Tranched pay packages tied to so-called moon-shot goals have become popular for incentivising executives with high-risk, high-reward deals. Since it was adopted in 2018, Musk’s Tesla pay package, which is being contested in a Delaware court as “excessive,” has spawned copycats including DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and Broadcom’s Hock Tan.
Field and co-founder Evan Wallace started Figma in 2012 after Field dropped out of Brown University and accepted a Thiel Fellowship, which pays students to leave college and begin a business.Credit: Figma
Taser-maker Axon Enterprise gave co-founder Rick Smith a 12-tranche plan to meet revenue and market cap targets. He finished it in five years, tracking his progress in an arm tattoo, and gained a $US2.5 billion fortune, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index.
For some tech leaders, the moon-shot targets have yet to pan out. Airbnb’s Brian Chesky received a 10-tranche package that combined a minimum vesting requirement and stock price hurdles ranging from $US125 to $US485. While Chesky hit the first two stock price hurdles in 2021 and 2022, the company’s stock has since declined and he hasn’t earned any more tranches. Airbnb valued the remaining unvested shares at $US1.2 billion in its April proxy filing.
Price hurdles
Field will have 10 years to help Figma achieve the stock price goals, but collecting on a separate, four-year-old compensation package will come much sooner.
Loading
In 2021, the board of directors granted Field a pay deal that split 22.5 million shares into service-based and market-based awards.
Field is expected to complete and vest all 7.9 million remaining shares of the service-based package — worth more than $US230 million before taxes — at the time of the IPO, according to the company’s filing. Depending on the performance of the company’s shares after the IPO, Field could also unlock the market-based award’s 11.25 million shares, tied to market valuation hurdles of $US15 billion, $US20 billion and $US25 billion. Figma’s listing values it at roughly $US18 billion on a fully diluted basis.
The design firm’s post-IPO valuation could be from $US19.1 billion to $US23.2 billion, based on its growth prospects, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anurag Rana. The company recently increased prices, which coupled with a post-IPO sales boost, could see Figma’s revenues increase to $US1.6 billion in 2026, he said.
That could put Field’s net worth back at the $US2 billion it was calculated to be when Adobe tried to buy Figma in 2022. At the time, Field said he wasn’t interested in reflecting on his own financial gains in the transaction.
“My focus has not been about money for a long time,” he told Bloomberg.
Bloomberg
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.