LIVE FROM CONFIG: Jeremy Hindle, Nairi Tashjian Hourdajian, Andrew Reed, Elliot Jay Stocks, John LePore, Marty Ringlein

28:31And now all I can imagine is that's the scariest Black Mirror episode. It's the thing that was loading the dishwasher. It didn't even mean to kill you. It just was like, I can't stop swinging my arm at 90 miles per hour. It's wild. Anything else you're excited to check out while you're here? Any other partners you're talking to? Oh, man. There's many amazing people. There's a ton of wild talks that I want to check out. I've spent a lot of time bumping into some friends that are in the automotive industry. I've done a ton of work in that space as well, which is like probably the digital experience that needs the most.

29:11Yeah. Unbucking. Yeah, totally. Most people just plug in their phone and then they get this very basic, like Apple hasn't really refreshed CarPlay in years. The positive is that manufacturers are realizing that people love analog buttons. Oh, yeah. The problem is they're realizing that today, which means that products will be available in about seven years. That's how long it takes to go for a special. There's some manufacturers that are putting, they figured out how to put buttons on top of the touchscreens. Have you seen this? Yeah, that's kind of a funny, like, hack, because they're like, we just want to do one big touchscreen, but somebody wanted a volume button, so we'll just glue that on, and it'll be capacitive, so it just acts like a thing.

29:51Yeah, and it's got, like, a little, like, sausage inside of it so that it activates the touchscreen. Yeah, the touchscreen, basically. Such a funny thing. Well, anyway, thank you so much for stopping by. Good luck with the rest of your config. Good luck with your talk. You nervous? I'm stoked. I'm excited. I love doing that stuff. I'm nervous about walking around because there's just so many goddamn super cool people everywhere. Not enough time. That gets me into my turn of the show. We were at a conference last week, and one of our friends said he shook so many hands, his hand got bruised. It's crazy.

30:24So stay healthy. Thank you. Enjoy. Have a blast while you're here. We'll talk to you soon. All right. Take care. Bye. Great to hang. Yeah. It's fascinating. We have our next guest coming into the studio. I love the motion design DNA moving from film and television into the real world. We're finally able to instantiate some of the stuff. And you do see it pop up in real world devices, but it feels like Hollywood is always the best at defining some kind of new UI paradigm and then actually bringing it. Hey, what's going on? Great to meet you. Nice to meet you. Great to meet you. I'm John. Excited.

31:04Excited to have you. Feel free to throw on those headphones if you want. You'll be able to hear your own voice. But let's kick it off with a little introduction of yourself, who you are, what you do, why you're here, how you're enjoying the day for those who don't know you. Sure, yeah. I'm Elliot, and I am a designer and author. I'm here and speaking tomorrow so I can relax today. I just like to enjoy it. I've just seen one of my very old friends do a fantastic presentation on stage. Is his name Dylan Field? Tim Van Damme. And yeah, they just announced some amazing stuff and it's great to be here.

31:35So what's your talk about tomorrow? It's about typography. Typography in design systems. Very cool. Give us the full backstory. I mean, I'll go out on a limb and say you're the godfather of type. It's a little bit dramatic. I certainly have had a massive influence on type online. So yeah, I would love to kind of hear the full journey. Cool. That's kind of you to say. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I've been super lucky to kind of work in the type industry for many years. I did a bunch of stuff with Adobe fonts. I'm now actually doing some more stuff with Adobe fonts and Google fonts as well.

32:18And I like to kind of balance things like writing about typography and about design with actually being handled in the tools as well. And yeah, it's been great to just get to share everyone. What is the structure of the industry? I imagine that there's the big players, Adobe, Google, like you mentioned, who are buying lots of fonts, but then there's also companies that need whole fonts for their own brand systems and their design systems, I'm sure. So is that kind of the shape of the industry, or is there another player that's really important? How would you break it down? It's the independent firms that make some of the fonts that you use and interact with on a daily basis, even some of the fonts that I'm sure we use at TBPN, but we'd love to understand the market structure.

33:05Yeah, absolutely. I mean, those indie foundries that you mentioned are kind of the backbone of the industry, really, because even you've got folks like Adobe, for instance, that library is made up of a bunch of different foundry partners, and so they are not owned by companies like Adobe. They are independent practitioners. A lot of the time, they are one-person bands, a lot of the time, you know, super indie. Obviously, you've got folks like Monotype as well who do own large libraries, and they have their IP. But the type industry is really just made up of a huge number of independent foundries who then use those distribution channels like Adobe Fonts, et cetera, to get stuff on there.

33:45Monotype have MyFonts as well, which is also another big channel. And the differentiator there, I suppose, is like Google Fonts, they are open source. Yeah. And so they tend to not exist elsewhere, although Adobe Fonts does pull in those as well. One second, we're going to pull in Gary Tan. He's just stopping by. Gary, it's great to see you. How are you doing? I know you've got to get out of here quickly. Good to see you. Busy man. It's great to see you. How's your Figma config been? Oh, it's been sick. Yeah? All I wanted to say was keep mogging, guys. Thank you. Keep mogging. Always mogging. Always be mogging.

34:16We'll see you, Gary. I'll write you well. I'm sure, you know, are you familiar with Gary? I have not. He's the president of Y Combinator. Also quite an accomplished designer. A bunch of the logos of some of the biggest companies. So I want to know more about the business model of working with Adobe. Is it like Spotify where you put your stuff up and then the more it gets used, the more you get paid? Or is it more like a one-off deal? Is it selling a book? Yeah, usage is shared to the successful fonts that get more usage. Okay. they get more money. Is it at the level where people are trying to pay influencers to use their fonts to promote them, go trending, go viral?

34:59From my perspective, how mature is the industry? From my perspective, you can see this sort of hype cycle with individual fonts where oftentimes one designer will leverage a font in a really unique way and then three months later there's sort of an explosion of sites using that. And we've even had people that have been maybe a little bit too inspired by what we're doing at TBPN actually find the font that we use for our logo and sort of use that for their logo. It's all mostly fair game on the internet. Yeah, I mean you can never predict how that stuff takes off as well. Foundries obviously try and look at trends and see what's doing well and sometimes try to to replicate that, but sometimes if something blows up and there's no real reason it comes from maybe someone using it or whatever, and some foundries have done very well out there.

35:56I know some type designers who've struggled for many years and slogged away, and they've released one thing and it blows up and they can go and buy a house. Yeah, it's a hit business. It's just like music. It is like Spotify. Totally, yeah. It's amazing. Are there specific eras of font design, typography design that you think of as you tell the story of how typography has evolved over the last, I don't know, 50, 100 years or something? I mean, it's driven by technology. A lot when you think of the move from metal type, wood type, photo type setting, early digital type. When you look at what we know of as fonts these days, you've got the 90s when folks like Fontshop really pioneered that, originally making them available on actual physical disks, and then obviously online, and that would really radically change things.

36:42And you had web fonts come along in around 2009, 2010, which before that you couldn't use anything on your websites other than Georgia, Ariel, Donna, Times New Roman. People forget that that was a pretty huge thing for web design. I was a web designer exclusively at that time, and it was kind of a wild time to be working on the web with all this new stuff that we had to play with. How is the industry reacting and responding to generative AI I mean, I haven't played around with any tools around type myself, but I imagine we're not far away from somebody kind of saying, hey, I like these three fonts.

37:23Generate me something that new. Yeah, it is kind of odd that ChatGPT, when they generate images, they can now do text pretty effectively, but they're not using an actual font library. Like a source. Yeah, a source. It's kind of just creating its own on the fly. Yeah, I mean, like everything that they are, it's just changing day to day. There are definitely some experiments going on. There are some entirely AI-generated font generators which have mixed results. But yeah, there are some tools which will generate images and as part of that, text is part of that. There is some recent huge leaps been made in that.

38:02The designer Jessica Hish has been posting a bunch of stuff, some experiments she's been doing with ChatGPT where she's a very accomplished lettering artist, but she's looking at what ChatGPT can actually put out and it's actually, you know, the progress is incredible. It's now its ability to actually do some half-decent lettering is, you know, it's super interesting. Where you look at a few months ago and you'd be lucky if you even have, like, the right word spelled correctly. No, that was always, that was the most quick way to identify if something was AI-generated was just how badly all the text was botched.

38:39Exactly. But it's certainly, yeah, it's getting uncanny. We're pushing past the uncanny valley now. How do you expect kind of the business models of the industry to evolve? I imagine I can see it going, you know, the way of fashion to some degree where, you know, maybe in the future you can get kind of a factory font that was just generated. but there's something about typography that's almost soulful. When you discover something you can just see, you can feel the attention that was put into it. Where do you expect the kind of, how do you expect kind of the industry to evolve and kind of the business models to evolve as assuming, I think we can safely assume that generative AI will be twice as good at type in a year, right?

39:36Maybe more. Yeah, I mean, totally AI-generated fonts are coming for sure. It's going to be a thing. And it is interesting for the business because at least in the US, you can't copyright a design. You can trademark a name. So things like Helvetica are always going to be trademarked and known by Monotype, but you can't copyright the outlines. So it's interesting. models can learn from all of the type that's out there. Also, type by its very nature is very systems-based. There's plenty of maths in there and metrics and things which are, in a sense, easy to replicate. I mean, my hope, personally, as a creative person and a great supporter of all type designers out there, I hope that there will always be a market for people who want to make type and have something very bespoke and something that we've got a lot of feeling and love put into it.

40:36But for sure, AI fonts are coming, and I think it's going to massively disrupt the industry in the same way that all those previous technological advances also changed the font industry. Give us some spice. Most overrated font, most underrated font. Take some shots. I want to hear. I don't know. You can go way back. Let's see. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I have some very good comments. Maybe meta commentary. What does the community typically say is overrated? I mean, the community tends to, people like free stuff, right? Sure. So a lot of people use stuff from places like Google Fonts to provide fonts for free.

41:18And it's great. There are some superb quality stuff, and they've done a lot of work recently to really improve the technical quality of their library. but it's important to remember that when you're using something for free obviously lots of other people are also using it for free so to get that differentiation still the kind of easy hack is to effectively to pay for a font whether that's through a subscription service like Adobe Fonts or just buying the font outright from the foundry so that's always a good way to get something that's super unique yeah amazing well thank you so much I think we have our next guest ready to come in thanks for stopping by thank you for having us good luck with your talk tomorrow thanks so much hope you get to tune in we'll see you on the internet alright see you then thanks guys It is.

41:55It is great. And we have Andrew Reid coming into the studio next. Second time appearance. I'm sure he is doing deals out there, writing term sheets on napkins, finding the next Figma. There he is. How are you doing, Andrew? What's going on? Am I live? Yeah, you're live. You can throw on the headphones, talk to the microphone. How are you doing? Good to meet you in person. There we go. Thank you for having me. What's going on? You might be able to adjust it. No, it's perfect. Okay, great. Yeah, how's it been? Is this your first config, or have you been coming for a long time? This is my fifth. Yeah, I was going to say, very bad investor if he's like, oh, I guess now that Figma's a big deal, I guess I'll show up.

42:38I remember back when we got a standing ovation for the font picker. The first of two standing ovations for the font picker. Wow. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. No, I mean, today feels monumental just given the scale of the event, but also the launches, the people that were doing a standing ovation for the font picker. I'm sure they're here today seeing the four massive launches. Yeah, it's massive. Yeah, I mean, what was the precursor to config? Were there like little user group meetups? You hear about that with the story of Instagram where Kevin would go running with the early group, which there were only 100 people on the service, but he still was doing that customer development.

43:20Do you remember kind of the arc of how we got here? Well for me, so yes. Well I remember predating our investment in Figma, we were involved with GitHub, which is kind of universe. Which is like kind of the same sort of vibe and actually very similar venues. It was the open source developer ecosystem. And I remember sitting through some of those universes back in the mid 2010s and thinking like I'm never gonna be involved with a company that can do something like this. Just having the true vibrant community, people actually want to show up. I was like that was a cool thing to be involved with and then I go to the first config and it was in a room that's the size of the maker studio thing now.

44:03It was just like buzzing. And I remember whenever I come to config, I really feel like I'm cosplaying. I like making websites. Some say I apply design creativity to my Excel sheets. I was about to say I'm an artist in Excel it's funny I'm so used to I go to these events with my daughters for school and stuff and there there's always a long line of people for face painting and there's plenty of face painting supplies but there's only two or three people who can actually do face painting I always walk around here like man everybody here could be the most amazing face painter you know it's like I could just bring my kids in the face paint and have them all solved.

44:49No, the talent density is wild. Yeah. On the topic of these annual releases, Brian Chesky recently said part of founder mode is even if you're a company that can do non-waterfall, more agile development, more iterative releases, it helps to get on an annual cadence. Not talking about Figma specifically, but is that something that you think is correct advice for big companies, small companies? Is it going to become increasingly popular? Because the Airbnb, Brian, like the Chesky memo kind of shook Silicon Valley. I know Ryan Peterson at Flexport was like, we're doing that too. At the same time, people have been looking at Apple and saying, hey, AI is moving too fast, Apple.

45:40you can't wait to launch your next thing for a full year. You should be dropping software updates every single month and just telling us, okay, you've improved it. So there's a little bit of like a balancing act there. But what do you think of the overall trend of these annual kind of agenda setting events versus something that's like you could kind of blend the two? Yeah, I think as software and technology has gotten easier to create, it has gotten so much harder. and as there's more companies that have gotten started and there's more venture capital. And I remember back when you could, you know, you get a TechCrunch article written about your product launch and it would, you know, you drive all this signups and it was this amazing thing.

46:21And it's just so much harder to stand out now. Like there are so many companies launching amazing stuff constantly. And just as a, you know, like the Red Queen dynamic, like just to stay in place, you have to be doing, you know, usability improvements, AI upgrades, et cetera, to your product every single week just to kind of maintain. Not fall behind. Exactly. Then I think as it relates to genuine product launches, even for the stuff that's launched today, there's an alpha, there's a beta, right? So you kind of have to do the user testing in sync with this. But yeah, it's pretty freaking cool to show everybody the things that you spent a year working on and rally your team around a deadline.

47:02Knowing the Figma team, Like, this date has kind of been in the back of everyone's heads for a very long time. Well, and it's such a, you know, we can kind of be understated, but Dylan and the Figma team are making a huge statement coming in with, you know, sites, make, buzz. Like, these are, you know, they can come out with a V1 now, but, you know, my expectation is they become, you know, very, very significant pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you're here to support Dylan, but has Figma grown into a type of ecosystem where there are other potential power loss startups building in on the round?

47:43Because you see that with a lot of companies. I mean, Zuck was just talking about it with like Facebook ultimately becoming a platform at a certain point. It's been a lot of companies that have built on top. Shopify's obvious. Exactly. Is there a story around like the broader design ecosystem that's taking hold? or is the venture capital community still just kind of like laser focused on Figma by itself? I think Figma has supported and enabled a broad network of plugin developers for a long time. And I think a lot of the power of Figma comes from what Figma enables, but also comes from the ecosystem around it that applies to things like templates, right?

48:22Into these plugins. So I think Figma, from an architecture standpoint, Figma was a platform before it became the platform. I do think it is the center of a community and a center of a community of products. I love the mission of trying to eliminate the gap between imagination and reality. These are not just face painters. They're the most creative people in the world who also love technology. I think for people with minds like that, allowing them to do so much more, that's like one of the coolest things a company can do. How do you think about design trends in the decks that you get pitched? I mean, Figma launched a deck designer.

49:10Obviously, just design is becoming more accessible. It's becoming more affordable. And also, I feel like there's a little bit of just a meme in Silicon Valley that, hey, like if you're going out for a Series A, it's not unreasonable to spend 10K, 50K on design for your deck. At the same time, that can totally be like Band-Aid on a bullet wound if you're not actually building a great business. So I imagine as an investor, there's a little bit of like don't fall for the pretty design. But we've seen trends where, I mean, for a while there were like a ton of direct-to-consumer companies that were just getting funded.

49:43And it was like, oh, you went to the exact same brand thing that the Warby Parker guys went to or whatever. No, it's funny. I remember, this is going to definitely date me. You know, we used to print out all these decks. Yeah. You would get the deck and you would just hit print. And I remember... It started being black. No, and then for the first... Black backgrounds. For the first... I'm going to send this clip to Joe at Loom. Joe and Vinay from Loom. For the first board meeting for Loom, they did like a 130-page deck in dark mode squared. It was like the level of dark gray versus modestly less dark gray in these stacked bar charts was impossible.

50:20I came into the board meeting with this printout. and it looked just like basically like a bunch of black pages. We've already lost like$400 on this investment because we have like burned through our entire printer ink and I can't figure out what the hell's going on in our business, you know? So anyway, let me switch that one to light mode. But I do think like presentation, you know, it's like anything in business, you know, at its core, it's like the Don Valentine thing is storytelling, right? And visual storytelling is imperative to fundraising, it's imperative to sales, and I think having the right set of assets to tell your story, it really matters.

50:59I actually do think spending the money to create a presentation that really captures your idea, your ethos, what you're trying to build, is totally worth it. And there's also the flip side, you can do it in the Times New Roman, the Spresatura presentation. So you can go that path, Like, look how little we tried. Or you can do the really good. Every once in a while, you see a deck from someone who's, like, coming out of an enterprise and has, like, deep, deep institutional knowledge. And they're probably going to build something really cool, but they just don't understand design or even how to speak Silicon Valley's language at all.

51:38And you're like, okay, I got to, like, you know, actually read between the lines. No, the worst is when you get the ones that are, and as a, you know, I used to work at Goldman Sachs. Yeah. You know, as a former banker, I love my investment banker friends. Yep. when you get the, all of a sudden, it's a Series B company, and they hire the head of finance and operations from Goldman, and then you get the 98 years of combined industry experience, like highly seasoned management teams. We're not doing this. Whoa, whoa, whoa. John and I have 20 years of combined experience in technology and media. Exactly.

52:10Yeah, I've never met a management team that's not highly seasoned. Yeah. I mean, Dylan was brand new. I'm curious. Chris, do you think there's, you know, the lore around Figma is that, you know, Dylan and it's Evan, right? Yep. Dylan and Evan, you know, spend years, you know, basically in obscurity building this, like, you know, product. You know, today, if a founder was building a SaaS tool and they were three years in and, you know, didn't have, like, a product that they were letting people actively use, I think most investors would write it off. I almost feel like it almost ended up being an anti-lesson, that sort of four-year period of obscurity, because they were pioneering the use of WebGL for browser collaboration.

53:01And have you ever found yourself kind of like pushing back on founders that are like, well, Dylan and Evan spent four years getting their products into work? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. So I think it's a little bit like, you know, for Dex, You can either do the, we really didn't try at all, or we made it look beautiful. I think with companies, similarly, you can do the, we're going to iterate constantly in the market and find our way to product market fit. Or you can do the, we have a concrete vision, and we're going to build what we want to build. And when we launch it, it's going to work.

53:30I think the in-between area, where you're just slowly maneuvering off of your initial course, that's, I think, the really unhappy path. Yeah, I think we've done so many retrospectives on, and like analyses on what are the commonalities between the big outlier companies. And the reality is, if you look at most of Silicon Valley history, the length of time it took you to get from nothing to a million dollars of revenue is basically uncorrelated with how fast your company grows. But how fast you go from one to 10 is highly correlated. So basically it's like, you know, you're trying to coil a spring, you know, and most of the companies that really make it go very fast out the gate, but take a variety of times to get into the gate.

54:23I mean, the most recent example, probably OpenAI. Literally a nonprofit for a decade and then all of a sudden a billion in like a couple months. Do you think that there's... Well, actually, one more Figma lore story. I've never been to, I just, so this is a Doug Bionni story, so I figured, you know, it's time to give Doug his shine. So when we were doing our Figma investment, it was, this was January 2019, and I was an associate, so I was like, you're doing my best to position ourselves, and I thought, you know, we're totally gonna do this investment, you know, like, Dylan loves us, and I was like, but just in case, I'm gonna bring Doug in.

55:06Like, you know. Bring in the big dog. And so Dylan and Evan are coming down to our office at Menlo Park. We had already given them a term sheet. And we're just, you know, trying to show them how much we love them. Is that the term sheet in that photo? Yeah, the one that got like, you know, someone did the CIA analysis to figure out all the other terms. Yeah, you see how they did the reverse. That was my bad to our comms team.

55:31And we're about to do the meeting and Dylan and Evan both into Brown, and Brown's one of our LPs. And we have all of our conference rooms at Sequoia named after our LPs. And we were gonna do this meeting in the MIT conference room. And then I was just like, yeah, it's a much nicer conference room than the Brown conference room. The Doug was like, no, we're doing this in the Brown conference room. And like maybe 10 minutes before the meeting, he moves the meeting to Brown, and then he goes into our system and shows, He prints out a page with all of the amount that Brown had invested in our various funds over the years and how much we had returned back to Brown.

56:08And sits down, we talk about Sequoia, and all the stuff that we're doing. And he puts this piece of paper out. And Brown is where Dylan and Evan met. It's where a lot of the early work at Figma kind of began. And I was like, this guy freaking rocks. I was about to be just hanging in the MIT conference room with no plans. So anyway, that's Doug. Yeah, that attention to detail is crazy. To actually go that extra step. Do you have fun at Brown? Well, we played a part. Yeah, exactly. Switching gears a little bit, are you surprised at how Gen.AI seemingly came for image creation before product design in some ways?

56:47Like, yes, you can use Gen.AI to generate, you know, screens of various products, but you would think that that would be – a lot of the product designers I know are still, you know, doing this sort of handcrafted work to design, you know, flows and features and things like that. And meanwhile, if you want to generate an image of the three of us sitting in a podcast studio, you can do that instantly. Yeah, I've been generally surprised at the order of things that have come out of this generative AI ecosystem in general, right? Like I remember back when people were, you know, self-driving truck wave and it was all this concern about blue-collar jobs, you know.

57:29and everyone should learn how to code, and you fast forward five years, and it's like, well, that was a very seemingly poor take, you know, in hindsight. Same thing with radiologists. Yeah, exactly. They almost all have their jobs still. Yeah. And who is it? Was it Hinton? I forget. It was someone, a big machine learning foundational researcher was saying, like, stop training them. Yeah, it's the, yeah, the, you know, how stuff, and I think ultimately it's kind of what I was saying about creativity earlier. I genuinely think it's not because of a difficulty of the problem or some underlying architectural thing.

58:03I think it's just like, you know, like look at the image editing models that came out of amazing.

58:18I think that's amazing, right? years and then we'll come out with something disruptive? Or does that pattern not even work in the age of the internet? Sequoia's probably already going to check in. It's interesting. Haven't you guys known Dylan for a long time? Figma was grinding for a long time. But it's not like they were grinding in true silence. Dylan and Evan were in, Evan, absolute genius. Dylan very engaged in the ecosystem it's a Teal Fellow we were wondering about those early rounds because it seems like going back to 2014, 2015 doing a$20 million series even a$4 million seed round that's not easy even if you're a hot company so yeah I don't know they were engaging actually interestingly so many of the people who I've run into already today were people who were the early users of Figma when it was still a developing product.

59:40And those people, they didn't hear about it and want to try it and sign up. That's customer development, right? Dylan was one of these true grassroots growth people in addition to the product visionary. Exactly. And building this community, it's like everything that is magical. with that John Colson tweet around like it's a museum of passion projects, right? You know, like this community doesn't just happen, right? Like it starts with a spark and I think that spark really is Dylan. Like I remember there's a guy named Stoleo Cuervo who's the first product designer at Facebook. He now does some investing.

1:00:25He's an amazing, amazing guy. And I remember he told me about Dylan back when Figma wasn't even around yet and he was just like, this guy's gonna be amazing. And it's funny, he's interested to be like four people. And one was Dylan and then one was Guillermo from Vercel. Oh, wow. So like, no more opt-in. You know what I mean? If you got somebody, send him my way. Yesterday. Yeah. On the note of, you said Dylan kind of creating this spark of community. I think that when people, when startup founders talk about community, it's almost like a meme. because usually the first context that they're using it in is like, oh, we should have a dinner.

1:01:07And it's like, to me, like a community is not like getting a room at a nice restaurant and just like getting people to show up and eat free food. Like this is a community of people that have traveled from, you know, basically every, you know, bunch of different continents all the way here, taking time out just to be immersed with this group. and it just feels like community is ultimately created at the product level to some degree. Like you can kind of like. Well, I completely agree with this. And to me, like I was thinking about this this morning. I wish everyone could have seen the keynote. Like it was so awesome.

1:01:45Yeah, it was like watching a rock star. Like the room, it's so big. There's like so many people in that room. It's massive. And it was standing rolling at the back. Yeah, it's unbelievable. but then you're like it's like 9 ,000 people right? Yeah. It's like you know imagine seeing a slide with you know 9 ,000 monthly active users right? Nothing you know but 9 ,000 people is a lot of people right? And to me it's the like your users aren't just numbers your users are people. Yeah. Right? And the nucleus of this community are people who travel from Southeast Asia to be here travel from Europe to be here.

1:02:23Travel from Africa to be here. Yeah. and that core 9000 Mao has such a loud voice and the ability to like really propel a company forward and if you put those 9000 Mao into a room it looks like that right like it's it's enormous and finding the ability to get that level of a nucleus I think is like it's it's a product thing right yeah you don't just buy them dinner yeah yeah yeah I know you can't talk about public companies too much, but I'd love to know if you have any interpretation of what's going on with the Mag 7 right now as far as an opportunity for startups. Today, what was the news with Google?

1:03:06They traded down basically Apple might launch something. Apple's VP of services basically came out and said that for the first time, searches in Safari shrank month over month. It just seems like there's general chaos in big tech, whether it's Google potentially splitting up or the pressure on Facebook for Instagram. It just feels like that could be fertile ground for startups. At the same time, a lot of people have been saying artificial intelligence, it just reads as a sustaining innovation, not necessarily a disruptive innovation. But what is the level of optimism around the next generation of founders right now, given what's going on with these very well-run companies that are often in founder mode or have amazing management teams and fortress balance sheets?

1:03:52I think, I forget whose law it is that you as a company ship your org chart. Oh yeah, I know that one. I'll look it up afterwards. Whatever. Reed's law now. Yeah, yeah, Reed's law too. I think the idea that AI will be a sustaining innovation, I think it's probably, it's probably I think it's probably far enough along now to call that mostly wrong so far. And I think it comes from that grassroots creativity, combined, small number of people, especially with AI, can do so much. I think that's one of the things that I was thinking about listening to the Figma keynote, is if the origin of Figma was specific, verticals inside of companies, designers, developers, marketers, content people, legal, you know, coming together and collaborating to move this like very complicated process from idea through to deployment.

1:04:58Now, any one of those people can basically do all of those jobs. And I think that's like, that's something that we are like definitely seeing. And so small enough people can do so much more. And you aren't encumbered by shipping your org chart because you are the org chart, right? Like it's, and you can just put out amazing experiences. And I think some of these big companies, what you see is, you know, they'll have amazing models or products or ideas, but they just don't even let you find them. You know, it's like the notebook LM thing, right? Like, oh my gosh, that was sick, right? And like, now what?

1:05:32The fact that we're using past tense for a breakthrough Google product is so crazy. And it was six months ago. I know. It's funny because it's probably - We shouldn't be using past tense. We should be like, yeah, it's still great. All of a sudden, you guys are in trouble. There's probably some app in the App Store that's just Notebook LM Cloud that's doing 10 million of ARR.

1:05:55We were talking about this idea that there's the chat GPT wrapper meme, and then the recent news of OpenAI acquiring Windsurf. I was debating this with Jordy. Is it kind of game on for wrapper M &A? maybe that doesn't affect how you're underwriting investments at Sequoia, but do you think that there are other venture firms that see a multi-billion dollar outcome as something that changes how they underwrite? Like if the M &A markets at that level are open, does that change the risk on nature of early stage venture, maybe in like the mid market or, or do you think it should just be business as usual?

1:06:33I, so I got a lot of questions that were similar to this after, we mutually called off the Figma deal with Adobe. And some of that, you know, how does this change your underwriting of an investment? It's like, I don't know what this administration is going to do, let alone the next one, right? Like in the gestation period for these companies, it's sufficiently long that like what's going on today, I don't think really we'll be able to change your investment criteria today. Now what you do with your companies might change, right? Whether it's, you know, you're looking to buy smaller companies, you have things that you're going to end up selling to bigger companies.

1:07:08That relates to the actual investment criteria. At least for Sequoia, we are looking for the big outlier companies, one of ones, the future aircraft carriers. But obviously, you pay attention to the news, and obviously you pay attention to what the administration is going to do. Yeah. I was thinking about it more just from this idea that if foundation model companies are not necessarily going to steamroll the application layer, even regardless of the administration, just this idea that foundation model companies, it feels like they need dance partners in a lot of different areas. We saw this with the X and XAI mergers, the social, who are we talking about?

1:07:46Like should Anthropic buy Snap? And I'm just wondering if there's more. Are you guys having Sonia on, I think on Friday? Yeah, yeah, on Friday. You should talk to Sonia about this. Okay, we'll talk to her about that. She gave a presentation based on this exact topic. Okay, great. And I could, you know, try to copy. He can't do what you said and do a poor job. Yeah, yeah. What were the other takeaways from, I assume you went to AI Ascent? Oh, yeah. What were the takeaways? Other than we found out that Jensen Wong's jacket is Ferragamo. Oh, we did find that out. I know, I know. It's leaked. It's leaked.

1:08:14From us. It's sold out everywhere. It's sold out everywhere. Yeah, shout out Alfred. That was a great trade. Oh, yeah, yeah. He did the jersey swap. Jersey swap. Well, you're up next. Legendary, legendary jersey swap. It was legendary. Man, that's so cool. Hang it in the halls. Yeah. I would just leave at that point. You got to frame that. Yeah, frame it. I would, like, ossify it somehow, put it on a, you know. That's great. Yeah, I think Alfred's jacket was. Yeah, what's the state of the Sequoia merch team? Have you guys explored anything as unique as a jacket? Well, I was thinking for this one, you know, this is all of a sudden we can somehow turn it into a statue, and then that's like an operating, but we can sell that for a certain person.

1:08:48Yeah, yeah. You don't see a lot of Sequoia merch floating out there. You guys are pretty, hold it close to the chest. Very subtle, yeah, yeah. Very subtle, yeah, yeah. Okay. But anyway, other takeaways from AISent. Who's interesting? I think it was vibe-wise, it was so much smaller than this room. Yeah, yeah. But I think vibe-wise, it was really amazing. We held it for a few years now, predating, I think, GPT-3. Yep. And it's been a lot of the same sort of people, right? Like the people who started working on this early really passionately are still the ones who are kind of at the bleeding edge.

1:09:18Yeah. Is there more focus on, like, energy, scale, data center build-out, or, like, new algorithms? because a lot of people are scale-pilled, scale's all you need, a better lesson, Rich Sutton. And then on the flip side, there's some folks that are saying like, hey, maybe we're actually topping out. That seems like a really foundational question. Yeah, we had a little bit of both. We had a little bit of both. And I think the practical reality is the answer is just yes, like both. Just both, yeah. Of course, why not better algorithms at higher scale? Yeah, and it's going to be both. Yeah, something that I've been trying to dig into more is like when are we going to see other models scale up to the size of like the big transformer from the gbt models yeah like we it feels like we're getting there with diffusion certainly not there with robotics even though some of the robotics companies are now saying like hey we have the end-to-end models we have you know big uh big data sets and but they're not yet talking about hey we're building the massive data set we're doing the 100k h100s or anything uh that seems like a really critical uh like discussion point especially for yeah like where where where the next applications go because it does seem somewhat specific it doesn't feel like i i was talking to one the founder of etched and he was saying like uh he was saying like no i actually think like you will just be able to train a robot to walk by having it read every book on walking i was like i don't know about that yeah i read the book on walking i read every book but but there is something there where it's like yeah if you're training a humanoid robot like why not just feed it all the data possible including all the images and all the videos and everything.

1:10:50Just the more it knows, the better. And that just builds like the stronger world model. Yeah, I'm trying this with my kids, right? It's like, yeah, yeah, just walk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It works. It does. It just works. So there's a way to do it, you know. Yeah. Anything else before we move on? No, this was fantastic. This was fantastic. Thank you so much for stopping by. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was great. Sonja on. Yeah, great. And I will tune in later today. Yeah, absolutely. We'll see you. Good to see you, dude. Bye. Peace. Thanks for coming. Bye. Always a fun time with Andrew Reed from Sequoia The best Legendary investor One of the greatest to ever do it And we have our next guest And still cooking Excited for the next 40 years Yeah, I'm bummed we couldn't make the AI Ascent thing It would have been very good But we had a lot of A lot of travel going on A lot of birthday Anyway, oh, fantastic What's going on?

1:11:41Thanks for coming Welcome to the stream Would you mind kicking us off with an introduction for those who might not know you? What's your name? What's your company? And your camera, by the way, is over there. Oh, there we go. You can just chat with us here. Perfect. Yeah, yeah. Marty Ringline, CEO, co-founder of Agree.com. Great. And what is Agree.com? It's a better DocuSign. Okay. The best part is it's totally free. Yeah. Free e-signature for everyone. But what makes it really special is we've combined invoicing and payment. Okay. At the end of most signatures, somebody has to pay someone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:12:09We just brought it all together. Okay. When I hear free, I think, am I the product? What's going on? Are you selling my documents to foreign countries or something? So we operate like a fintech, right? We monetize on the payments. On the payment side. So it operates a lot like Stripe. Sure, sure. I can't tell you how many times. I feel like it's mostly with home services where I'm paying, like, for pest control, and I'm, like, signing something, and then I'm, like, okay, like, I'm ready. you know again I'm ready to pay and then it's like oh well like Zelle you know Zelle me or whatever I'm just like really like this should be all in one what um I'm curious what uh what markets have you guys really focused on uh initially just we're at Figma designers agencies freelancers solopreneurs are obvious ones but the big b2b SaaS sales especially in tech startups they're just moving so fast the growth trajectory is there and then I think you pointed out something that's really interesting where If I say you have net 45 to pay, I think most of us think, oh, I'll pay on the 46th day.

1:13:13I'll stretch it out as long as I can. But usually we want what's on the other side of that transaction so bad. We want to pay quicker. I want my pest control done. I want my roof fixed. I want my contractor started. I want my SOC 2 compliance quicker. So, like, delaying the invoice just doesn't make any sense, right? I want to go from execution of agreement. I want to pay quickly. Don't stop that. That's such a manual process right now. Everyone takes executed agreement. They send it over to finance. Somebody in finance manually creates an invoice, manually sends it over. It's kind of weird in 2025.

1:13:46Yeah. I got to ask, how did you get the domain? Yeah. So it was always agree. We knew that that was the word. But one day we're pitching, and my co-founder says to me at the end of the pitch, the investor missaid. He said, agree.com. It's like, oh, that could be a problem. It's got a nice ring to it. He's like, hey, did you ever go to agree.com? I said, no. I don't know. What if it's a porn site? So we go, and it's clear that it hasn't had love in a number of years. But I see, I know there's a privacy policy, and a privacy policy is going to be a legal entity. I track it down. I find the owner of that legal entity.

1:14:18And then it was four months of pestering and wooing. Because he's a high net worth individual. He didn't need to let it go for the money that we paid. Did he make you, give you some equity? No, no, we did all cash. But we did, I did have to eventually sell him on the vision and the dream. Sure. Be a part of the story. Yeah, like it'll be used for good. And I will never not do one of these interviews where that question won't come up. Yeah. We'll be like, yeah, I was at the beginning of this. That's great. That's great. Probably early.com guy, I imagine, just sat on a bunch of domains. Fantastic.

1:14:46He picked it up a few years ago for like 75K at an auction. Oh, wow. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Wow. What's the go-to-market been like? I imagine that there's some sort of like almost like viral loop where somebody sends something and then they get a chance to sign up and then you kind of grow from there. Is there like a positive viral coefficient with this? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's one where I pitched it just like that in the pre-seed. Didn't realize how fast it would kick in and how substantial that would be to us. So we launched the product September 4th. In a month, there was 1 ,000 users. Wow. Hey, not bad.

1:15:18Yeah. 30 days later, 10 ,000 users. Wow. Okay, that's impressive. And then seven weeks after that, it doubled to 20 ,000. But when I looked at those users, a third of them, they came to us. Their origin story is someone sent them to sign on the platform. They signed, they're like, let me give this thing a shot. So that's kicked in. That's been awesome. So we'll always talk about our customer, but then our customer's customer is vitally important to us. And then now, yeah, the go-to market's just, we see the same thing on the invoicing side. So it's just more, the customer base itself is the biggest distribution engine.

1:15:50How big is the company? I imagine it's like several thousand. Are you in tens of thousands of yet in terms of just employees? Oh, yeah. To run one of these businesses, typically it's five figures of employees, typically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone likes to remind that at DocuSign, 7 ,000 people. That's how many it is? I chat GPT'd it. It would take four Titanics to fit all the employees of DocuSign. But we're a team of eight, and I think this is what you're - Eight people? Not 8 ,000? Doing the impossible. Doing the impossible. DocuSign execs look at you guys, and they're like, we don't know how they do it.

1:16:23We don't know how they do it. That's right, that's right. Payments, too? We need to double it. Unfathomable. Yeah, everyone always wonders, what are they all doing over there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you actually have a – I'm curious if you have a read. I was always surprised that after, you know, Twitter was able to lay off, you know, such a huge amount of the workforce, I was surprised that didn't inspire other similarly drastic cuts. Are you surprised in general at some of these more scaled enterprise companies that they haven't tried taking a leaner approach yet? I think one of the secrets behind some of the B2B staffs in Silicon Valley is that there are an enormous amount of humans that power what we think is technology.

1:17:15And there's some companies where you can tell between like December 21st and January 1st, the servers have gone down. or something's not working. It's like, oh no, the humans are gone, right? They're out of the office. This is a service as a software. That's right, that's right. And so I think for some of these organizations, you need a huge customer service staff, a huge support staff to make it all work because they're pushing buttons and pulling levers behind the scenes. And so the tech deck is just so enormous that they can't scale back even though they know they need to. And I think this is what we're seeing with AI.

1:17:48We know smaller teams can do more, they can do it faster. Now, how do they start automating their workflows with agentic AI or whatever tools they might be putting into place? Yeah, that's awesome. So you're here specifically pitching designers and studios. Who is the current customer avatar that you're going after at Config? So at eight, we've got to do everything and anything to build the brand. I saw some flyers that were just hanging out here. I've got a stack of them out there. I saw a stack of flyers. I was like, oh, he's doing it. I've got a copy cart out front that I push. I make cold brew coffee.

1:18:21That's great. People meet my co-founder, Will. Yeah, yeah. But this conference is going on, right? Yeah. Thousands of people here. Totally. May 6th through 8th at Moscone West. Yeah. Turns out Stripe Sessions is right across the street. Yeah, yeah. The same dates within the same block radius. In my ICP's here, why would I not be here? So what I did, yeah, I'm here handing out cards, knocking on doors, giving out free coffee, whatever it takes. But just build that brand, get them to know what it is. Because for us, it's an amplification. The big announcement just went out about our seed round. And so now we're doing interviews like this and just want people to be like, oh, agrees everywhere.

1:18:55It's not everywhere. It's just everywhere that I know you're looking and you're listening and you're reading. Yeah, break down the round for us. How did it come together? Who's in? Yeah, so it was exciting because we raised. That was yesterday. That was yesterday. Yeah, yeah. So this is perfect timing. We had closed 3 million pre-seed in March of last year. We launched in September. And then once those viral loops started hitting and there was some interesting traction. And so we had a number of investors start reaching out to us towards the end of the year, expressing interest. We were going to go to market with a round either right before the summer or right after the summer.

1:19:27But then a few folks asked to preempt and just say, hey, let's just do it now. Yeah, do it now. Yeah. So we thought, let's formally go to market on January 6th. And then it closed in two weeks, which was a wild. There we go. Yeah, so it was beyond our own expectations. And then we just made the big announcement yesterday. It's great to get it out. That's great. I'm curious, I'm curious, with some of the early pushback from investors, there's always pushback, even if people are generally bullish. Just like, why hasn't anyone done this before? Doesn't this already... This feels pretty counter-positioned against DocuSign, right?

1:20:02Because, like, it would be a massive upending to their business model. It capitalizes their pricing model. No, no, no. I know it's highly disruptive, but if you look back somewhere around two years ago, it felt like a lot of traditional SaaS. We were out of new traditional fintech and SaaS ideas, but the thing that became obvious is if you just brought a new approach or a disruptive pricing model. It took a simple idea deadly serious. Exactly. So the biggest pushback was this is too obvious. Why doesn't this exist? And that was a great question because I'm like, I'm glad you asked. What I'll always say in the pitch at that point is this is the last time we'll ever actually talk about DocuSign because this is about payments.

1:20:49This is about big techs. This is about AR automation. And it becomes very clear that the second question they shouldn't ask me is like, what if DocuSign did this? DocuSign can't become a payments company. The real question I have is what happens if Stripe across the street decides they want to do e-signature? Sure, sure, sure. That would be disruptive. Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting to me. What if they decided that owning the contract as a source of truth to revenue was really impactful to financial and CFOs? Like, that would be really interesting. Well, hopefully they're not listening.

1:21:15Yeah, yeah. Well, the problem is you still have to be really good at talking about the industry. They have their conference right now. We're live. Yeah, yeah, they're busy, so you can't be listening. They're watching backstage. We know John and Patrick are on stage. They can't be watching this right now. That's great. What was your background before this? Yeah, so long-time entrepreneur. I had a startup back in 2007 that got acquired by Twitter in 2012. Oh, cool. Had a few exits, a few other startups in between. But most pertinent to this one is me and two of the folks that worked with me even at that first company.

1:21:42We started up a fintech that got acquired by Brex. And Brex brought us in to build out expense management. Sure. Specifically invoicing bill pay. And this is like right before we all meet our friend ChatGPT. But before the GPT-3 beta goes out, and the best technology we have at the time to scan and parse invoices is called OCR, Optical Character Recognition. Brex's position was spare no expense. Use the best technology. It's Google. It's 87 % accurate and reliable. It's just not great for financial services. It means we still need human in the loop. There are human beings pulling levers, pushing buttons.

1:22:16But that June, when we get access to the GPT-3, the whole world's freaking out. Gen AI, Gen AI. turns out you put generative AI on top of OCR, it closed that 13 % error gap almost instantly. So we knew that, oh, legal documents. Huge, because the generative nature of generative AI, it's context-aware. So it can read the document and start to infer and imply things and fill in those gaps. That was a huge unlock for us. Yeah. Were you at Twitter post-acquisition for a little bit? Yeah, I was at, no, no, it was only at Twitter pre-IPO. Okay. And I was only there, I did my year. Your year. What was it like working there?

1:22:50It was awesome. But I always talk about it as equal parts frustrating and fascinating. Because the site's still going down. They're still fail well. Oh, wow. But it was fun for us. It's 140 characters. It's still no photos, no videos. They just acquired Tweety2. So they didn't even have their own apps yet. They just got TweetDeck and Tweety2. So they're starting to get their own app. But this was the mantra of let's be mobile first. Yeah, yeah. So we're watching them for the first time figure out what happens. That's crazy. Because that famous photo of when the plane lands in the Hudson, people forget that's a TweetPit.

1:23:19Sully. Yeah. But that's not Twitter. That's TweetPic on Twitter. It's separate because Twitter doesn't have photos. Wow. You were very, very decentralized back then. Now you can't even link out to anything. Oh, yeah. It's completely different. You have a product for everything. Do not put Agree.com in a post. No. I know. It hurts us. It hurts us. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure. Are you finding any luck with the world of venture capital and startups sending safe notes around on Agree? So this one made it easy on the pitch. I didn't have to explain the pain. All VCs are like, yeah, this is a miserable experience.

1:23:55Sure, sure, sure. I hate moving money with my bank. Yep. I don't like working with DocuSign. DocuSign's not a bad company, but people get a visceral reaction. It's like Microsoft Teams or Jira. Nobody likes DocuSign. Yeah. And so, yeah, when we told them that the way you invest in startups, your workflows will be better. It's like, oh, that's an immediate aha moment. Is that a different product on the fintech side? because it's more of like an investment wire than just a payment? It's different in that to monetize the way just the benchmark against Stripe, invoicing, and billing, they take 0.6 % blended, 0.4 or 0.7%.

1:24:29Oh, yeah, you don't want to take 0.6 % of like a VC investment. The psychological moment for people is$50 ,000. If it's a$30 ,000 SaaS charge and you take 0.6, nobody really even notices. Sure, sure, sure. But on our$7.2 million, I'm not paying point anything of that. But there is a place in FinTech where people take a.6. Because what do I do with the 7.2? I don't spend it right away. I put it into a bank, a row bank, if I can plug that up. But no, they've just been so great to us. But it goes into a treasury account. I make greater than 4 % interest on it. Got it. You know what the rows, Mercury, Bruxes take?

1:25:05Yeah. 0.6%. Okay. So the Agree Act 2, what's coming out this October, the Agree account by default will be a treasury. Yeah. So we want founders doing their safes on the platform. We want all the money flowing through it. And then it would just make sense just to leave it and agree. Don't move it to another bank. Because I didn't have a treasury. I had to go to Rowe and I had the checking, but then I had to create a treasury account on top of it. Interesting. That makes no sense. Cool. Well, our next guest is here, micing up. Anything else you want to share with the stream? Just love having you guys in.

1:25:33Hey, today we always say it's the last day you'll ever pay for DocuSign. There we go. What a pitch. I feel like you're going to get a season to this at some point. I can't wait to tweet that season. There's something weird about startups. They're very hesitant about, even if they are building a direct competitor or something, they're usually pretty hesitant about saying it out loud for a variety of reasons. Just inviting competition. He's bold. He's brave. Bold. Brash. He'll take all 7 ,000. Why are you guys going to town, though? If you happen to hit the blue bottle on 2nd Street, there's a billboard that's going up right as we speak.

1:26:06There we go. All it says is, today's the last day you'll ever pay for Doc. Very nice. Just one block from the HQ. That's bold. Putting the heat on them. I'm poking the bear. We're going to see what happens. Poke the bear. Thanks for having me. Good luck out there. Congrats on the new round. Thank you. Thank you. Good to meet you. That is bold. Well, hopefully he's buying billboards on adquick.com. We are, of course, sponsored by Adquick. Of course. We should tell you about all our sponsors. It's interesting. I feel like it's the treasury functionalities. I feel like it makes sense potentially for if you're like an SMB.

1:26:37Yeah. But if you're a startup that raises through like a DocuSign-like product, are you going to leave money in that corporate treasury? You probably want to pay your employees, do all sorts of stuff. Yeah. I don't know. Anyways, very bullish on the product overall. Good to meet you. What's happening? You too. Hi. Hi. You can throw on headphones if you want to hear yourself. Are we twins? Yeah. We're brothers. We're not related, actually. We're not actually related. You guys look so much alike. That's funny. It'll be easier. You can adjust. We are live. Would you mind introducing yourself and what you do for the stream?

1:27:12Jeremy Hindo, production designer. Design Severance, Top Gun Maverick, Zero Dark Thirty, a couple things. Just a couple things. Why don't you go say a few more? First few are so impressive. And a few thousand commercials. And Detroit. A few other movies. I have a new Catherine Bigelow movie coming out in the fall on Netflix. Awesome. We're just finishing that up now. Where are you based normally? Los Angeles. Nice. So are we. Talk me through the - I never worked there. I moved from Toronto 19 years ago to work in LA. And then you're going to Toronto. I've only done one film in California. Yeah.

1:27:45Wow. Why, even when you moved, it was already - It's just so, there's so much shooting abroad. I mean, it's good for certain projects like Zerdark 30, you need to - You're always going to need to travel. It's just now that there's a, you know, other than - But Severance feels like something you could film in LA. No, so we shoot that in New York because Ben Stiller lives in New York. Okay, sure. Which is awesome. Yeah, yeah. So we're not going too far. Yeah, yeah. which is nice. And it's nice. It's great to be in New York. And a lot of the cast live there. And the crew are amazing. Do you agree with the criticism that Los Angeles and Hollywood should have done more to prevent?

1:28:15Oh, my God. It's been bleeding for years. Yeah. The interesting thing, the tariffs on foreign films news came out Sunday. And I forget the guy's name who was kind of spearheading that. John Boyd? You were saying like these other countries, you know, it was like the local state and county leadership in L.A. have to take some responsibility for creating an environment where, you know, it's just like economically unfeasible. Do you think that was just hubris by the elected officials in Los Angeles and Hollywood to say, oh, we don't need to compete with Atlanta because we're Hollywood? Honestly, I don't know why.

1:28:52I mean, I think honestly the tech, a lot of tech moved into California, into Los Angeles. Oh, sure. And I kind of think that might have distracted them. Oh, interesting. I'm not sure they were paying attention. Tax revenues are coming in. You know, and they saw that, and I don't know. But, like, the studio system and all the prop houses, they've been closing for the last five years. All the best ones are gone. They went bankrupt. A lot of them through COVID. And then a lot of them hung on until the last year. But they're all closing because no one's shooting in California. It's the stages. I think it's, I've heard, 40 % empty.

1:29:20I mean, we're really. No, we've been looking for a new, so we've been looking for, like, effectively a soundstage new studio space. and we found a space that we liked. Everything's empty. But it was shocking negotiating. We would tour a space, be completely empty, then we'd start the negotiation process and they would have these, even the spaces, maybe the way that the management or however they're capitalized, but they would start throwing out numbers and I'm just like, you realize I've been in this space and I know that there's no one there. I'm like, you're kind of, who's your backup offer?

1:29:54because yeah and then of course like everyone who's ever been involved in the building management ownership they're all of a sudden flying in to see you for just touring one little stage and you're like okay this is a big deal for you no there's something wrong for sure yeah i think it's just um you know most countries it's so like i did a movie in australia yeah so incentivized totally it's not because what a lot of these countries are giving is above the line all the money is the above the line it's actors directors yeah that's the big money yeah yeah and the places like California don't do that.

1:30:23New Jersey's starting to do that now. Is that just tax incentives? Well, it's a tax incentive for cruise and shooting and post-production, but not always. A lot of places don't cover the cost. If an actor's$25 million, they don't cover that part. But now New Jersey's covering that part for Netflix. Certain people have their own deals. That's where the real money is. The state of New Jersey. Is giving a tax write-off for that? A certain part of above the line, yeah. Wow. A lot of them are capped at half a million. it doesn't save you much when someone's getting 30 million on a movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:30:55And so you have two or three of those people. Yeah, yeah. That's the big chunk of money that it's a lot. And, I mean, career-wise, for most people I know, everyone's making the same money they made 10, 15 years ago. Yeah. It hasn't changed much. So it's just how – Even if you've progressed a lot in your career in terms of doing – You know, I still think what I make, I still probably make the same – as Rick Carter would have made 20 years ago, the same number. And the currency is not even close. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a good number. I'm not complaining. But it's not what people, it's the same number.

1:31:26Yeah. It's wild. It's interesting. And they still go, that's, you know, but it hasn't caught up in a lot of ways. And I'm not asking. I have a nice life. Yeah. It's more I just like to be home sometimes. Yeah. Well, take me through the production design workflow on a project that we might be familiar with. Start with, like, is there location scouting involved? Photographs? Are you sketching things? Are you in a particular software? Like, what is your process? I mean, basically, Severance is, you know, it was, when Ben sent it to me, it was two scripts. There was only two scripts for the first 10 episodes.

1:31:57Sure. And tonally, it was really nothing there. It was very funny. And it was a great concept. Like, people will want to be severed. It kind of scares me. Yeah, yeah. I could go, well, I know half of my friends want this. Yeah. If they could get it. But it didn't have a look to it. Sure. So I wasn't, it read like The Office. It was budgeted exactly like The Office. Shoot in a location. Great cast. Adam was already attached to it. Yeah, yeah. You know, it could have been Parks and Rec. It was the same sort of tone, like that feel. And I was like, that's not really my thing. I want to do cinema.

1:32:26I want to do something really visual. He said, well, what do you want to do? And I'm like, give me a couple days and I'll put a lookbook together. I didn't know him. I just put a lookbook of what I thought it would look like. I'm like, if you want to do this, I'll, I love this. I had an idea that I really fell in love with and he loved it. You know, and it was sort of conceptually like the outside was always going to be, I was like, it should always be winter. It should always be really sad outside. We have to kind of accentuate it. And then when we go underground, it has to be, you know, very particularly designed.

1:32:58And also all the technology should be, all the tropes that I, as a kid, grew up with, that if you came out in the outside world now and told somebody you worked at this CRTC screen with a trackball, it wouldn't make any sense. It had to be things that made no sense to anyone outside the world, especially young people. They'd never even seen it. My son didn't even know what it was. he's 20 he's like he still doesn't know what a trackball is really so I was trying to like the initial part is really conceptually what does the world look like and then I really always start everything with a researcher her and I we just bang stuff out for a while and then I start with a concept artist How much of moving from a look that's similar to the office which is very docu style to something cinema where you wound up is driven by actual budgetary choices versus just picking the right tools out of the same tool we didn't have any on service we just abandoned that thought okay like the cinematographer jess and ben and i we were like what do we want to make yeah and we just made it okay the budget exploded it really did really but what drives that because you people think about like oh we're filming with cook lenses or aria-alexa and it gets expensive but on the production side uh you know not to degrade it but it does feel like it's desk how expensive can it be well it's it's it's it's five stages as a set.

1:34:15Sure. It's a lot of that. It's a lot. It's a volume. Sure. Like, a lot of shows, like, say, Parks and Rec, it's one set. Yeah. For the entire show. Yep. The entire, every scene. Speaking of a lot of sets. That makes sense. The rehearsal. Yeah. That's a lot of sets. A lot. It's a, yeah. I mean, it's every new scene. Like, the amount of sets and then the amount of actors that come in and the amount of time it takes to shoot all those sets and pre-light and camera tests and all just... And the lighting probably gets more expensive as you're going for a more cinematic look.

1:34:44We built it. It's only in one scene. Wow. But it's a particular scene. It's destroyed. Well, never. It doesn't exist anymore. Wow. So you start to, you have to offset like how, a lot of shows are, you know, like Law and Order is designed to, the sets are standing sets. It's a courthouse. It has, and then the only sets are, the only other ones are locations. Yeah. Ours are whatever we want. And also all the locations, like, they have to be places that we've never seen before. Like we shoot in Utica. We shot in Newfoundland. We're all over the place. because I can't have somebody know that train station.

1:35:18I can't know it. And then we alter so much of it later. Take a location that's unique and maybe hasn't been popularized before and build on top of it. Absolutely. And then we do a lot of visual effects after. We augment and alter it, because it's really about creating a world that everyone doesn't know, they don't know where it is. I would say we're in Poland for all I know. Nobody knows. And I don't want people to know we're in upstate New York. There's nothing identifiable, really, that people could pick. And it's not, the intention is really just for people to go down that rabbit hole. It's not to really trick them.

1:35:50It's just, it makes it believable that they can't go, well, I hike there all the time. It's just... Can you talk about previs, or is generative AI playing a role? Is everything, do you interface with storyboard artists? What does that look like as you're trying to go from just this idea on the page, which you said was very blank, to something that you need to get to the point where you're like, this is exactly what we're building. Basically what I do is I concept everything and we do iterations, like sometimes probably 50 times to get to the way we like the set looks the way we all think it should shoot.

1:36:23Like Jess, the DP, and now she's one of the directors on Severance and Ben. It's really the three of us that just run with it when we're in shoot mode. And it's really, they both storyboard like crazy together. Like we're really tight and very opinionated. We ride each other like crazy. We argue all the time. But in a really passionate, collaborative way, there's zero egos. None of us have an ego about it. It's just passionately, what is the best thing? If it's not perfect, we don't shoot it ever. Do you ever feel like the materials that you're working with to build a particular piece of furniture, for example, actually matter beyond just how they read on camera?

1:37:04Is there something about a heavy desk that actually brings out a better performance? Oh, yeah. Even though you could just make everything out of balsa wood or something. Well, it's like the desk, the main desk. It was just, the script said four desks, large room. And I was like, it has to be, this is like, I kind of treat it like a spaceship. It's like the control room of Star Trek. You need one thing to set the tone. If everyone buys off on that set, they'll believe anything after. So I'm like, the desk has to be, let's build this desk that's very interactive. They're like five-year-olds. We treat them like once they're birthed into the Audi on the boardroom table, which Dan calls the womb of the office.

1:37:43That's the birthplace. You go to this work, and you're really five years old. You don't know anything. You just start to work at this computer. I'm like, let's make it really playful. Let's treat it kind of like a playground. But I want them to be able to jump on it. I want Zach to be able to jump on it. It has to be structurally insanely strong. And we just think of everything so that that way they're not impeded by anything. Whatever they want to do, safety first, go do it. It's just amazing. I'm assuming you created the activation. Where was it in New York? It was in the middle of? That's so marketing for Apple is amazing.

1:38:18That's all marketing. Okay, interesting. They are amazing. And the one in Grand Central was. But based on? Yeah, it's all based on what we do. But they're really interesting how they take it to the next level. That one worked out really well. Well, it worked not in a good way. but the fires, so the premiere was canceled because of the fires in LA. So that was happening at the same time and all the actors were going to be, we were all going to be at the premiere. They all just jumped on a plane and went to the event. So it would have just been like, you know, people cast to be there, but they all showed up.

1:38:46That's amazing. Unknown to everyone. I wasn't there. I didn't know they were going. I feel like just the imagery, there's so many different images from Severance that have become iconic and in some ways just got outsized attention on the internet just because they were so many. Have you been to the Apple website? Is it still? Yeah, you click on it, it's the first computer they sell. I don't know if they still have it. Or Ikea started making the desk. Like in Austria, they issued it first. It's on the cover of Ikea. Yeah, but is it the work that you're most proud of in your career? Or is there something else that maybe didn't get at the same level of attention that you've - I mean, I love, the process is the best part.

1:39:33Yeah. I mean, Top Gun was hilariously fun. Serenduct 30 was an amazing challenge. They're all, it's about, for me, it's the experience of, it's a year or two of my life. Yeah. The people I'm with, like, I'm so particular who I work with. It's like, you better be, they better be interesting because why are you going to spend your time with them? That's really, for me, what it is. What it goes out into the world, what people make it is, I mean, this is exciting to watch. Yeah. But not unlike Top Gun was exciting to watch. You must appreciate, you know, product design is really hard, right? There's no doubt about that.

1:40:04But somebody can have an idea for a product and, you know, within maybe call it 10 minutes to an hour, they can have something that looks somewhat like the end state. You must not have a lot of sympathy for that given that when you're like, oh, we need to design this, like, you know, entire scene and we're going to need to import, you know, wood from, you know, this region and that. It's just a very different. Well, it's also AI is a funny one because we don't use any AI. Nothing. But no, because I mean, my biggest problem is I don't need ideas. I just need money to make stuff. I have some ideas just fall out of me.

1:40:36And the older I get, So you want humanoid robots that can assemble. I really just want support. Really, we just want artists that we can. We're making art, which is amazing. And it's not, actually, a robot wouldn't work for me. I need the person who has an opinion. I have this amazing sculptor who does all the sculptures. he's full-time I've never had a full-time sculptor I could go panko make let's make this let's make a bus let's make this piece of art yeah he makes it in a day wow and it's and it's all in his head it's great that is that human and it has like yeah and it has his heart and it has I love that and it's not where the necessarily what I wanted it's I want what they want too sure sure sure put that where there's so much doom and gloom in the world the movie industry.

1:41:22No, not the world. Not here. No, but specifically in entertainment, filmmaking. It is pretty gloomy. It is gloomy, but clearly there's amazing work being made. There's all these new tools that people are going to have access to or already have access to that make variety, different parts of the process easier. Where are the bright spots to you? What gets you excited? I miss the John Hughes movies i miss scripts i'm so tired of seeing guns i really am if i has any of the poster with a gun on it yeah i just i find it really sad yeah and i really i miss john hughes like i my kids know them all and most people know them but there's nothing to really take like adolescence is is an interesting thing for young kids to watch because it's about real life but it would be nice to also give them something that's to look forward to that's like how to fall in love for the first time like yeah the things that i find young generations are not getting they're literally getting, I love John Wick, it's fun, but they can't all be John Wick.

1:42:22Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do have a lot of John Wick. We were talking earlier, the need for positive science fiction, right? You can still have a dramatic storyline. Futuristic, but not dystopian. Not cyberpunk, necessarily. Maybe solarpunk. I think ours is funny, because it's really still a love story. He loves her outside, and he fell in love inside. It's just about love. That's really all we all want, and it's the hardest thing to figure out how to have, and how to be vulnerable is not something that's being allowed these days. Can you talk about production design in the context of a film where there's going to be a lot of shots on location?

1:42:57Like, I mean, I imagine that the nature of an aircraft carrier plays into the design, production design, even when you're on a soundstage. And there's less things that you have full control over. But how do you think about that in the context of Top Gun or Zero Dark Thirty? similar where you know there's a certain grounding in the real world that you need to pull into the rest with the lighting design but also the production design i mean honestly i i think we can do anything really we built the summit been london compound it's the size of this whole whole area it's massive that's amazing i'm like why wouldn't we build it yeah it was 300 people laying bricks for six weeks just non-wow just it was a factory line it was amazing all these egyptian that's remarkable brick layers it was incredible like i we built the jet on top gun like Like, I just don't think you can't do it.

1:43:45I have zero understanding of no or why not. Like, I always go, why not? And they go, why? And I'm like, I said, why not? We're doing it. Showbiz. Let's do it. What about CGI, like set extensions as a tool? Amazing. Are you reaching for that more? And then how does that change your process? We use it a lot in Severance. We use it a lot. I use it on everything. It is, and I do a lot of cleanup now. Sure. Because you're shooting so much faster. You're prepping so much faster. is a great tool that doesn't allow you to waste your time stressing over it that I can't do this in three weeks but I can do this and I'll do the rest after yeah it's more economical and it's way less stressful but it the hardest part is the production the studio producers it's hard because that bag of money hasn't been put aside until people are just starting to like I'm like put it away yeah let's commit to this amount of money and leave that money but how much of how much of your process is a dance with the you know whoever's funding 90 project where where you're just trying to understand you're like dancing with the bowl right you know or you're like you know trying to figure out if i if i push the budget you know 15 maybe they'll be fine but if i take it you know 22 you know you kind of can read a room like anybody like yeah you know and i love just i'm i'm just like let's just talk to them let's can i just how about i just pitch let them see it and then if they say no they say no you get a nose a lot and you have to adapt but you have to keep pushing it's just a battle like filmmaking really is a war and it's a war till the end and it's just how it works because and I respect their job like we can't all go rogue you have to be responsible but you have to they do hire me to trust my instincts and if you don't do that you don't make good art you can't.

1:45:29How confident are you film is television, it's a hits business. How confident are you during your process around what the commercial or just reception of a project will be? I honestly have... For a long time I did commercials because I couldn't pick a movie because I was terrified. Is this going to be good? And then I had a friend of mine who's done a million movies. He said, just let go. You have to let go. Just pick the people you love to work with and forget about it. Because, you know, he did Silence with Marty and, you know, that movie didn't do well. It's a great movie, though, but you don't know why.

1:46:11And you can't bleed over it for the rest of your life. You've got to do another one and another one. You just can't predict what people are going to like. And honestly, you just have to not care. I couldn't care less. You'd love to care. Wouldn't we all love to care to make everyone happy? But I don't know why people like anything. I think once you just give up on that and just, look, They want what you want. If you are a visualist, they mostly want what you want. Yeah. I have a conspiracy theory. I want to run by you. Someone was posting, this is just a random person on the internet, but they said that Apple is preparing people for a world where we're using virtual avatars in the Apple Vision Pro by using a more high-key lighting style in shows like Severance and Ted Lasso.

1:47:00Do you think there's anything to that? No. I don't think I've ever, none of us have ever even heard of it. Yeah. I mean, our goal is - It does seem to be odd that it would bleed over, but - Our goal is really, we are, when I, like, Justin Bell and I really wanted to make a movie. Yeah. A 10-hour movie. Yeah. And another 10-hour movie. Yeah, that's great. Because everyone has a huge, like, I have a 140-inch screen at home. Yeah, yeah, of course. I like to love a projector now. You can buy one for 500 bucks. Project it on your wall. It's still amazing. Yeah. I think most people have the, you know, a lot of people have the potential to see it bigger than watching it on their phone, which a lot of people, producers say, yeah, but everyone's watching it on their phone.

1:47:31I'm like, I don't agree. And I think some of these shows could be shown in theaters. I think it could go back the other way. We just screened Severance episode 10 at the Dolby Theater a couple weeks ago for 3 ,000 people, and it was like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. How would you fix the theater industrial complex because the sort of 100 % tariffs on foreign films plan involved governments basically subsidies to help theaters like fix their bathrooms or at least that was what was put out there and i was like i'm gonna go out on a limb and i and i don't think the reason our theaters are suffering is because they haven't had a new toilet in you know 20 years i honestly i don't i don't i think everybody just wants like companies want this guarantee they're gonna make money they gotta take a risk yeah yeah you know so you fail i'm sorry i fail all the time yeah what we do humans are failures works and sometimes it doesn't it's like so you have like their odds are still going to be good yeah like look at what people will watch and if there are like i couldn't believe how many people came dressed up as characters like they could screen on a weekend all 10 episodes and i guarantee you the like the dome if the arc lake was still open oh yeah it would be sold out you could sell it out for a week yeah like i i do believe that because i see what these kids want to see and i have a 25 year old daughter she had every friday night she had severance dinner night at their friends amazing everybody was doing it.

1:48:54It's like, that's what Rocky Horror Picture Show was like when I was a kid. We had those experiences. People want them and they want to walk out and talk about them. They don't want to watch at home and then look to the left and to the right and then go back on Instagram. There can only be so much laundry TV, right? Like, it's fun to communally watch something and then talk about it and hang out on the street. Yeah. On that note, do you have a take on... You guys have to get it back. That's the thing is you have to demand it. Sure. John organizes movie night. Yeah, I actually organize movie nights with all my friends.

1:49:26And I just text everyone in Los Angeles. I get 20 tickets. I text everyone in my phone who's in town. Say, hey, do you want to come? And then if people don't show, I just refund the tickets. It's great. Amazing. And just put together a huge movie night. I love that. It's just an activity to go out. Better than going to the bar with your guy friends. I'm not really that into sports. I've always been more into movies. But I think that's the thing is I don't think that they're – Look, baby boomers have obviously lived too long. They're still controlling how we live. Then there's, you know, my age.

1:49:53and there's not a lot of like there needs to be a lot more control for you at your age that's really controlling a lot of this and demanding that this is what you guys want they still think they know yeah the 65 70 year old guys they still think they have the answers like nobody wants to go no you don't want to go out you're 70 you want to sit at home you loved covid yep like 25 don't want to sit at home they want to you go to paris the movie houses are packed yeah every little theater's jammed all the time yeah yeah you will go if they're i've actually been surprised i mean we're a technology and business focus show, but I've been surprised to not see more attempts at, you know, I'm surprised there isn't like a sweet green of theaters, right?

1:50:34It's something that's like well-designed and has healthy snacks and food. I'm so tired of the food. Isn't it awful? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a big part of it. It's like, I haven't eaten movie theater. Yeah. Our place was done a little bit in LA and a lot of them, a lot of them, they end up focusing too much on avant-garde film and all that. That's true. You just want to, you know, if they were just playing. Yeah. I do feel like, yeah, mixing in the hits and creating these, like, big re-release moments can be good for kind of getting people back in the flow. Like, look at Top Gun. People saw it five, six times.

1:51:05Oh, yeah, totally. It was amazing. It was exactly how I grew up. You had to see it. And I loved it. And it's like, I. There's also. Why can't there be more of this? Well, so here's another funny. The concept of scarcity could be interesting to implement. It's like you figure out a way to say, we're going to pull this film off the internet everywhere. for a year off all the streaming platforms. I mean, that was the way it was. It used to be, you see it, and then nine months you have to wait. Now it's on demand the next week. But now you can do it. Take a movie, pull it off everywhere for a year.

1:51:32Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bring it back. Honestly, if you guys want to, I hope someone starts an app, and I'll give you an idea away for free. Do one that doesn't track you or focus to you. You have to be, it's like going to Blockbuster, walk around and find it. Yeah, interesting. You just can't send the same stuff. It's awful. Yeah. There's so many good, Join the Criterion Collection, which not a lot of people do. There's a billion amazing films on there. And start watching them. If they're available, you just have to get off some of the other, you know. Yeah, we've got to get him the Criterion Collection.

1:52:02He hasn't seen any movies. I've seen everything. It's so cheap, too. It's at$10 a month. I know, yeah. I love it. It's the same price of a coffee with a tip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got to get him through that. So we're actually going into a production design session, building a new studio. what are the common pitfalls where we could get stuck in quagmire? We've been looking at big news desks. We're thinking about putting some TVs behind us for, you know, graphics and displays. It'll be a pretty basic set, but we do want it to have, to be more opinionated than just one newsroom, please. We want something that speaks to a more modern brand, but we have a little bit of this, like, you know, we wear suits, even though we're tech people, and there's a little bit of that.

1:52:43But where would we get stuck? who are the people we need to be talking to to really nail this project. Yeah, because I don't think it's whoever did CNN's set. Those sets are so old. I mean, honestly, this is a fun set. Do this at large. Yeah, that's cool. I think the cool thing is to make it really what it's real. Those sets are, they're just designed for, all they care about is their logo. It's so boring. Like, make something, I remember Letterman. Letterman was hilarious when he threw that card through the window that didn't exist and you heard the sound effect. like just make it just make it fun yeah yeah like an interactive cheap it doesn't have to be expensive no one cares yeah just make it fun fun is fun is key yeah like i back at our home studio we have uh a range of exotic sound effects that yeah we build the soundboard but we also have props we have a tinfoil hat for when we're talking about conspiracies we have a crystal ball that we pull out we have bottles of champagne and books and we've kind of built this whole Come back and hang with us.

1:53:42I totally will. I live in Studio City. Oh, fantastic. Just go to CBS Radford. It's the best. CBS Radford? What's that? It's where they shot. It's Laurel and Ventura. Okay. Maybe we should check that out. It's where they shot Parks and Rec. It's where they shot Gilligan's Island. I mean, everybody. The other CBS is a place we were looking at. We were looking at Television City. Oh, I don't know that. It's another CBS lot. Bill Maher films there. Oh, yeah, yeah. But we were touring it, and it was pretty empty. But it was very cool. I mean, it was the real deal. You just dox Bill Maher? I think that's public.

1:54:15No one wants to go there anymore. I mean, there's like seven layers of security to get in that building. I think it's fine. It's a live studio audience. People go in all the time. Right, right. Anyway, are there any new trends that you're tracking in production design or kind of advice for up-and-coming folks who want to get into the industry? Is it, like, what is the path? Because I imagine you don't just call up a studio and ask for your first job. You need to build a resume of some kind, but it's kind of hard in the TikTok age to do anything related to that. You know what's funny? I tell all my kids, like all their friends, you just have to do what we did.

1:54:54You have to knock on doors. Knock on doors. Like my son's graduating from LMU right now. Yeah, yeah. He's interviewing for these jobs that have five positions, 8 ,000 applicants. Wow, yeah. What's he want to do? He's in marketing and wants, you know, marketing for something like event planning or film promotion or he was interviewing. Connect us. Agencies. Connect us. Yeah, we're hiring. Yeah, we're hiring. No, it's really, it's amazing. But that's what they're up. And the other thing is they're all having to do these stupid Zoom interviews. You can't. Oh, yeah. That's really rough. You can't not.

1:55:24I tell Sam, don't take one. You need to know if you like them, too. And you'll know their chemistry. If you, I find Zoom interview is a waste. It's like, I don't know. I can't get a vibe from them. But the second I sit with you guys, I'm like, I get their vibe. Yeah. And you want to hang out. Yeah, exactly. And you know who you don't want to hang out with. Totally. And that's what's being lost. That's the art of, I think that whole thing is just chaotic bullshit. Is there? And really lazy since COVID. A lot of you. No, I go super quick. It's very lazy. It's typically one call, 10 minutes. Come hang out.

1:55:53Let's meet up in person. Yeah. And meet up at a coffee shop. Yeah, of course. And really, you can just tell. Like, there's a million things. There's style. Totally. Do they look at you? Do they shake? I don't know. I feel like the etiquette of a human you need to meet. Yeah. Are there any particularly underrated films from a production design perspective that you go back and you think? Yeah, Playtime. Playtime. It's the one I reference all the time, Jacques Tati's Playtime. Francis Coppola still talks about it. It's what, you know, Metropolis is going to be another one. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they're bombs.

1:56:22Like, Playtime is a masterpiece. And it's my biggest reference for Severance was there's artists. Like there's cardboard cutouts, there's people in the back. Wait till you see the airplane. Just wait till you see it. Okay, awesome. And it was all his own money. He went bankrupt. And nobody watched it. And it's like now there's books. It's one of the greatest films ever made. And sometimes that takes 50 years. Sadly, he doesn't see it. Wait, so when does Metropolis actually release? It's out. It's out. And it bombed, right? Yeah, it bombed. It was long. I couldn't watch it. Will it be appreciated in the fullness of time or just?

1:57:01You know, I think sometimes it takes 20 years for people to want to watch. Maybe it's too close to us. It's about us. We don't really like watching about ourselves, right? We don't like what we're doing to the world. So I think in 20 years, your kids will be like, you guys didn't watch this? But in a weird way, people like White Lotus because it's like watching their own family vacation. Isn't that amazing? But that's different than anything. Yeah, White Linus feels like being at a luxury resort and just eavesdropping on everyone and their lives are falling apart. More than eavesdropping. But you're doing great.

1:57:36More than eavesdropping. I know. You're sitting there the whole time going, God, I'm so lucky. Yeah, exactly. I'm here. I'm eating the same food. But look at these freaks. Yeah, look at these freaks. That's great. Yeah, anything else you're tracking or watching these days? Have you seen the studio? I did, yeah. Okay. Do you think it rung true? because for me as an outsider, it felt like it was this great introduction. It felt honestly like the world of Silicon Valley and venture capital with like episode two, he is giving notes that he shouldn't. And then episode three is he has to give a note but can't bring himself to.

1:58:10And it showed that, you know, it's not just, there's not just a blanket rule. Studio exec never gives notes. No, sometimes they do have to. And that kind of back and forth was really - I mean, I think it has to be true because they're all Seth's experiences. is he's regurgitated. Yeah, of course. And I have friends who, you know, pitched me. I don't have that sort of relationship with studios. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a lot of my director friends who pitched and pitched, and they laugh. They know. They're like, oh, my God, that's that guy. That's her. It's based on real people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's hilarious.

1:58:40I don't know if other people get it. I don't know because it feels very filmy. Yeah. I mean, sometimes he's doing Woody Allen. That cracks me up. Like the one episode four, I felt like Manhattan Murder Mystery. Yeah, yeah, totally. You know, I get what he's doing. He's just trying to be fun. which is cool. What's the most expensive item you've ever had to procure during a production build? Has there ever been any moment where it's been like, this is really high stakes, we've got to get the shot? The jet for Top Gun. It took me a lot of time. How did that work? You built it, right? Yeah, and everyone kept saying, no, no.

1:59:12But you built it out of... Now you get why the F-35 is a trillion dollars. I think it was about$3 million all in to build but it's only it's not it obviously doesn't fly but to build a prop that's a lot of money for a prop and does it go on some sort of like robotic arm or motion control device but we also built it to be real at China Lake and Tom sees I wanted Tom to be able to touch it see it interact with it he gets in it we tow it out all the way until it takes off it's all real and I'm like I'm just a believer everything should be real and you know there's some feedback I was like but we can do you're just going to change it to post later and I'm like we're not going to change it we love it if we make it that's it and you have to find certain directors that can commit to that a lot of directors want to change it so producers are like we're not going to pay for this he's going to change it anyways we didn't change anything and there's a unique dynamic with Tom Cruise specifically correct because he I've heard like he even has his own insurance so he can do stunts but can you unpack what it's like to work with him so when we did the cockpit like we built you basically you know when you do something like that especially with Tom you have to build plywood versions and you build it to make sure because Tom's an amazing pilot so we built it in this wooden cockpit with the wooden windows and the template, and he's like, it's not comfortable, guys.

2:00:24We've got to make it comfortable. Like, yeah, we know it's a plywood. But he's really adamant. He's going to be in there a lot. It's going to be really comfortable. And Ron, who was the aircraft designer I was working with, he's done about five movies with Tom. He got it all. But Tom is very specific where he likes buttons. Like, he moves things to where he is. If he was a pilot, he is a pilot. Yeah, he is. Oh, no, I would put it there. So when he's in that mode, he's perfect because it's so custom to him. And the inside cockpit, we did it with Skunk Works. We had a whole deal with Skunk Works.

2:00:57Really? I was out there. Joe and I were there all the time. We co-designed the cockpit with them. There are components. There's buttons in there that are$2,$3 million that are from prototypes. Wow. That only 10 people know what they are. Wow. And they're nods to those people. They're not for us. But they would bring them to us in these little boxes, and we'd put them in. And then, you know, and it's just, that part's amazing. It's such a little touch, but you know it just goes a little bit further. And it's like that finishing, that last 1%. It takes 90 % of the time. And for me, it's, you know, in Severance, a lot of the actors say it to me.

2:01:29It's like they look around the room and they're like, there's so much we won't see. And I'm like, but you're seeing it. Yeah, yeah. And they're using it. And it's not just for the audience to see it all. If they walk into this bonkers set and it all feels real and there's things to do, they just get lost like you naturally would. So it's just the way you have to design. A lot of people say we won't see that. I don't even know what that I just don't ignore it creating a world and it's hard as a lot of designers they will cut it out they'll be like oh yeah they won't see it it's like you don't know and every director like Catherine Bigelow everything's a 360 you don't give her a half set it's like because if you do she will shoot that other half and it'll be in the movie and it'll be wrong you gotta do the whole thing yeah but you just have to be she wants to be immersed our job is to create a world that actors feel real in totally and then when you watch it you believe it yeah should there be an Academy Award for production design there is there is yeah But it doesn't happen during the main event?

2:02:28It does? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, my friend Patrice won for Dune last year. I don't know who won this. Okay. I can't remember. Yeah, it's a big award. I thought there was, there's one category that I feel like people get snubbed. I have to imagine you're going to be. This will be an Emmy. There you go. I hate to cut this interview short. This is really fun. No, I love it. It's super enjoyable. Yeah, it's fine. I'll happily do it again. Yeah, this will be great. You'll be in my home. I'll drive my best foot down and visit you guys. Oh, fantastic. There we go. You can drive it onto the set. Don't go west side.

2:02:55It's too damp. No. We're going to Hollywood. Nice. We're bringing media to Hollywood. Come to Hollywood. We're bringing media back to Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, thank you so much. Cheers. Great hanging. It was great. I got to watch Playtime. 1967 comedy drama. Never seen it. Bye, guys. Later. Bye. Yeah, what a delightful conversation. Not someone that we normally have on the stream, but we need to do more Hollywood. We should do a whole Hollywood day. Welcome. Hey. How you doing? Welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Great to be here. Really, really chill day, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, super relaxing.

2:03:28Super relaxed. Plenty of time to just come hang out on a podcast. It's quiet. Here, and let's adjust that microphone so it's towards your face. You can just adjust the mic, I think will be enough. There we go. That's good. Would you mind introducing yourself for the stream? Tell us who you are, what you do. Sure. Hi, I'm Nayri Hurdajian. I'm the Chief Communications Officer at Figma, which basically means I'm lucky to work with this amazing design community on events and how we engage them all around the world, including Config. How have the comms been different this year than in years past? You know, I think that the launches really set the tone for how we bring the community together at Config every year.

2:04:10And, you know, we were just so excited about the launch slate this year. Four new products taking us from four to eight. we had uh we had andrew reed on from oh good from sequoia earlier and he said that a few years ago they were giving dylan a standing ovation for a team for a font picker and to see this year it's you know make site you know buzz oh my god i remember in 2022 it was a dark mode was similar. It's like, oh my God. Everyone's so excited, but now it's like, and it's just been really amazing to see the response so far already, and we're excited to see them, the community play with the product, get feedback, and keep iterating.

2:04:54Do you think about who you're communicating with as specific customer avatars or cohorts, or is it all just kind of one big happy Figma family? And yeah, if you put on the headphones, you'll just be able to hear yourself a little bit better. A little bit better. A little more authentic podcast mode. Oh yeah. But yeah, In terms of the types of communities that are here, obviously there's consumers who might use Figma just to design a wedding invitation or a birthday card. And then there's all the way up to an enterprise that has probably hundreds of seats, if not more. Do you think about communicating to different groups in different ways?

2:05:30Or is it kind of just a big celebration of the broader Figma community? Yeah, I mean, Figma can be really good for figuring out your wedding seating. So I don't want to discount that use case. But in general, we're really serving people who are making software. Yeah, yeah. So going from idea to product and all the tools that they need to be able to do that. And, you know, obviously the product design community is a huge part of that. But over the past several years, the way people are building has changed. The entire process has become more blended, interdisciplinary. Today you heard from an engineer, a product manager, designers, and they're all just working together to build, to go from idea to product and AI is changing that.

2:06:09And so we really think of serving that entire development cycle. No, it's crazy. The entire org chart can now make things. Totally. Which is insane. Like the idea that someone in legal could create a marketing asset or, you know, some type of material for hire, you know, it's pretty unheard of. Yeah, even just like a one-off internal tool could be built. Can you talk about kind of the pressure, you know, around Figma? A lot of companies say they have a community, but they really just have, you know, an audience or a customer base. But, you know, something that feels very obvious here and even online is that Figma's community is a real community, right?

2:06:51You have people coming in from Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, like all descending here. And you don't get that without, you know, people. and these aren't, you know, some people are coming on behalf of a company. Other people are like a one-person studio that's just like, I'm spending my own money to get here because I need to be there. Can you talk about how you've approached, you know, comms specifically at Figma, knowing that when you send an email, people are going to open it and they're going to care a lot about what they're hearing. And I just feel like that's very different than even some big important companies where they're just sort of this monolithic organization and people are going to buy their stuff regardless of how they feel about the company.

2:07:37Totally. Well, a lot of that goes back to the very earliest days. And I think because Figma was in the browser and suddenly made Design Collaborative, it completely changed how designers worked. Completely. Like radical change in their day-to-day. and so that we we always try to bring it back to the product solution that we're offering but um you know we think of config as being an event for the community by the community it always has been that way since the first one back in 2020 right before the pandemic that predates my time at figma um but the talks are by the members of our community the um like activations um even some of the other events that are being sponsored and put on by people who are just here gathering.

2:08:25And so for us, the way we think about it is just to maintain authentic relationships with people. We ask for a lot of feedback, sure, on the event, but also on product. And so we're just trying to have a really open and engaged dialogue with folks. You know, we're happy that they tell us when they like things. We're also glad when they tell us what they don't like. Last year, we had a lot of overcrowding at Config. On the one hand, that was like, you know. So an interesting problem to have. Shoulder to shoulder. More of a Coachella complaint. Yeah, it was not easy for folks to get in and around.

2:09:00And so we heard that. And I think it feels like much more roomy and spacious this year. And so just trying to make the experience always feel as authentic and connected as we can. Although the keynote was still standing room only, I noticed. We maxed out the number of chairs we could put in there, I think. Of course. Can you talk about the trade-offs between batching these four product releases into one big event versus splitting it up. You could imagine like quarterly releases. There's obviously trade-offs there. In the age of the internet, there's a lot of demand on companies to just, hey, as soon as it's done, give it to me.

2:09:29I want it now. Even if it's rough around the edges, let's iterate. We get that. At the same time, you're becoming more of like the Apple-like annual release. And there's something beneficial from a comms perspective about concentrating all the energy and attention to really break through with one big day of the year because you can't really dominate the internet every day, even if you're the best in the business. That's true. But yeah, how do you think about it? Was it ever a trade-off or do you just love the annual release cycle? Honestly, we really look at the roadmap and let the roadmap kind of dictate what will end up at Config and what ends up outside of Config.

2:10:03We're not necessarily on a big annual release a year. Obviously, Config is a catalyst for a bunch of stuff. We've never launched four products in one launch ever. And yeah, I'm going from four to eight. So for us, it's not set. We really, we believe in the philosophy that you just said of like get product into users' hands fast, even if it's not, you know, like even if it's early and learn and keep iterating faster from there because, you know, our philosophy is that design is always, and product development are always iterative, always living, and so you're constantly going to be tuning it. And the faster you can get it to users, the better.

2:10:40Dylan always tells the story of the early days of Figma where they didn't ship for a few years. He talks about that as being something he would do differently if he could go back again. And it's the advice he gives other founders. Yeah, we were talking about this with Andrew too. It's just so much part of the lore of just basically building in relative obscurity and then just coming out. And how most, I do think that that made sense in the context of building novel functionality in the browser and the super complex product. But now that there's a platform taking that kind of iterative approach, it makes a lot of sense.

2:11:21Yeah, you learn faster. The more people get their hands on it. Can you walk me through some of the other like comms best practices from amplifying an event like this? Like obviously we're here having fun kind of in the new media streaming, very different world. But I imagine that there's like a series of press releases that go out. And how do you work on getting coverage across? like what is the market map of like getting attention at Figment's level? Well, because this is an event formed by our community, a lot of what we do is really about that direct and owned communication and the owned channels across social especially.

2:11:57And then of course like the other events that are, you know, the constellation around Config. Like we had a day zero block party outside on Howard Street yesterday called Config Commons that was so much fun. like great music, great vibes, people really warmed up. I'm sure people joined not knowing what it was, tried to join, not knowing what it was for, just being like, looks like a fun party. But one of the things that we like to do is just have fun with how our brand shows up. Yes, Figma is a B2B SaaS company, but we have a consumer patina to our brand and we get to lean into that, which is so much fun and unique, I think, within enterprise software.

2:12:40And so, you know, we changed our social handles to be called Config Crave, which I don't know if you all follow Pop Crave on Twitter, but, you know, the Demois, the Pop Craves, all these Stan accounts that sort of get to feature celebrities. For us, our celebrities. Even this morning, there was a bunch of really funny posts. Yeah, celebrities here are our community, right? So we wanted to feature them, and we just are always looking for ways to do that authentically and have a little fun. You saw the, I think we talked about the auto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The big pal CGI video. Yeah, there's this like Godzilla auto.

2:13:16It's amazing. We like to have fun and bring that vibe while also like sharing clear factual information. What's launching? When can you get your hands on it? So it's really a balance to do it all. It's the hardest thing. Clarity while trying to get max attention. Makes sense. Yeah. I mean, it's your first config. Tell me what you all think. no it's huge it feels like it feels like being at Coachella yeah it really does it feels like being at a music festival yeah it's massive so um it's so fun to have you here and and it's and it's so great that the diversity of different types of creatives that we've had on the show just today is so fascinating the last one was was like production sort of isn't he awesome yeah yeah it's great he's so fun incredibly he's gonna do a great talk later today yeah I'm very excited for that we didn't even get to like how does he use figma at all or he doesn't but he's just speaking about design broadly yeah we just think you know someone in our community yeah tweeted at us yeah you know who i want to hear from my config that's the production designer from severance and we were like let's make it happen we've got you no but you can just tell like the dedication to the craft process that everybody even if you have nothing to do with production set design And it's like, I want to apply a lot from our conversation, not just to our set, but how we do the show.

2:14:32And a lot of it just resonated. Personally, I'm just excited to go make my first Figma site. What are you going to make? I don't know. I have so many different ideas, both at TBPN, of just what it enables, just that speed of iteration. I think the most frustrating thing for me was always hitting a wall on no-code, like low-code software, like web development tools where I don't have an engineering background and it would just be so frustrating to like make something in Figma and then get to the point where I'm like, okay, now I have to wait. Who do I give it to? Yeah, I've got to find like the right developer and they're like, okay, I can get to it in like a week and then you're like, can you do it in two days?

2:15:20And then it's like, you really want it like that day. We have so many of these ideas that are effectively like memes. Like they're one-off webpages that do not merit any sort of real budget or weeks of engineering time. Like we wanted to do venture capital radio, VC radio. And so when you go to a specific VC firm's webpage, it plays a song that identifies with that fund. That's a really good idea. You go to Andreessen Horowitz, American Dynamism is going to play like Free Bird or something. Yeah, yeah. No, but there's this idea. But it's like, that's not something that you would want to actually spend some developer's time on.

2:15:55Yeah, but like ephemeral apps, websites, this idea of apps as memes, right? The internet used to be like this. Back when it was just an HTML page, you would just kind of hack something together and then stumble upon, would drive some traffic. And then we kind of went into the social era and everything has to be either an image, text, or video. but you know my hope is that something will break through and people will be able to build more interactive stuff yeah we talked about this i want to enable you know we have a bunch of brand assets at tbpn and people will remix them and use them in different ways and sometimes i look at an image i'm like oh this is like hilarious i you know we i want to reshare it but like the logo it's not quite right yeah we need to manage all that maybe figuring out a way to make buzz i was going to say you can use buzz for that too and then see what people make for you So meme you guys.

2:16:45Yeah, it's got to be getting memed all the time. Rise of the meme, I love it. How are you feeling for you guys who are headed to London? We are. Last year, right after Config SF, we took Config to Singapore. Okay. This year it's London. We're excited. Is it a lot of the same set, effectively, or is it a separate set out there? We are bringing the inflatables. Yeah, okay. Those are easy to collapse, pack, and ship. The synth can't come. It's too expensive to ship, unfortunately. That makes sense. It's, you know, in general, in another, like, raw space where we can bring our own scenic and make it feel like Figma.

2:17:27It's a smaller venue. It's about, you know, for a couple thousand people. Is config, like, a full-time job now for Figma? Like, does the planning for 2026 start next week, basically? It already has. It already has. It already has. We have to walk and chew gum always. Our configs are measured in centuries. But it's fun. You know, I think there are great moments in companies' lives that rally everybody together. And they differ for every company. And for us, this is one of them on an annual basis. Everyone on the product team, on the sales team, on the marketing team. And we have a lot of fun with it.

2:18:04And it's just really important for us to show up and be present with our users and our community and make sure that they know how much we appreciate their feedback and how much we're working to ship for them. Totally. Yeah. We need your help at some point finding apparently Dylan was in a Windows XP commercial when he was a kid. Do you have that? I think I, well, there's that. There's Dylan on the Today Show. after he became a Teal Fellow with his mom. No way. Another good one. We've got to get these. The third best is in the early days of Figma, when it was really small, they were trying to recruit this intern to come work at Figma.

2:18:45She was really into K-pop. So Dylan and the early team filmed a K-pop music video for her. That's like really hardcore recruiting for an intern. It must not have been very good. She declined the internship. No way. But those are some good videos from the early days I can share with you. I will, I'm sure, always regret that decision. That's hilarious. We wish her well. We wish her well. But that video is so good. We showed it at our tenure. That's like the equivalent for an intern is when the NBA general commissioner or team coach goes to the parents and sits them down and says, hey, we want them to join the team or something or college recruiting.

2:19:23Even more than that. Yeah, even more. Brutal. Dylan did a lot of child acting. There's so much good lore around that. like Eric Glyman has that video of him speaking fluent Chinese on some game show. I don't know if you've seen this. Oh, it's a fantastic at ramp. Is he a fluent speaker? Yeah. Yeah. So, so he's, he was over in China for, I don't know, a semester, maybe a couple of years or something. Went on a game show is telling all these jokes and like getting a, uproarious applause from everyone. It's remarkable. And then of course, Scott Wu at cognition has that video of him doing like the most complex math imaginable as like a child.

2:19:57In his head. Yeah. What do you all have in your closets? We need to dig those up. That's tough. That's something. Home videos. Then meme those. Yeah, totally. For 2025. Yes. I'm trying to think. There's probably a video interview from my first company years ago, but I don't think it was too embarrassing. I don't have anything embarrassing. One, my mom was a graphic designer. Oh, cool. So my earliest memories doing design in a business context were working with her. These were like the Photoshop years, and I have like pictures. So I had a skateboard company when I was 12, and I have pictures of me like holding up, you know, the finished product.

2:20:39But it was so funny because at the time, I actually really remember how like single player the product was. It was like, you know, files and like versions and whatever. So anyways. I remember some of my friends in high school made a student film, and I was tall. I'm still tall, but they made me play the dad, which is hilarious. And I was a terrible actor. Oh, you had to wear a suit. Yeah, I did actually wear a suit. It was very, very embarrassing. I do feel a little underdressed compared to you two. I mean, I forgot. We're overdressed. Look at the community. This is not exactly the Goldman Sachs technology media and telecom conference.

2:21:20We were in L.A. We had a meeting Monday, and we showed up to Melkin, not for the event, but meeting somebody there, and we didn't have our suits on. I had a suit on. Oh, you had a suit. I didn't have a jacket. Yeah, yeah. Well, a jacket doesn't count. And then we were at Hill and Valley in D.C. He felt right at home. Right at home. That was all of us Silicon Valley people putting on suits for the first time in years. Yeah. And all the D.C. people already in suits. And we fit right in. But here we kind of stick out. Fortunately, everyone's been very nice, and I think they're having fun. I don't miss the bad suits from Washington.

2:21:49No, the joke is that you know you're at Hill and Valley when everyone has their business cards in their suits from the last time they were there because they only go to a DC once a year. Anyway, we're getting a hard stop. So we're going to stop in four minutes. Yeah. But thank you so much for hopping on. Thanks. To be clear, I think we're getting booted from like for some reason. Otherwise, we'd keep. Yeah. I mean, we got another four hours. We got another four hours. Honestly, we're not used to being on couches. It is a little bit different. Comfy? You could go longer? I think we can easily put up another 12 hours.

2:22:25Easily. Easily. Next time. Thanks for making this happen. Why don't you meet us in London next week? Yeah. The international travel. We have yet to take the show on the road internationally. We've done Miami. We've done D.C., San Francisco now. So check in the boxes. We'll get out there. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for having us. Do you know where the next next config is? Or is that not released? Come back with breaking news. I'd love to. Maybe, I don't know, where, where, uh, San Tropez or, uh, John just wants it to align with 2026 summer plans. Exactly. Sorry, John. Lake Como. I'm on Geary.

2:23:05Yeah. For a more intimate setting. I think we may not be the right, you know, company conference for those locations, but, um, I mean, Singapore is very nice. London was fantastic. Um, you know, you should, Maybe Cam Lyon needs to have TVPN. Yeah, that'd be great. That's what you need. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cam Lyon would be great. That'd be fantastic. I feel that for you. Anyway, thank you so much for tuning in. Talk soon. We'll see you after the show. Thank you so much. Anyway, this has been a fantastic stream. Thank you for watching. We really had a lot of fun being here at Figma Config 2025. Had a lot of interesting conversations.

2:23:39Really took us on a world tour. having a sequoia partner and the designer of uh of the of severance um not every day that you see a technology and business show do both but we are men of many talents how many guests do we have tomorrow by the way uh i think we have like six we can give everyone kind of a run through i think it's gonna be closer to seven seven we want to we want to leak it i think i don't i don't want to go But we are hoping to get some great people from the government as well as our first post game of a major public company. Post earnings. Post earnings. Yeah. Which we're very excited about.

2:24:18And so we're going to be digging into that, kind of cutting our teeth in the post earnings game, which we want to get more into. And so stick with us. It's absolutely stacked. Tomorrow's absolutely stacked. We have to get back to LA actually right now because we have to prep because we're going wall to wall tomorrow. It's by far the most stacked show. I'm excited. It's going to be a big growth moment for the show. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. We will talk to you soon. We'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye.