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Figma and the cost of collaboration
How Figma’s pricing is anti-product-led growth
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Last month, I paid for Figma for the first time.
I wrote about the upgrade experience on Medium and showed that the number of paying teams is a big KPI for Figma right now, as well as the average revenue per team.
I got this sense from seeing a whopping eight prompts to upgrade in a single session and seeing a notable increase in the urgency of their upgrade messaging; now it’s all ‘last file’, ‘0 left’, and ‘you’re running out’.
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This monetisation push shows in their numbers too: Figma hit $600 million in annual revenue last year (up 50% from $400M in 2022) and reported a 150% net dollar retention rate (i.e. every $100 spent results in $150 in the future). We’ll come back to Figma’s tactic that boosts their net dollar later...but the TL;DR is that it’s dark AF.
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From a business perspective, these are incredibly attractive numbers.