The Teaching Assistant Who Built Figma
He showed a student a cool demo. That student asked him to start a company. Figma was born.
In the early 2010s, a student at Brown University named Dylan Field saw a demo made by his teaching assistant.
It showed fancy graphics running smoothly inside a web browser. Dylan was amazed. He decided that if he ever started a company, he wanted to build it with this person.
The teaching assistant was Evan Wallace. The company became Figma.
A graphics wizard
Evan Wallace studied computer science at Brown University. He loved computer graphics: making beautiful, fast visuals with code.
Before Figma, he interned at Pixar, the animation studio, and at Microsoft.
He also made experiments just for fun, like a realistic water simulation that ran in a browser. Programmers shared his demos everywhere.
Starting Figma
In 2012, Dylan won a Thiel Fellowship, a grant for young people who leave college to build companies. He and Evan moved to San Francisco and started Figma.
Their idea was bold. Design tools like Photoshop ran on a computer. They wanted a professional design tool that ran in a web browser, where many people could work on the same design at the same time.
Many experts thought browsers were too slow for that.
Building the engine
Evan became Figma's chief technology officer. He built the heart of the product: the rendering engine that draws everything on screen at high speed.
He also built the multiplayer system that lets many people edit together, the vector and text editors, and the plugin system.
The team worked in secret for years. Figma launched publicly in 2016. Designers were stunned by how fast it felt.
Leaving at the top
In 2021, Evan quietly left Figma. At the end of that year he shared the news.
"It was the ride of a lifetime."
He turned his attention to esbuild, a free open source tool he created that bundles JavaScript and CSS code. When he released it, many common web tools were 10 to 100 times slower. Developers around the world now use it.
What happened to Figma
In 2022, Adobe agreed to buy Figma for about $20 billion. In December 2023, the deal was called off after pushback from regulators.
On July 31, 2025, Figma went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Its shares more than tripled on the first day, though they later fell a long way.
Where he is now
Today, Evan Wallace is best known in the developer world for esbuild. He keeps a low profile and lets his code do the talking.
Why the story matters
Evan Wallace's story shows how one person's skill can change a whole industry. By proving serious design tools could run in a browser, he helped change how teams everywhere design apps and websites.
He also shows that success can mean choosing your own path, even stepping away from a company on its way to going public.
For young builders, the lesson is simple. Share what you make. A fun demo can lead to your life's biggest partnership.
He did not just write code. He made the impossible feel smooth.
The Record
Studied: Computer science, Brown University
Internships: Pixar, Microsoft
Built: Figma (with Dylan Field), esbuild
Role at Figma: Co-founder and CTO until 2021
Timeline
2012 Co-founds Figma with Dylan Field.
2016 Figma launches publicly.
2020 Releases esbuild.
2021 Leaves Figma.
2022 Adobe agrees to buy Figma for about $20 billion.
2023 The Adobe deal is called off.
2025 Figma goes public on the NYSE.