Iconiq’s will Grifation explains how his company celebrated Figma and why investors sold stocks

Will Griffiths was only two months in his job as a legitimate investor in Iconiq when he met a 19 -year -old university leakage named Dylan Field. This would lead to one of his distinctive seeds investments, in a start -up company called Figma.

Thursday , Figma has been published with arrows From the public subscription opening price of $ 33 to be closed at $ 115.50 and the market rate of $ 47 billion. Griffiths cannot be more effective in praising the company.

Griffiths smiled: “You go to one of these user conferences and you are like, there are 15,000 people here and 5000 have a Figma tattoo,” Griffiths smiled. From the first days, the founders of this company who provide programs for designers have had a “strong desire to win this ecosystem, present and redefine it.”

However, in 2013 in that first meeting, the participating founders did not test Dylan Field and Ivan Wallace. At this stage, it was an icon. It was then known to be a very secret wealth management company for many of the richest technology in Silicon Valley, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsi.

However, Figma had already had a hero: Field was trained in LinkedIn under the CEO of Jeff Weiner at the time. Winner was an angel investor (and bought more Inventory in subsequent toursAlso) and the field was displayed to Griffiths.

“We contacted Figma before we have an early box, before we have any legitimate box,” Griffiths told Techcrunch. The investor remembers trips to the founding meeting. “It was like two players and dogs in an apartment in Palu Alto, and they were working on these new drawings and design capacity in a browser.”

The illustration shows how light can be processed when editing an image in a browser. At that time, the browser -based design program, based on Webgl, was revolutionary. TECH GIANT AdOBE had a graphics design market with desktop software. “I thought he was crazy,” Griffiths remembers.

The idea was not proven by Alexis Ohahanian, who was investing from his company that was prepared at the time, was transferred to Figma when he saw the product years later in 2016, as he indicated in Tweet this week. Ohanian Figma described as a member of the “Miss Miss List”.

But Griffiths wrote a check. By the way, the seed shares were priced at $ 0.0878 each, Figma Detected In S-1A. Griffin wrote more checks as Figma raised additional rounds. The company raised a total of about 332 million dollars from the project financing until 2024, according to Pitchbook estimates.

“We have invested in the seeds,” Griffin said. “We have invested more.

Iconiq has not ended with the possession of at least 5 % of the company, a tape that publicly requires Figma to detect its share. But it has enough to celebrate the public subscription in IconQ offices.

Griffin said: “One of the ways we celebrate is that we believe that the price of the closing share will be on the first day. It is a prediction competition around the company.” “There are some good rewards and rewards.” If someone postponed this number, it may end up with a healthy cash reward or even something like a trip to Hawaii.

As for the individual part of this public subscription, Griffen has some insight. Most of the shares were sold Of investors sharesand Including the fieldThe company said that the new shares issued by the company.

He said: “I think it is generous that the current investors are ready to sell a lot to create enough offer to this public subscription.”

Figma basics are so strong The public subscription was 40 times in the subscriptionAccording to Bloomberg, this means that the number of investors want the stocks more than the available offer.

Griffin explained that this could be almost as a problem like lack of interest in the investor. He said that the largest institutional investors will not bother the public subscription as they cannot trade hundreds of millions of shares. If the public subscription does not float enough, the available stock prices may become artificially inflated, which means that the company will not be valid properly. If the prices drop after the opening day, the company’s value can also be reduced artificial.

Griffin said that current contributors to Figma do not really want to sell shares at $ 33. “We have been with this work since 2015, and we have not sold a stake. We will be buyers with meaning in public subscription,” he said.

However, Griffin emphasized that the public subscription day is just a milestone, not an end. He said: “I met a 19 -year -old young man, and we have formed a partnership.” He describes himself as “proud” by seeing Maidan, CEO of Figma, “continued to mature and grow, but he has the same vision, morals and originality.”

Meanwhile, he says he will spend the public subscription day in Figma, “a meeting with the founders of the next generation.”