The SaaS Apocalypse Is a Goldmine With Figma’s Matt Colyer

The SaaS apocalypse, or the next era of software, if you will. I'm really excited about it, and I think Figma and a lot of other SaaS businesses are too, because like I've worked in developer tools for a long time, and maybe five, 10 years ago, the estimate of like number of developers worldwide was like, I don't know, 25 million, 30 million, 40 million, give or take. I think what's most exciting about this time is that I think it's gonna be like a billion, maybe even more than that, right? And so like, I think there's this incredible time that we're moving through of product development and really the democratization of technology. And I think the end result is that there is dramatically more software out there in the world. If you're in that space, it means it's a gold mine, right? That there there's all this opportunity out there. And that I'm really excited about it. And I think, you know, Figma and a lot of other SaaS businesses are too. And so I think the other part, you know, kind of some more of the negative sentiments of the discussions you see online, is around like, well, what if I could just vibe code every app, right? And I think what's really interesting about this time is like, for whatever reason, like January of this year was like the point at which it became the larger narrative. Like, I've been doing this stuff for like probably 18 months or two years. So like, I was already like, yeah, let's go build everything. But I feel like the whole world's caught up in January of this year. And I was like, yeah, let's go build everything. And like, people are. And I am excited to see what happens because like I know my own personal journey through that is like, it's really fun to build the initial version of it, right? And like, I actually built one of my own agents two years ago. And the very first one was like an email agent. And I had to look back as like how it started. And it was like literally this, like, terrible Python script. And it kind of was rickety. And like, sometimes the replies didn't work. And I was like, okay, but like, and like, the larger narrative here is like, software companies build more than just like code, right? Like, there's a reason that I pay for Gmail to like, operate my email. It's like, it turns out, it's kind of stinks when you're like, the SMTP version needs upgrade. And you're like, I don't care. Like, I just want to receive email. And so like, As I've had to run my own agents for my personal life, like, I've had to experience that pain of like, the product I want doesn't exist. And I built it. And now I get the ongoing cost of it. And like, I'll be honest, I'm buying more software these days than I ever did before because I'm like, you know what, that tool seems cool. Like, I'm just gonna pay somebody else to run my agent for me. I totally agree. As someone who has vibe-coded my fair share of tools, a, yes, the personal maintenance, but b, I've vibe-coded tools that we've re-released into production. And let me tell you, it's not as simple as saying, like, fix this bug. And I do think that that's, I do think that's something that is really missed in the quote-unquote SaaS apocalypse discourse. I gotta say though, if one of the first things you did was an email agent, I'm super curious how you're doing your email right now because I feel like things just got to a point where you can like, kind of just do your email without doing your email. And I'm so excited about it. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I can tell a little bit more about the story. So like the problem that started two years ago is, I was using chatbots at work because at that point that was kind of like the primary interface. Like, agent usage was not really a thing yet. And so my personal life, like, I have kids in three schools. And if there are any parents out there listening, you know what it's like to get the PTO emails and they're like, what is the, what's the theme for today? And like, do you know the feeling of like a missed, like this is like the worst parent feeling in the world, but like, if you miss the spirit day because your kid didn't do a crazy hair day, like you feel like you have failed at life. I will tell you that. And having done it more than once. And so I was like, I can't, I can't miss another one. And I was like, you know what I have? I have, and it was because I had to track, you know, 15 emails a day. Like you think we produce a lot of email in corporate America. Wait till you get to the PTO emails you get at school. And so I was like, you know what, I can't read all these, but who can? Agents. And I was like, why can't I just do this? And you know, one of the amazing, many agent platforms out there. And I was like, the missing part here is like, I just want to hook it up to email. And so the very first, first version of it was just literally like, grab an email inbox, look for the top email and literally paste it. So like one of the LLMs and like dump the response back. And I know you like to talk a lot about prompts and like my favorite prompts in those days was basically like, forward the email and it would just be extract the facts. And it was always shocking to me that I would send like a multi-page email and get like three bullet points back. That is, yeah, I remember those days. Like the wiring up and the copying and pasting. And I feel like that's so far away, but it's only like a year or two ago. Yeah. Well, and then like, you know, to your point about agents, so then I added a memory system, right? Because like, to your point of like, haven't fully automated and like, not sure that I trust it to reply on my behalf. But like, having the memory system was like a total unlock. And like now how I've evolved it is like, I have a daily, so like, this is an interesting thing. Like open claw, I feel like hit on this, but like the proactive part is I think the thing that really like set it on fire. And my version of that was like, I would have my agent, like take a summary of all that stuff and send me an email every day at a certain time. And like, the unlock for me was like, instead of having to go to a tool and ask for the thing, like it was just, like it would show up. Now, not that it was particularly smart. It would just do it at the same time every day. But like, I think where agents are going, it's like much more proactive. And then like, you know, thinking about like, do I need to reach out and contact my owner and let them know what's going on? So if, if that was the, like where you were a couple of years ago, like what are, what are the, you know, what are the workflow things that you have now that you rely on that you're excited about? So it seems like there's some sort of brief functionality you're using in OpenClaw, but what are a couple of things that, you know, you've been tinkering with that you like? I think one of the things I'm trying to figure out, like in my workflow is around summarization. Like, I think part of the job is like understanding an immense amount of information and then like figuring out like, how do I filter that information and like, how do I like imbue my agents with that skill of like, this is the thing that matters and this doesn't. And then like, it's actually like a really hard problem. Because like, there's a lot of stuff that you read and at the first pass, you're like, oh, that doesn't matter. And then it will matter like three days later. And it's like, how do you describe like, which things matter and which things don't? It also feels like the agents are a little bit like, you know, one of the things that I will have it do is go through all my meetings. And like all the meetings in the company, we record it all in Notion so I can have Codex just like go through all the meetings and be like, here's all the stuff that you might be interested in, which is really cool because I can be in all these meetings that I'm not in. But then it feels like if it gives me stuff that is not quite right and I tell it it's not quite right, it overcorrects and it gives me all of the things that I said I wanted, but like way too much and way too literally, you know, and it's just like, you're never, it's never quite right somehow in this weird way. Yeah, I was curious to see where you're at on that because like I feel like this is like one of the unsolved problems at this point is like, I think we're all kind of grasping for like, like you said, like, I guess you mentioned like with the email and like your inbox, like, have you fully automated it? Like, does it reply on your behalf? Or like, do you approve every reply or like what does that look like? I have to approve every reply, but basically what I have, what I do is in Codex, I have a little app that, like I open in the Codex in-app browser that in the app runs locally. And basically every day, it just Agents, like the command line agents, like don't have the ability to like do those workflows. And so that's kind of where I see the future of design and product thinking. I think that makes total sense. And yeah, it seems like, from what I can tell so far, the agents are really good for, I already have a design system, I need a new landing page. Like, get me a landing page in the design system I already have kind of thing, which, to be honest, a lot of designers don't really want to have to spend time doing the nth landing page or the nth like graphic for this, you know, post or whatever, which is more convergent and a little bit less divergent. What about, what about, like, the future of, you know, maybe Figma design tools or just generally software with allowing external agents in versus building your own agent or having both, which you all do have? How does, how do you think that works? I mean, I think we embrace both, right? Like, and I think this is like, I think design workflows are different than engineering workflows, but like the lines are blurring. And so like, I think in the future, we're going to be all builders, right? And it kind of comes like, which perspective are you coming at the problem from? And so we definitely very much support third-party agents today. And like, our answer for that is our MCP server, right? And so I think one of the nice things about MCP is like, it allows like a standardized interface across all these different kinds of tools, right? And so we kind of think about the problem in two directions. We think about it as like, code to design. So it's like, OK, in that scenario, you just said like, that's like a pretty common thing. You're like, hey, I have a signup page, but like, it doesn't support GDPR, right? Like, most people are not going to be like, you know what I should do? I'm going to start with a Greenfield page and reimagine what our signup flow should be to add GDPR. Most people are trying to get their job done. It's like, you log in on Monday morning, and you're like, OK, I just got to get this thing done, right? And like, let me add the check box here, right? And so for that workflow, it's like, if you are comfortable in codex or cloud or WinSurf or cursor, you pull up your code base, you fire up the MCP server, and you ask it like, hey, can you copy, like, go to this page, like fire up the dev server, go to this page, and copy it into Figma canvas. And it will actually do it. Like, that's one of the releases we had earlier this year, which is like a little bit mind-blowing that agents can do this faithfully, but it turns out they can. And now you have just removed all that drudgery, right? And you've got it into like a medium where you can actually interact with it. It's like, OK, let me go, like, move things around very precisely with the direct manipulation tools that most people are comfortable with. And then the other kind of workflow that we think about is like, OK, now that we've got the design, take that design and bring it back to code, right? And so we've got a tool called Kit Design Context, which takes a Figma design, wraps up all the different properties and, like, components that you're using, as well as like any other kind of guidelines you've provided in your design library and provides it to the agent. And again, it's kind of like magic. It's like the agent will be like, OK, cool. Let me, like, look at your current code base. I'll make a branch, create a PR, make the changes. And then, like, you can ask the agent, be like, OK, take me a screenshot and put on the PR. And then, like, your job is like, kind of like what you're talking about your workflow earlier with email. It's like, you don't merge it, but you're like, OK, well, I've got a good starting spot, right? And then it's like, you can come in there and riff. What do you, what have you learned about what makes for a good internal agent experience, internal to a product that you may not have known before Figma agent? I don't know, like, that's like an interesting question. What would make it a good product? I think, specifically, this is like very specific to Figma, but like, the context and personalization matters. Like, in other products, like, I've worked on in the past for like AI companies, it's like, personalization is often like kind of the last thing. Like, you get it just working for everybody first. But I think the thing that really differentiates, like, an OK agent to one that people really love is the personalization aspect. Like, we talked about memory, like as a form of it in these, like, third-party chat agents. I think for Figma's version of that, it's like the design system. That it's like, if you have a system, but without, like, the concept of like, well, this is like how we structure our designs and like how we put them together, like, the designs that it create just aren't usable from that perspective. I don't know, like, what your plans are for Figma and, you know, the like proactive, being like being a proactive agent. But I'm curious, to the extent you have those plans and those experiments, how that's working. Obviously, like, we've talked about that being kind of hard to get right. Yeah, I mean, I think that's where the future is going. Like, if you look at like how like agents have kind of evolved. I will say we've got a lot of things cooking internally. I don't know. I can't talk about specifics too much. I definitely think this is an area where we want to head, right? And so like, I think I can talk about the problems that we see today. It's like, if the amount of software is like really exploding in the world, one of the bigger challenges then becomes like, OK, well, like, how do you make sure that it's like consistent with your values, right? And so like, I think, and like, we become the bottleneck then, right? It's like, we only have so many human eyes to review all of this work. And so it's like, how do we provide a solution that allows people to make sure that they can continue to innovate at the speed that these agents create, but also maintains their values? What has been the transition like internally in Figma in terms of your own workflows in the engineering org, in the product org, in the design org from a pre-AI world to now? So I joined in January, and I would say even in that period of time, it's been like kind of night and day. Like, I think folks in January were kind of experimenting with these new ways of working. And like across all the functions, right? Like I think probably engineering was leading the way, as they do in, I think, most of these cases. But I'll give you an example in the product org. So like, we had an off site. I think you might have actually come by. Weirdly enough, it was like a small world. I think one of my favorite memories of that off site is that we have a product operations team, and they had put together what we call PMOS. And to like take a step back for a minute, like one of the, one of the like unlocks to me about AI is like, you kind of realize every problem becomes a context problem. And it's like, then the work becomes about like framing the problem with the right set of like information. And so our product operations team is like, huh, like a lot of the work that we do is like in structured data as a PM. And it's like, why don't we like aggregate that all together? And it's like, okay, let's get a copy of the org chart. We'll throw that in a SQLite table and put it in the file system. And then it's like, okay, why don't we create like a connector to Asana? And then we'll connect Slack and then we'll connect, you know, you can get hub and a few other things, right? And then the real insight was like, skills had really taken off at this point. It's like, okay, the magic sauce here is like, one of the skills that I really like is like this onboarding file creation. So like when you add a new team member to your team, like as a manager, you've got to like create a customized, like, okay, here's the channels you should know. Here's the people you should know. And like, it takes a lot of that knowledge that I would have previously said was like entirely in my head. But then you start to look at, like, how, like if you shape the context, right? That data was actually already there, right? Like you already had the org chart and it can walk the org chart and figure out like, who's the team and like, who's the trifecta on the product engineering design side for this new team. You just have to identify, like, here's the new person. Here's the team they're going to join. And it's like, okay. And then I can do a bunch of research and then it goes into Slack and it figures out the channels. It's like, oh, this team is probably these three channels. And then it's, it reads the last 30 days of content and then it's like, here, and then it goes and checks the Asana board and finds all the projects. And so like, it comes back and you're like, oh breaks it down into like the refraction and all the rest of it, and you're like, well, what is a squirrel? And it will give you an answer of that. And so it's like, you know, they're not perfect and some of them are a little weird, especially if they eat bees' eyes, but like, I don't know, it's like, it's a magical time to be alive for like curious people, I'd say. I totally agree. Matt, it was a pleasure. Thanks. Oh my gosh, folks, you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI&I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard, but instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about ChatGPT. Every episode is a rollercoaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat, craving for more. It's not just a show, it's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So, do yourself a favor, hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely, hopelessly in love with you.