Before Figma's rise to dominance, the design tool landscape experienced several different eras. When I started my career in the early 2000s, we were in what I would call the "Photoshop era," where Adobe Photoshop was the industry standard for any digital (interface) design work.

I still remember the (very painful) experience of spending my first hard-earned money on buying an original license, which cost around $600 back then. It was a huge but worthy investment that allowed me to kick-start my commercial design career.

The "Photoshop era" lasted roughly for the next 10 years until new tools such as InVision and Sketch emerged, stirring the waters. At one point, InVision was the hottest design (prototyping) tool and a coveted brand to work for, partly due to their pioneering work-from-anywhere policy. However, InVision's time on the sun was short-lived, as it eventually flamed out in a quite spectacular fashion.

Sketch seemed to be the obvious heir to the throne for a while, but ultimately its reign was also brief. There were numerous reasons for this, but let’s just say that the overall workflow was less than ideal. The Sketch/Zeplin/Abstract/InVision dynamics still give me nightmares. Anyone who worked on large design projects during that time understands the struggle.

Some might suggest mentioning Adobe XD, but it was always somewhat of an outlier—a poorly executed product that never gained significant market traction before Adobe ultimately decided to retire it.

All these tools, despite their innovations and initial success, ultimately fell short of creating a seamless design experience. None of them could maintain their momentum long enough to take over the market.

Then, in 2016, Figma launched, and by 2019, it had started to dominate. And its meteoric rise was well-deserved. It focused on solving critical problems and introduced truly innovative features. The real-time online collaboration, simple and clean interface, and enticing freemium model were groundbreaking.

Since its rise, Figma has become the primary tool for UI design, prototyping, and design systems. Its versatile capabilities make it a valuable asset even beyond UI design, extending to communication design, product ideation, data visualization, and more.

As a designer, I’ve never seen such a great multi-purpose tool in my career so far. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Figma revolutionized my daily design life, and it certainly deserves recognition for that.

Globally, Figma has created a "love brand," particularly among younger designers and those who focus primarily on UI design.

Its savvy community engagement, strong brand equity, and initially user-friendly approaches made it easy to forget that, at the end of the day, Figma is still a business.

And businesses need to grow, especially when they’ve raised a significant amount of venture capital and are operating in a post-zero interest rate era. This is where, it seems, the current friction begins.

Figma has raised approximately $750 million in venture capital to date. That’s a lot of money – and even more expectations to deliver returns. Simply because, the more money you raise, the more expectations you face.

Now, with the Adobe $20 billion mega-deal off the table, another acquisition looks unlikely, which means that to deliver on its massive (investor) expectations, Figma will likely seek to go public, through an initial public offering (IPO).

However, the path to an IPO is complex, requiring both internal factors (financial health, operational efficiency, growth momentum) and external factors (market conditions, investor sentiment) to align favourably and can sometimes take years.

As Figma pushes for significant business growth to build up its IPO momentum, the lines between user-centricity and business-centricity may continue to blur, resulting in even more complaints and uproar. Balancing user love with the pressure to grow the business is never easy.

For example, simplifying pricing plans to make them more transparent and user-friendly might seem like a no-brainer from a user perspective, but if it stalls or even decreases business growth, it becomes a much harder decision.

Similarly, calls for unlimited variables — a seemingly obvious feature from the user’s point of view — might be resisted if it negatively impacts revenue per account for example.

Or the extreme push to add expensive dev seats breaking some users' hearts ("I’ve been an avid Figma advocate for years, and now I feel like a fool".)

After all, Figma's incredible annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth from $75 million in 2020 to $600 million in 2023 hasn’t come solely from user love.

It’s also been driven by aggressive sales and pricing techniques and dark patterns that leverage its dominant market position.

While Figma is not alone in adopting such strategies — big players like Adobe and Amazon have also entered these murky waters — it’s a clear indication of the challenges the company faces as it tries to satisfy both users and investors.