Figma

Adobe is the 30th largest company in the world at $315 billion

Sam uses Adobe's market cap to argue Figma's $10B valuation has huge headroom. Adobe was worth $315 billion — the 30th largest company in the world — making it a massive target for Figma to chip away at.

“It is $315 billion. And if I'm not mistaken, that might be one of the— let's look it up. It might be one of the 50th— let's see. Adobe would be— it's one of the biggest companies in the world. So Adobe is the 30th largest company in the world.”

Unbundle, move to cloud, make it multiplayer — Figma's three macro trends

Shaan breaks down why Figma wins: unbundle the most valuable piece out of a suite (Photoshop from Creative Cloud), make it cloud-based, and make it multiplayer (live shared cursors on one canvas). Riding all three macro shifts at once.

“It's like first unbundling. It's like, well, Creative Cloud brings in $12 billion a year. Well, let's unbundle the most valuable part of it, Photoshop, and let's do it differently. Okay. What's different? Second trend, cloud-based, right? Third trend, multiplayer, right? Like when I'm using Figma, my mouse is moving around, your mouse, I'll also see what you're doing on the same canvas.”

Steal thisTo attack an incumbent suite: unbundle its most valuable feature, rebuild it cloud-native, and add real-time multiplayer collaboration.

GitHub for documents: branch, fork, and merge knowledge work

Maples describes his portfolio company Almanac as bringing GitHub-style collaboration to documents. Just as GitHub made code social and Figma did it for design, document tools should let teams branch, fork, merge, and track every version, including when a forked employee handbook gets reused elsewhere.

“Why shouldn't you, just like GitHub, be able to branch and merge and fork documents and be able to, within that one document, know every version of that document that ever existed and everybody's— and if somebody forks it and uses it, let's say it's an employee handbook, if somebody uses it for their next company, why not want to know that as well?”

Steal thisApply the GitHub branch/fork/merge model to a category of knowledge work that still ships static files around.

Multiplayer software: turn single-player tools into shared ones

Shaan lays out his 'multiplayer software' framework: Figma made Photoshop collaborative, Google Docs made Word multiplayer, Front made the inbox multiplayer. He scans his desktop for single-player apps and asks which could be made shared, landing on the browser as the biggest untapped one.

“So I just look at on my computer screen, I go look at the, the, the kind of the desktop apps, all the apps I have, and I just think, which ones of these are single player today that could be multiplayer? And the biggest one is, uh, the browser. So Chrome, right, or Safari or whatever you use. So today your browser is a completely single player experience.”

Steal thisList every single-player desktop app you use and pick the one where real-time collaboration would create the most value, then build the multiplayer version.

Make single-player tools collaborative to mint multi-billion-dollar companies

Shaan's repeatable pattern: take a staple tool used solo and build the team/collaborative version. Photoshop to Figma, Word to Google Docs, email to Front. Cracking the collaborative use case of a single-player staple is a recipe for multi-billion-dollar companies, and he'd fund someone doing it for the browser.

“anytime you take a staple tool that's today used only single player, and if you actually crack the collaborative use case, it's a recipe for multi-billion dollar companies. It just keeps happening. So if I found that around the browser, I'd be excited about it.”

Steal thisFind a widely-used single-player tool and build its real-time collaborative, multiplayer version.

Build a Figma-style video editor purpose-built for YouTubers

Shaan points out that YouTubers still edit on pre-YouTube tools (iMovie, Final Cut, Sony Vegas), and pitches a video editor built with YouTube as the output, bundling everything creators have to do anyway, sold as a paid Figma-style product.

“even if you just took that as the premise, like, hey, I'm going to build the video editing software that's best for video for YouTubers and I'm going to build it with YouTube in mind. YouTube is the output. And I'm going to build in all the things that everyone has to do for YouTube anyways. I think that's a service you could charge for in a Figma-style, Figma-style tool”

Steal thisRebuild a legacy pro tool around one modern output platform and charge creators a subscription.

Single-player to multiplayer: the collaboration wedge

Shaan's idea-generation framework: take any work tool that's still solo and make it collaborative, the way Google Docs did to Word, Airtable to Excel, and Figma to Photoshop. Find what's still single-player and make it multiplayer.

“So the question is what's left? What is something that today we all still do solo, you know, single player and we should be doing it multiplayer. And so I don't know what's left, like design has been done, docs has been done, Excel has been done, but there might be something still in the sort of workflow or workspace. And maybe it's by vertical, maybe like consulting companies use this one thing a lot or defense contractors use this one thing, but like everything that's a solo player thing will be multiplayer.”

Steal thisFind a work tool that's still single-player and build the collaborative, browser-based multiplayer version.