Kevin Fremon

Cybertruck but in a roadster! 🥵

I worked at InVision during its heyday, from $15m-$100m in revenue. If nothing but to share an important takeaway for other founders, Figma is not why InVision failed. Simply, InVision failed because they stopped listening to customers. Figma built tools InVision customers had been asking for for years. IN had become so obsessed with winning against Adobe and Sketch, and trying to own the end-to-end design system on a much too aggressive timeline that it lost sight of solving for the customer on what they needed at that moment in time, not years from now. Understandably, in a category where Designers are fickle and switch tools easily, IN had every right to be paranoid about the incumbents. Their vision was incredibly ambitious, but that ambition caused a lack of focus on their core product. To be clear, IN had an immense love for their customers and the design community. They championed a movement that gave designers a voice and seat at the table. They didn’t just sell software but a purpose. They created a category! But while IN focused on Adobe, Figma focused on quietly building a better product, slowly. Figma had only raised $15m until 2018, and it took them 8 years to hit their first $1M in rev. I have incredible respect and love for InVision’s founders, team, and know first hand just how HARD building a company is for the long haul. I can only imagine the decisions they needed to make on a daily basis. I feel such great sadness for everyone involved. But while it’s really easy to point fingers at innovators dilemma (totally a fair point), my POV (which may reflect differently from others whom I respect)…figma’s entrance just exposed an internal weakness at InVision, that at which point when you’re already a $100m business, is really hard to course correct.

This is what building a startup feels like.

Annual planning doesn't work. Not for people. Not for companies. So instead of spending today planning out all of 2024, just set goals for Q1. (Repeat the process again at the end of March for Q2.) It's the only thing I've tried that actually works.