Figma’s IPO: The Full Breakdown & Why Melio’s $2.5BN Acquisition is “Discouraging”

Jason Lemkin and Rory O’Driscoll on Figma’s IPO, Melio’s premature $2.5B exit, and why any SaaS company that hasn’t grown from AI by June 2025 is already dead.

• Figma filed S1 at $821M revenue, 46% YoY growth, 40%+ FCF margins, $1.5B cash — Rory calls it Rule of 80+, likely valued $20-30B.
• Lemkin calls Melio’s $2.5B sale to Xero “discouraging” — they were at $153M ARR growing 127%, far too early to sell.
• Index Ventures returning ~$3.5B across Figma and Scale AI in compressed timeframe; only Founders Fund and Index achieving 3x DPI at large fund sizes.
• Lemkin’s rule: if your company hasn’t accelerated growth because of AI by June 30, 2025, it won’t — give up on it.
• Oracle closed a $30B/year deal with OpenAI; Larry Ellison redirected stock buyback cash into Nvidia GPUs, now showing in capex not P&L.
• Surge AI (Scale competitor) bootstrapped to $1B revenue, only 7 enterprise customers, one-page website — nobody in VC was talking about them.
• Nine-figure SaaS zombies growing mid-teens face a valuation gap: sellers want 5x, buyers will only pay 2x, so no M&A clearing happens.
• VLEX, a 25-year-old Barcelona legal data company, sold to Clio for $1B after successfully AI-ifying its libraries — proof legacy companies can make the jump if they move fast enough.

2025-07-03 · Watch on YouTube