Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product, Figma)

Literally, what I did was walk around the New York office asking every single person, 'Will you work on this thing with me?' And eventually, someone says yes, and then you can use that to build momentum.

Hype as well is really tied to emotion. So to the extent that a person using a product can feel like, 'Oh, this thing that is built in the product was built for me not to advance the company's goals or anything like that, but to make me feel special, to make me feel happy.'

My take is that your scope is the world. Nothing should ever perceive as being out of bounds.

You need to have insane, almost like reality distortion field where you don't hear the word no, or at the very least, you translate it into a not yet.

Never letting your own skills stop you from going out there making a pitch and then turning that into reality is really important.

I think that it's just by having this insatiable curiosity and talking to users at every chance you get. So, I would go to dinners and grill the people around me on how they use Figma and how they use FigJam.

Putting out an idea, even if it's totally wrong, is a much better catalyst for getting to a good solution because people are much more likely to react to an idea than to nothing.

If you and your team do your job correctly, what does the world look like?

We lean heavily into designing and prototyping even before a project gets a green light.

I will never sugarcoat anything. I'll never say I like something if I don't like something. If I'm in a meeting and someone tells me they don't agree with me, I will tell them I don't agree with them back.

If you have feedback to give someone else, I think you can start by asking, 'Hey, do you have feedback from me?' And kind of taking the feedback first.

Directness only works if it's two-way. If it is one person being really direct with another person and then the other person being afraid to talk, you will end up in probably a not great relationship.

I think that asking non-users about your product, why they're not using your product... actually I think that those are the most insightful conversations.

If you and your team do your job correctly, what does the world look like?

You want individuals to be spiky and you want team to be well-rounded.

If you have an insight that only you have... if you have an insight that other people are not seeing, it is even more on you to get people onto the same page.

Most things are two-way doors. You can come back. And so, it's so important to have an opinion and use that opinion to anchor people around and have people react to.

Understanding motivations is, in my opinion, one of the keys to running a team successfully and driving an idea forward.

Anytime someone joins my team, especially on the engineering side, because I think this is where there's the greatest variance, I will literally ask, 'How much do you like being involved in product decisions?'