Episode 16: Bridging the gap with Jonathan Keen, Head of Legal at Figma

Inspiring Legal

Today, Inspiring Legal is joined by Jonathan Keen, the Head of Legal at powerhouse software company Figma. Listen in as Stine and Jonathan dive into Figma's legal operations, their approach to privacy, and Jonathan's own Legal journey.

Thank you for listening to Inspiring Legal.

Full episode transcript:

[00:00 - 00:17] Welcome back to another episode of Inspiring Legal. So today I am joined by Jonathan and you'll get to hear more from him in a second. But Jonathan is working for Figma, a fast growing, amazing tool.
[00:17 - 00:34] If you ever used it, you know what it is and you know how good it is. But Jonathan also has a background working for tech companies that are growing fast. And today Jonathan is joining me to have a conversation about privacy, expanding into new markets
[00:34 - 00:56] and how you're managing that when you're working for a company both headquartered out of the US, but also working in Europe. So welcome, Jonathan. Hi, thank you for the warm welcome. I'm delighted to be here. So Jonathan, for the listeners out there that don't know you, I think they should get to know you a little better.
[00:56 - 01:13] So I was wondering if you could just share a little bit about yourself, where you are from and what you do. Sure. So where am I from? I'm based out of London in the UK and have been for some time.
[01:13 - 01:38] And I guess my legal career started in a traditional way. I worked for a well-established English firm to do my training contract, which is a two year kind of training period, which we do in the UK, before qualifying into a number of US law firms in their London office,
[01:38 - 02:01] but headquartered in New York. So I had that exposure to working with US organizations very early on in my career. So I had kind of that insight into working to tight deadlines and to working with a US centric kind of work culture and kind of the pace and the requirements of that entail.
[02:01 - 02:18] So the first US firm I worked for was Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. They're one of the big white shoe New York firms. And when I was working for them, we were in the middle of the financial crisis in 2000, then it was the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
[02:18 - 02:35] And I joined kind of towards the end of that. And they were actually the official counsel to the Lehman Brothers Chapter 11. So working on really high profile corporate insolvency work as part of their financial restructuring team, which was hugely interesting.
[02:35 - 02:51] And a lot of new case law was made at the time because obviously a bank of the size and complexity of Lehman Brothers had never gone insolvent before. So it's a hugely interesting project and I'm delighted to play a very small part in that.
[02:51 - 03:12] Subsequently, I realized that kind of in the long term, private practice wasn't really the area for me. I am interested in studying new areas of law. I'm interested in a breadth of work. And that doesn't really traditionally tie up with a private practice career.
[03:12 - 03:36] So relatively early on in my career, I made the move in-house working for a portfolio technology company, a very small bespoke software house working in the energy sector, and then gradually made my way into into the West Coast technology scene where I've kind of been specializing for the last five years,
[03:36 - 04:03] helping West Coast typically headquartered hyper growth SAS companies expand into the international market. So I've been the first non-US lawyer now. The last two organizations I've worked for. And the first kind of pair of feet on the ground outside the US. And I'm there to help enable that rapid growth into Europe and beyond for these for these companies.
[04:03 - 04:20] And yeah, Figma has been my home for the last 18 months and seen a exceptional pace of growth. We've opened offices in London, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, and now Singapore is next on the list during that time.
[04:20 - 04:38] So kind of the we have this phrase that kind of a month in Figma is like a year at other companies because so much, so much changes. And that's part of the excitement, but also presents its own challenges as well. I'm normally saying working at a tech scale up is kind of like dog years.
[04:38 - 04:58] So you're multiplying it by seven. Here we're multiplying it by 12. And I think it kind of gives a good understanding of the growth of Figma and where Figma is going. So if you don't know about Figma out there, take a look, because if you're working at a tech company, you are most likely using their products.
[04:58 - 05:19] And if not, most likely going to, especially the product teams and the dev teams are madly in love with it. And I'm not getting commissioned for saying this, and I don't use your product, but my dev team does. I am not creative. I'm not able to do anything that just resembles something smart when it comes to technology.
[05:19 - 05:38] But I know from my UX designer and from my CPO that they are in love with your product, which was also why we reached out to you, Jonathan. But also because of those challenges and but also exciting times that come with working for such a company.
[05:38 - 05:56] Could you maybe just put a few words on like just during those 18 months that you've been there? How has that journey been so far? Yeah, it's been hugely exciting. It's come in two phases, really. There's the initial six months where it was just me.
[05:56 - 06:24] So I didn't have a team. So and kind of covering off so many different areas. So primarily new business, negotiating SAS contracts with with our existing and expanding customers, but also kind of doing the corporate foundational work, incorporating entities in France and Germany and all of that good stuff and helping enable the rapid growth in headcounts.
[06:24 - 06:46] We were only 50 people in Europe and now we're 150 plus. So a huge amount of growth in terms of personnel, but also in terms of revenue as well. So that first six months I was really doing everything from a legal perspective, employment as well, privacy.
[06:46 - 07:08] It was really fascinating, but also it's a challenge on your resources when you're doing all of that. So you have to ruthlessly triage and prioritize what is kind of key for the business and turn your attention to it. And you're very much kind of doing baseline compliance in some areas and focusing on the real high risk areas and putting your time into that.
[07:08 - 07:36] So everyone at Figma has done it. It's kind of the six months initial trial, almost where you kind of head of HR did the same, where you're kind of coming in and you're, you're building things just on your own and looking after everything and then you start recruiting and then things become more manageable. And then it's a focus on the on the kind of the value add and the strategic rather than just the tactical.
[07:36 - 08:08] So when you not have only done this once, you've done it twice. I think you are almost a veteran when it comes to really scaling a US company into Europe. And one of the challenges that are then I could pursue is maybe around privacy and getting that ingrained and bridging the US with the EU and working with that.
[08:08 - 08:28] Could you maybe just share a little bit about what have been your experiences and how have you worked with it? Yeah, this is the second time I've done this. So before Figma, I was at a company called Zero who did identity management and a very similar growth trajectory to Figma.
[08:28 - 08:47] And then we were acquired by Opta for six and a half billion. A couple of years ago now. So this is my second time arou...