An inside look at how Figma builds product | Yuhki Yamashita (CPO of Figma)

**Yuhki Yamashita** (0:00)
There's something controversial about this idea that everyone can see what you're doing, or that multiple designers can be in the file at the same time. We like to say that one of the first responses we saw Oeyland's Figma was, if this is the future of design, I'm quitting. I'm changing careers.
And there's that kind of tension, that narrative tension, but that is signal that you're kind of part of this revolution. And you're trying to change something. And when it equips your customers or user base with that, then I think that's something that they can really get behind and champion. So it's not just that they're championing for a tool. They're also championing for a new way of working. Obviously, that's a tall order.
I don't want to come up with that. But hopefully, if you're a founder and you're working on something, your vision is so big that you have those kinds of ideas. And it's like, how do you actually equip your customers to want to talk about that?

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:58)
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and scaling today's most successful companies. Today, my guest is Yuki Yamashita. Yuki is Chief Product Officer at Figma, where he's been for almost four years. Prior to Figma, he was at Uber both as a product leader and also interestingly, as Head of Design for one of their bigger product teams. Before Uber, Yuki spent time at Google and Microsoft, even taught an introductory computer science course at Harvard. In our conversation, we explore Figma's product development philosophy, how they build such consistently great products, how they hire, what habit Yuki has found to be the most instrumental in his success in his career, and also what Yuki and his product team have learned by building a product-led growth business. This episode builds on a newsletter post where I interview Yuki about how Figma builds product. So if you enjoyed this episode or even while you're listening to it, I highly recommend you check it out. It's currently my fourth most popular newsletter post of all time. You can find it at lennysnewsletter.com.
With that, I bring you Yuki Yamashita after a short word from our wonderful sponsors.
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Yuki, welcome to the podcast.

**Yuhki Yamashita** (4:30)
Thank you for having me, Lenny.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:32)
I'm quite honored to have you on this podcast. For folks who don't know, we actually collaborated already on a newsletter post that has quickly become my fourth most popular post of all time, which you can find if you search for how Figma builds product.