0:00 Dear lovable, I am the general counsel
0:02 at Figma Incorporated. Figma is the
0:05 owner of the Dev Mode trademark, which
0:06 has been used extensively around the
0:08 world in connection with our software
0:10 platform. We're flattered that you agree
0:11 Dev Mode is the ideal name for a
0:13 software tool that helps bridge the gap
0:15 between design and development. But as
0:17 inventors and entrepreneurs, we're sure
0:19 you can understand that we need to
0:21 protect our intellectual property. We
0:23 ask that you please cease all use of dev
0:24 mode in connection with your products
0:26 and services, rename your tool, and
0:28 remove all references to our mark from
0:30 your website, marketing materials, and
0:32 other public-f facing content. We'd like
0:34 to resolve this amicably so we can each
0:36 get back to building great products for
0:37 our customers. Please write back as soon
0:39 as possible. Let me know you've agreed
0:41 to this request. I don't know how to
0:43 start this one other than to say Figma.
0:46 What the Are you joking? This is
0:50 one of the most absurd things I've ever
0:52 seen. I have heard weird stories of
0:55 Figma doing strange things behind the
0:57 scenes, but this takes the cake. There's
1:00 a lot of layers to this, a lot of drama
1:02 adjacent to this, a lot of trademarks
1:04 that are kind of that they
1:06 currently have. But I'm going to talk
1:08 about this. I need a little bit of
1:10 cushion because if they sue me, I need
1:11 the money to protect myself. So, since
1:13 Fig was not paying me, we're going to do
1:15 a quick word from today's sponsor and
1:16 then dive right in. Wouldn't it be cool
1:18 to see your brand in a video like this
1:19 one being shown to hundreds of thousands
1:21 of motivated engineers that want to
1:22 learn more about cool technologies and
1:24 solutions and maybe even buy them and
1:26 pay for them at their company? Well, I
1:28 have some good news for you. We are a
1:29 little low on inventory for the year,
1:30 but we do have a couple slots left. You
1:32 might be surprised how cheap it is to
1:33 sponsor a video like this. If you want
1:35 to learn more and put your brand in
1:36 front of thousands of experienced
1:38 engineers, especially those who are in
1:39 the AI space, you can take my word for
1:41 it, or you can read all these comments
1:42 of people saying how great the ads are,
1:44 or you can read the commentary from our
1:46 other sponsors about how useful these
1:48 ads have been for them. If you want to
1:49 join the set of awesome brands that have
1:51 been helping us make this content
1:52 happen, email us today at
1:54 youtube3.gg and you can learn more at
1:57 t3.gg/sponsorme. I'm gonna be honest,
1:58 guys. When I first saw this, I assumed
2:00 it was fake. Quick bias check just
2:03 because I think it's important. Lovable
2:05 has sponsored videos before. They are
2:07 not sponsoring this. I have not reached
2:08 out or talked to them at all about this.
2:10 I think one employee is in my chat, but
2:12 this video has no relation to Lovable
2:14 whatsoever. I'm covering this cuz I'm
2:16 pissed at Figma. You can say I'm biased
2:18 or whatever, but if this was any other
2:19 company, I swear I would be just as
2:21 angry. This was my immediate public
2:23 response that it seems like people
2:25 enjoyed. And we also see here from Cara
2:28 some other fun trademarks they have
2:31 including schema and my personal
2:34 favorite config as well as summit and
2:38 forge. The reason they have config for
2:41 those who are wondering is because they
2:43 have a conference named config. And I
2:45 happen to know some drama about this
2:47 conference right now that I have not I'm
2:50 not in a position to share yet but I
2:51 have a feeling it will be public in the
2:52 near future. Let's just say Lovable is
2:55 not the only company that's getting some
2:58 really weird notices from our friends
3:00 over at Figma. This is absurd. We need
3:03 to talk a bit about what's going on
3:04 here, why they're doing this, and why
3:07 trademark works this way at all. What
3:09 the Figma? Let's get started. So,
3:12 I was hunting through for trademarks.
3:14 Funny enough, there's a lot that mention
3:16 dev mode or something like it somewhere.
3:18 Most of these are nonsense and almost
3:20 all of them are dead. But dev mode, it's
3:22 live and registered from Figma. If we
3:24 look here, we can see this trademark was
3:25 registered in November last year. It was
3:28 originally applied for in June, but only
3:30 officially became a trademark as
3:31 approved by the USPTO end of last year,
3:34 which means that there are probably a
3:36 lot of other companies calling things
3:39 dev. That is particularly strange
3:42 because I am near certain that there's a
3:44 lot of prior art here. So, first off, we
3:46 should probably ask WTF is dev mode. And
3:49 to be clear that we're not talking about
3:51 dev mode from other products. We're
3:52 going to add the
3:54 TM. We want people to think we mean dev
3:57 mode, the generic, when we actually mean
3:58 dev mode, the product. If you're somehow
4:01 not familiar with Figma, it is a design
4:03 tool similar to what I'm doing over here
4:05 with Excaladraw. By the way, I just said
4:07 the name Excaladraw. So, if all the
4:08 comments are, what's the tool he's using
4:10 to draw, I'm going to go insane. Figma's
4:12 originally focused almost entirely on
4:14 helping designers with a canvas built
4:17 for making applications. Back in my day
4:19 when I was learning how to code and
4:20 build websites, you would mock up your
4:22 websites in Photoshop. A lot of tools
4:25 like Photoshop, Illustrator, and other
4:26 graphic software were being used to make
4:28 mocks for apps. And it was realized by a
4:31 handful of people that that's not ideal.
4:33 The strange differences between what
4:35 editing an image looks like and what
4:37 editing an app mockup looks like meant
4:39 that there was a pretty rough spot there
4:42 where you would either try and force
4:44 design work into Photoshop or you'd give
4:46 up and go to my old favorite software,
4:49 Dreamweaver. I know the demographics for
4:51 this channel, a lot of you guys are old
4:53 enough that you absolutely used the OG
4:55 Dreamweaver. So don't pretend you
4:57 haven't. I know you have. Don't lie.
4:59 Pre-EA Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver
5:02 before Adobe was so big they weren't
5:03 allowed to acquire other companies. The
5:04 good old days. Oh, Dreamweaver. Yeah.
5:09 So, it kind of felt like there was a
5:10 spectrum where on one side you had
5:14 Photoshop and on the other side you had
5:16 Visual Studio or other like really heavy
5:19 idees. We had a little spot here that
5:21 was Dreamweaver, but it still wasn't
5:24 like anywhere near as visual as the
5:26 average like designer would probably be
5:29 looking for. And as such, more and more
5:31 people started to try and figure out
5:33 what it looks like to build something in
5:35 this range that is more apply and
5:38 developer focused than Photoshop, but
5:40 more designheavy and not codeheavy
5:42 unlike Dreamweaver and VSC. This in
5:45 between area started to get random
5:47 products thrown into it. We had Sketch.
5:50 We had Adobe XD. I don't know which came
5:52 out when, and I'm too lazy to look it
5:53 up. I'm pretty sure Sketch was first,
5:55 but I could be wrong. But eventually, we
5:57 had Figma. Figma's biggest
5:59 differentiator at the time is that it
6:01 was browser based. It also had a desktop
6:03 app, but it was browser based. The
6:05 desktop app was an Electron app, but the
6:07 real innovation of Figma was the crazy
6:09 stuff they were doing to make it perform
6:10 well in the browser. So, you could do a
6:12 canvas-like experience like we're doing
6:14 here, but with app mockups. That
6:16 combined with how generous the free tier
6:17 was meant Figma very quickly took over.
6:20 And by the time I joined Twitch in like
6:22 2017, Figma had fully taken over the
6:25 company. It was very clear. Sketch was a
6:28 one-time purchase license, but the
6:30 commercial side of it was a bit of a
6:32 mess. Adobe XD was an Adobe product, so
6:34 nobody liked it anyways. Figma very
6:36 quickly established itself as the winner
6:38 of this app focused design tool. It was
6:42 a weird in between, but it turns out
6:44 that weird in between is worth a lot of
6:46 money. Enough so that Adobe killed XD
6:48 and tried to buy Figma, got really far,
6:51 inked the deal and everything, and then
6:53 they got blocked by enough courts
6:54 because of monopolistic practice that it
6:56 didn't go through. And now Figma, since
6:59 they literally can't be acquired,
7:00 they're too big to be acquired
7:02 effectively after that decision, they
7:03 now have to win in order for all of the
7:06 value the company has to ever be
7:08 realized. If Figma's ever going to IPO
7:11 so that its stock could become real
7:13 money, they have to win hard now.
7:15 Previously, they could have had a nice
7:16 exit with an acquisition that's been
7:19 ruled out by the courts. So, their only
7:21 option is to make something so big, so
7:24 dominant, such a strong force in the
7:26 market that when they eventually go to
7:28 sell stock, it will be worth a ton of
7:31 money and they can make their money
7:32 finally. Fun thing that just happened
7:34 after I finished filming the video. My
7:36 editor will stuff this wherever it fits.
7:38 Figma just filed for a US IPO last year.
7:41 They were valued at 12.5 billion after
7:42 it closed a deal to allow employees and
7:44 early investors to sell some of their
7:45 stake to new and existing investors.
7:47 They are now filing for the IPO. Makes a
7:49 lot of sense. They need their brand to
7:51 be perceived as as valuable as possible
7:53 right now more than ever. So, they're
7:55 going to be fighting tooth and nail to
7:57 make sure any potential external risk to
8:01 Figma's visible path to success is
8:04 destroyed. Because if anything even
8:06 looks like it might get in their way of
8:08 success, the IPO goes much much worse.
8:10 We're talking about like a 5 to 10%
8:13 difference being billions of dollars,
8:15 they're going to fight hard now more
8:16 than ever. And that's why we're going to
8:18 start seeing this type of
8:20 behavior more than we've ever seen it
8:22 before. So Figma's had just absurd
8:24 levels of success, but it needs to keep
8:26 going if it's going to eventually turn
8:28 that stock into money. Figma's original
8:30 threats were Sketch and Adobe XD. But if
8:32 we look at Figma's market share, you'll
8:34 understand that these things were not
8:35 actual threats. Do you understand? This
8:39 is 2022. It's gotten worse since Sketch
8:42 was doing well and Figma just comes in
8:44 and wins the entire market. Entire
8:48 market. It's not close. It's not like
8:50 they have 30% or something. Figma
8:52 won. So the risk is no longer can Figma
8:56 win the design world. That's already
8:59 over. Figma already won design. That's
9:02 not a conversation we need to have
9:03 anymore. The numbers prove it. Figma's
9:05 the winner of the design world. So,
9:07 what's left? I'll argue there are two
9:09 things Figma has to do. Now, thing one,
9:12 find other markets to maintain growth.
9:15 And two, protect the design industry at
9:19 all costs. This is Figma's mission now.
9:22 figure out how we can grow by branching
9:26 to adjacent places and protect the
9:28 design industry so that we never lose
9:30 that thing that we have a huge
9:32 percentage of. So what does part one
9:34 here look like? Ever heard of Fig Jam?
9:36 Fig Jam was an attempt to do something
9:38 similar to what I'm doing over there in
9:39 Excal. The goal of Fig Jam was a
9:43 collaborative workspace whiteboard thing
9:45 so that you could talk with your team
9:47 about stuff. This was a really
9:49 interesting idea for a handful of
9:50 reasons. First off, the people who run
9:53 these types of things at companies tend
9:54 to lean product, not engineering. If
9:56 you're trying to talk about different
9:58 things in your product and the direction
10:00 you want your team to be moving in,
10:01 that's probably going to be led by a
10:02 product person. And if you were to
10:04 spectrum out like what different roles
10:05 exist at a company, I'd say product,
10:07 it's all the way here. Maybe if we go a
10:09 bit further, we'd say support, it's all
10:11 the way to the left there. Then you have
10:13 product, then you have design, then you
10:15 have front end, dev, then backend.
10:20 Roughly, this is meant to give a a rough
10:22 idea of like how things relate back and
10:25 forth. And you could argue that each
10:27 layer here, the person in the middle is
10:29 the bridge between the other two. So
10:31 when support notices a bunch of
10:32 customers having a problem, they'll
10:34 probably talk to product, the product
10:35 manager, product team, whoever. Product
10:37 will figure out what issues exist on the
10:38 support side and then talk with design
10:40 about how to make the product clearer so
10:42 these mistakes don't keep happening.
10:44 Design will then work with product and
10:46 edge in order to make sure those designs
10:47 can actually be implemented and get them
10:49 started in the implementation. Then
10:51 front end will yell at backend to make
10:52 sure their stuff actually works so they
10:54 can actually ship it. This is a real
10:55 rough idea of how companies work. What
10:58 this means is that product is the place
11:00 where a lot of the conversations really
11:02 start and because of that product tends
11:04 to be the group that leads the meetings
11:06 where we do big product planning,
11:08 quarterly management, all the things
11:10 that you would use a fancy whiteboard
11:12 with a team for. So if your product
11:13 exclusively lives here and your goal is
11:16 to expand like this, it makes a lot of
11:18 sense you would go left first because
11:20 that's kind of your bread and butter.
11:21 And product tools are garbage. Product
11:24 teams are the reason Jira still exists
11:26 because they're tolerant of terrible
11:28 things and Figma really wanted to fix
11:30 that with Fig Jam and they failed. I
11:33 think Fig Jam's actually dead. If not,
11:36 it's close to it. I think they formally
11:38 announced that. I might be wrong though.
11:40 What was was it not Fig Jam? What's the
11:43 Figma thing they shut down? Oh, Google
11:46 Jam Board. That was Google's. Okay, I
11:47 misremembered. Google Jam Board is the
11:49 one that is dead. Figma is still alive
11:51 and well. I don't know anybody using it,
11:53 but it does still exist. Thank you,
11:55 chat. Anyways, Fig Jam was very clearly
11:58 an attempt to expand Figma's presence
12:01 further towards product. But that's not
12:03 the only thing they did. Soon after, not
12:05 that soon after, but relatively soon
12:07 after, they started expanding the other
12:08 way. And that's what dev mode is. Dev
12:11 mode was an attempt by Figma to make it
12:13 easier to take a mock in the Figma app
12:15 and export code from it. Be it CSS,
12:18 HTML, even theoretically React code. And
12:21 ideally, if they get everything right,
12:22 you'd be able to throw it into your
12:24 editor directly or use the Figma plugin
12:25 inside of VS Code. I have a whole video
12:28 about this that I dropped right when it
12:30 was originally announced. I tried
12:32 playing with it, didn't have a good time
12:34 with it, and moved on. And honestly
12:36 speaking, I've been using Figma less and
12:39 less. I barely touch it nowadays.
12:40 There's a combination of reasons why.
12:42 Tailwind's made a lot easier to mock
12:44 things up fast. More importantly, AI
12:46 tools have made it comically easier to
12:49 make a decent enough looking thing. And
12:51 also, I don't have a designer that's
12:52 working with me full-time right now. So,
12:54 there's less incentive. And usually when
12:55 I hire designers, I'm hiring engineing
12:57 ones. And they're just going to start by
12:59 going into the code anyways. So, they
13:01 went left with Fig Jam and they went
13:03 right with dev mode. These were their
13:05 attempts to expand the potential market
13:06 for Figma products. And I'd go as far as
13:09 to say they weren't very successful.
13:11 We'll do a quick poll because this is an
13:13 audience of devs. Have you used Figma's
13:17 dev mode? Yes, often. Yes, not often.
13:21 Yes, stopped using. No, never used. I
13:25 use it, but only because it has a ruler.
13:27 Oof. Yeah, the dev mode experience sucks
13:29 ass. This is what I've heard mostly. I'm
13:32 very familiar with Framework. It's a
13:33 cool product. So, my dev heavy audience,
13:35 here you go. The numbers kind of speak
13:36 for themselves. There aren't a lot of
13:38 people who are using Figma's dev mode,
13:41 especially when we again compare to
13:43 those insane numbers here where they
13:46 have like well over 80% of the
13:49 market, like way way over. It's higher
13:53 than that now. I saw numbers as high as
13:54 95 in the past. So, they won design.
13:57 They can't even make a splash in dev.
14:00 They're struggling a lot. So I I hope
14:03 that we've established here Figma is
14:05 struggling a lot to break into these
14:06 other spaces, especially the dev world.
14:09 But something else happened that's
14:10 important. This is where we need to talk
14:11 about point two. AI dev tools got really
14:14 good. Important to realize how much this
14:18 has changed the trajectory of Figma.
14:20 Figo's bet was effectively that these
14:21 designs were so valuable and developers
14:23 needed these designs so badly that
14:25 building a tool for the designers to
14:27 provide mocks that are usable and useful
14:29 to the developers could be a many many
14:32 multi-billion dollar industry. And they
14:34 weren't wrong, certainly not at the
14:35 time. But some of these AI dev tools
14:38 have meaningfully reduced the amount of
14:40 help you need from designers. They're
14:42 far from perfect. I'm not going to sit
14:43 here and pretend otherwise. But they are
14:45 so much better than devs previously
14:48 would have needed to rely on. There's a
14:50 spectrum I drew a while back. I want to
14:51 see if I can find it. There's going to
14:53 be a weird comparison, so hear me out.
14:55 It's a diagram I drew when I was talking
14:57 about HTMX versus Nex.js. And the reason
15:00 I drew this diagram is to try and frame
15:02 the like back end and front end and when
15:05 different parts are necessary. If you're
15:07 building an app that is just a couple of
15:10 forms with a really complex backend that
15:11 has to scale well and process tons of
15:13 data and the website is just a basic
15:16 form and a page that shows the current
15:18 state of the infra, you don't need much
15:20 on the front end side. So if we were to
15:23 like show how far and how much any given
15:26 piece needs, the back end would be a
15:28 majority of the complexity and the front
15:30 end here would be really small. The back
15:32 end could be this big complex thing. The
15:34 front end doesn't have to be. But there
15:35 is a spectrum here where the server is
15:38 more complex versus the client being
15:39 more complex. If the back end is where
15:41 the complexity lives, building that
15:43 backend with front-end tools probably
15:45 isn't the best bet. Even using Node
15:46 might not be the best bet depending on
15:47 what you're building here. But if you're
15:49 building a Twitter clone, the back end
15:50 is a hell of a lot less complex and the
15:53 front end is a hell of a lot more
15:54 complex. At which point, the tools you
15:56 pick should be able to handle that level
15:59 of complexity well. Building a good
16:00 Twitter clone that feels nice to use
16:02 with HTMX would suck. the same way
16:05 building a complex infrastructure with
16:07 Nex.js would suck. The interesting thing
16:08 about HTMX is it meaningfully moved the
16:10 line for where do you need to adopt a
16:13 front-end
16:14 framework previously in order to have a
16:17 front-end framework that was like could
16:19 go further left than here. Let's say you
16:21 would need to adopt something like
16:23 React. You'd have to go all in on single
16:24 page apps and let the client own its
16:26 state. As soon as you have a certain
16:28 level of interactivity in your page, you
16:30 effectively need a clientside framework.
16:32 HTMX said, "Wait, do you though?" And
16:36 they moved this line pretty far down.
16:39 So, there are lots of levels of
16:41 complexity your front end apps can have
16:42 where you don't need to adopt a tool
16:45 like React. HTMX is much more backend
16:47 focused. It lets you update the state of
16:49 the page from the server without having
16:51 to reload the entire content of the
16:52 page, which makes more interactivity
16:54 possible without having to write
16:56 clientside code. Before HTMX and
16:58 honestly before intercooler and things
17:00 like it, if you had a comment section on
17:02 your blog and somebody left a comment,
17:03 the whole page would have to reload to
17:05 see that or they'd have to load some
17:07 JavaScript single page app style. So
17:09 when they leave the comment, it would
17:10 update the DOM using React, Angular,
17:12 even jQuery. A lot of clientside code
17:15 would be necessary in order to do that
17:17 type of good experience. HTMX challenged
17:20 the notion and said, "Wait, for basic
17:23 page updates that are serverdriven, what
17:25 if we just update the HTML in place
17:26 instead, which is really nice and
17:28 powerful." And there's a reason why
17:29 people love HTMX. It's because they
17:31 don't need all the things React can do.
17:33 They're not building a heavily
17:35 interactive app like T3 chat. They're
17:37 trying to build something that just
17:39 shows what the backend's current state
17:40 is with a little bit more interactivity.
17:42 So, why am I talking about all of this?
17:45 Well, I'm going to copy paste this guy
17:46 into our new diagram. And hopefully
17:48 you'll see why. If we change this from
17:51 server to client to design and develop
17:56 and we change this to front-end code and
17:58 designs or mocks, I'll even say Figma
18:01 mocks specifically. Kill all that. There
18:04 would be a point where a front-end dev
18:07 isn't good enough to design the thing.
18:10 If you look at like my homepage, you
18:12 don't need a designer to design this
18:13 page. If somebody was to take the time
18:15 to mock this up in Figma, I would
18:16 probably make fun of them and I hope you
18:17 would too because it does not it's not a
18:19 complex design. This does not need a
18:21 whole lot of effort to make. But if
18:22 you're trying to do something like T3
18:24 chat, you'd benefit a lot more for
18:26 making proper mocks in something. So
18:28 it's important to think for any given
18:30 project, how complex is this design such
18:32 that we want to take the time to mock it
18:34 and how competent are your devs to get
18:36 by without having those mocks. So for
18:38 some projects, the bar might be here cuz
18:41 oh, we don't really care. We just needed
18:43 to show the data quick. we don't care
18:44 how nice it looks. Some projects might
18:46 be all the way down here where it's
18:48 like, "Oh, mocks are the only thing that
18:50 make this product viable. Without them,
18:51 we're not going to get anything done."
18:53 Previously, I would argue there was very
18:56 little you could do with just front-end
18:57 code. You effectively needed to have a
19:00 designer doing things in Figma if what
19:02 you were building was more complex than
19:04 like a basic form or a dashboard. And by
19:07 dashboard, I mean just a table
19:08 effectively. And even then, having
19:09 design help would be nice. The crazy
19:12 thing that has happened due to AI tools
19:14 is very similar to HTMX where these AI
19:18 focused developer tools have effectively
19:20 made it so you can go way further
19:23 without needing a designer to help. If
19:25 we were to say that further left is a
19:27 beautiful design and further right is a
19:29 I don't know T3.gg design. My design
19:32 capabilities pre these AI tools were
19:34 like here and I needed a designer to
19:37 save me. But now that we have Vzero,
19:39 Lovable, Bolt, and all these other
19:41 tools, especially Vzero, because it's
19:42 really good at like UI, this has shifted
19:45 quite a bit for me. And I've been amazed
19:47 at how far it has. I never thought I
19:50 would see the day where I could just go
19:52 to a chatbot and say, "Hey, make this."
19:53 And it will make something that looks
19:54 good enough. And since the output is
19:56 code, not a design in a mock software, I
20:00 can dive into the code and play with it
20:02 the way I normally do. So, it allows for
20:04 me as a dev to go way further in design
20:06 without needing a designer, without
20:08 needing Figma, without needing mocks,
20:09 and it comes out in the language I want,
20:11 which is code, ideally react if you're a
20:14 React developer. And now I can take this
20:16 design that I previously would have had
20:17 to pay a designer for, then spend all
20:19 the time making a first version, go back
20:21 to the designer, get more feedback, and
20:23 like iterate back and forth. Now, it's I
20:25 prompt an AI bot. It gives me a starting
20:27 point with code. If there are things I
20:29 don't like about it, I ask it to try
20:30 again. If I just don't like it entirely,
20:32 I will hit the reroll button. It's so
20:34 much easier to get way further without
20:37 needing to go hire a designer. When I
20:39 first started Ping, my first hire was a
20:42 designer because it was so hard to find
20:44 good designers and I was not competent
20:47 enough to do it. The original versions
20:48 of Ping were so disgustingly,
20:51 hilariously ugly. But I don't have a
20:53 designer I employ right now. I have a
20:55 design engineer working with us
20:57 part-time. Shout out to Dom. He's been
20:58 killing it. But we don't have a
20:59 full-time designer anymore because we
21:01 haven't needed it for a while. We
21:02 originally moved away from having
21:04 designers. We were focused on dev tools.
21:06 Now we're not and we still haven't found
21:08 the need for it. You can go so much
21:10 further without a designer now. And this
21:12 puts 2 here for Figma at risk. The
21:16 design industry is legitimately at risk
21:18 of getting smaller now. Previously,
21:21 every company shipping software probably
21:23 needed a designer, at least part-time.
21:25 Now, a significant portion of them
21:27 probably don't. That's a huge risk for
21:29 Figma, especially because the output of
21:31 these tools isn't something you can use
21:33 in Figma. The output of these tools is
21:35 on the other side. It's something you
21:36 can use in your editor. If these AI
21:38 tools were spitting out Figma mock, so
21:40 you need a designer to go in and tidy
21:41 up. They'd be in a great place, and I'm
21:42 sure they'd be hyped. Instead, they're
21:44 throwing really, really weird pot shots
21:47 and going out of their way to damage
21:49 these AI code building tools because
21:51 they are putting Figma's entire place in
21:53 the industry at risk. And again, I can't
21:56 say the details, but I will say
21:57 confidently, Lovable is not the only
21:59 company dealing with like this
22:01 right now. And it makes sense why
22:03 Figma's in a weird spot. Figma can't be
22:05 acquired. And again, at a company of
22:08 this size, acquisition is usually your
22:10 exit plan. So, they can't be acquired.
22:12 Figma struggles to win devs. Figma's
22:16 industry is at risk. So, what happens
22:20 when you can't sell to make your money?
22:22 You can't expand the marketplace to make
22:25 more money and the thing you're
22:27 currently making money from is at risk.
22:29 This leads to what I call the Netscape
22:32 effect. Microsoft realized that the
22:35 internet was going to risk the entire
22:37 model they had for how software was
22:39 going to work long term. Microsoft
22:41 realized that people wouldn't be going
22:43 to stores to buy discs with licensing
22:45 fees anymore. They saw Netscape and its
22:47 success in the browser space and
22:48 realized, "Oh, we need to win here." And
22:50 that's why they made a free browser to
22:52 compete with the paid Netscape app and
22:55 also built functionality into Windows to
22:57 make it really really good for Internet
23:00 Explorer and kind of hostile for other
23:02 browsers. And that led to Microsoft
23:04 getting sued so hard that they ended up
23:07 having government people full-time
23:09 employed at Microsoft just looking for
23:12 more antitrust practice going on in
23:14 order to prevent this in the future.
23:15 It's one of like the biggest antitrust
23:17 lawsuits in history. And by the time it
23:19 wrapped up, Netscape had already shut
23:20 down because they were higma's the new
23:23 Microsoft, which is crazy when you think
23:25 about it. But that's the position
23:27 they're in. They're losing their base.
23:29 Their base is getting smaller. They're
23:31 struggling to grow into other spaces,
23:33 and the whole industry category they're
23:36 in looks like it is starting to
23:39 shrink. Shitless right now. And when
23:42 you're a billiondoll company that is
23:44 scared, that fear tends to come out like
23:46 this with what I would consider to be an
23:48 absolutely trademark suit. I do
23:52 want to try and steal manand them quick
23:54 because there are real reasons you would
23:56 do something like this. Why would you
23:59 ever do this? Obviously, the optics of
24:02 this are terrible. If Figma's goal was
24:03 to make devs like them, they just made
24:05 that 10x harder for themselves for no
24:07 good reason. They probably assumed
24:08 Lovable was a safe thing to sue because
24:10 Lovable isn't as popular in the dev
24:13 world as some of the other tools are.
24:15 They're wrong though because that went
24:16 really viral and the optics of this are
24:18 terrible. But again, to try and steel
24:20 man it, the only reason your company
24:23 would have a real vested interest in
24:24 doing this other than screwing with your
24:25 competition is if you don't enforce your
24:28 trademark, you lose it. So if I was to
24:31 trademark Vibe Code for example, use it
24:35 in my product, had a trademark through
24:37 USPTO where I own the word mark of Vibe
24:40 Code and then everyone started using the
24:42 term and I didn't enforce it. I didn't
24:44 go after them and say, "Hey, that's not
24:45 actually Vibe Code because that's my
24:47 trademark, a petition could be made to
24:49 strip that trademark from its owner."
24:51 This is going on right now with
24:52 JavaScript. Believe it or not, Oracle
24:54 owns the JavaScript trademark because
24:57 they acquired Sun Micro Systemystems who
24:59 owned the trademark originally.
25:02 JavaScript isn't Java, but it was
25:04 similar enough and the goal was to feel
25:07 like it and more importantly be as
25:08 portable as Java, which is why it got
25:10 named JavaScript. Neither Sun nor Oracle
25:12 have ever done anything meaningful with
25:14 it. Oracle in particular has never done
25:16 anything with JavaScript. They don't
25:18 have a JS engine. They don't have JS
25:19 materials. They have one tiny little SDK
25:22 for web apps that doesn't even work,
25:24 hasn't maintained for a very long time
25:26 that they have used as their
25:27 justification for maintaining the
25:29 trademark. They've also done some
25:31 sketchy stuff like sue a random dev who
25:33 made a Rust for JavaScript devs book,
25:36 suing him and threatening him because he
25:38 doesn't have the right to use the word
25:39 JavaScript in the title of the book.
25:41 Absolute absurdity. They're currently
25:43 being sued by our friends over at Dino.
25:45 I have a whole video about this, too, if
25:46 you're curious. Dino is going through
25:48 the process to argue to USPTO that
25:51 JavaScript is a generic term and it
25:54 cannot be restricted in the way it is
25:56 right now because they're not using the
25:57 trademark. They are keeping what they
25:59 consider to be an invalid trademark and
26:00 personally I do as well. I don't think
26:02 Oracle is using this trademark in a
26:04 meaningful way. They are holding it so
26:05 they can sue people for using it, not
26:07 because they're using it themselves. The
26:10 only good faith why I think they might
26:12 be doing it that is even slightly
26:13 defensible is if they give up the
26:15 JavaScript trademark, it might risk the
26:17 Java trademark, which they are
26:18 absolutely using and enforcing. That
26:20 line is blurry enough I can sympathize a
26:22 bit, but that's about as far as it can
26:23 go. Another really common one that you
26:25 guys have probably seen a bit about is
26:26 Nintendo's trademark chaos. And I'm
26:29 going to do a fun contrast here between
26:31 Nintendo and Sega's trademark vagueness.
26:36 Nintendo is known for being very ligious
26:38 with their trademarks. If you put
26:40 something that even vaguely looks like a
26:42 Pokemon or Mario in something that isn't
26:44 officially Nintendo, there's a good
26:46 chance they're going to come after you
26:47 for it. They've even sued for things as
26:50 absurd as the trademark of a ball being
26:53 thrown at a monster. It's kind of
26:55 absurd. But the reason they do that is
26:57 because in Japan especially, the rules
27:00 around losing a trademark if it becomes
27:01 a generic are much more open and it's
27:03 very easy to lose your trademark if
27:04 you're not careful. So Nintendo very
27:07 strictly enforces their trademark
27:08 because their whole business is built on
27:11 their exclusive right to things like
27:12 Mario. If anyone could make a Mario game
27:14 and anyone could make a Pokemon game,
27:16 Nintendo would lose a huge portion of
27:18 their value because let's be real,
27:21 they're not making money because of
27:22 their hardware. They're not making money
27:24 because of their network code. They're
27:25 not making money because of much.
27:27 Certainly not the quality of the store.
27:28 The store is the Switch store is one of
27:31 the most pathetic piece of software I've
27:32 ever used in my life. Their trademarks
27:34 and their IPs are what make them
27:36 valuable. So, they strictly enforce
27:37 them. Who knows what makes Sega
27:39 valuable? I want to see if this one.
27:42 Where does Sega make their money right
27:44 now? I love that it's 50/50, but half of
27:47 you got it right. Gambling. Slot
27:50 machines. If you didn't know this, a
27:53 while back, Sega got acquired. Sega
27:55 Sammy was a merger that happened way
27:57 back because Sammy Holdings Company was
28:01 making a lot of money selling pachinko
28:03 machines and other gambling things in
28:05 Japan and they had a really, really bad
28:08 reputation. They were starting to look
28:11 very bad to the public. Sega was failing
28:14 because the Dreamcast just lost compared
28:17 to the other consoles. and Sammy saw the
28:19 opportunity to buy Sega mostly for the
28:22 sentiment win. They could use the name
28:24 Sega as their public name, which has a
28:27 positive reputation, to hide the fact
28:30 that they were doing other things with
28:31 their business. And this went very well
28:33 for them. This basically allowed them to
28:34 flip sediment and get away with
28:36 continuing to do terrible things. But
28:37 because of that, the value of Sega's
28:40 trademarks are not that they have the
28:42 exclusive rights to them. To be frank,
28:44 Sega doesn't really care what you do
28:46 with Sonic. The goal of Sonic isn't to
28:49 make them a lot of money directly. The
28:51 goal of the whole Sega brand is to have
28:54 enough positive sentiment that they're
28:56 less likely to have a big flip that
28:58 causes them to lose their gambling
28:59 business. So Sega's goal with their
29:01 trademarks is not to use them to make
29:03 money. It's to have positive sentiment
29:05 with the community. So they kind of let
29:07 you do whatever. Nintendo needs to sell
29:09 the things that they make with those
29:10 trademarks. So they can't do that. Sega
29:12 doesn't give a Hopefully this
29:14 helps contrast the difference between
29:15 these two here. So, what the is
29:17 Figma doing? I think Figma's in a weird
29:19 spot here because in my opinion, dev
29:22 mode is a BS trademark. That's a term
29:25 we've used for things for so long. Dev
29:28 is a generic, mode is a generic. The
29:30 combination of the words is very
29:31 generic. And there have been a lot of
29:32 tools, and I'm positive there is good
29:34 prior art to dev mode being used in
29:36 other places because it is such a
29:39 trademark. And because it just
29:41 got approved very recently, as we saw
29:43 here, November of last year, in order
29:46 for them to not lose it, they have to be
29:48 strict as hell with it. And I think
29:50 that's what we're seeing now. We're
29:52 seeing Figma protecting this trademark
29:55 at all costs because it is a
29:57 trademark and they are scared of losing
29:58 it. But as we saw earlier,
30:01 trademarks are kind of their thing as
30:02 they have config trademarked, they have
30:04 schema trademarked, they have factory
30:06 trademarked. seems like they've gotten
30:08 away with this for a while and they want
30:10 to make sure they can continue to. I
30:11 also don't think they've gotten a proper
30:13 blowback for it because I don't think
30:14 they've went after a prominent enough
30:16 figure in a public space like this
30:17 before. So, the combination of Dev mode
30:20 being a trademark, the
30:22 necessary nature of protecting your
30:24 trademark to keep it, and the weird
30:26 position Figma is in where their market
30:28 is shrinking and they're failing to grow
30:29 it. They're acting
30:31 irrationally. And it's kind of pathetic
30:33 to see a multi-billion dollar company
30:36 act like this. But this is kind of the
30:38 the end of the friendly nice guys Figma
30:41 that we have liked to pretend they were
30:43 for a while. I have felt that going away
30:44 for a bit now, but this is a real like,
30:46 oh, it's over now, isn't it? One other
30:49 important detail because people might
30:50 not know this. Tools like Lovable
30:52 actually let you import from Figma. So,
30:55 I can import a design from Figma and
30:57 generate code. I can do it here. I can
30:58 do it in bolt. Import from Figma. I even
31:02 do it from VZ. Import from Figma. Figma
31:05 is now a button you click in other
31:06 people's tools. They don't want that.
31:08 They want the opposite. They don't want
31:09 VZero or Lovable or Bolt to be the thing
31:11 people export their Figas to. They want
31:13 Figma to be the tool they do the
31:15 exporting with. And the more that these
31:17 tools allow you to import from Figma,
31:19 the more companies that are using Figma
31:21 are going to start trying them and the
31:22 more likely they are to cancel their
31:24 Figma subscriptions in favor of just
31:25 using Vzero in the first place. The more
31:27 that that happens, the less money Figma
31:29 can make, the less likely they are to
31:30 have a successful IPO and make all their
31:32 investors and their founders and
31:33 everybody else a whole bunch of money.
31:35 They are scared. They're acting scared.
31:37 And this is an absolute
31:38 trademark that I hope they lose in
31:40 court. Yeah, what a ride. I got nothing
31:43 else. Thank you guys as always and
31:45 hopefully my use of the word dev mode
31:47 throughout this doesn't get me sued.
31:48 Until next time, peace
31:50 nerds. I just went the whole video
31:52 without making a Ligma joke. You guys
31:54 proud?
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