| Welcome back! The tech investment climate feels more like New York City (97 degrees) today than San Francisco (67 degrees). That is to say, it's scorching hot and starting to get uncomfortable. The latest major startup deal I'm hearing about is crypto exchange Kraken seeking about $500 million, at a $15 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter. The 14-year-old Coinbase challenger was last valued at about $11 billion in 2022, according to Caplight. That was another era in the crypto world. Since then, it brought in a new co-CEO (Tribe Capital's Arjun Sethi), began publicly releasing financial figures ($1.5 billion in revenue last year), and has become a well-known initial public offering candidate for next year. What it doesn't really have is the kind of roster of institutional investors it would likely need to pull off a public listing. This latest round could help, if it can get investors comfortable with that valuation. Startups with a halfway-compelling story in either crypto or artificial intelligence seem to be getting the benefit of the doubt from investors. In the past 24 hours, we've also seen AI cloud startup Fireworks in talks to raise at $4 billion and Anthropic lining up Iconiq Capital to invest at $170 billion. Another test of that will be chipmaker Cerebras. My colleague Valida Pao and I broke the story today that it will seek up to $1 billion in a private round, potentially delaying an IPO that's on file. You only have to look at the performance of similar public companies to understand why startups are asking for so much. In crypto, stablecoin firm Circle is up 480% from its IPO. Coinbase's stock is up 44% year to date. AI data center firm CoreWeave is up 170% from its IPO. Many of the companies raising money right now are staying private for now, however. That means buyer beware. We reported today that chipmaker Groq, which is raising more money privately at a $6 billion valuation, slashed the financial forecasts it had been sharing with investors. That story, from Miles Kruppa, Anissa Gardizy and me, is a reminder of why companies are staying private: There are fewer harsh repercussions for missing your numbers than if you're public. But if investors overlook those kinds of red flags, it's a sign the market is something more dangerous: dangerously overheated. Investors planning to buy into Figma's IPO this week are putting their faith in one man: CEO and co-founder Dylan Field. The 33-year-old, who will be among the youngest tech CEOs to take their own company public, controls 74% of the voting power in the design software company. That tops the amount of control even the most powerful founders have obtained. He is in line for new stock awards that will allow him to maintain his grip even if he sells a significant amount of shares. Field's voting power gives him more control over his company than other tech founder luminaries, including Mark Zuckerberg, Brian Chesky and Brian Armstrong, have over theirs. Field will only own about 9% of the company after the IPO on a fully diluted basis. That stake is worth $1.7 billion, at the high end of the IPO price range. He's also selling $75 million in the IPO. Field has so much more voting power for two reasons. He owns a special class of shares that gives him 15 votes per share, and his co-founder, Evan Wallace, has given him proxy over his shares. (Wallace left Figma in 2021.) Figma's board also has given Field a relatively low bar to expand the number of shares he owns by nearly 50% in the coming years. To do so, he has to get Figma's valuation to $25 billion, which would be only a modest bump over its likely IPO valuation, and he has to stay at the company for five more years. He would increase his stake by another 25% if he helps rocket the valuation to $75 billion over the next decade. Shareholders may be happy to put their faith in Field during an unpredictable time. The CEO's wide range of interests and investments should help him navigate Figma through a whirlwind of AI-driven changes in how software is designed and created. "The thing that sets Dylan apart is he's very interested in things around the edges," venture capitalist Victor Lazarte, a friend of Field, told me last month as I was reporting a profile on Field. He is a crypto enthusiast and has been a prolific startup investor, with 87 active startup investments, including AI startups HeyGen and Perplexity, according to PitchBook. Those interests could also be a distraction, Figma admits in the "risk factors" section of its IPO filing. "Field is involved in a number of initiatives aside from his work for Figma," including startup investments, it states. "This and other initiatives he is, or may become, involved in could divert Mr. Field's time and attention from overseeing our business operations." Field's backers would argue he's earned the enormous power he has to dictate Figma's future. He ensured the company maintained momentum after its sale to Adobe was scrapped, he turned it wildly profitable, and he's remained well liked by his employee base. He has a 94% approval rating on corporate review site Glassdoor, much higher than some other high-profile startup CEOs of his vintage, like Stripe's Patrick Collison and Rippling's Parker Conrad (both 80%). The reward is that Field will oversee an IPO that has seen relatively little drama so far. Figma has timed the market well, and investors are climbing over themselves to buy the stock. The company has increased the midpoint of its IPO price range in the past week by 17%, to a valuation as high as $18.8 billion. But, as CEOs often like to point out, an IPO is just one moment on a company's journey. What will shape Field's legacy in tech will be whether he can use his power to maintain Figma's shine. | 
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