people
steve ruiz and the people around tldraw — who they are, what they wrote, and what they believe.
the founder
- steve ruiz · founder · steveruizokfounder and ceo. american-born, london-based designer-developer: bfa in painting, mfa in visual art from the university of chicago (2013), then a working painter — 'kind of broke' near cambridge at ~30 when he pivoted into product design via clearscore, inviqa, design educator at framer (amsterdam, 2019–2020), and product designer at play. the open-source canvas libraries drew inbound from every infinite-canvas product in spring 2021; he took an adobe offer, deferred it, quit, and turned it down — 'on a friday.' started tldraw in may 2021, went full-time that july on github sponsors and contracting savings, founded the company february 2022. writes the canvas micro-problem essays at steveruiz.me and runs the finsbury park office.
the writing
steve ruiz has been writing about canvas micro-problems since the steveruiz.me essays — and the tldraw blog is where the license, the demos, and the business keep getting explained in public. the writing is the company's connective tissue.
- 2021–2023the canvas micro-problem essays · essay, steveruiz.me · steve ruizthe steveruiz.me corpus — technical essays documenting canvas micro-problems as they were solved in public: 'creating a zoom ui,' 'fixing the drift in shape rotations,' 'perfect dragging,' 'dead zone dragging,' the reordering essays on fractional indexing, 'all about arcs,' and typescript utilities.
- 2022-11-30announcing tldraw's seed round · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe seed announcement — $2.7m led by lux, the 'new tldraw' beta, the full angel roster, and the first statement of the canvas-as-infrastructure thesis.
it's our belief that a canvas should be a thing you build with, rather than build yourself
154 points on hn - 2023-03-02introducing signia · post, tldraw's early blog · steve ruizintroducing signia — the v2 rewrite's reactive state library, released standalone under mit and co-authored with david sheldrick.
- 2023-11-18make real, the story so far · essay, tldraw's early blog · steve ruizthe inside account of make real week: forking sawyer hood's draw-a-ui the next morning, the generated site living in an iframe on the canvas, the rate limits, and the byo-key workaround.
our tldraw + gpt-4v experiment broke the internet a little
6 points on hn — the virality lived on x and in the press - 2023-11-22tldraw raised another $2m · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe $2m insider extension announcement — amplify, lux, and preston-werner ventures, closed a week before the make real virality.
not sure how to feel about that—but hype is hype!
- 2023-12-20license update for the tldraw sdk · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe license change post — the sdk moves to a bespoke non-commercial license adapted from scratch's, timed with the v2.0.0 beta, with mit and apache-2.0 grandfathered for old releases.
open source is a spectrum
- 2024-05-23miro vs. tldraw · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe miro-vs-tldraw post — the direct comparison with the enterprise whiteboard, on the company's own terms.
- 2024-08-05announcing tldraw sync · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizannouncing tldraw sync — self-hosted sync as the sdk's first add-on module, included with the license.
- 2025-04-09announcing tldraw's series a · essay, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe series a essay — $10m led by lux and definition, ~$1m first-year license revenue, named customers, and the 'mapbox for figma for x' pitch.the hn submission got 3 points
- 2025-09-18announcing tldraw sdk 4.0 · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe sdk 4.0 announcement — create-tldraw cli, five mit starter kits, wcag 2.2 aa, and license-key enforcement: free in development, keyed in production.
fate and capital both demand that tldraw be a sustainable project
98 points, 50 comments on hn — the most contested thread in company history - 2025-12-19getting multiple ai agents to work together · post, tldraw · steve ruizthe multi-agent coordination writeup — what tldraw learned running a 'fairy management system,' including that the agents are essentially working blind.
- 2026-01-17stay away from my trash! · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe ai-slop follow-up — 'stay away from my trash!' concedes tldraw's own /issue claude code command authored some of the bad prs and notes excalidraw's pr volume more than doubled quarter over quarter.
- 2026-03-03tldraw mcp app: letting your agents draw · post, tldraw blog · steve ruiz'tldraw mcp app: letting your agents draw' — the canvas as an mcp surface for agents.
- 2026the 2026 craft essays · essay, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe 2026 craft essays on the tldraw blog — 'text is not enough' (march 30), 'an exhaustive review of design tool hover areas' (april 7), 'erasing shapes' (june 10), 'i'm pretty sure isrecord is our fault' (july 9).
- 2026-05-07tldraw sdk 5.0 · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe sdk 5.0 post — a feature-heavy release around customization, performance, and extension.
we shipped our backlog
- 2026-06-1220 things i wish ai chatbots knew about tldraw · document, tldraw blog · steve ruiz'20 things i wish ai chatbots knew about tldraw' — a page maintained partly because llms keep misdescribing the license.
- 2026-07-16tldraw offline · post, tldraw blog · steve ruizthe tldraw offline launch — free, file-based, local-first desktop builds with scripting and agent access.16k+ downloads in the first week, self-reported
- 2026-09-10introducing tldraw flash · post, tldraw blog · the current rosterintroducing tldraw flash — lo-fi hand-drawn animation built largely by interns audrey leo and leo knudsen with max drake and daniel lefcourt.
- undatedthe designers-shipping posts · tweet, x · steve ruizthe x corpus survives third-hand — a barnsworthburning record preserves ruiz's posts arguing designers should race to get as close to the product as possible, the design-engineer position stated on social media rather than the blog.
if you're a designer then you should be racing to get as close to the product as possible
the team
- david sheldrick · ds300the first senior engineer, joined june 2022 — ex-artsy and pulley, author of patch-package. co-created signia, the v2 rewrite's reactive state library released standalone under mit, and leads much of the sync/store engine work.
- lu wilson · todepondsoftware engineer and prototyper, november 2022 – december 2025 — ex-ink & switch, creator of sandspiel. ran the release-notes posts, built the 'carry on' canvas autocomplete, co-built teach, and made the fairies launch video — 'the weirdest and most ambitious project.' left to prototype contributor tools for wikimedia and wikipedia.
- the seed-era benchnamed in the november 2022 seed post: mitja bezenšek ('arrow bender,' slovenia, staff from january 2023, ex-zebra bi), alex dytrych (somehats — product engineer and interaction designer, london, founder of the erase all kittens coding game), jamie blair (frontend, september 2022 – june 2023), and collaborators faraz shaikh and sunil pai (partykit founder, ex-react core and cloudflare — engagement type unclear, likely contract or advisory).
- the later additionstaha hassan (software developer, august 2023 – november 2024; make real, carry on, accessibility), orion reed (engineer-in-residence ~2024 — spatial-canvas hci researcher from block science and liberatory computing; co-built teach; author of tldraw-3d and tldraw-graph-layout), mime čuvalo (head of engineering, 2024–present; ex-youtube, dropbox, google; the firessh author), and alix wiesser, who posted the tldraw computer announcement in december 2024.
- the current rosterthe company page lists ~20 people as of september 2026: phil low (head of gtm), andreas aslaksen (business operations lead), mime čuvalo (head of engineering), tim gilboy (pm), dan ross (solutions eng), niall drievers (backend eng), josh flynn and spencer tasch (sales), sasha li and siobhan codd (ops), and product engineers mitja bezenšek, kostya farber, max drake, andromeda stroev, ani krishnan, guillaume richard, jessica edwards, kevin ingersoll. growth markers: 5 fte in december 2022, ~8 in november 2023, 'nearly twenty' in april 2025. distributed across uk, eu, and us.
- the backerslux capital led both the $2.7m seed (november 2022) and the $10m series a (april 2025, co-led with definition); amplify partners and preston-werner ventures joined the $2m insider extension (november 2023). the angel list reads like tools-of-thought twitter: guillermo rauch, soleio, adam wiggins (muse — the lineage link made literal), cristóbal valenzuela, johannes schickling, david khourshid, tom preston-werner, brian lovin, sabrina hahn, liu jiang, and more. ~$14.7m raised across three rounds per indexed.vc; a '$24.1m' figure on linkedin-derived aggregators is unverified.
interviews and talks
- 2025-12-01the fairies launch · tldrawlu wilson's fairies launch video — the december-only, $25 multi-agent experiment she called tldraw's 'weirdest and most ambitious project.'
- 2022supper club × steve ruiz: building a drawing app · syntax.fmsyntax.fm supper club #505 — 'building a drawing app': the tech origin interview covering perfect-freehand, globs, and why the canvas is dom rather than a canvas element.
- 2022-07-07infinite canvases with steve ruiz · metamusemetamuse ep. 59, 'infinite canvases with steve ruiz' — the muse team interviews ruiz on the canvas as 'ultimate fully-generalized form of all digital documents,' plus the art-school-to-broke-at-30 backstory and the sponsorware launch details.
- 2023the tldr of the collaborative whiteboard · generative nowlightspeed's generative now with michael mignano — 'the tldr of the collaborative whiteboard.'
- 2023-12drawing the future with ai · this week in startupsthis week in startups e1863 — 'drawing the future with ai': ruiz demos make real (including state-chart-to-ui generation) weeks after the raise-and-go-viral fortnight.
- 2024-01-05the accidental ai canvas · latent spacelatent space's 'the accidental ai canvas' — the key intellectual framing interview: the adobe and figma offers, the taste-driven oss philosophy, and the canvas as 'a really, really good visual multimodal prompting application environment.'
- 2024make real: tldraw's ai adventure · gitnation / jsnationthe full behind-the-scenes make real talk — including why miro 'could not' have built it, because their canvas isn't web.
- 2024tldraw's accidental ai play · podrocketpodrocket — 'tldraw's accidental ai play,' touring makereal, teach, and computer.
- 2025-07-21tldraw computer · ai engineer world's fairai engineer world's fair 2025 — the tldraw computer talk covering the make real → draw fast → computer → teach arc, the excalidraw ink origin, and the google collaboration story, with shoutouts to liquid layers and observable.
- 2025what's under the pointer? · react advancedreact advanced 2025 — 'what's under the pointer?': the hit-testing deep dive.
- 2025is the canvas the future for ai? · dive clubdive club — 'is the canvas the future for ai?': 'over 3 years and $5 million building the perfect canvas,' the fairies work, and ruiz's tool-design principles.
- 2025-11-10shoptalk show #690 · shoptalk showshoptalk show #690 — the state of the sdk, local data, the business model, fairies, and the company's future.
- 2026-03-16he turned down adobe. then he shelved his own product · ux toolsux tools s1e13 — 'he turned down adobe. then he shelved his own product': product-maker fit, and 'just ask for money' on oss monetization.
- 2026-03-22why html canvas beats graphics rendering · two set aitwo set ai written interview — the html-vs-webgl bet that made the canvas a host for arbitrary product surfaces.
- 2026-03-28canvas vs. chat for ai collaboration · two set aitwo set ai written interview — canvas-vs-chat for agents, and why a shared spatial surface suits parallel multi-agent work.
- 2026agents on the canvas in tldraw · ai engineer europeai engineer europe 2026 — 'agents on the canvas in tldraw': fairies, the replit and luma canvases built on the sdk, the stitch joke, and make real looking 'quaint… in 2026.'
- 2026-06agents on the canvas with tldraw · ai native devconai native devcon, june 2026 — 'agents on the canvas with tldraw.'
- 2026agents on the canvas with tldraw · gitnationmax drake's agent-history talk — teach, the agent starter kit, and fairies from inside the team.
the philosophy
themes tracked across the writing: ai on the canvas, building in public, canvas as infrastructure, demos as r&d, independence, open source as spectrum, taste-driven engineering, the sdk business.
- 2021–the adobe turndownthe adobe legend is single-source — ruiz's own podcast retellings: he took the offer, deferred six months, quit play, and turned adobe down 'on a friday.' no adobe-side confirmation exists; the story is load-bearing for the independence narrative.it's consistent across years of retellings (metamuse, latent space, ux tools) and nobody has contested it — but it remains self-reported biography, marked reported rather than confirmed.
- 2023–open source is a spectrum'open source is a spectrum' — ruiz's line in the december 2023 license post became the definitional flashpoint. the readme's 'open source' wording needed a pr to become 'source available,' and isitreallyfoss.com lists tldraw as formerly-foss.the company now claims 'source available' rather than osi-conformant openness; the debate survives as a discourse scar and an llm-misinformation problem the '20 things' page exists to correct.
- 2025–the two steve ruizesthe other steve ruiz — a separate archive of 'trends with benefits' workos/gtm essays like 'sameness-as-a-service' describes 'my first 50 days at workos.' it appears to be a different steve ruiz, not tldraw's founder.recorded so nothing from that corpus gets attributed here — an inference from the workos references, not a confirmed identity split.
- 2023–tldraw, inc. vs tldraw gb ltdentity naming drifts between sources — license texts say 'tldraw, inc.' while the early company blog's footer says 'tldraw gb ltd.' the corporate structure (uk ltd plus us inc.?) is not publicly documented.the dossier preserves both names as printed rather than resolving a structure the company hasn't published.
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.