State of Play

Steve Ruiz was about to start at Adobe. Bags packed. Job accepted. Start date: Monday.
Then he looked at what was happening with his side project — an open-source canvas tool he'd been building — and 200,000 people were using it every month. Hundreds of sponsors had put up 00,000. Two major companies wanted to build on it. He called Adobe and said he wasn't coming.
That project became TLDraw.
Steve's background isn't in software — it's in fine art. He has a masters in it. He spent thousands of hours studying ink on paper — how it moves, how it bleeds, how it dries. And when he later wrote the algorithms for digital ink, he had this deep physical knowledge that most engineers just don't have.
We talk about why he killed his own SaaS product to focus on the SDK, why he thinks craft only matters when you're building for high-agency users, and his surprisingly simple answer to the question every open-source founder faces — how do you actually make money?
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Cold open
01:30 - Art school to open source
04:32 - 10,000 hours of unmotivated work
06:08 - Finding ideas without external validation
08:22 - The content-first experimentation loop
11:30 - Why software is easier than art
14:42 - Most software experiences haven't been discovered yet
17:10 - Prototyping obsession and the infinite canvas
17:47 - 200,000 users before you could even log in
19:14 - Make Real: the first vibe code tool
21:13 - Optimize for the points of contact
23:51 - Killing the SaaS to ship the SDK
29:19 - The open source money problem
30:03 - "Just charge for it" — beating React Flow
32:12 - When craft actually matters (high-agency users)
35:57 - What's most fulfilling about building TLDraw
ABOUT TOMMY GEOCO
I spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in creative tech.
ABOUT STATE OF PLAY
A narrative podcast about building things that matter told through deep conversations with designers and builders.
LINKS:
UX Tools Newsletter: https://uxtools.co
TLDraw: https://tldraw.com
Follow Steve: https://x.com/steveruizok
FOLLOW ME:
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@designertom
Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom
X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Ben Fryc doubled his freelance salary in a year. Then his wife told him, on vacation in San Francisco, that he was working too hard. 
He quit freelancing and never went back.
Ben taught himself Cinema 4D during COVID and started designing a physical keyboard in Figma. Now he's a household name in motion design, works at Framer, and takes on all manner of passion projects.
We get into the experimentation crash loop of learning 3D tools, why he treats passion projects like hobbies, and what he tells the young creative who wants to do it all.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 — Intro
01:45 — Comic books, GeoCities, and why Ben wanted to make video games
04:40 — Five years at Mango Languages and the 3D pivot during COVID
07:20 — "You don't need to know everything about a tool"
09:26 — The Polygon Runway course and finding your people
12:51 — The Knob: fantastical devices that probably can't exist
15:33 — Commerce vs. passion and treating creativity like a hobby
17:59 — Photoshop muscle memory and tools that refuse to die
19:47 — Storyboarding as the bridge between static and motion
21:36 — What motion tools still hide behind right-clicks
24:28 — From Figma mockups to firmware in C
29:45 — Moments of delight: what makes motion design captivating
34:20 — The Play-Doh people nobody liked
35:25 — Where AI actually helps creative work
37:32 — Advice for the young creative who wants to do it all
40:38 — "I doubled my salary freelancing. Then my wife said stop."
43:53 — Outro
LINKS
Ben Fryc — https://x.com/benfryc
Framer — https://framer.com
FOLLOW ME
Twitter/X — https://x.com/designertom
LinkedIn — https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco
Newsletter — https://uxtools.co

Andy Allen raised 5 million, built a hardware-software company, had a decent exit, and then walked away from all of it. Most founders would double down and scale. 
Andy did the opposite. 
He started Not Boring Software — fully bootstrapped, no investors, making apps that feel like nothing else on your phone. 
What Andy is doing isn't just different, it's proof that there's another path most designers don't even know exists. You don't have to raise money, scale fast or break things. 
You can just make something beautiful with a point of view where people can feel you in the work.
A refreshing conversation for those tired of the ambient noise lately.
Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me)
Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co
CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Walking away from 5 million
02:27 - Camera app becomes biggest launch yet
04:04 - Why speed is overrated for quality work
07:25 - Fully bootstrapped vs VC funding pressure
09:17 - Physical prototypes and 3D printing process
13:09 - Avoiding AI hype, focusing on interface innovation
15:45 - Game design principles in everyday apps
18:36 - The "kid in the cockpit" design philosophy
20:49 - Creative recovery and exploration process
22:49 - Leaving VC startup world for sustainable business
25:19 - Defining "enough" as a company and creator
28:44 - Being a beacon for other designers
32:11 - What's missing in design storytelling
36:51 - Hands in the clay vs management roles
LINKS:
Not Boring Software: https://notbor.ing
Andy Allen: https://x.com/asallen
Not Boring Camera App (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/not-boring-camera/id6737783441
FOLLOW ME:
X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom
Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Stephen Haney has been quietly building design tools for years. Now he's betting that the canvas wants to talk to your agents.
Paper just shipped MCP support. I've been playing with it. It's wild.
We talked about why he thinks the future stack is just three tools, why his team canceled Figma four months ago, and what happens when your production site becomes your source of truth for design.
Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me)
Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co
CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Everything changed in nine months
03:57 - Where the puck is going
05:08 - Figma's walled garden problem
06:18 - Agent + Code Review + Canvas
11:42 - Did agents kill collaboration?
15:18 - They canceled Figma 4 months ago
17:27 - What MCP actually means
21:03 - Live demo: production → canvas → code
LINKS:
Paper: https://paper.design
Stephen: https://x.com/stephenhaney
FOLLOW ME:
X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom
Instagram: / itsdesignertom
LinkedIn: / tommygeoco

Weber Wong was supposed to be a venture capitalist. Then he realized he wouldn't back himself, so he quit, moved to New York, and got a job at a coffee shop.
Now he's building Flora, one of the most uniquely-positioned AI tools for creative teams.
We talked about why node-based tools have such a bad reputation (and how Flora's fixing it), what "anti-slop" actually means when you're building AI creative tools, and the moment Pentagram reached out and he realized he'd accidentally built something useful.
Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me)
Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co
CHAPTERS:
00:00 - "They've been cooking"
02:11 - From VC to coffee shop to Flora
05:37 - The pain cave vs. Plato's cave
08:38 - Poetry as the entry point
11:34 - First time using an LLM
13:26 - "The world's most powerful creative operating system"
16:21 - Commerce vs. art — does it have to be at odds?
19:12 - A Berkeley professor and Cat's Cradle
20:25 - Fine-tuning GPT-2 on his own poetry
25:42 - Why node-based?
28:50 - The iceberg: low barrier, high ceiling
32:56 - What "anti-slop" actually means
40:48 - When Pentagram reached out
44:51 - Advice for the next generation of creatives
LINKS:
Flora: https://flora.ai
Weber Wong: https://x.com/weberwongwong
FOLLOW ME:
X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom
Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco