Figma broke a “golden rule” in marketing…

And it was the key to their growth

🔑 They built their GTM messaging “feature-first”

Common advice says NOT to do this - And instead recommends to message on:

→ benefits and value

→ problems and JTBD

But when Figma would meet with prospects, they’d almost always start demoing features.

Just showing the coolest stuff they were building and asking for feedback.

They even built content this way.

Their very first blog post was titled - “Grid Systems for Screen Design” by Johan Prag

And it covered highly technical features they were building in constraints, grids, and frames.

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Why did this work for Figma?

There are 2 main reasons:

1️⃣ They were playing the long game

→ They had PLG in mind from the start - anchored in building trust

2️⃣ They deeply understood their early-adopters

→ The key to building trust was to get early adopters to love what they were doing.

These early adopters were bleeding edge designers

❌ They didn’t want to be sold to

❌ They weren’t looking for ROI or a problem to be solved

✅ They just wanted to see and do cool shit

And because Figma deeply understood the mentality of early adopters, they could “break the marketing norms” in their approach to earn that trust.

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The takeaway for your startup?

⛔️ Don’t build your marketing on “best practices”

🟢 Build your marketing on your customer’s mindset