How to build a beloved tech brand | Sheila Joglekar Vashee (CMO, Figma)
From In Depth by First Round
June 4, 2026 · 1h 1m
About this episode
Sheila Joglekar Vashee discusses innovative marketing strategies and brand building in the tech industry.
In today's conversation, Brett sits down with CMO of Figma, Sheila Joglekar Vashee. Previously the second marketing hire at Dropbox, where she helped scale the company past $1 billion in revenue, she now leads marketing at Figma fresh off its IPO. In an industry that has spent a decade trying to turn marketing into something closer to hedge fund trading, Sheila argues the art was always the point — we just stopped talking about it. She unpacks how to run marketing as a portfolio of moonshots, why giving teams different goals breeds dysfunction, how to scale taste across an organization, and why old playbooks are obsolete, even as the fundamentals hold. In today's episode, we discuss: How to run marketing like a portfolio of moonshots The value of disruptive energy for senior marketers Why "Ubiquity is the opposite of cool" How to actually scale taste across an organization What great marketing looks like in the AI era Referenced: Apple: https://www.apple.com/ Dennis Woodside: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-woodside-341302/ Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/ Dylan Field: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanfield/ Figma: https://www.figma.com Francoise Brougher…
People in this episode
Host: Brett
Guest: Sheila Joglekar Vashee
Topics covered
- marketing strategy
- brand building
- disruptive energy
- AI in marketing
- organizational culture
Keywords
- Figma
- marketing
- brand strategy
- moonshots
- organizational taste
- AI marketing
- disruption
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Figma, Dropbox, Apple, Google Chrome, Harley-Davidson, HubSpot, Notion, Opendoor, Pinterest
More episodes of In Depth
- Why old-school sales work still wins in the AI era | Graham Moreno (Head of GTM, Parallel) · May 21, 2026 · 1h 2m
- Why founders should bet on first-time executives | Praveer Melwani (CFO, Figma) · May 14, 2026 · 44 min
- Why great product leaders should stop obsessing over the roadmap | Diya Jolly (CPO & CTO of Xero) · April 30, 2026 · 50 min
- Inside Artemis' "AI vs AI" war | Shachar Hirshberg & Dan Shiebler (Co-founders, Artemis) · April 21, 2026 · 57 min
- Scaling DoorDash to market dominance | Christopher Payne (Former COO, DoorDash) · April 17, 2026 · 1h 2m
- The most politically dangerous role in the C-suite | Katie Burke (COO, Harvey) · April 10, 2026 · 1h 11m
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the In Depth podcast page.