Episode summary
How AI Is Turning Figma’s Finance Team Into Builders
The a16z Show
· · 50 min · Hosts: Seema Amble, Ivan Makarov · Guests: Praveer Melwani
Summary
AI is pushing finance at Figma from backward-looking reporting toward operating leverage, faster decisions, and more strategic work. Praveer Melwani argues that the modern finance leader should act like an operational business builder, not a traffic cop: use AI to automate repetitive work, but still understand the business deeply and avoid outsourcing judgment.
He says the biggest gains so far have come from workflows that stitch together messy data across systems, such as collections, credit checks, expense review, and planning analysis. In one example, Figma’s corporate development team now uses tools like Codex and internal AI workflows to help diligence deals, including vibe coding a product and simulating how different executives would challenge an investment memo. Praveer says these tools speed up iteration, surface anomalies quickly, and free teams to focus on experiments and higher-value questions.
He also warns that AI can create “slop” if teams produce more documents without clearer thinking. His hiring bar emphasizes intellectual curiosity, data fluency, communication, and the ability to interrogate model output rather than blindly accept it. Looking ahead, he expects more finance work to become automated end to end, while a centralized systems layer becomes necessary to turn one-off team-built agents into shared infrastructure.
Key takeaways
- Praveer Melwani says Figma’s best finance hires are intellectually curious, fluent in data, and able to use AI without outsourcing their thinking.
- He says the highest-value automations are in messy, repetitive workflows like collections, credit checks, expense review, and planning analysis.
- Praveer says Figma’s corp dev team now uses AI in diligence to vibe code products and simulate how leaders would attack an investment memo.
- He argues that “slop” is a real risk, so anything finance publishes should be reviewed, simplified, and worth the reader’s time.
- Praveer expects more finance work to become fully automated, but says a centralized systems team will be needed to productize successful local experiments.
Notable quotes
“I want folks that feel extremely intellectually curious. You're coming in and trying to solve and try to understand the business really well”
“You want to use AI as a tool to help you and empower you, but it's really, really critical to still be that thinker”
“We're in an era right now where a lot of slop is being called out”
“I don't think that necessarily has changed today. Like I still very much value that”
How the episode opens
I think we're going to be able to attract and build the world's best finance organization because so much what people want the ability to learn and feel like they're being invested in and surrounded by people that want to go and become the best at their craft.
We'd love to hear a little bit about what made someone a great hireer on your team, a great person.
I want folks that feel extremely intellectually curious. You're coming in and trying to solve and try to understand the business really well. You want to use AI as a tool to help you and empower you, but it's really, really critical to still be that thinker.
We're in an era right now where a lot of slop is being called out. I've heard one CFO talk about how using AI just led to unlimited amount of docs that are being created every day. Anything that you're putting out there that you're asking someone to consume, it's going to take them time, effort, and energy.
95% of the challenge there is just like getting your data in the right spot.
What do we think changes in the next 12 to 18 months? — If our biggest complexity was staying the same, I think we probably wouldn't need the same number of people a year from now. Um, — Welcome to the A16C podcast. I'm CMA Amble. I'm joined here by my partner Ivon Macarov. We recently wrote a piece called You Need a New CFO. Our argument uh was that AI takes um finance to the next level. And the CF CFO's job increasingly includes building and automation and really designing the systems and the team to do that. Today we're joined by Pier Milwani um who's the CFO at Figma.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- ai finance automation
- build vs buy
- m&a diligence
- ai slop
- finance leadership hiring
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Figma
Watch the episode
Watch “How AI Is Turning Figma’s Finance Team Into Builders” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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The a16z Show, this episode and its artwork belong to Andreessen Horowitz. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
