Figma and the cost of collaboration

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’.

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.

From a business perspective, these are incredibly attractive numbers.