Co-Founder & Managing Partner of FPV Ventures. Canva Series A Lead and Board Member. Forbes Midas List investor.
Cliff Obrecht, Melanie Perkins and Cameron Adams launched their new redesign of Canva today in Los Angeles to 2.5 million people who joined live and tuned in online. I’ve been fortunate to have a front row seat watching their journey as an early investor and board member for 10+ years. It’s been quite the ride. One of the most striking things about coming to Canva’s product launches is how excited their users are when new features come out. They cheer, applaud, and travel all over the world to share their excitement together. It reminds me of watching Steve Jobs launch a new version of the Mac or iPod on stage at Apple’s MacWorld over 20 years ago. Rarely do you find a customer base so thrilled and rarely do you find a company who can keep their users so happy and engaged for more than a decade. I went up to a few folks at Canva Create and asked them about their excitement. “I love it,” one user told me, “when I create a well-designed deck and they ask who I hired to do it—and I tell them I did it myself and they go, ‘wait how?’ And then I tell them about how I did it in Canva.” Another attendee told me, “They keep launching new features, like 1-click background remover - this will save me hours of tedious work. You don’t know how excited I am about this…” (And he’s even more excited now that Canva just launched their 1-click remover for videos when before it only worked on photos.) Many companies have terrible business models that deliver bad products which traffic in their users’ misery. They make gobs of money by charging more to reduce their user's suffering, bit by bit. (Think airlines, most enterprise software companies, and products at most large banks). Canva has done the opposite, for more than a decade. They launch great new products and features that make their products massively more delightful that they almost always don’t charge more for. And for those that need Canva the most and can least afford it, the company gives away their top version for free (for example to non-profits and schools). It’s a welcome relief from those that seek to exploit their customers for profit by trafficking in their misery and then pretending that they can buy a “premium” version that reduces their suffering. It’s no wonder that Canva is one of the fastest growing tech companies that still mainly grows from word-of-mouth. Mel announced there are now 185+ million happy users of Canva each month, most of them who found out about how great Canva was from a friend or colleague. Ten years ago when I discovered Canva there were a couple hundred thousand. I can’t wait to see what happens ten years from now!
I was excited. 5am Sydney, I read an article about the first 1M getting access to the Glow Up editor. I franticly searched around the homepage. I get the help of Canva's AI assistant. It gave me the hint regarding something like that it was all "for you".. I clicked once.. It didnt register yet. I panicked, out of frustration I clicked 6 more times and was taken through the portal.. to the otherside
Mel and Cliff have build the company , their team and their products. Products are beautiful because the founders have carved them beautiful with so much effort towards team and everything to Canva. Mel is humble enough to add me as her facebook friend. Shows her leadership qualities in lot many ways. And ofcourse through her smile as well
Everyone around me is oohing and ahhing. I love it.
Great reflection post, Wesley. Love this line you wrote in paragraph 3: "rarely do you find a customer base so thrilled and rarely do you find a company who can keep their users so happy and engaged for more than a decade." Crazy to see how much Canva has evolved since day one. And word of mouth continues to be the top growth channel for them. Can't wait to see where Melanie, Cliff and Cameron take Canva in the next 10 years.
As an early adopter of Canva 7 years ago, I agree with all your points and more. Inspirational leadership true to their values, a powerful vision and safe to say Canva have truly democratised the world of design and creatorship 👏🏾
I really hope they maintain the accessibility of the product (by that I mean that pretty much anyone can use it for free, or for a modest fee people can choose to enjoy the premium features.)
Hi Wesley Duncan Davidson, @Bullpen Capital would like you to be interviewed with him on When is AI bubble going to burst? audio podcast interview via VConVC.com please accept my Linkedin connection and we can organize. Thanks in advance Pemo Theodore FinTech Silicon Valley
I agree!
I run, teach, build models and code 🐢
3moCanva has played the long game and gets rewarded for it 👏👏