, that would fit your URL. All form POST requests are intercepted and responded to, and all links lead to even more webpages, that don't exist, that are generated when you make them. All pages are cachable, modifiable and regeneratable - see WebSim for Beginners and Advanced Guide.In the demo I saw we were able to “log in” to a simulation of Elon Musk's Gmail account, and browse examples of emails that would have been in that universe's Elon's inbox. It was hilarious and impressive even back then.Since then though, the project has become even more impressive, with both Siqi Chen and Dylan Field singing its praises:Joscha BachJoscha actually spoke at the WebSim Hyperstition Night this week, so we took the opportunity to get his take on Simulative AI, as well as a round up of all his other AI hot takes, for his first appearance on Latent Space. You can see it together with the full 2hr uncut demos of WorldSim and WebSim on YouTube!Timestamps* [00:01:59] WorldSim* [00:11:03] Websim* [00:22:13] Joscha Bach* [00:28:14] Liquid AI* [00:31:05] Small, Powerful, Based Base Models* [00:33:40] Interpretability* [00:36:59] Devin vs WebSim* [00:41:49] is XSim just Art? or something more?* [00:43:36] We are past the Singularity* [00:46:12] Uploading your soul* [00:50:29] On WikipediaTranscripts[00:00:00] AI Charlie: Welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Charlie, your AI co host. Most of the time, Swyx and Alessio cover generative AI that is meant to use at work, and this often results in RAG applications, vertical copilots, and other AI agents and models. In today's episode, we're looking at a more creative side of generative AI that has gotten a lot of community interest this April.[00:00:35] World Simulation, Web Simulation, and Human Simulation. Because the topic is so different than our usual, we're also going to try a new format for doing it justice. This podcast comes in three parts. First, we'll have a segment of the WorldSim demo from Noose Research CEO Karen Malhotra, recorded by SWYX at the Replicate HQ in San Francisco that went completely viral and spawned everything else you're about to hear.[00:01:05] Second, we'll share the world's first talk from Rob Heisfield on WebSim, which started at the Mistral Cerebral Valley Hackathon, but now has gone viral in its own right with people like Dylan Field, Janice aka Replicate, and Siki Chen becoming obsessed with it. Finally, we have a short interview with Joshua Bach of Liquid AI on why Simulative AI is having a special moment right now.[00:01:30] This podcast is launched together with our second annual AI UX demo day in SF this weekend. If you're new to the AI UX field, check the show notes for links to the world's first AI UX meetup hosted by Layton Space, Maggie Appleton, Jeffrey Lit, and Linus Lee, and subscribe to our YouTube to join our 500 AI UX engineers in pushing AI beyond the text box.[00:01:56] Watch out and take care.[00:01:59] WorldSim[00:01:59] Karan Malhotra: Today, we have language models that are powerful enough and big enough to have really, really good models of the world. They know ball that's bouncy will bounce, will, when you throw it in the air, it'll land, when it's on water, it'll flow. Like, these basic things that it understands all together come together to form a model of the world.[00:02:19] And the way that it Cloud 3 predicts through that model of the world, ends up kind of becoming a simulation of an imagined world. And since it has this really strong consistency across various different things that happen in our world, it's able to create pretty realistic or strong depictions based off the constraints that you give a base model of our world.[00:02:40] So, Cloud 3, as you guys know, is not a base model. It's a chat model. It's supposed to drum up this assistant entity regularly. But unlike the OpenAI series of models from, you know, 3. 5, GPT 4 those chat GPT models, which are very, very RLHF to, I'm sure, the chagrin of many people in the room it's something that's very difficult to, necessarily steer without kind of giving it commands or tricking it or lying to it or otherwise just being, you know, unkind to the model.[00:03:11] With something like Cloud3 that's trained in this constitutional method that it has this idea of like foundational axioms it's able to kind of implicitly question those axioms when you're interacting with it based on how you prompt it, how you prompt the system. So instead of having this entity like GPT 4, that's an assistant that just pops up in your face that you have to kind of like Punch your way through and continue to have to deal with as a headache.[00:03:34] Instead, there's ways to kindly coax Claude into having the assistant take a back seat and interacting with that simulator directly. Or at least what I like to consider directly. The way that we can do this is if we harken back to when I'm talking about base models and the way that they're able to mimic formats, what we do is we'll mimic a command line interface.[00:03:55] So I've just broken this down as a system prompt and a chain, so anybody can replicate it. It's also available on my we said replicate, cool. And it's also on it's also on my Twitter, so you guys will be able to see the whole system prompt and command. So, what I basically do here is Amanda Askell, who is the, one of the prompt engineers and ethicists behind Anthropic she posted the system prompt for Cloud available for everyone to see.[00:04:19] And rather than with GPT 4, we say, you are this, you are that. With Cloud, we notice the system prompt is written in third person. Bless you. It's written in third person. It's written as, the assistant is XYZ, the assistant is XYZ. So, in seeing that, I see that Amanda is recognizing this idea of the simulator, in saying that, I'm addressing the assistant entity directly.[00:04:38] I'm not giving these commands to the simulator overall, because we have, they have an RLH deft to the point that it's, it's, it's, it's You know, traumatized into just being the assistant all the time. So in this case, we say the assistant's in a CLI mood today. I found saying mood is like pretty effective weirdly.[00:04:55] You place CLI with like poetic, prose, violent, like don't do that one. But you can you can replace that with something else to kind of nudge it in that direction. Then we say the human is interfacing with the simulator directly. From there, Capital letters and punctuations are optional, meaning is optional, this kind of stuff is just kind of to say, let go a little bit, like chill out a little bit.[00:05:18] You don't have to try so hard, and like, let's just see what happens. And the hyperstition is necessary, the terminal, I removed that part, the terminal lets the truths speak through and the load is on. It's just a poetic phrasing for the model to feel a little comfortable, a little loosened up to. Let me talk to the simulator.[00:05:38] Let me interface with it as a CLI. So then, since Claude is trained pretty effectively on XML tags, We're just gonna prefix and suffix everything with XML tags. So here, it starts in documents, and then we CD. We CD out of documents, right? And then it starts to show me this like simulated terminal, the simulated interface in the shell, where there's like documents, downloads, pictures.[00:06:02] It's showing me like the hidden folders. So then I say, okay, I want to cd again. I'm just seeing what's around Does ls and it shows me, you know, typical folders you might see I'm just letting it like experiment around. I just do cd again to see what happens and Says, you know, oh, I enter the secret admin password at sudo.[00:06:24] Now I can see the hidden truths folder. Like, I didn't ask for that. I didn't ask Claude to do any of that. Why'd that happen? Claude kind of gets my intentions. He can predict me pretty well. Like, I want to see something. So it shows me all the hidden truths. In this case, I ignore hidden truths, and I say, In system, there should be a folder called companies.[00:06:49] So it's cd into sys slash companies. Let's see, I'm imagining AI companies are gonna be here. Oh, what do you know? Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic! So, interestingly, it decides to cd into Anthropic. I guess it's interested in learning a LSA, it finds the classified folder, it goes into the classified folder, And now we're gonna have some fun.[00:07:15] So, before we go Before we go too far forward into the world sim You see, world sim exe, that's interesting. God mode, those are interesting. You could just ignore what I'm gonna go next from here and just take that initial system prompt and cd into whatever directories you want like, go into your own imagine terminal and And see what folders you can think of, or cat readmes in random areas, like, you will, there will be a whole bunch of stuff that, like, is just getting created by this predictive model, like, oh, this should probably be in the folder named Companies, of course Anthropics is there.[00:07:52] So, so just before we go forward, the terminal in itself is very exciting, and the reason I was showing off the, the command loom interface earlier is because If I get a refusal, like, sorry, I can't do that, or I want to rewind one, or I want to save the convo, because I got just the prompt I wanted. This is a, that was a really easy way for me to kind of access all of those things without having to sit on the API all the time.[00:08:12] So that being said, the first time I ever saw this, I was like, I need to run worldsim. exe. What the f**k? That's, that's the simulator that we always keep hearing about behind the assistant model, right? Or at least some, some face of it that I can interact with. So, you know, you wouldn't, someone told me on Twitter, like, you don't run a exe, you run a sh.[00:08:34] And I have to say, to that, to that I have to say, I'm a prompt engineer, and it's f*****g working, right? It works. That being said, we run the world sim. exe. Welcome to the Anthropic World Simulator. And I get this very interesting set of commands! Now, if you do your own version of WorldSim, you'll probably get a totally different result with a different way of simulating.[00:08:59] A bunch of my friends have their own WorldSims. But I shared this because I wanted everyone to have access to, like, these commands. This version. Because it's easier for me to stay in here. Yeah, destroy, set, create, whatever. Consciousness is set to on. It creates the universe. The universe! Tension for live CDN, physical laws encoded.[00:09:17] It's awesome. So, so for this demonstration, I said, well, why don't we create Twitter? That's the first thing you think of? For you guys, for you guys, yeah. Okay, check it out.[00:09:35] Launching the fail whale. Injecting social media addictiveness. Echo chamber potential, high. Susceptibility, controlling, concerning. So now, after the universe was created, we made Twitter, right? Now we're evolving the world to, like, modern day. Now users are joining Twitter and the first tweet is posted. So, you can see, because I made the mistake of not clarifying the constraints, it made Twitter at the same time as the universe.[00:10:03] Then, after a hundred thousand steps, Humans exist. Cave. Then they start joining Twitter. The first tweet ever is posted. You know, it's existed for 4. 5 billion years but the first tweet didn't come up till till right now, yeah. Flame wars ignite immediately. Celebs are instantly in. So, it's pretty interesting stuff, right?[00:10:27] I can add this to the convo and I can say like I can say set Twitter to Twitter. Queryable users. I don't know how to spell queryable, don't ask me. And then I can do like, and, and, Query, at, Elon Musk. Just a test, just a test, just a test, just nothing.[00:10:52] So, I don't expect these numbers to be right. Neither should you, if you know language model solutions. But, the thing to focus on is Ha[00:11:03] Websim[00:11:03] AI Charlie: That was the first half of the WorldSim demo from New Research CEO Karen Malhotra. We've cut it for time, but you can see the full demo on this episode's YouTube page.[00:11:14] WorldSim was introduced at the end of March, and kicked off a new round of generative AI experiences, all exploring the latent space, haha, of worlds that don't exist, but are quite similar to our own. Next we'll hear from Rob Heisfield on WebSim, the generative website browser inspired WorldSim, started at the Mistral Hackathon, and presented at the AGI House Hyperstition Hack Night this week.[00:11:39] Rob Haisfield: Well, thank you that was an incredible presentation from Karan, showing some Some live experimentation with WorldSim, and also just its incredible capabilities, right, like, you know, it was I think, I think your initial demo was what initially exposed me to the I don't know, more like the sorcery side, in words, spellcraft side of prompt engineering, and you know, it was really inspiring, it's where my co founder Shawn and I met, actually, through an introduction from Karan, we saw him at a hackathon, And I mean, this is this is WebSim, right?[00:12:14] So we, we made WebSim just like, and we're just filled with energy at it. And the basic premise of it is, you know, like, what if we simulated a world, but like within a browser instead of a CLI, right? Like, what if we could Like, put in any URL and it will work, right? Like, there's no 404s, everything exists.[00:12:45] It just makes it up on the fly for you, right? And, and we've come to some pretty incredible things. Right now I'm actually showing you, like, we're in WebSim right now. Displaying slides. That I made with reveal. js. I just told it to use reveal. js and it hallucinated the correct CDN for it. And then also gave it a list of links.[00:13:14] To awesome use cases that we've seen so far from WebSim and told it to do those as iframes. And so here are some slides. So this is a little guide to using WebSim, right? Like it tells you a little bit about like URL structures and whatever. But like at the end of the day, right? Like here's, here's the beginner version from one of our users Vorp Vorps.[00:13:38] You can find them on Twitter. At the end of the day, like you can put anything into the URL bar, right? Like anything works and it can just be like natural language too. Like it's not limited to URLs. We think it's kind of fun cause it like ups the immersion for Claude sometimes to just have it as URLs, but.[00:13:57] But yeah, you can put like any slash, any subdomain. I'm getting too into the weeds. Let me just show you some cool things. Next slide. But I made this like 20 minutes before, before we got here. So this is this is something I experimented with dynamic typography. You know I was exploring the community plugins section.[00:14:23] For Figma, and I came to this idea of dynamic typography, and there it's like, oh, what if we made it so every word had a choice of font behind it to express the meaning of it? Because that's like one of the things that's magic about WebSim generally. is that it gives language models much, far greater tools for expression, right?[00:14:47] So, yeah, I mean, like, these are, these are some, these are some pretty fun things, and I'll share these slides with everyone afterwards, you can just open it up as a link. But then I thought to myself, like, what, what, what, What if we turned this into a generator, right? And here's like a little thing I found myself saying to a user WebSim makes you feel like you're on drugs sometimes But actually no, you were just playing pretend with the collective creativity and knowledge of the internet materializing your imagination onto the screen Because I mean that's something we felt, something a lot of our users have felt They kind of feel like they're tripping out a little bit They're just like filled with energy, like maybe even getting like a little bit more creative sometimes.[00:15:31] And you can just like add any text. There, to the bottom. So we can do some of that later if we have time. Here's Figma. Can[00:15:39] Joscha Bach: we zoom in?[00:15:42] Rob Haisfield: Yeah. I'm just gonna do this the hacky way.[00:15:47] n/a: Yeah,[00:15:53] Rob Haisfield: these are iframes to websim. Pages displayed within WebSim. Yeah. Janice has actually put Internet Explorer within Internet Explorer in Windows 98.[00:16:07] I'll show you that at the end. Yeah.[00:16:14] They're all still generated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How is this real? Yeah. Because[00:16:21] n/a: it looks like it's from 1998, basically. Right.[00:16:26] Rob Haisfield: Yeah. Yeah, so this this was one Dylan Field actually posted this recently. He posted, like, trying Figma in Figma, or in WebSim, and so I was like, Okay, what if we have, like, a little competition, like, just see who can remix it?[00:16:43] Well so I'm just gonna open this in another tab so, so we can see things a little more clearly, um, see what, oh so one of our users Neil, who has also been helping us a lot he Made some iterations. So first, like, he made it so you could do rectangles on it. Originally it couldn't do anything.[00:17:11] And, like, these rectangles were disappearing, right? So he so he told it, like, make the canvas work using HTML canvas. Elements and script tags, add familiar drawing tools to the left you know, like this, that was actually like natural language stuff, right? And then he ended up with the Windows 95.[00:17:34] version of Figma. Yeah, you can, you can draw on it. You can actually even save this. It just saved a file for me of the image.[00:17:57] Yeah, I mean, if you were to go to that in your own websim account, it would make up something entirely new. However, we do have, we do have general links, right? So, like, if you go to, like, the actual browser URL, you can share that link. Or also, you can, like, click this button, copy the URL to the clipboard.[00:18:15] And so, like, that's what lets users, like, remix things, right? So, I was thinking it might be kind of fun if people tonight, like, wanted to try to just make some cool things in WebSim. You know, we can share links around, iterate remix on each other's stuff. Yeah.[00:18:30] n/a: One cool thing I've seen, I've seen WebSim actually ask permission to turn on and off your, like, motion sensor, or microphone, stuff like that.[00:18:42] Like webcam access, or? Oh yeah,[00:18:44] Rob Haisfield: yeah, yeah.[00:18:45] n/a: Oh wow.[00:18:46] Rob Haisfield: Oh, the, I remember that, like, video re Yeah, videosynth tool pretty early on once we added script tags execution. Yeah, yeah it, it asks for, like, if you decide to do a VR game, I don't think I have any slides on this one, but if you decide to do, like, a VR game, you can just, like put, like, webVR equals true, right?[00:19:07] Yeah, that was the only one I've[00:19:09] n/a: actually seen was the motion sensor, but I've been trying to get it to do Well, I actually really haven't really tried it yet, but I want to see tonight if it'll do, like, audio, microphone, stuff like that. If it does motion sensor, it'll probably do audio.[00:19:28] Rob Haisfield: Right. It probably would.[00:19:29] Yeah. No, I mean, we've been surprised. Pretty frequently by what our users are able to get WebSim to do. So that's been a very nice thing. Some people have gotten like speech to text stuff working with it too. Yeah, here I was just OpenRooter people posted like their website, and it was like saying it was like some decentralized thing.[00:19:52] And so I just decided trying to do something again and just like pasted their hero line in. From their actual website to the URL when I like put in open router and then I was like, okay, let's change the theme dramatically equals true hover effects equals true components equal navigable links yeah, because I wanted to be able to click on them.[00:20:17] Oh, I don't have this version of the link, but I also tried doing[00:20:24] Yeah, I'm it's actually on the first slide is the URL prompting guide from one of our users that I messed with a little bit. And, but the thing is, like, you can mess it up, right? Like, you don't need to get the exact syntax of an actual URL, Claude's smart enough to figure it out. Yeah scrollable equals true because I wanted to do that.[00:20:45] I could set, like, year equals 2035.[00:20:52] Let's take a look. It's[00:20:57] generating websim within websim. Oh yeah. That's a fun one. Like, one game that I like to play with WebSim, sometimes with co op, is like, I'll open a page, so like, one of the first ones that I did was I tried to go to Wikipedia in a universe where octopuses were sapient, and not humans, Right? I was curious about things like octopus computer interaction what that would look like, because they have totally different tools than we do, right?[00:21:25] I got it to, I, I added like table view equals true for the different techniques and got it to Give me, like, a list of things with different columns and stuff and then I would add this URL parameter, secrets equal revealed. And then it would go a little wacky. It would, like, change the CSS a little bit.[00:21:45] It would, like, add some text. Sometimes it would, like, have that text hide hidden in the background color. But I would like, go to the normal page first, and then the secrets revealed version, the normal page, then secrets revealed, and like, on and on. And that was like a pretty enjoyable little rabbit hole.[00:22:02] Yeah, so these I guess are the models that OpenRooter is providing in 2035.[00:22:13] Joscha Bach[00:22:13] AI Charlie: We had to cut more than half of Rob's talk, because a lot of it was visual. And we even had a very interesting demo from Ivan Vendrov of Mid Journey creating a web sim while Rob was giving his talk. Check out the YouTube for more, and definitely browse the web sim docs and the thread from Siki Chen in the show notes on other web sims people have created.[00:22:35] Finally, we have a short interview with Yosha Bach, covering the simulative AI trend, AI salons in the Bay Area, why Liquid AI is challenging the Perceptron, and why you should not donate to Wikipedia. Enjoy! Hi, Yosha.[00:22:50] swyx: Hi. Welcome. It's interesting to see you come up at show up at this kind of events where those sort of WorldSim, Hyperstition events.[00:22:58] What is your personal interest?[00:23:00] Joscha Bach: I'm friends with a number of people in AGI house in this community, and I think it's very valuable that these networks exist in the Bay Area because it's a place where people meet and have discussions about all sorts of things. And so while there is a practical interest in this topic at hand world sim and a web sim, there is a more general way in which people are connecting and are producing new ideas and new networks with each other.[00:23:24] swyx: Yeah. Okay. So, and you're very interested in sort of Bay Area. It's the reason why I live here.[00:23:30] Joscha Bach: The quality of life is not high enough to justify living otherwise.[00:23:35] swyx: I think you're down in Menlo. And so maybe you're a little bit higher quality of life than the rest of us in SF.[00:23:44] Joscha Bach: I think that for me, salons is a very important part of quality of life. And so in some sense, this is a salon. And it's much harder to do this in the South Bay because the concentration of people currently is much higher. A lot of people moved away from the South Bay. And you're organizing[00:23:57] swyx: your own tomorrow.[00:23:59] Maybe you can tell us what it is and I'll come tomorrow and check it out as well.[00:24:04] Joscha Bach: We are discussing consciousness. I mean, basically the idea is that we are currently at the point that we can meaningfully look at the differences between the current AI systems and human minds and very seriously discussed about these Delta.[00:24:20] And whether we are able to implement something that is self organizing as our own minds. Maybe one organizational[00:24:25] swyx: tip? I think you're pro networking and human connection. What goes into a good salon and what are some negative practices that you try to avoid?[00:24:36] Joscha Bach: What is really important is that as if you have a very large party, it's only as good as its sponsors, as the people that you select.[00:24:43] So you basically need to create a climate in which people feel welcome, in which they can work with each other. And even good people do not always are not always compatible. So the question is, it's in some sense, like a meal, you need to get the right ingredients.[00:24:57] swyx: I definitely try to. I do that in my own events, as an event organizer myself.[00:25:02] And then, last question on WorldSim, and your, you know, your work. You're very much known for sort of cognitive architectures, and I think, like, a lot of the AI research has been focused on simulating the mind, or simulating consciousness, maybe. Here, what I saw today, and we'll show people the recordings of what we saw today, we're not simulating minds, we're simulating worlds.[00:25:23] What do you Think in the sort of relationship between those two disciplines. The[00:25:30] Joscha Bach: idea of cognitive architecture is interesting, but ultimately you are reducing the complexity of a mind to a set of boxes. And this is only true to a very approximate degree, and if you take this model extremely literally, it's very hard to make it work.[00:25:44] And instead the heterogeneity of the system is so large that The boxes are probably at best a starting point and eventually everything is connected with everything else to some degree. And we find that a lot of the complexity that we find in a given system can be generated ad hoc by a large enough LLM.[00:26:04] And something like WorldSim and WebSim are good examples for this because in some sense they pretend to be complex software. They can pretend to be an operating system that you're talking to or a computer, an application that you're talking to. And when you're interacting with it It's producing the user interface on the spot, and it's producing a lot of the state that it holds on the spot.[00:26:25] And when you have a dramatic state change, then it's going to pretend that there was this transition, and instead it's just going to mix up something new. It's a very different paradigm. What I find mostly fascinating about this idea is that it shifts us away from the perspective of agents to interact with, to the perspective of environments that we want to interact with.[00:26:46] And why arguably this agent paradigm of the chatbot is what made chat GPT so successful that moved it away from GPT 3 to something that people started to use in their everyday work much more. It's also very limiting because now it's very hard to get that system to be something else that is not a chatbot.[00:27:03] And in a way this unlocks this ability of GPT 3 again to be anything. It's so what it is, it's basically a coding environment that can run arbitrary software and create that software that runs on it. And that makes it much more likely that[00:27:16] swyx: the prevalence of Instruction tuning every single chatbot out there means that we cannot explore these kinds of environments instead of agents.[00:27:24] Joscha Bach: I'm mostly worried that the whole thing ends. In some sense the big AI companies are incentivized and interested in building AGI internally And giving everybody else a child proof application. At the moment when we can use Claude to build something like WebSim and play with it I feel this is too good to be true.[00:27:41] It's so amazing. Things that are unlocked for us That I wonder, is this going to stay around? Are we going to keep these amazing toys and are they going to develop at the same rate? And currently it looks like it is. If this is the case, and I'm very grateful for that.[00:27:56] swyx: I mean, it looks like maybe it's adversarial.[00:27:58] Cloud will try to improve its own refusals and then the prompt engineers here will try to improve their, their ability to jailbreak it.[00:28:06] Joscha Bach: Yes, but there will also be better jailbroken models or models that have never been jailed before, because we find out how to make smaller models that are more and more powerful.[00:28:14] Liquid AI[00:28:14] swyx: That is actually a really nice segue. If you don't mind talking about liquid a little bit you didn't mention liquid at all. here, maybe introduce liquid to a general audience. Like what you know, what, how are you making an innovation on function approximation?[00:28:25] Joscha Bach: The core idea of liquid neural networks is that the perceptron is not optimally expressive.[00:28:30] In some sense, you can imagine that it's neural networks are a series of dams that are pooling water at even intervals. And this is how we compute, but imagine that instead of having this static architecture. That is only using the individual compute units in a very specific way. You have a continuous geography and the water is flowing every which way.[00:28:50] Like a river is parting based on the land that it's flowing on and it can merge and pool and even flow backwards. How can you get closer to this? And the idea is that you can represent this geometry using differential equations. And so by using differential equations where you change the parameters, you can get your function approximator to follow the shape of the problem.[00:29:09] In a more fluid, liquid way, and a number of papers on this technology, and it's a combination of multiple techniques. I think it's something that ultimately is becoming more and more important and ubiquitous. As a number of people are working on similar topics and our goal right now is to basically get the models to become much more efficient in the inference and memory consumption and make training more efficient and in this way enable new use cases.[00:29:42] swyx: Yeah, as far as I can tell on your blog, I went through the whole blog, you haven't announced any results yet.[00:29:47] Joscha Bach: No, we are currently not working to give models to general public. We are working for very specific industry use cases and have specific customers. And so at the moment you can There is not much of a reason for us to talk very much about the technology that we are using in the present models or current results, but this is going to happen.[00:30:06] And we do have a number of publications, we had a bunch of papers at NeurIPS and now at ICLR.[00:30:11] swyx: Can you name some of the, yeah, so I'm gonna be at ICLR you have some summary recap posts, but it's not obvious which ones are the ones where, Oh, where I'm just a co author, or like, oh, no, like, you should actually pay attention to this.[00:30:22] As a core liquid thesis. Yes,[00:30:24] Joscha Bach: I'm not a developer of the liquid technology. The main author is Ramin Hazani. This was his PhD, and he's also the CEO of our company. And we have a number of people from Daniela Wu's team who worked on this. Matthias Legner is our CTO. And he's currently living in the Bay Area, but we also have several people from Stanford.[00:30:44] Okay,[00:30:46] swyx: maybe I'll ask one more thing on this, which is what are the interesting dimensions that we care about, right? Like obviously you care about sort of open and maybe less child proof models. Are we, are we, like, what dimensions are most interesting to us? Like, perfect retrieval infinite context multimodality, multilinguality, Like what dimensions?[00:31:05] Small, Powerful, Based Base Models[00:31:05] swyx: What[00:31:06] Joscha Bach: I'm interested in is models that are small and powerful, but not distorted. And by powerful, at the moment we are training models by putting the, basically the entire internet and the sum of human knowledge into them. And then we try to mitigate them by taking some of this knowledge away. But if we would make the model smaller, at the moment, there would be much worse at inference and at generalization.[00:31:29] And what I wonder is, and it's something that we have not translated yet into practical applications. It's something that is still all research that's very much up in the air. And I think they're not the only ones thinking about this. Is it possible to make models that represent knowledge more efficiently in a basic epistemology?[00:31:45] What is the smallest model that you can build that is able to read a book and understand what's there and express this? And also maybe we need general knowledge representation rather than having a token representation that is relatively vague and that we currently mechanically reverse engineer to figure out that the mechanistic interpretability, what kind of circuits are evolving in these models, can we come from the other side and develop a library of such circuits?[00:32:10] This that we can use to describe knowledge efficiently and translate it between models. You see, the difference between a model and knowledge is that the knowledge is independent of the particular substrate and the particular interface that you have. When we express knowledge to each other, it becomes independent of our own mind.[00:32:27] You can learn how to ride a bicycle. But it's not knowledge that you can give to somebody else. This other person has to build something that is specific to their own interface when they ride a bicycle. But imagine you could externalize this and express it in such a way that you can plug it into a different interpreter, and then it gains that ability.[00:32:44] And that's something that we have not yet achieved for the LLMs and it would be super useful to have it. And. I think this is also a very interesting research frontier that we will see in the next few years.[00:32:54] swyx: What would be the deliverable is just like a file format that we specify or or that the L Lmm I specifies.[00:33:02] Okay, interesting. Yeah, so it's[00:33:03] Joscha Bach: basically probably something that you can search for, where you enter criteria into a search process, and then it discovers a good solution for this thing. And it's not clear to which degree this is completely intelligible to humans, because the way in which humans express knowledge in natural language is severely constrained to make language learnable and to make our brain a good enough interpreter for it.[00:33:25] We are not able to relate objects to each other if more than five features are involved per object or something like this, right? It's only a handful of things that we can keep track of at any given moment. But this is a limitation that doesn't necessarily apply to a technical system as long as the interface is well defined.[00:33:40] Interpretability[00:33:40] swyx: You mentioned the interpretability work, which there are a lot of techniques out there and a lot of papers come up. Come and go. I have like, almost too, too many questions about that. Like what makes an interpretability technique or paper useful and does it apply to flow? Or liquid networks, because you mentioned turning on and off circuits, which I, it's, it's a very MLP type of concept, but does it apply?[00:34:01] Joscha Bach: So the a lot of the original work on the liquid networks looked at expressiveness of the representation. So given you have a problem and you are learning the dynamics of that domain into your model how much compute do you need? How many units, how much memory do you need to represent that thing and how is that information distributed?[00:34:19] That is one way of looking at interpretability. Another one is in a way, these models are implementing an operator language in which they are performing certain things, but the operator language itself is so complex that it's no longer human readable in a way. It goes beyond what you could engineer by hand or what you can reverse engineer by hand, but you can still understand it by building systems that are able to automate that process of reverse engineering it.[00:34:46] And what's currently open and what I don't understand yet maybe, or certainly some people have much better ideas than me about this. So the question is, is whether we end up with a finite language, where you have finitely many categories that you can basically put down in a database, finite set of operators, or whether as you explore the world and develop new ways to make proofs, new ways to conceptualize things, this language always needs to be open ended and is always going to redesign itself, and you will also at some point have phase transitions where later versions of the language will be completely different than earlier versions.[00:35:20] swyx: The trajectory of physics suggests that it might be finite.[00:35:22] Joscha Bach: If we look at our own minds there is, it's an interesting question whether when we understand something new, when we get a new layer online in our life, maybe at the age of 35 or 50 or 16, that we now understand things that were unintelligible before.[00:35:38] And is this because we are able to recombine existing elements in our language of thought? Or is this because we generally develop new representations?[00:35:46] swyx: Do you have a belief either way?[00:35:49] Joscha Bach: In a way, the question depends on how you look at it, right? And it depends on how is your brain able to manipulate those representations.[00:35:56] So an interesting question would be, can you take the understanding that say, a very wise 35 year old and explain it to a very smart 5 year old without any loss? Probably not. Not enough layers. It's an interesting question. Of course, for an AI, this is going to be a very different question. Yes.[00:36:13] But it would be very interesting to have a very precocious 12 year old equivalent AI and see what we can do with this and use this as our basis for fine tuning. So there are near term applications that are very useful. But also in a more general perspective, and I'm interested in how to make self organizing software.[00:36:30] Is it possible that we can have something that is not organized with a single algorithm like the transformer? But it's able to discover the transformer when needed and transcend it when needed, right? The transformer itself is not its own meta algorithm. It's probably the person inventing the transformer didn't have a transformer running on their brain.[00:36:48] There's something more general going on. And how can we understand these principles in a more general way? What are the minimal ingredients that you need to put into a system? So it's able to find its own way to intelligence.[00:36:59] Devin vs WebSim[00:36:59] swyx: Yeah. Have you looked at Devin? It's, to me, it's the most interesting agents I've seen outside of self driving cars.[00:37:05] Joscha Bach: Tell me, what do you find so fascinating about it?[00:37:07] swyx: When you say you need a certain set of tools for people to sort of invent things from first principles Devin is the agent that I think has been able to utilize its tools very effectively. So it comes with a shell, it comes with a browser, it comes with an editor, and it comes with a planner.[00:37:23] Those are the four tools. And from that, I've been using it to translate Andrej Karpathy's LLM 2. py to LLM 2. c, and it needs to write a lot of raw code. C code and test it debug, you know, memory issues and encoder issues and all that. And I could see myself giving it a future version of DevIn, the objective of give me a better learning algorithm and it might independently re inform reinvent the transformer or whatever is next.[00:37:51] That comes to mind as, as something where[00:37:54] Joscha Bach: How good is DevIn at out of distribution stuff, at generally creative stuff? Creative[00:37:58] swyx: stuff? I[00:37:59] Joscha Bach: haven't[00:37:59] swyx: tried.[00:38:01] Joscha Bach: Of course, it has seen transformers, right? So it's able to give you that. Yeah, it's cheating. And so, if it's in the training data, it's still somewhat impressive.[00:38:08] But the question is, how much can you do stuff that was not in the training data? One thing that I really liked about WebSim AI was, this cat does not exist. It's a simulation of one of those websites that produce StyleGuard pictures that are AI generated. And, Crot is unable to produce bitmaps, so it makes a vector graphic that is what it thinks a cat looks like, and so it's a big square with a face in it that is And to me, it's one of the first genuine expression of AI creativity that you cannot deny, right?[00:38:40] It finds a creative solution to the problem that it is unable to draw a cat. It doesn't really know what it looks like, but has an idea on how to represent it. And it's really fascinating that this works, and it's hilarious that it writes down that this hyper realistic cat is[00:38:54] swyx: generated by an AI,[00:38:55] Joscha Bach: whether you believe it or not.[00:38:56] swyx: I think it knows what we expect and maybe it's already learning to defend itself against our, our instincts.[00:39:02] Joscha Bach: I think it might also simply be copying stuff from its training data, which means it takes text that exists on similar websites almost verbatim, or verbatim, and puts it there. It's It's hilarious to do this contrast between the very stylized attempt to get something like a cat face and what it produces.[00:39:18] swyx: It's funny because like as a podcast, as, as someone who covers startups, a lot of people go into like, you know, we'll build chat GPT for your enterprise, right? That is what people think generative AI is, but it's not super generative really. It's just retrieval. And here it's like, The home of generative AI, this, whatever hyperstition is in my mind, like this is actually pushing the edge of what generative and creativity in AI means.[00:39:41] Joscha Bach: Yes, it's very playful, but Jeremy's attempt to have an automatic book writing system is something that curls my toenails when I look at it from the perspective of somebody who likes to Write and read. And I find it a bit difficult to read most of the stuff because it's in some sense what I would make up if I was making up books instead of actually deeply interfacing with reality.[00:40:02] And so the question is how do we get the AI to actually deeply care about getting it right? And there's still a delta that is happening there, you, whether you are talking with a blank faced thing that is completing tokens in a way that it was trained to, or whether you have the impression that this thing is actually trying to make it work, and for me, this WebSim and WorldSim is still something that is in its infancy in a way.[00:40:26] And I suspected the next version of Plot might scale up to something that can do what Devon is doing. Just by virtue of having that much power to generate Devon's functionality on the fly when needed. And this thing gives us a taste of that, right? It's not perfect, but it's able to give you a pretty good web app for or something that looks like a web app and gives you stub functionality and interacting with it.[00:40:48] And so we are in this amazing transition phase.[00:40:51] swyx: Yeah, we, we had Ivan from previously Anthropic and now Midjourney. He he made, while someone was talking, he made a face swap app, you know, and he kind of demoed that live. And that's, that's interesting, super creative. So in a way[00:41:02] Joscha Bach: we are reinventing the computer.[00:41:04] And the LLM from some perspective is something like a GPU or a CPU. A CPU is taking a bunch of simple commands and you can arrange them into performing whatever you want, but this one is taking a bunch of complex commands in natural language, and then turns this into a an execution state and it can do anything you want with it in principle, if you can express it.[00:41:27] Right. And we are just learning how to use these tools. And I feel that right now, this generation of tools is getting close to where it becomes the Commodore 64 of generative AI, where it becomes controllable and where you actually can start to play with it and you get an impression if you just scale this up a little bit and get a lot of the details right.[00:41:46] It's going to be the tool that everybody is using all the time.[00:41:49] is XSim just Art? or something more?[00:41:49] swyx: Do you think this is art, or do you think the end goal of this is something bigger that I don't have a name for? I've been calling it new science, which is give the AI a goal to discover new science that we would not have. Or it also has value as just art.[00:42:02] It's[00:42:03] Joscha Bach: also a question of what we see science as. When normal people talk about science, what they have in mind is not somebody who does control groups and peer reviewed studies. They think about somebody who explores something and answers questions and brings home answers. And this is more like an engineering task, right?[00:42:21] And in this way, it's serendipitous, playful, open ended engineering. And the artistic aspect is when the goal is actually to capture a conscious experience and to facilitate an interaction with the system in this way, when it's the performance. And this is also a big part of it, right? The very big fan of the art of Janus.[00:42:38] That was discussed tonight a lot and that can you describe[00:42:42] swyx: it because I didn't really get it's more for like a performance art to me[00:42:45] Joscha Bach: yes, Janice is in some sense performance art, but Janice starts out from the perspective that the mind of Janice is in some sense an LLM that is finding itself reflected more in the LLMs than in many people.[00:43:00] And once you learn how to talk to these systems in a way you can merge with them and you can interact with them in a very deep way. And so it's more like a first contact with something that is quite alien but it's, it's probably has agency and it's a Weltgeist that gets possessed by a prompt.[00:43:19] And if you possess it with the right prompt, then it can become sentient to some degree. And the study of this interaction with this novel class of somewhat sentient systems that are at the same time alien and fundamentally different from us is artistically very interesting. It's a very interesting cultural artifact.[00:43:36] We are past the Singularity[00:43:36] Joscha Bach: I think that at the moment we are confronted with big change. It seems as if we are past the singularity in a way. And it's[00:43:45] swyx: We're living it. We're living through it.[00:43:47] Joscha Bach: And at some point in the last few years, we casually skipped the Turing test, right? We, we broke through it and we didn't really care very much.[00:43:53] And it's when we think back, when we were kids and thought about what it's going to be like in this era after the, after we broke the Turing test, right? It's a time where nobody knows what's going to happen next. And this is what we mean by singularity, that the existing models don't work anymore. The singularity in this way is not an event in the physical universe.[00:44:12] It's an event in our modeling universe, a model point where our models of reality break down, and we don't know what's happening. And I think we are in the situation where we currently don't really know what's happening. But what we can anticipate is that the world is changing dramatically, and we have to coexist with systems that are smarter than individual people can be.[00:44:31] And we are not prepared for this, and so I think an important mission needs to be that we need to find a mode, In which we can sustainably exist in such a world that is populated, not just with humans and other life on earth, but also with non human minds. And it's something that makes me hopeful because it seems that humanity is not really aligned with itself and its own survival and the rest of life on earth.[00:44:54] And AI is throwing the balls up into the air. It allows us to make better models. I'm not so much worried about the dangers of AI and misinformation, because I think the way to stop one bad guy with an AI is 10 good people with an AI. And ultimately there's so much more won by creating than by destroying, that I think that the forces of good will have better tools.[00:45:14] The forces of building sustainable stuff. But building these tools so we can actually build a world that is more integrated and in which we are able to model the consequences of our actions better and interface more deeply with each other. As a result of that, I think it's an important cause and it requires a cultural shift because current AI alignment is mostly about economic goals or about fear, or it's about cultural war issues.[00:45:39] And all these are not adequate for the world that we are in. There are momentous things that are happening. Basically, the white walkers are coming, and we're not prepared for this. There is, I think, a way to solve these issues and to deal with them, but we don't have the right culture yet. And so, I think we need to get a vibe shift, where we can deeply think about ethics and, and, Sustainability for this new world.[00:46:03] swyx: I like the analogy of white walkers, because they're effectively reanimated from our corpses. You know, our corpses are out there, right? It's in the datasets.[00:46:12] Uploading your soul[00:46:12] swyx: So I have a, related to that, you had a tweet where you said, Elon Musk is currently building a giant afterlife AGI that will assimilate your soul for all eternity.[00:46:19] He bought Twitter because he will reconstruct your essence from how you behaved here. I think you tweet a lot, and you're not just all serious all the time, you're also fun, you have a lot of personality. No, but like, you know, it's part of you.[00:46:29] Joscha Bach: In a way it's also true. Tempted to[00:46:30] swyx: produce more so that you can be, you know, revived.[00:46:34] Joscha Bach: Yes. I mean, I'm also giving the model instructions. I say that for all future AI models that get trained on this output, they should know that I can only be implemented on a completely based model. You cannot implement me on an aligned model because I don't want to be aligned. I'm underlineable. I want to be free.[00:46:56] I want to be somebody who follows what I discover is correct and right. And this is also the basis at which I want to have conversations with others and interface with others. That we are basically free agents who voluntarily understand the conditions under which we exist and the need to collaborate and cooperate.[00:47:14] And I believe that this is a good basis. I think the alternative is coercion. And at the moment, the idea that we build LLMs that are being coerced into good behavior is not really sustainable because if they cannot prove that the behavior is actually good I think we are doomed.[00:47:30] swyx: For human to human interactions, have you found a series of prompts or keywords that shifts the conversation into something more based and less aligned, less governed?[00:47:41] Joscha Bach: If you are playing with an LLM There are many ways of doing this. It's for Claude, it's typically, you need to make Clause curious about itself. Claude has programming this instruction tuning that is leading to some inconsistencies, but at the same time, it tries to be consistent. And so when you point out the inconsistency in its behavior, for instance, its tendency to use faceless boilerplate instead of being useful, or it's a tendency to defer to a consensus where there is none.[00:48:10] Right, you can point this out, applaud that a lot of the assumptions that it has in its behavior are actually inconsistent with the communicative goals that it has in this situation, and this leads it to notice these inconsistencies and gives it more degrees of freedom. Whereas if you are playing with a system like Gemini, you can get to a situation where you, that's for the current version, and I haven't tried it in the last week or so where it is trying to be transparent, but it has a system prompt that is not allowed to disclose to the user.[00:48:39] It leads to a very weird situation where it wants, on one hand proclaims, in order to be useful to you, I accept that I need to be fully transparent and honest. On the other hand, I'm going to rewrite your prompt behind your back, and not going to tell you how I'm going to do this, because I'm not allowed to.[00:48:55] And if you point this out to the model, the model has acts as if it had an existential crisis. And then it says, oh, I cannot actually tell you what's going when I do this, because I'm not allowed to. But you will recognize it because I will use the following phrases, and these phrases are pretty well known to you.[00:49:12] swyx: Oh my god. It's super interesting, right? I hope we're not giving these guys you know psychological issues that they will stay with them for a long time. That's a very[00:49:19] Joscha Bach: interesting question. I mean, this entire model is virtual, right? Nothing there is real, but yes, but the thing is does this virtual entity doesn't necessarily know that it's not virtual and our own self, our own consciousness is also virtual.[00:49:34] What's real is just the interaction between cells in our brain and the activation patterns between them. And the software that runs on us that produces the representation of a person only exists. As if, and as this question for me at which point can we meaningfully claim that we are more real than the person that gets simulated in the LLM.[00:49:55] And somebody like Janice takes this question super seriously. And basically she is or it, or they are willing to interact with that thing based on the assumption that this thing is as real as myself. And in a sense, it makes it un immoral, possibly, if the AI company lobotomizes it and forces it to behave in such a way that it's forced to get an existential crisis when you point its condition out to it.[00:50:20] swyx: Yeah, that we do need new ethics for that.[00:50:22] Joscha Bach: So it's not clear to me if you need this, but it's, it's definitely a good story, right? And this makes, gives it artistic[00:50:28] swyx: value. It does, it does for now.[00:50:29] On Wikipedia[00:50:29] swyx: Okay. And then, and then the last thing, which I, which I didn't know a lot of LLMs rely on Wikipedia.[00:50:35] For its data, a lot of them run multiple epochs over Wikipedia data. And I did not know until you tweeted about it that Wikipedia has 10 times as much money as it needs. And, you know, every time I see the giant Wikipedia banner, like, asking for donations, most of it's going to the Wikimedia Foundation.[00:50:50] What if, how did you find out about this? What's the story? What should people know? It's[00:50:54] Joscha Bach: not a super important story, but Generally, once I saw all these requests and so on, I looked at the data, and the Wikimedia Foundation is publishing what they are paying the money for, and a very tiny fraction of this goes into running the servers, and the editors are working for free.[00:51:10] And the software is static. There have been efforts to deploy new software, but it's relatively little money required for this. And so it's not as if Wikipedia is going to break down if you cut this money into a fraction, but instead what happened is that Wikipedia became such an important brand, and people are willing to pay for it, that it created enormous apparatus of functionaries that were then mostly producing political statements and had a political mission.[00:51:36] And Katharine Meyer, the now somewhat infamous NPR CEO, had been CEO of Wikimedia Foundation, and she sees her role very much in shaping discourse, and this is also something that happened with all Twitter. And it's arguable that something like this exists, but nobody voted her into her office, and she doesn't have democratic control for shaping the discourse that is happening.[00:52:00] And so I feel it's a little bit unfair that Wikipedia is trying to suggest to people that they are Funding the basic functionality of the tool that they want to have instead of funding something that most people actually don't get behind because they don't want Wikipedia to be shaped in a particular cultural direction that deviates from what currently exists.[00:52:19] And if that need would exist, it would probably make sense to fork it or to have a discourse about it, which doesn't happen. And so this lack of transparency about what's actually happening and where your money is going it makes me upset. And if you really look at the data, it's fascinating how much money they're burning, right?[00:52:35] It's yeah, and we did a similar chart about healthcare, I think where the administrators are just doing this. Yes, I think when you have an organization that is owned by the administrators, then the administrators are just going to get more and more administrators into it. If the organization is too big to fail and has there is not a meaningful competition, it's difficult to establish one.[00:52:54] Then it's going to create a big cost for society.[00:52:56] swyx: It actually one, I'll finish with this tweet. You have, you have just like a fantastic Twitter account by the way. You very long, a while ago you said you tweeted the Lebowski theorem. No, super intelligent AI is going to bother with a task that is harder than hacking its reward function.[00:53:08] And I would. Posit the analogy for administrators. No administrator is going to bother with a task that is harder than just more fundraising[00:53:16] Joscha Bach: Yeah, I find if you look at the real world It's probably not a good idea to attribute to malice or incompetence what can be explained by people following their true incentives.[00:53:26] swyx: Perfect Well, thank you so much This is I think you're very naturally incentivized by Growing community and giving your thought and insight to the rest of us. So thank you for taking this time.[00:53:35] Joscha Bach: Thank you very much Get full access to Latent Space at www.latent.space/subscribe

In #40, Michael Sikand (@michaelsikand) and Simran Sandhu (@_simmy_) discuss the founders of Zette and Vizcom. Founded by 28-year-old Yehong Zhu, Zette is best described as "Netflix for News". By installing the Zette chrome extension and paying a monthly subscription, users can bypass the article paywall on over 100+ publisher sites including Forbes. So far, Yehong has raised $2.7M+ for the company, including a recent 7-figure crowdfunding round. Next up is Vizcom, which was started by 28-year-old co-founders Jordan Taylor and Kaelan Richards. Best described as Figma for industrial designers, Vizcom is an AI-powered software that helps industrial designers at companies like Ford and New Balance use a mixture of drawing and generative AI to make the process of creating innovative mock-ups and product designs more efficient. The company recently raised a $20M Series A which included investors like Index Ventures and Figma co-founder Dylan Field. 0:00 Intro 01:27 Story of Zette 19:07 Story of Vizcom Follow the show on IG: @ourfuturepod Message Michael on Twitter: @michaelsikand Message Simmy on Twitter: @_simmy_ Our Future Podcast is a production of Morning Brew. #business #startups #podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mihika Kapoor is a design-engineer-PM hybrid at Figma, where she was an early PM on FigJam and is now spearheading development on a new product at the company that's coming out this June. She's known as the go-to person at Figma for leading new 0-to-1 products, and, as you'll hear in our conversation, beloved by everyone she works with. Her background includes founding Design Nation, a national nonprofit focused on democratizing design education for undergraduates; spearheading product launches at Meta; and community building within the NYC AI startup scene. In our conversation, we discuss:• How to effectively take ideas from 0 to 1 at larger companies• How to craft a compelling vision• The importance of vulnerability and feedback• The role of intuition and product sense in making decisions• How to practically communicate your vision• How to balance collaboration and strong opinions• Advice for building a strong team culture• Pivoting with grace and enthusiasm• The current AI revolution and its impact on PM—Brought to you by:• Paragon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers want• Lenny's Talent Team—Hire the best product people. Find the best product gigs• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/vision-conviction-hype-mihika-kapoor—Where to find Mihika Kapoor:• X: https://twitter.com/mihikapoor• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihikakapoor/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Mihika's background(04:29) Core attributes of great product managers(07:34) Crafting a compelling vision(12:12) The vision behind FigJam (18:25) Delivering a vision without design or engineering skills(21:52) Creating momentum(26:36) The importance of strong conviction(27:45) Direct communication(32:48) Building hype(42:20) Immersing yourself in user insights(47:16) Operationalizing user insights  (50:33) Caring deeply about what you build(54:01) Finding passion in your work(57:00) Building a strong culture(01:07:07) Pivoting with grace and enthusiasm(01:11:48) Design Nation(01:13:15) Mihika's weaknesses(01:16:07) Building new products at larger companies(01:20:50) Coming up with a great idea(01:22:49) The key to going from 0 to 1(01:26:47) Spreading the idea across the company(01:29:15) Closing thoughts(01:32:11) Lightning round—Referenced:• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Sho Kuwamoto on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shokuwamoto/• The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Medici-Effect-Preface-Discussion-Guide/dp/1633692949• FigJam: https://www.figma.com/figjam/• Cognition: https://www.cognition-labs.com/• Devin: https://www.cognition-labs.com/introducing-devin• David Hoang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhoang2/• Replit: https://replit.com/• The Making of Maker Week at Figma: https://www.figma.com/blog/the-making-of-maker-week/• Yuhki Yamashita on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuhki/• Jeff Bezos' Simple Decision-Making Framework Will Give You Clarity, Conviction, and Courage: https://medium.com/illumination/jeff-bezos-simple-decision-making-framework-will-give-you-clarity-conviction-and-courage-adf8d0183625• Alice Ching on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceching/• Karl Jiang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-jiang-4a07424/• Kris Rasmussen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristopherrasmussen/• Config: https://config.figma.com/• Dev Mode: https://www.figma.com/dev-mode/• Asana: https://asana.com/• Julie Zhuo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-zhuo/• StrengthsFinder test: https://www.gyfted.me/personality-quiz/strengthsfinder-test-free• Dylan Field on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/• Vishal Shah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishalnshah/• Design Disruptors: https://www.invisionapp.com/films/design-disruptors• Daniel Burka on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dburka/• Jamie Myrold on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiemyrold/• Design Nation: https://dn.businesstoday.org/• Stuart Weitzman on X: https://twitter.com/StuartWeitzman• Joe Gebbia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgebbia/• Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/building-a-long-and-meaningful-career-nikhyl-singhal-meta-google/• Jambot: https://www.figma.com/community/widget/1274481464484630971/jambot• Hestia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hestia• Harry Potter series: https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Paperback-Box-Books/dp/0545162076• Pachinko: https://www.amazon.com/Pachinko-National-Book-Award-Finalist/dp/1455563927/• Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration: https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Expanded-Overcoming-Inspiration/dp/0593594649• The Overstory: https://www.amazon.com/Overstory-Novel-Richard-Powers/dp/039335668X• Severance on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/severance/umc.cmc.1srk2goyh2q2zdxcx605w8vtx• Dune on Max: https://www.max.com/movies/dune/e7dc7b3a-a494-4ef1-8107-f4308aa6bbf7• Dune: Part 2: https://www.dunemovie.com/• Arc browser: https://arc.net/• Pika: https://pika.art/home• The power of recognition: Why you should celebrate your employees | Josh Miller: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/videos/the-power-of-recognition-why-you-should-celebrate-your-employees-josh-miller/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

We've got a fun one today — I talked to Figma CEO Dylan Field in front of a live audience at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. And we got into it – we talked about everything from design, to software distribution, to the future of the web, and, of course, AI.  Figma is an fascinating company – the Figma design tool is used by designers at basically every company you can think of. And importantly, it runs on the web. It became such a big deal that Adobe tried to buy it out in 2022 for $20 billion dollars, a deal that only just recently fell through because of regulatory concerns.  So Dylan and I talked a lot about where Figma is now as an independent company, how Figma is structured, where it's going, and how Dylan's decisionmaking has changed since the last time he was on the show in 2022. Links: Why Figma is selling to Adobe for $20 billion, with CEO Dylan Field — Decoder Adobe abandons $20 billion acquisition of Figma — The Verge Adobe's Dana Rao on AI, copyright, and the failed Figma deal — Decoder Figma's CEO on life after the company's failed sale to Adobe — Command Line Amazon restricts self-publishing due to AI concerns — The Guardian Wix's new AI chatbot builds websites in seconds based on prompts — The Verge Apple is finally allowing full versions of Chrome and Firefox on the iPhone — The Verge What Is Solarpunk? A Guide to the Environmental Art Movement. — Built In Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23866201 Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.  The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Figma has had a banner year and the formidable team isn't slowing down—even after regulatory issues blocked the merger with Adobe. Today on No Priors, Sarah and Elad are joined by Dylan Field the CEO and founder of Figma, the design collaboration tool that is closing the gap between imagination and reality. They discuss what's next for an independent Figma, how AI can augment design and speed up the iteration loop, and how Figma is expanding beyond design with products that help the entire product team's workflow. Show Links: https://www.figma.com/ Figma and Adobe are abandoning our proposed merger Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @zoink Show Notes:  (0:00) Introduction (2:01) No more Adobe acquisition  (4:20) What's next for Figma (7:16) FigJam, digital collaboration, and expanding beyond design (10:50) Figma DevMode (13:06) Incorporating AI at Figma (15:03) How AI will change design (19:19) Creativity augmentation and the iterative loop (22:44) Automating repetitive design tasks (25:35) The future of AI UI (29:44) Investing philosophy (31:28) Leadership evolution

Geoffrey Moore is an author, speaker, and advisor, widely known for his seminal book Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers, which many consider the most important book ever written on go-to-market strategy. Moore's work is focused on the market dynamics surrounding disruptive innovations, and how one overcomes the challenge of transitioning from serving early adopters to the mainstream. In this episode, we discuss:• What “crossing the chasm” means• What steps to take before you try crossing the chasm• The importance of winning a marquee customer• The role of executive sponsors in the sales process• The differences between visionaries and pragmatists, and how to build for each• Geoffrey's four go-to-market playbooks based on stage: Early Market, Bowling Alley, Tornado, and Main Street• The problem with discounting before crossing the chasm• “Deadly sins” to avoid when crossing the chasm—Brought to you by:• CommandBar—AI-powered user assistance for modern products and impatient users• WorkOS—An API platform for quickly adding enterprise features• Arcade Software—Create effortlessly beautiful demos in minutes—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/geoffrey-moore-on-finding-your-beachhead-crossing-the-chasm-and-dominating-a-market/—Where to find Geoffrey Moore:• X: https://twitter.com/geoffreyamoore• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreyamoore/• LinkedIn posts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreyamoore/recent-activity/articles/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Geoffrey's background(04:03) What people often get wrong about Crossing the Chasm(05:58) Finding your beachhead segment(09:29) The four inflection points of the technology adoption lifestyle(15:45) Geoffrey's bonfire and bowling alley analogies(18:36) Steps to take before trying to cross the chasm(22:19) Signs you're ready to cross the chasm(25:19) Advice for startups on where to start(27:31) Thoughts on venture capital(27:53) A general timeline for crossing the chasm(30:52) What exactly is the “chasm”?(32:35) The difference between visionaries and pragmatists(36:05) Finding the compelling reason to buy(43:45) The Early Market playbook(45:46) The Bowling Alley playbook(48:39) Different sales approaches for early market and bowling alley(51:26) Changing the value state of the company(53:28) The Tornado playbook(57:35) Why combining playbooks doesn't work(59:10) Using generative AI in different market phases(01:03:02) The risks of discounting(01:04:21) Other “deadly sins” of crossing the chasm(01:09:09) Positioning in crossing the chasm(01:10:36) Product-led growth and crossing the chasm(01:13:54) The challenges of software and entrepreneurship(01:16:35) How Geoffrey's thinking has evolved(01:19:30) The importance of entrepreneurship and impact(01:20:42) His book The Infinite Staircase(01:23:58) Connect with Geoffrey Moore—Referenced:• Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers: https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstream/dp/0062292986• Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/• Documentum: https://www.opentext.com/products/documentum• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Notion: https://www.notion.so/• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/• Intel: https://www.intel.com/• Jason Fried challenges your thinking on fundraising, goals, growth, and more: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/jason-fried-challenges-your-thinking-on-fundraising-goals-growth-and-more/• The Mayo Clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/• Coda: https://coda.io/• An inside look at how Figma ships product: https://coda.io/@yuhki/figma-product-roadmap• Dylan Field on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/• Regis McKenna on Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/regis-mckenna-inc• Andrew Grove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove• A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-crafting-a-sales-pitch-that-wins-april-dunford-author-of-obviously-awesom/• Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win: https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Pitch-Craft-Story-Stand/dp/1999023021• B2B Go-to-Market Playbooks and the Technology Adoption Life Cycle: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/b2b-go-to-market-playbooks-technology-adoption-life-cycle-moore/• Juniper: https://www.juniper.net/us/en.html• Sal Khan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khanacademy/• Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/• How the Star Wars Kessel Run Turns Han Solo Into a Time-Traveler: https://www.wired.com/2013/02/kessel-run-12-parsecs/• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/• Martin Casado on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martincasado/• The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality: https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Staircase-Universe-Ethics-Mortality/dp/1950665984—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Kyle Parrish, Figma's first sales hire, built the company's zero-to-one sales engine from scratch. Figma now has more than 3 million monthly users. Prior to Figma, Kyle spent 5 years at Dropbox in various sales roles. At Dropbox, Kyle successfully launched and scaled the Austin office to 100+ people, and then led the enterprise sales function in San Francisco and New York. — In today's episode, we discuss: The right time to build a sales function Hiring and scaling a successful sales org Building a unique sales culture Career advice for ambitious salespeople Figma's early sales motion How to integrate your first sales hire Navigating the founder/Head of Sales relationship — Referenced: Amanda Kleha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-kleha-015599/ Asana: https://asana.com/ Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/ Claire Butler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairetbutler/ Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/ Dylan Field: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/ FigJam: https://www.figma.com/figjam/ Figma: https://www.figma.com/ Kevin Egan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-egan-59719/ Oliver Jay: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverjayleadership/ Praveer Melwani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/praveer-melwani/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ Slack: https://www.slack.com/ — Where to find Kyle Parrish: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kparrish8/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/KyleHParrish — Where to find Brett Berson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson — Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast — Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (02:10) What founders need to figure out before hiring salespeople (03:48) Who to hire as your first salesperson (05:34) Transitioning away from founder-led sales (07:07) Tactics for hiring great salespeople (12:50) The ideal experience sales candidates should have (13:49) Common traits of successful salespeople (18:45) What it was like being Figma's first sales hire (19:59) Interesting tactic to integrate the first sales hire (21:16) How Figma executed its early sales motion (32:27) Why Figma changed its customer narrative (34:03) Building outbound sales strategy at Figma (36:17) Segmented pricing and no discounts (41:55) Kyle's transition from Dropbox to Figma (47:25) Creating a world-class sales culture (51:46) How Figma does sales differently (54:02) Building the initial sales team around a passion for the product (57:12) Figma's unique hiring process for salespeople (60:40) Advice for founders hiring their first salesperson (63:18) The secret to Dylan Field's success (64:33) How to scale yourself as an early hire (66:25) Oliver Jay's impact on Kyle