Graphics-editing platform Figma's record $20 billion sale deal with rival Adobe has put focus on its 30-year-old co-founder Dylan Field.
If the deal goes through, Field could become one of the youngest billionaires in the world, Market Watch reported.
A native of California's Sonoma County, Field displayed an aptitude for computers since he was just three, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
But he described himself as an average high school student, who found some direction by joining a robotics team and taking college-level courses.
He was accepted into Brown University -- the Ivy League school in Rhode Island -- for a computer science and mathematics programme. But he dropped out of the course after receiving an entrepreneurial fellowship.
The Thiel fellowship, that Field received, provides $100,000 to youngsters who "want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom".
Candidates are required to drop out of college to accept the grant.
With the fellowship amount that field received, Field planned to start a company to build software that would equip drones to monitor traffic, WSJ reported. But the project did not succeed.
Later, Field went on to set up Figma with one of his friends from Brown University.
In June, 2013, Figma raised $3.8 million in seed funding. After multiple rounds of fundraising, it came to be valued at over $2 billion by April, 2021. In just over a year, its value jumped to $10 billion.
Now, Adobe is readying to acquire it for double the amount. Field told WSJ he is still trying to process the magnitude of the deal, but added that if it were to collapse tomorrow, he would be "just fine".
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