YouSaid · the spoken record

Mihika Kapoor

lines on the record: 108
first: 2024-04-21
most recent: 2024-04-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“You for having me, Lenny. This was such a fun conversation. It was such an honor and a privilege to be on the podcast. So really, thank you so much for having me.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It'll probably be in the opening keynote, which is done by Dylan. But I'll probably give a config talk on it as well. So that's how you will know. And I'll probably tweet about it. What I was actually going to do is to release the original vision deck when it launches. So you can look out for that.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can find me on Twitter. I'm at Mihikapur. It's kind of my first name and last name smushed together. And in terms of how users can be useful to me, so one is, you know, come to config. We will be announcing both this new product, but also like so many cool things that the company is working on, a lot of very exciting AI launches, and more. And I think that like having the community come together is a very special moment. So hope to see you there. You know, cough, cough, try the new product when it comes out. And I don't know. I'm always like on the lookout for cool new products. I like to be, you know, someone who tries things out early. So to the extent that you see things, send them my way.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Life is a game of expectations. And so speaking of books and movies and things like that, I will never, ever watch a movie trailer or read the back cover of a book. Because I think it means that you're going into it with too many expectations. It either tells you all the punchlines or it tells you like the foundational backstory or something like that. And I think that to the extent that you go in either with like no expectations or low expectations, that's the key to like enjoying life.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think PICA is doing a really great job of not just investing in the foundational video models, but also giving you the ability to manipulate the output. And so I'm excited about that approach, and I hope that more companies take cue from that.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of showing you to what extent their team thinks about the details of the product where a lot of other products might cut corners. And I think their ability to communicate the ethos of their product through that is really powerful. So that's one. And then I think the second is in the AI space, I'm really excited by PICA, which is video generation, video editing software. I think that in my mind, one of the biggest shortcomings of AI the way that a lot of people are building it today is that it's like optimized for the demo or optimized for the tweet, right? And it's basically this situation where I think about it as like, in my mind, one of the biggest goals of AI right now is the like de black boxification of AI because it's not really useful to enter a prompt and get an output that you can't interact with. Because then it's like, if something's a little bit off, what are you going to do? You're kind of stuck.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Speaking about hype, I am kind of obsessed with the browser company Arc onboarding flow, specifically the onboarding flow. I think that they do such a good job of like amping you up for not only like the larger change that they're trying to make in terms of personal operating system.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I liked asking what motivates them, but also people often ask me what is my favorite hot seat question, which I think is kind of similar. And my answer to that is that it's like highly dependent on the person and there is no go-to hot seat question. And I almost feel the same way about interview questions.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, movie. I recently watched Dune 2 and Dune 1 in the span of a week. It was really fun. I watched Dune 2 because someone asked me to co-host a premiere of Dune 2 with them. And I was like, okay, sounds good. Sounds cool, but like I need to watch Dune 1.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, like pseudo steer clear of how-to books, but one that has had a particularly large impact on me is creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull. And this is about the founding story and scaling of Pixar. And what was so interesting to me about this book was it basically talks about how you create a process around cultivating creativity. And it's interesting because creativity is so unencumbered and processes the opposite. So that's very fascinating.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, you have to read the entire series and you have to read it in order. It's actually funny when I was in kindergarten. My mom bought like the fifth book, and then the person at the bookstore was like, No, no, like, no, no. We were like, okay, got it. And then the others that I would recommend are, from a fiction perspective, I think Pachinko by Minjin Lee is incredibly beautiful and powerful. It's like a multi-generational Korean saga. I think I'm personally just motivated and moved by large-scale things. So to see a single story traverse so many generations was very fascinating to me. And then from a more like business-y book perspective, which is maybe more what you're getting at, I think that I”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I will start by saying that I am immediately skeptical of anyone who has not read Harry Potter. So if you're one of those people go read Harry Potter. Maybe it contributes to creativity. I don't know.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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? And to the extent that you can take decisions in the open, that is excellent. And even if the decision is something along the lines of like, okay, we have like four options. And you can go in with a leading point of view, but giving everyone the opportunity to like. Voice their perspective and push back if they want to, I think that that's like very powerful.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My opinion is one of the keys to running a team successfully and driving an idea forward. So, for example, if you think about the composition of a product team, you have engineers, you have designers, you have researchers, data scientists, et cetera. Different people want to be involved in the On the other hand, there are other people who find it really hard to feel passionately about a thing that they have not contributed to. And so I think to the extent that you can understand these motivations of your team, of your leadership, of your peers and constantly ensure that you are catering to the individual as opposed to the average, that is what, in my opinion, leads to one of the like highest functioning teams.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you have an insight that only you have, I think on one hand, you can kind of believe, oh, other people aren't thinking similar to me. Therefore, like maybe I'm wrong. But I would actually flip that because I think if you have an insight that other people are not seeing, it is even more on you to get people onto the same page. And so to the extent that you can shout from the rooftops about all the insights that you're learning, I think that in and of itself creates a more entrepreneurial culture within the company because chances are other people will see you doing that. They'll be inspired to contribute in the same way as well. I think the last thing that I would say is, which is maybe an aspect that we did not touch on, is that understanding motivations is”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“End of the day, like product development is a team sport, right? Like, you know, it takes everyone to make something successful. And so Just think about putting things early on staging and getting people involved in the cycle as opening up the doors to the product development process. And hopefully that just like elevates the quality of the product.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what's really interesting is this helps the team who's working on the product because you're getting feedback. And that's the most like direct benefit of putting something on staging early. But the other benefit of putting something on staging early is that it makes people invested in your product. So if you think about like, why are betas so valuable and why are alphas so valuable? It's because when someone gives you feedback and then the team in charge implements that change, you see that and you're like I shaped that part of the product, right? And to the extent that you can get as many people in the company feeling like they shaped XYZ parts of the product, I think that's really powerful because then you kind of are ensuring that there's this constant feedback loop and there is this constant like investment in thinking about like how can we collectively like drive towards success.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think something that's very unique about Figma as compared to other companies is we have a multi-month plus long staging our dog fooding process and so something that was really interesting to me was one of the first projects that I worked on at the company was we were building sections inside of FigJam and you know like we had the problem we built it we put something on staging And I was kind of like, okay, cool. Like it's been on staging like a week. Like now we can like launch, right? And that was greeted with like, no, like we can't launch. And I think that leaning into that willingness to being vulnerable about your product and this acknowledgement that feedback is a gift and that fits and pieces of feedback from across the company will like help your product mature and get to a place where it's ready to go out the door is really important.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And did like a little wardrobe change in between. And I think that what ended up being really great about presenting an idea like this in a company-wide forum, which I highly recommend, is that at that point it becomes not just you evangelizing the idea, but your teammates and your colleagues and your peers evangelizing the idea. And that sense of momentum carries a lot of weight, I think.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building a product in a week is like for all intents and purposes, kind of crazy. This is, I think, where the scrappiness piece comes in. You need to be willing to be very clear about where you're willing to take the hit on quality or believability and where you need to kind of like push in order to make your thing feel believable. So like one example of something that we did was we like literally like in order to make this new product like feel more real. And this was like maybe a two-line change in code was we like swapped out the fig jam icon in our file browser to this new icon and like adding a whole new like entry point is like a lot of work and you can't do that but like just swapping something and taking about what exists and like changing the minor things in order to communicate like what is different about your idea versus what exists today is something that you really want to lean into. And what basically happened was that at the end of the week we had this demo day and I was like going between like introducing each of the demos to like doing the demo.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, hosting our hackathon. So I was kind of like working with our BP of design NOAA in order to like spread the word about like, hey, everyone, pitch your ideas and to constantly hackathons are interesting when they're virtual, right? Because you don't really know a people not in your office are doing, right? So you're constantly thinking about like, okay, how can you like hype up the whole company, right? Like, how can you hype up the SF office with what people are building in New York? And how can you ensure that London stays included, even though there's like a limited time zone overlap and things like that? And so I was like simultaneously thinking about like, okay, how do we like kind of keep the momentum of this hackathon running? And then also how do I like push this idea bottoms up? And I think that something that's really important when you're making a pitch is to not be daunted by the scale of your pitch. So for example, in this instance, the proposal was basically to like introduce a new product.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the key to being successful at zero to one is to honestly have optimism that borders on delusion. 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. And so I think that in terms of pitching, I'll be honest, like my first few pitches of this idea were not successful. What basically happened was like I kind of like bold conviction the idea by talking to users and then I would have like ad hoc conversations with folks around the company and I would be like we should do this and they would be like maybe And I would be like, okay, like what am I seeing? What are they not seeing? And then what basically happened was we had a PM offsite where we were talking about like strategy for the next year. And I like again pitch this and it got like kind of momentum there, but not really. And then I think the third time when it like actually stuck was at the Maker Week hackathon. And this was kind of an insane experience for me because I was.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Towards ladders into a company goal. And so something that's very top of mind at Figma, you know, something that has been very top of mind at Figma has been how do we go from building for designers to covering the entire product development cycle and extending to non-designers in particular? And non-designers is kind of this like bucket term that we use for PMs and developers and marketers and so on and so forth. How can we ensure that our tooling suite is reflective of all the different stakeholders that make the product development process what it is? And so I think that, yeah, just like constantly having the conversation with the users and also constantly being anchored around not what are you currently working on, but what is the broader company goal is something that will help you come up with the right idea.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's funny because the current product that I'm working on actually came out of a conversation or a set of conversations where I was pitching Figjam to people. And so kind of speaking about, you know, kind of constantly having these user conversations, I think in order to have the right idea, there are two key elements. The first is you need to have that user empathy. You need to be constantly having conversations with your users, diving into what are their pain points, not only about the product that you're working on, but general perceptions about your company and also general perceptions about like the other tools or products that they might be using on a daily basis. It's not enough to have a perspective on how well you are competing in the market, but you also need to know, like, understand of persons like full end-to-end tooling usage. And then the second thing is you need to ensure that what you're kind of working”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or an entire set of people to be clamoring for something to get built. And so more concretely, I think that there are three things you need to do in order to be successful at bringing an idea into existence. The first is you need to have the right idea, right? And that's the empathy piece. That's the piece that you will get from having conversations day in, day out with your users. The second is you need to secure buy-in for that idea. So that's the vision piece. You need to be able to rally an entire set of folks, but honestly, most importantly, your leadership and your team behind an idea. And then the third is you need to be able to make it spread like that wildfire. You need to get it to a point where someone joins a company and they're like, oh, what is that flame burning there? And how can I learn more about that?”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think about the person who is pushing a zero to one idea as kind of being the keeper of the flame. And in particular, there's this metaphor that really sticks with me, which is in Greek mythology, you know, all the gods sit on Mount Olympus. And there's this goddess Hestia, who is the keeper of the hearth. And it is her job to always keep the hearth burning, even when all the gods out to go on their various quests. And I kind of think about the person or the team or the group of people who are pushing a zero to one idea as being the like hestias or the keepers of the hearth. And it is your job to stoke the flames and the embers if they are at risk of dying out. And it is also your job to ensure that the idea can spread like wildfire and can build that level of hype you need for an entire company.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that there's this interesting metaphor that you were calling out earlier about a zero to one project being like a flame. Flames are interesting because they're sort of destined to die at the end of the day.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so at the company, you know, some of our most monumental launches have come out of hackathons and have come out of bottoms up projects. So like recently this week, we had a launch of multi-edit, which was like a long clamored for a feature where folks can edit things across multiple frames at the same time. That was a multi-year, multi product long initiative. We have things like Jambot, which is an AI plugin inside of Fig Jam that has, you know, come out of an AI hackathon that we had last year. Our entire widgets platform was originally a hackathon project. And so there's this culture of celebrating things that have been push bottoms up. And so, you know, constantly thinking about like, how can people within the company be entrepreneurial, both in terms of getting new products up to users and in terms of improving internal processes is just like a culture that you”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In order for a company to stay competitive, a company needs to stay entrepreneurial. If you are not constantly thinking about what's next, defining the industry standard, seeing around the corner from your competitors, you will get taken over if that is like a reality. And so consequently, I personally love to screen for very entrepreneurial companies and companies that have that culture. And so Figma has this huge run-with it culture where I've run with it is also one of our core values. And it's really encouraged that people can kind of just like sprint off in a direction. And that is seen not as a distraction, but rather a manifestation of the company's values.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, kind of building off of that is as you scale your team, it's really important to be self-aware of what those blind spots are and to sort of hire for that. Because at a team level, you want individuals to be spiky and you want team to be well-rounded.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for example, it's like very common that I am like editing a product review deck minutes before we are about to present or that I haven't started until the night before and then stay up until 3 a.m. to do it. And this is like. Somewhat fine, but then I think that other people don't always love it because they're like, hey, maybe let's start earlier next time. I get that. The third piece would be. I get very consumed by the details of something. And I think in a lot of instances, this is great. Also at a certain point, like sometimes you want to defer those decisions. And so that's also an important skill to learn.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's kind of interesting because I think that there are many things that we talked about that are actually a double-edged sword in practice. So let's start with the conviction piece. I think that the good thing about being high conviction is that you're able to sell forward and to get people to feel strongly about something in a next step in the future. I think the downside of that is if there is less of a history of working together, there might be skepticism about like, oh, are you just pushing something because you believe in it or are you pushing something because our users actually needed it? And so in those moments, it becomes really important to constantly be highlighting user proof points. I think the second is like scrappiness. So I think I have like a very high ability to like thrive in ambiguity and to like pull things together last minute.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's for design driven college students. I think one thing to call out is that Of my focuses in the early years was to ensure that this is for not just capital D designers, but design-driven students. So we also took engineers who were very design-minded and marketers who were very design-minded, et cetera, because of that core belief that the most innovative solutions will come out of people that are kind of like operating at this intersectionality.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so. You can Google Design Nation and we have like an Instagram page amongst other things. And yeah, last year we had folks like Stuart Weitzman and Joe Gebia, who's one of the co-founders of Airbnb come and speak, which was super exciting.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Brought together folks from originally around the country than more recently around the world, and ultimately did live under that broader organization. But I think having the ability to in the absence of formal backing or something, still like chase after something and maybe pivot the way that you're thinking about it or pivot the way that you are allocating your own time, like maybe, you know, suddenly like speakers is not the most important thing. Fundraising is the most important thing. Or, you know, building a hype landing page so that you seem more legit than a very scrappy few person student organization is the most important thing. And just being like quite adaptable when it comes to resourcing, I think is very important.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building something in a situation where I thought like finances, expenditures, connections, et cetera, were like totally taken care of to having none of that and needing to like build it from the ground up. And it was funny, one of the best pieces of advice I got in college was don't underestimate the power of a.edu email address. And I just went like on a spree like cold emailing so many people, so many executives about this problem that I was trying to solve. And what actually ended up happening was people would hop on the phone with me. And a lot of the folks who I spoke to, you know, designers who I really admire, like Daniel Virke, Jamie Myralt, et cetera, were folks who would be like, oh my God, this was such a problem when I was in college. Like, of course I'll help you solve it. I can't believe it hasn't been solved yet. And so, you know, ultimately, like, it grew into this conference that, you know, lasted many years.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was talking about how design changed the world that we lived in and was going to rewrite the future, which I really believed in. And so I was sort of incentivized to found this conference called Design Nation that would democratize access to a design education and bring together top students from across the country with like industry leaders. And originally my plan was to build this within an organization that already existed at Princeton because they had the funding, they had the resources, they had the expertise in order to kind of like make this a reality. And then what actually ended up happening was like they too were skeptical of the business value of design and didn't think it would be possible for something like this to be funded. And so I went from, you know,”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Software had reached a certain level of saturation where things that were not possible were now suddenly possible and now suddenly possible in multiple companies. And design became this differentiator, which is really exciting. But at the same time, none of this was reflected in most schools across the country. And so I went to Princeton and there was like nothing that resembled product design in our curriculum. And this was baffling to me because I was like, there is such clear momentum, you know, speaking about momentum in industry about this being a profession that is like so important and so influential in building the next generation of companies. Yet the kind of groundwork to make that happen wasn't really there. And then I interned at Facebook and I realized that my entire class of 25 interns had very similar experiences. Were they too were self-taught product designers? And so that summer I actually watched”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For this one, I could actually maybe give an example that preceded my product career, which was when I was in college, I actually founded a national design conference for students across the country. And the way that this came about was when I was in college, design was very much”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so actually, I want to combat the perception that the Figgies was a high production, high cost thing. It was very low cost. I ordered everything on Amazon and assembled it in like an hour. And so there are ways to be like scrappy in kind of making things come together.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Team. They give me like so much joy and happiness on a daily basis. I was telling them the other day that when they post prototypes in our Slack channel, like sometimes they get little flutters in my chest. Like when you have a crush on someone. And I think that having that emotional connection to your team is fun. I think that emotional connections comes from investing in culture.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think culture is important in that it establishes trust between groups of people. And so I think that actually earlier you were asking about passion and what makes someone feel passionate about work. And I think that realistically that passion breaks down into two things. One is like, are you passionate about the vision that you're building towards, which we spoke about? But the second thing is, are you passionate about the people who you work with? And I think that roadmaps change, products change, but feeling a connection to the folks that you're working with make you much more durable as a team. It means that when times get tough, which they will, your gut instinct is to rally together and collaborate together to find a solution rather than to jump ship or something. I think personally, like I'm in love with my”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of interesting something that I had heard Vishal Shah, who was the former head of product at Instagram say, is that often in companies culture is set top down and then the innovation that comes out of that is bottoms up. And so I think in the first place, like having a value play does a lot in order to make folks feel like these kinds of things are celebrated and like time should be carved out for them”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, like beyond them, you know, kind of like having the zoom background. This is what's like cheeky about them or this is what's like interesting or unique about them. And so I think that culture is so important. Figma has this core value called play, which I love, which really emphasizes just that everyone should be having fun at all times and work should be fun and gathering should be fun. And I think that I personally am like a huge believer in this remote first world that we live in. You also want to kind of like take advantage of those times when you're able to get together and, you know, do things that make the team feel like even geographically close even when they were like geographically spread out.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Boardroom, which is called Bigma, and worked with another PM Eulen to duck it out and like a red carpet, gold curtains, et cetera. And we bought little Oscar trophies for everyone and got their names written on it and voted people in for all of these like absurd categories, like most likely to name their child figma, most likely to go their career without writing a PRD. And, you know, of course, forced everyone to give some sort of acceptance speech. But I think that, you know, making people feel appreciated for the even just like the quirks and the energy that they bring to the team is something that's incredibly important and celebrating that diversity together is something that I think goes a long way in terms of making people feel close. And also, you know, making people understand, like maybe someone who they don't know that well on the PM team, because then you kind of learn like.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Awards ceremony that was like hacked together. So where the Fingies was inspired from was actually every year we have, you know, I was mentioning like SKO, our sales kickoff. And on the last night of SCO, there's like this award ceremony where they appreciate all of the incredible work that has taken place in the sales and marketing org. And I saw this and I was like, this is incredible. Like we should absolutely be celebrating the product team as well when we're together. And so what I did was I basically like to hook.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We to this day say the best one was the one that we did at this off site, which is the Strengths Finder test. And what had basically happened was over the course of that morning, we had all And I think that, you know, being able to understand what motivates a person is so important when you're working with them and also just like in building a connection with them. And so that was this moment that really brought the whole team together. And something that I was really gratified to hear after is that since then, hot seed has kind of become a tradition within the company. And so all the PMs went on to play it with their own teams. Yuki and Show went on to play it with the exec team, so on and so forth. And so it's kind of become this thing that now anytime that like someone joins the team, it's like, okay, you put them in the hot seat. And then, you know, if you're meeting someone's significant other, you like put them in the hot seat. And it's this thing that is just like totally spread, but it's a really fun way to just get to know folks and what drives them. So that's one of my favorites. I highly recommend. The second thing that you asked about, which was the figgies. And this is basically like an Oscar.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was thinking about, like, okay, like, how do we break the ice? And hot seat is like this game where you go around the table and each person gets two minutes on the clock and everyone else at the table can ask them anything. And if they want to, they can decline to answer, but we try and keep it generally speaking quite friendly and comfortable for folks. And so we kicked off this game. And what was really interesting was earlier that day we had done a personality test, a side note, our PM team is like obsessed with personality tests.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I can definitely talk about those two things. So, hot seat is actually a tradition I started at our first PM off-site post-pandemic. So this was March of 2022, the PM team was like sub 15 people at that point. And we all fit around a dinner table, which is no longer true today. And it was really important to me that we all got to know each other in a context that was outside of work. I think that PMing is a highly collaborative function. And to the extent that you have great relationships with all the teams that you're interfacing with, that just goes, one is it goes a long way in terms of the product, but two, it makes, you know, speaking about passion, like it makes your day-to-day so much more fun if you feel like you're working with your friends and if you are working with your friends. And so we were coming out of a long, intense day session.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recruit from that composition is quite different. And then the way that you pitch and who you are pitching to is quite different. And so I think that, you know, sometimes, yeah, it makes sense to found inside of a company and to like use that to like make your flame burn right. Sometimes it makes sense to found out right. But I think that, you know, the first key to being passionate about what you're working on is to like find an idea that you're passionate about.”
2024-04-21 · Lenny's Podcast · Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source