On Figma's oversubscribed IPO from @WeberWest in @NewcomerMedia: Figma ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange Thursday and seeing its shares skyrocket by more than 3X when trading opened was a celebratory moment that’s been all-too-rare in the venture industry of late. It’s not just that Index Ventures, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia all stand to post ten-figure gains on their investments, with Index looking at a return of more than 1000x based on Figma’s soaring share price. Nor is it merely the huge first-day pop, which along with the success of few other recent offerings is likely to lure fresh IPO candidates to the market. It’s that Dylan Field and Figma represent the best of the best of what venture capital can bring to the world. The company and its backers won big by doing it the old-fashioned way, building the company at a measured pace over more than a decade. It’s something the venture industry needs more of as it figures out its future. With Figma, there’s no fancy arbitraging of GPUs, or scrapping for margins on consumer lending, or worrying about whether your roll-up is actually good for customers, or loading up a bazooka of cash to blow away competitors. Instead Field, who by all accounts was a born founder, came up with a very good product idea: browser-based design software, which had the potential to open up design in interesting ways and offer new types of collaboration. It was a steep technical challenge, but thanks to his already-impressive track record in college he got a Thiel fellowship in 2012, and the next year raised a seed round of $3.9 million, with Index taking about half and an Iconiq consortium also participating. Then Field and his co-founders worked on the product for a couple of years before raising a $14 million Series A. Then they worked on it for three more years before raising a $25 million Series B in 2018. They raised $40 million the next year and $50 million the year after that and then $200 million in 2021. This is how venture capital is supposed to work. Give a great founder with a great idea some money, and as the company makes progress put in a little more. Rinse and repeat, and if everything goes absolutely perfectly you eventually get to an exit like Figma’s. It’s very different from many of today’s big startups, which sometimes look like fund-raising operations with a tech business on the side. And many small startups position less as long-term bets on an exciting idea than as targets for a quick acquisition — or an acqui-hire.