Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company

Mihika Kapoor is a design-engineering-minded PM at Figma who has led early zero-to-one work on FigJam and a new product launching later, and previously worked at Meta and founded the Design Nation student conference. The conversation covers building compelling visions and prototypes, developing and communicating conviction, direct feedback culture, generating internal and external hype, staying close to users and sales, and operating zero-to-one projects inside large companies.

01Key learnings

• Build a vision that ties together a user pain point, a proposed solution, and a proof point such as a testimonial or prototype, rather than relying on words alone.
• Pull research, design, and engineering feasibility into the vision early so it reflects what users feel and what the team can actually build.
• Lean on prototypes and mocks before a project gets approved; seeing and feeling the future often persuades more than market-sizing slides.
• Anyone can pitch a project: ask colleagues directly to join your idea, as Mihika did during an internal hackathon, even without design or engineering skills.
• Form a strong opinion early, even if imperfect, since people react more to a concrete idea than to nothing; then be willing to abandon it when external signal disagrees.
• Be explicit about your confidence level and invite disagreement, so a strongly held opinion does not silence the rest of the room.
• Build hype by getting leadership, company forums, and users to see the product; demos at big moments and product personality-driven celebrations help create emotional buy-in.
• Operationalize user insight by regularly joining sales calls, asking non-users why they don't adopt the product, and routing feedback into a backlog reviewed weekly.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.