Figma found its early audience by talking to the people doing the work
Dylan Field's account of early designer conversations offers a practical lesson in choosing people whose feedback can change an offer.
Relevant feedback begins with relevant people#
An audience can look impressive without helping you understand whether the offer works. People who do the job can often ask more useful questions than people who simply like the idea.
In South Park Commons' conversation with Dylan Field, he describes mapping designers' networks and inviting designers for coffee and early-product feedback. He says early users joined the development journey and many remained friends, customers and evangelists at the time of the 2021 account.
The same account says the initial community-first strategy changed. It would be misleading to turn this into a claim that a public community preceded the product or produced a specific growth rate.
Choose people who can challenge the offer#
For a design tool, practitioners can describe how work is created and shared. For an operational service, the people handling the process can describe handoffs and failure points. For a manufacturer, the people using or servicing a product can expose requirements a commercial overview misses.
Ask why a person's experience is relevant to the question you need answered. A popular profile, a senior title or a large company logo is not enough. You may need several roles to understand the job and the buying decision.
Prepare questions that can reveal a mismatch. Useful feedback should sometimes make the plan harder to defend. That is how you discover what needs changing before committing to a wider market.
Keep the user and the buyer visible#
The person using an offer may not approve the purchase. A champion may care deeply but still need implementation, financial or leadership agreement.
Record the job, the person's responsibility, who else is affected and what a next decision requires. Do not make every user conversation into a purchase request. Equally, do not report product enthusiasm as commercial demand without investigating the decision around it.
Use the first-conversation guide to gather recent events and current alternatives. The account-growth guide helps when a relationship needs to extend to another team or problem.
Build a relationship around useful work#
A person can become an advocate because the work becomes useful to them and they choose to share it. That choice cannot be manufactured by placing “champion” in a CRM field.
Explain what you learned, follow through on agreed feedback and ask whether the next step is relevant. Keep requests proportionate. Do not assume permission to quote a person, display their logo or introduce their colleagues.
Kite helps businesses meet the right people for an objective. Define the people around the actual work and decision you need to understand. The relationship can then develop from a useful conversation, with your business responsible for what happens afterward.
Sources behind this story
Primary accounts and industry guidance inform the facts. The discussion and recommendations are Kite University's editorial analysis.
- Dylan Field on Figma's early adopters South Park Commons · conversation with Dylan Field · Checked 2026-10-14
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