The now-33-year-old CEO was just 19 when he founded the online design tool in 2012—and the aspiring tech entrepreneur pulled on any loose thread he could find to convince others to use it.
“I just looked online, like, ‘Who are the designers that I think could be really helpful to us and I respect their work?’ If they answer my email and they let me buy them a coffee, it’ll just be like a personal moment for me, because they’re my hero,” Field recalled. “And a lot of them replied. It’s kind of wild that people reply to cold emails, but they do.”
Fortune reached out to Figma for comment.
Figma’s CEO isn’t the only one admitting to reaching out to the upper echelons of business for help out of the blue—and actually finding success from it.
At the time Samat was in his 20s, trying to make it in the start-up world, when a cofounder at his company Mohomine was weighing leaving the business for graduate school. Unsure of how to convince them to stay, he emailed Brin at 3 a.m., hoping for some words of wisdom. A mere minute later, Brin replied and invited Samat and his entire team down to Google’s headquarters, interviewing them on the spot. Brin offered Samat a job, but the now-executive turned down the opportunity to build up his company.
