The woman behind Canva shares how she built a $42B company from nothing | Melanie Perkins

There's a very famous story about Canva. Early on, you pitched over 100 investors, and over 100 investors said no to you.

It was really clear in my mind that it was the future. And I thought the investors were wrong, frankly. But investors also gave really helpful feedback, and feedback often in the form of rejection. They would say, oh, your market's not big enough. And I would say, it's going to be huge. And I'd add a new page in my pitch deck that said how big the market I believe was. And then they'd say, you're the same as some other company. And I would say, hey, now I've got a new slide in my pitch deck that shows all the players and the huge gap in the market that we believe we're going to fill.

One of your values, crazy big goals. I love that as a value.

The thing that I love about a crazy big goal is that you feel completely inadequate before it. You want to work really hard to will it into existence. I really like to start by just imagining what is the future that you actually want. Right now I have a wall in my house, in my office, which is my vision for what I'd like the world to look like in 2050.

I heard from one of your team members, Melissa Tan, that there's a deck like this for every project you kick off, there's this big vision deck.

So we have this concept of chaos to clarity. Every idea starts in the chaos side, and then you have to work all the way to the other side, which is clarity. That very first step at the far end of chaos was quite a embarrassing step, actually, because you don't have mastery at that point. You don't have all the answers.

A lot of people think of Canva as like a design graphics for, you know, social media and marketing and things like that. But you also have spreadsheets, docs, whiteboards, charts, AI coding tool.

It was funny looking back from really old decks. We were trying to do AI before AI was actually a thing.

Today, my guest is Melanie Perkins, CEO.

And co founder of Canva. Melanie is on track to be the most successful female tech founder in history and one of the most successful founders, period.

Canva is currently valued at over $42 billion, making over $3.3 billion in revenue a year. They've been profitable for eight years straight.

And are one of the hottest private tech companies in the world right now.

But it wasn't always this way.

Melanie was rejected by over 100 investors when she was trying to raise her first round. Their team spent two years rewriting their entire code base and were unable to ship any new features for over two.

Years, something they expected to just take six months.

And they even went through a big pivot early on, from a yearbook publishing platform to the Canva that you know today. Melanie does not do a lot of podcasts.

She shares stories that I've never heard before and lessons that I'm still thinking about. This is a really rare opportunity to.

Learn from a legendary founder. A huge thank you to Cameron Adams and Melissa Tan for suggesting topics for this conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.

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Melanie, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm even more excited. It's such an honor to have you here. I am such a fan of yours. I'm such a fan of the company that you've built. Also, just everyone I meet from Canva is just, like, so nice and so awesome and so smart and so clearly you've built something really special. I'm really excited to use this hour to learn as much as I can from you about how you did that. And we were actually chatting ahead of this about what would make the best use of this hour. And I asked you what you believe has been the biggest factor in the success of Canva. And you described something called building a column B company, and column B thinking. I've never heard of this before. So let us start there. What is building Columbia Company? What does that mean?

Really great place to start. So I guess there's two ways of planning. The way that you can plan is you can dream of, like, what is the perfect vision of the future? What future do you want to exist in? What would you like the world to look like? What would you like companies to look like? And then going from there, which is completely improbable, a completely crazy big dream, and then working hard to turn that into reality. And the alternate is so, you know, just imagine you're building a castle on the hill and you're like, what would be the most magical, wonderful, mythical experience? And the other thing you can do is you can look at the bricks around you and you can say, what can I do with these bricks? How high can I stack them? What can I do? And I think most planning is often done by looking at the bricks and trying to stack them. And then you kind of. You can create only so much. And so I guess the column B thinking is thinking about what is that magical, wonderful future that you then want to invest years and decades of your life actually building. And so that's column A and column B in a nutshell.

So column A is the traditional, just like work from today's world, column B is work from this dream reality and work backwards from how to achieve that.

Exactly that.

This is exactly the way, actually, Brian Chesky thought. I worked at Airbnb for a long time and it was always just like, think about the world, the dream, and then work backwards from that. So there's a lot clearly also worked out. So clearly this is an important lesson in the example of Canva. Just what is what would have been column A for what Canva could have been? And what was the how did you think about the column B approach of what Canva in a dreamland could be?

So column A would have been nothing, frankly, because the reality was, when I was a university student with no company and no business or product or software experience, the reality would have been not very much. And so it was all column B. It was all thinking about the wild future that we wanted to create. You know, I imagined what would be publishing in the future, what would communications look like in the future? And it seemed really impossible that it would stay on the desktop, it would stay really complicated. And it just seemed so apparent to me that in the future it was going to be, like, completely different. Could I build that future? I had absolutely no idea. But the idea seemed completely likely, completely improbable that it wouldn't be the case that in the future, design would be online and collaborative and really simple. And so starting from that, we then took that concept and applied it to the school yearbook market in Australia with our first company, FusionBooks. And then we applied it to Canva, where we wanted to take it much, much bigger.

Let's talk about just how to actually go about building a column B company. Say a founder's listening to this and they're just like, okay, I want to do this. What do they do? What are the steps? Where do you start?

I really like to start by just imagining what is the future that you actually want to. What is the world that you want to live in? What is the future of transportation? What is the future of healthcare? What is the future that you want to live in and exist in? And for example, right now I have a wall in my house, in my office, which is my vision for what I'd like the world to look like in 2050. And so it's not necessarily that you can bring that into existence or you can will that into existence, but just to start to get clearer on what you would like that world to be like. Would you like it to be more inclusive? Would you like it to. You know, for me, one of the things I desperately want is everyone on this planet to have their basic human needs met. You know, what are those things that you believe are so important that you would love to see exist in that future? And, you know, I think an exercise we often do is like, what is wild success for X or what is wild success for Y? And then equally what is terrible failure for those things? And you can apply that just to abstract thinking in different industries. You can do that, apply that for. We do that for the whole company, for different areas of the company. And I think just taking that very long timescale of 10 years and getting a really crisp idea of what you want or what you don't want, that's sort of the first step. And I think a lot of people don't spend quite enough time imagining that. And then the next part is you don't want to have this crazy big dream and then do nothing about turning into reality. You kind of want to have a ladder that goes all the way up to the moon, which is your crazy wild vision. And then you want to have rungs that just like work its way up step by step. And so you want to get that really clear picture of the future that you would like. And then just take little step after little step after little step. And it doesn't matter how small that first step is or how seemingly inconsequential, if it is working towards that future that you want to will into existence, then you'll keep on climbing up that ladder in the right direction.

I think a lot of people hearing this might feel like, I do this. Yeah, I have a vision. I kind of, I know where I'm going. I have this big idea. What do you think they might be missing about just what this actually means and why? They're probably not thinking big enough. They're not making the time to think like this.

I think it is easy to be discouraged by the two because they're completely two complete odds. They're completely different ends of the spectrum. So one is dreaming about the future, not that you think you can will into existence, just the future that you want. And then the next part is taking the tiny step that might be extremely microscopic. And it feels a little embarrassing to be like, I want a future that is, whatever it might be. And then to take such a microscopic step, because I think that you often have the future in one side or don't spend much time thinking about that. You're just thinking about the bricks before you. And so I think it's also naturally, we all get distracted by day to day. It's your email, your slack, the things that are kind of in your face, the reality that lives around you every day that kind of pulls you into this moment right now. And so I think Actually, just making time to spend thinking about that is probably one of the most critical pieces. Just literally dreaming. What is wild success in 10 years, what is terrible failure in 10 years is a really great place to start, is just like spending some time there. And then even if that is so big and so vast and so wild, having that very first step is so important because then you take that little tiny first step, and then the next step, and then that compounds for us, it's been compounding over a decade as we continue to work towards that same mission and vision.

I want to hear how you operationalize this. I heard from one of your team members, Melissa Tan, that there's a deck like this for every project you kick off. There's this big vision deck that talk about what that looks like, because I think that's where people are like, okay, how do I actually do this? Talk about that deck?

So we have this concept of chaos to clarity. And every idea starts in the chaos side. And then you have to work all the way to the other side, which is clarity. And so chaos can be an idea, it can be a problem, it can be a philosophy or a belief. And I've got a joke that I find funny. I'm not sure if you will, but how do you. How do you go from chaos to clarity? You add clarity. And so the idea is that, like, each, like, little step from chaos to clarity is like, the very first step might be literally writing it down. So rather than it being in your head, you've written it down. Then the next step might be starting to create a pitch deck on it, and the next step might be starting to refine that, turning it into some designs, turning into a prototype. And then as it kind of goes from chaos to clarity, it starts to become more and more real and more and more people can see it. And so just like taking those little incremental steps that adds clarity with every single step, then starts to help will it into existence, rather than it being something that's completely amorphous and just stays in your head. So I think that's why, you know, visual communication for us is so important, is because otherwise, if it's just in your head, no one else can see it and you can't will it into existence.

This makes me think about this concept of an ugly baby from the book Creativity Inc. By, I think, Ed Catmull, where he talks about how new ideas are this ugly baby that nobody wants to look at and deal with that. And like, I think he says, they want to kill. I don't know why you do that with an ugly baby, but there are these, like, very soft, subtle, fragile things, and it's really important to not kill them early and give them a chance to survive. And that's kind of what I'm hearing here, is, like, have this big vision that many people would be like, no, wait, this is completely absurd. And I love this idea of, okay, but here's, like, one step we could take there to see if this could be a thing.

Yeah, I completely agree. And I think that's the thing, is that that very first step at the very far end of chaos, it's very embarrassing because you're like, I have this idea that is so big and so wild, and how the hell would I do that? I have no idea. And so it's quite a embarrassing step, actually, because you don't have mastery at that point. You don't have all the answers. In fact, you have likely none of the answers. But you just have the idea that you think would be cool. And ideally, you get the idea that would be so cool that you want to work really hard to will that into existence. And so I think one of the really key parts is not only just having the idea, but thinking, it's so cool that you're going to work for years to will it into existence. Actually, Melissa did a really amazing pitch deck recently about the vision of. I won't go into the details right here, but the vision of her space. And I was really excited about it. And so I think that that's the great thing about a pitch deck is that other people can see your thinking, and your thinking actually gets clarified as well as you go through that process.

I talked to Melissa, I talked to a bunch of other people that work at Canva, that have worked at Canva. And something else I heard along these lines is this phrase crazy big goals, which I think is one of your values. Crazy big goals. I love that as a value. Why is that so important? How does that fit into this? And just talk about the importance, the power of having crazy big goals.

Yes. So right from the start of Canva, it was truly a crazy big goal. We're like, we want to empower the world to design and take all these things that are super complicated and put them into one platform and make it accessible to the whole world. And we want to, rather than it be super expensive and unaffordable, we want to empower everyone, everywhere in the world to design. So, I mean, that was the epitome of a crazy big goal. And if we macro out even further. We've got this two step plan. Build one of the world's most valuable companies and do the most good we can do. So again, a rather crazy big goal. And I think the thing that I love about a crazy big goal is that you feel completely inadequate before it. Another crazy big goal. We'd love to see everyone's basic human needs met on the planet. Like completely crazy big that truly shouldn't be. It's kind of absolutely absurd that that's the case, but we can go into that later. But I think with a crazy big goal, then you want to work really hard to will it into existence. And so if you start with a reasonable goal or a realistic goal, then you kind of get to it and you're like, oh, cool, whatever. Or more importantly, if something happens, all the problems and roadblocks come along as they always do, then you're like, okay, I won't bother with that. And then you can just go and choose another course. And so a crazy big goal is both crazy big, but it's also something that you think is incredibly important that you actually want to will into existence. Because it is so much work to will a crazy big goal into existence. So it better be one that you want to actually achieve.

Is there a crazy big goal that you set that comes to mind? Maybe as a good example of this is what I'm talking about. Maybe a product you launched or featured back in the day?

Yeah, I mean, so many things. So we have our mission. Empower the world to design and we break it down into mission pillars. So empower everyone to design anything with every ingredient in every language on every device. Obviously a mouthful, but then what we do is we take successive goals every year towards this mission. And so for designing anything, we started off with social media and presentations, and now like docs and websites and whiteboards and video. And so every year we're just launching more and more things to fulfill that part of the mission of empowering everyone to design anything and then equally in every language. We started in English and then it was Spanish and then it was 20 languages, and then 100 languages, and then hard languages like Arabic and Hebrew and Urdu and right to left languages. And now we're in 100 plus languages now. And now we're really doubling down on the localization experience to make it feel truly local in every market around the world. And so you can see how having these very big audacious goals that you then just take a step after step towards helps then will it into existence or on Every device. We started off obviously just with a web platform, and then we launched our iPad app and then iPhone and then Android and then we spent years investing in cross platform. So we have the same feature set across every device. And so you can see how these like big amorphous things that seem very outlandish you can then just will into existence after continual investment for a decade. And it compounds over time.

I see how all this is starting to fade together. There's this big crazy ambitious vision and below there are the mission pillars that are feeding into this vision and then the crazy big goals within each of those mission pillars to measure your progress towards all these components of the mission.

Exactly, exactly.

Okay, so with all that in mind, there's also this kind of trade off you have to make of just how ambitious you get, because oftentimes, sometimes, maybe you never miss the goal, but most, many times people miss these very ambitious goals. How do you just find that balance between ambitious, crazy, but doable enough where people don't get discouraged?

I think with a crazy big goal, the thing we have been really great at is achieving them. The time frame that we achieve them on has not always been very reliable. We have certainly not been able to have pin dot. What's the accurate bullseye? We have not been very accurate with timing, but it's really interesting. I look back at a 2021, 2021 vision deck that we made obviously in 2021, but it was about 2026 and it was fascinating to see how much we'd actually been able to achieve from that vision deck and how many things were currently still in flight. And so by having that, I thought in 2021 some of those things may have happened a little quicker. But over the last five years they've really been coming into reality. And so, you know, we might think things are going to take six months and they take a year. We might think things are going to take six months and they take two years, as has been the case. We might think something's actually going to take our entire lifetime as some of those really truly crazy big goals. And in fact, I don't even know if we can ever achieve them, frankly. But they're such an important goal that even if you make a little step in their direction, they're worthwhile nonetheless, whether.

You like them or not. Elon, this is similar to his. If you watch him, he has sets these really ambitious goals and then often is far late on achieving them, but clearly it has worked out in achieving the crazy things that he's achieved. Something else I hear is you celebrate these goals in a really unique way to talk about that.

So when we have these crazy big goals, we also have couple them with really fun celebrations. And so we attempt to make the crazy big goals happen in a moment in time. So then when we achieve them, we actually have a really fun moment. Because if you're just trying to plod towards the top of the mountain always and you never take a little moment to pat yourself on the back, it would feel a little arduous. And so over the years, we had all sorts of fun little celebrations where we have smashed great plates and released doves and had a little La Tomatina festival and all sorts of fun things just to take a moment with the team to celebrate that huge achievement. And so I think that you want to celebrate what you want to really focus on and what you want everyone to take that moment. So when you achieve that crazy big goal, when we launch in Spanish, when we hit 100 languages, and then so forth across the company, taking that moment to actually pat yourself on the back and pat the teams on the back and say, hey, we did this thing, that thing that seemed really hard, we've now achieved. And the mission is often each of the different mission pillars. They're obviously a long area of investment that's going to take a long time to get to. But being able to celebrate each of the rungs on that, on the way there, I think is extraordinarily important. And then it makes everyone. Everyone works extraordinarily hard to bring them to life. And then it gives everyone a little moment to feel proud of themselves.

It'd be very motivating to get to just break a bunch of plates. I really like that. You need to bring that one back.

We haven't done that one in a while.

It's a good one. I just love how concrete you're making this. So it's set these crazy big goals, find the components of the goals, set numbers there, and then figure out kind of the steps you take to achieve these things. All fail is very easy. Kind of on the flip side of that, this is a segue. People hear these stories, they hear your story, they see Canva over the years and it's just this, like, up into the right huge success story. One of the most successful companies in history. I imagine there have been many periods where things weren't going so great and when maybe things didn't look like they worked, would work out. So let me just ask you this. Over the course of building Canva, once It started to click and started to feel like it was going to be a thing. Was there a point where it. I started to again feel like, wow, maybe this may not work out. Maybe there's a huge setback that we may not get over.

I think it's just a constant evolution. Like every time the company doubles in size, pretty much all your systems break. All the things that were working, don't work. You know, a little example in the early days, we'd stand up and everyone would present their, present their goals, what they're working on, every day, every week. And then it kind of moved every month. And then it was just like it was just taking too long because we've got so many people. And then it was sort of like we started doing these things called season openers. And season openers were really fun, where we got the entire company together. We talked about the goals that we'd achieved. And it was so funny because ahead of season openers, everyone would launch everything because they wanted to do it ahead of the season opener. And then we'd also set the goals for the coming cycle, for the coming season at that point in time. But then they started to become like six hours long because we had so many people and so many teams and so like trying to find that right with the same philosophies of deep context for everyone, with the same philosophies of the celebrations and the goals and like trying to find that right flavor at every stage of scale is definitely hard. And so I think it's just like a constant work in progress or you know, back to your earlier point about timing of things. We were doing a front end rewrite and we thought it would take about six months. It was really important because it was critical for cross platform. It was critical for right to left. It was critical, critical because we could only have five people working in our editor at any point in time because of the way the code base was structured. And we thought it was going to take six months and then it took two years and it was two years of not shipping any product, Two years of a product company not being able to ship product. And like that is such a core motivation for our team is like shipping something, seeing great customer feedback and then that kind of makes everyone feel happy and like you've got momentum. And it just felt like we're in a dark, dark tunnel that we could hardly see the end of the tunnel. And we didn't really know how long it was going to take because it had to take as long as the tunnel was going to take. And it was, you know, a very hard time because, you know, other people would be launching this and that and it was. We weren't. You know, eventually we got out of that tunnel and it was extremely important that we did that work. We've now got two and a half thousand engineers and we're able to deliver amazing things that would have just like, been completely infeasible, but. And simultaneous collaboration was all like. So many things were baked into this. But yeah, it was not a fun period of time. A product company, not shipping product. It's not really a recipe for fun.

For two years.

For two years.

I feel like every builder listening to this knows exactly what you've been through. And maybe not on that scale in those stakes, but you start on something, oh, yeah, it'll be. Take a few weeks and then a year later you're still working on it.

Totally.

How did. Just. Was the mood really? I don't know, Sad internally, just. That must have been like two years. That's a long time not to ship anything. Just what was it like internally during that period?

I think it was kind of everything internally. Like, we. We made it into a bit of a game. We had this game board and I bought these little, like, rubber ducky sort of bath toys, and we had this. So we had all the little. The components represented as a bath toy on this board. And there was like all these stages of like, home kind of went launched in product. There was an emergency lane at the end of it was home and hosed. And we did these weekly standups where everyone would come in and talk where their bath toy was at. And kind of just like, we tried to make it fun for the team. So it was partly fun and it was partly distressing as all of our investors were like, hey, you know that thing. So I think it was both things at the same time. It was bonding, let's say.

Okay. Speaking of investors, speaking of other hard times, there's a very famous story about Canva. Early on, you pitched over 100 investors, and over 100 investors said no to you when you were just starting Canva. I think that's more investors than any founder I've talked to. Like, actually tries to pitch. It's a. It's impressive you tried that hard and went for so many pitches and finally got someone to take a bet. Now you are something like a $40 billion company making 3.3 billion arrangements. I think there's something like 240 million monthly active users. One of the hottest private companies in the world. Just how does this feel?

I don't know. It was really clear in my mind that it was the future. And I thought the investors were wrong, frankly. But investors also gave really helpful feedback and feedback often in the form of rejection. So they would say, oh, your market's not big enough. And I would say, it's going to be huge. And I'd add a new page in my pitch deck that said how big the market, I believe was. And then they'd say, you're the same as some other company. And I'd say, coupled with rejection. And I would say, hey, now I've got a new slide in my pitch deck that shows all the players and the huge gap in the market that we believe we're going to fill. Or most investors knew absolutely nothing about design or the industry that we're in. And so we then ended up with the first few slides saying, here's the lay of the land today, here's the problem that we're going to solve. And so while it was extraordinarily frustrating, their feedback made us stronger and made our pitch deck stronger. And it was sort of like from that chaos to clarity, at the start, it was just like this idea. And then through the copious amounts of rejection, the pitch deck got stronger and more refined. So then when people, the first time I remember I spoke to someone for hours and they eventually got it, they were really committed to understanding what we were trying to do. But then not everyone has six hours to understand a concept. And so being able to take all the gems of wisdom from that conversation and have that understood really clearly in a really short period of time and have all of the reasons that people were rejecting us pre answered in that initial pitch deck was really important. And I think that's probably one of the reasons why when I look back at our 2012 pitch deck, it's so valid and really still captures what we're doing today. And so I think that retection in some ways makes you stronger if you can persist through.

Well, I think beyond that, I've never heard this part of the story. It's not just persisting, it's actually iterating and taking feedback that you're hearing to continue to evolve the pitch to a place where, okay, I finally get what you're doing. That is such a cool part of the story. Is there how much of the product, like how much of that vision and product changed throughout that journey versus just the way you pitched it and convinced.

People it was pretty consistent, but the way we articulated it changed greatly. And so, for example, I wouldn't in the early days articulate the problem very much. I went into like, here's the cool solution. And so then the first few pages became very much more problem based.

So.

Because if people don't understand the problem, then they can't understand or care about your solution. And so there was a lot of, a lot of refinement on the way it was articulated and. But the actual vision itself I think.

Was pretty consistent through, I'm guessing a lot of founders ask for your advice on raising money, getting started. Having gone through so much rejection early on, what do you, what's your general advice to folks that are having a hard time fundraising?

I mean, I can only go on my experience, but I think it's sort of like the dark tunnel analogy, just, oh, chaos to clarity. Let's go read that one. It's a slightly friendlier analogy. And I think just taking the rejection and turning into things that you can control. So I can control my pitch deck, I can control the number of people I'm speaking to. And I just spoke to literally everyone. And I think that like continuing to use it to refine it rather than taking it as a personal rejection, I think it's really important to think like, how can I improve? How can I help someone to understand it? Some people are never going to understand it. I remember pitching an investor that had the lean startup book on their behind them when they were, when I was pitching them and they were never going to like Canva because we were not the lean startup. That was not the way that we're approaching it whatsoever. So there's some people that are just going to never like you and that's okay. I think it's important to find some people that do, like what you're trying to say and trying to do and, you know, kind of finding your tribe. I think.

I think as an investor this is really interesting to hear because it tells you there are companies like Canva out there that everyone's turning down. 100 investors passed on that you might still be able to invest in. Talking about your growth as a leader. Say, if you compare Melanie of today to Melanie of, I don't know, 12, 13 years ago, when you were just starting Canva, what would you say is most different in terms of leadership?

I don't really know. Probably if you ask other people around me, they'd probably be more observant. But it is funny because there's some things that I think that I need to change and then I realized, go and do it. The same as some other company. And sometimes we even try that for a while, and then we try that out, and we're like, it didn't really work for us. And it's kind of like building a house that you want every brick in the house to match. And if you go and try and take some bricks from someone else's house and stick it in your house, it's probably going to not look very matched. And so trying to find things that are authentic to us and are authentic to everything that's come before it is just that constant, constant thing. And then each stage of scale of the company, rather than going, taking someone else's bricks and trying to stick that in your house, trying to build the thing that's authentic. So I think there's many things that are the same, but obviously the stage and scale, and we're constantly having to give away hats. And so you kind of think about it. In the very early days, we're just a few of us or just two of us in Fusion, and then three of us and just a little tiny group, and you kind of wear 100 hats. And then you have to be able to give away those hats to other people that can then do that way better than yourself. And so I'm sure there's been a few skills I guess I would have had to have developed over the last decade to be able to give away those hats. But, yeah, I think there's a lot of things that we've had to do and double down on that was more authentic to the way we did it in the early days?

Actually, I love that story. I think, again, if anyone working at a company that has gone through a lot of growth has experienced that when people from other companies come in, and here's how we did it at this company. Is there. Is there an example of some there that just like, here's something that this company brought in and people from this company thought we should do, and we tried and didn't work.

I won't go into specific examples, but so many times over. And I think that, I mean, maybe that's probably in answer to your other question, like, not we did things our way, because that was the only way we knew. And there was many, many times over the years that we were like, didn't have confidence in the way we were doing things, and we'd be like, oh, they've done it from a big company that's bigger than our company. Let's go do that. And that hasn't always worked out so well for us. And so, yeah, I think confidence in how we take what is authentic to us and do it at the next level of scale is a constant work in progress. It feels like, as I was saying before, systems break and need to be reinvented, but also reimagined for that next layer of scale rather than going to try to get something off the shelf from another company.

Imagine also helped that you were in Australia, away from the Bay Area and where all these other, you know, big companies are at just being, being able to do it your own way.

Yeah, very much so.

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Is there anything else that is a good example of how you did something pretty different from how other companies operate? Anything else that comes to mind as a, as a fun example?

The goal driven structures, I think the things that we were talking about before. So the mission actually breaking that down into the mission pillars, breaking those mission pillars down into the goals that we're then pursuing and then celebrating those goals when we do achieve them, I think is a deeply under loved way of building a company. Often people have a mission that's kind of on the wall somewhere and then what they're actually doing and the way they actually make money and the way that, you know, where people actually spend their time is in a very, very different direction from that original mission. And I think the magic is when you can bring those two things together and so you can have your mission and you can have your mission pillars that actually are helping to achieve that and I think there's a real authenticity in that for customers as well, is that you're actually doing the thing that you promised you do and it all ladders up together. It's certainly not an easy way to run a company. But I think that when you do get that formula right. I think that there's a lot of authenticity with what you're saying you're doing, you're actually doing.

I want to come back to that. That's a whole really cool process do you have with closing the loop with customers. But something else I want to talk about while we're in this topic of growth over time. I saw you post something about how you had to realize that you had to slow down and not just work, work, work, like crazy. Talk about just that realization and why that ended up being so valuable.

So in the early days, I would just work seven days a week, round the clock. In our very first company, we actually had printing presses because we were printing the yearbooks in my mum's house and then delivering them to schools around Australia. And, you know, in the early days of Canva, we certainly were working all weekend, all hours of the day. It was just constant. But when you've been doing this for a while, if you just keep working at that pace, I don't think it's good for anyone's health, mental health or anything else. So I think finding ways to continue, I still work extraordinarily hard, but to continue to have that balance in my day to day where I actually go to sleep, I tend to. I find time to do things like going for walks or doing yoga, journaling I find extraordinarily helpful to make sure that I can always bring my best to everything that I'm doing.

It's easy to say that kind of stuff. It must be really hard to actually make time for that thing. Is there anything for those sorts of things? Is there anything that you do that allows you to actually protect that time, to actually do these things? Because as you said, there's a billion things that are just looking for your attention constantly.

I feel like I've developed some healthy habits over the years. I don't have email and slack on my phone and so when I shut my laptop, I actually tune out. And then if there's a real issue, I'll get an emergency call or page. But I think trying to delineate, I think is really important. So when I'm working, I'm all in, and then when I'm not working, I'm all out. And actually giving that mental space, I think is really important. I've spoken to a lot of founders that haven't quite found that and then do struggle with it, you know, so when they're not, when they're working every weekend, it feels like the right thing, but then you're kind of missing. Sometimes you can miss the forest from the trees when you're just working harder and harder, but maybe you're actually working on the wrong thing. And so I think being able to step away a little, just to be able to get perspective is actually really beneficial.

I want to come back to this closing the loop process. Let's say that you have where you figure out what to build. A lot of your ideas come actually from the community. Talk about just that process and how many of your ideas actually came from your community.

Oh, it's one of my favorite things. We've been doing it for years now. And so we get more than a million requests from our community every year. And we then we've got a whole incredible team that then tallies them, breaks them down, and then delivers them to all of our product teams. And then those actually get closed. So this year we've closed more than 2, 200 loops, but we know that each one of those things is going to be loved and needed by so many more people that don't bother to actually fill out the request form. And so, so many things from gradient text, like little things like gradient text, to really big things like our sheets product, there's just been countless products. You know, in the early days with our AI products, we didn't release them to teachers because we knew there was a lot of hesitancy for teachers using AI in the classroom. And we got so many requests from teachers saying, can I please use this magic write in classroom? And so then we unlocked that and put on safety controls for teachers. And so it's just constant, actually. It's just part of our product process. I think there's two parts to product. One is building the future and towards the mission and the mission pillars, as I was saying before, and the other is actually listening to our community and building what they want. And so I think that that's the two core pieces of product in my mind. And the closing the loop comes in so many different forms. There's the explicit asks, and then the other thing that we double down on all the time is user testing and watching people use it. And if people hesitate clicking a button or people don't quite understand how something works, it's amazing to me how you can find 10 random people on the Internet and they can give such astute feedback that then is so representative for such a large number of people. So I've personally run hundreds, if not thousands of user tests myself, and it's been deeply embedded in our product teams also.

Wow, that must Be really stressful for someone looking at a test of Canva, trying to try someone when you're in the room.

It's actually. We do it all online, actually. I mean, the ones I've run are typically online. So people are so much more frank, I think when they just. It's just them and their camera and they don't really. Yeah, they tell you really how it is.

Is there a tool or a kind of a process there that you find really helpful? I don't know if you want to name names of products or anything like that, but it's something that you find help useful.

Yeah, we use a lot of usertesting.com I find that super, super valuable.

All right, go. User testing. Okay. Something else that I know is really important to you and also really unique to Canva is something that's called the two step plan. You mentioned this earlier. I want to definitely talk about this. What is the two step plan? Why is this so important to you?

Yeah, so when you were asking about crazy big goals, I think this is our most macro, most crazy biggest goal. Step one, build one of the world's most valuable companies. And step two, do the most good we can do. And in our early days, I thought I'd do step one and then step two and realize that actually step one can fuel step two and step two can fuel step one. And so that's been a really big part of Canva for some years now. You know, in the early days, we took the 1% pledge, which I think is an incredible program. Every single person, every single company should, should take that, where you give 1% of time, money, equity and profitability. And I think that's a really easy thing to do in the early days that then can compound greatly over time. We also knew that Canva's equity was obviously going to be a really key part of it. So Cliff and I owned a little over 30% of Canva. And so we decided we were going to take 30% of Canva and use it to do the most good we can do. And we are doing that. So we're doing all of our donating through the Canva Foundation. We've just, over the last few years we've donated $50 million to GiveDirectly, where they give money directly to people in Malawi who are in extreme poverty. And then they can use that money on their family to go to school, to get health care, to start small businesses, to get a roof so they can sleep without being wet. You know, just like real, truly basic human needs. Things and we've just announced that we're going to be giving another $100 million over the next four years to people in extreme poverty. And it's just like when you go and sit with people and you hear about how they're spending what's very microscopic amount at $550, it doesn't buy us that much. But it's a life changing amount of money for people in extreme poverty and it's truly transformational what it can do. And you meet people and you hear their stories and it's truly the best money I could ever imagine spending. And that crazy big dream I was mentioning earlier of everyone having basic human needs met, it's so completely insane that that isn't the case today. There's no specific reason why people don't have their basic human needs met on our planet. But we just haven't got to act together as humanity. And so that is a truly crazy big dream. But back to the two step plan. Step one, build one of one of the world's most valuable companies. And step two, do the most good we can do. And finding ways to do that at the same time I think is extraordinarily important.

That's incredible. It makes me think about, not to mention Elon again, but Elon's three step strategy plan and it's like build better cars versus this is like, okay, solve all the problems of the world and make the world a better place. What a better master plan to compare. And something else about this that I love is a lot of companies have this, have something philanthropic going on with the company and it's like sitting in a doc on some page as part of their mission. It's not actually that big of a deal to them. What I hear from folks at Canvas is something you talk about all the time. This is like an actually core part of how you work and think and how you set goals and set vision and missions.

Yeah, I'm happy to hear that. I wouldn't do canva if it wasn't going to have a positive impact on the world. Like for me, getting really rich is not a goal unto itself whatsoever. It's a means to an end. And I've been very blessed to be able to do some work and that creates wealth that can then go and have people's basic human needs met. You know, it's completely. Yeah, but they're working just as hard, but they don't have the opportunity. And you know, even our education product is now used by 100 million people each month. And we are in most school districts and rolled out across countries and being able to bring quality education tools to every. And we give that away for free as well. Being able to help empower schools all around the world. And we're going to be doubling down and doubling down into that product to bring quality education to all. I think it gives so much more meaning behind work. We've also, between our education product and our nonprofit program where we also give away our paid product for free, we're giving away $1.5 billion of product A year now. And so the impact that that can have and the ripple effect of that, I think is pretty great. And I think for all of us, it gives a lot more meaning to our work than get rich.

Okay, so speaking of product, coming back to that, you guys are launching something. Maybe you've already launched it by the time this comes out. What I heard described as the biggest launch in Canva's history. No big deal. That's a high bar. Considering all the things that you guys have launched. What are you launching? Why is it such a big deal?

So we are extraordinarily excited about what we are launching. I guess the whole mission of Canva is to empower the world to design. And so what has been enabled by new technology with all of AI has been just really profound, enabling people to take their idea and turn it into a design and have as little friction between those two points. So we are doubling down radically on our video product and bringing some incredible capabilities to our mobile and desktop platform. We are launching email, which has been one of our most hotly requested features from enterprise customers around the world and business customers around the world who want to be able to design with Canva's drag and drop ease and to be able to create an email we're launching forms we are launching. Probably one of the most exciting things is the way we're embedding AI across the entire product suite. And so you can actually use AI to design a presentation, a video, a email, a website. All of these things can actually now be done inside the core editor, inside the design tab, which is used by 170 million. It's used 170 million times a month. And then on our Elements tab, which is used 900 million times a month, we are also embedding AI so you can actually generate a video, you can generate Canva code, and you can generate photos all directly inside that platform. And then we're also launching comments, as lots of our customers use Canva to comment and collaborate. And now you can actually just Tag at Canva and you collaborate, you can just say hey, like can you make this title shorter? Can you do this? Can you do that? And it has all of the context of the design. So in situ you can actually just have a collaborator that can help get your work done. So we are pretty excited about all of this.

Amazing.

Something I'm going to just let people know. I don't know if people know all this, how many products you all have now. I think a lot of people think of Canva as like a design graphics for social media and marketing and things like that. But you also have spreadsheets, docs, whiteboards, charts, code, AI coding tool. And now what I'm hearing is email forms. There's probably a few other things I'm not thinking about.

Yeah, truly design anything. We're literally living up to that. Like 100 million people. I design a presentation in Canva each month now and it's pretty fascinating to see that when you speak to. I saw a tweet some time ago. They were talking about how it's a generational thing that a certain generation uses Microsoft, a third generation uses Google and then Gen Z, like presentations have become the way they design a presentation is in Canva. But it's not just generational for those of other generational ilk. But it's been fascinating to see that come to life.

The email product, is that like a email client product or it's design emails that you can then send through your product.

It is design emails. So you can design email. Then you can take that code and you can pop it into any email platform that you use.

How do you think about products you're going to expand to? I know there's like trade secrets here. You don't want to tell everyone where you're going next, but just how do you approach. Here's where we're going next.

So our mission, empower design. Empower everyone to design anything with every ingredient in every language on every device and just take those things very literally. So to literally design anything, to literally publish anywhere. And so, you know, we now print.

In.

50 something countries around the world and you can get it printed and delivered to your house. And we planted.

I actually did that.

Oh awesome.

I wasn't planning this, but I had a print thing delivered to my house.

Exactly.

We have to go to a print shop in this freaking graphic and then. Well, there's a button.

Let's click on.

Exactly.

Here's click print and it pops up beautifully packaged to your door.

I don't know how that Works. Yeah. I don't know how you did that, but it worked.

How cool that is very cool. And so, yeah, I guess literally bring these things to life. Oh, we're like launching 3D as well. So all of these things we will be bringing to life, literally, and just picking off what is the most strategically important next thing to enable everyone to design anything, to enable everyone to publish anywhere. And we have been doing that for a decade and we'll continue to do that forevermore, using the latest technology to truly bring people's ideas to life.

Okay, so this is helpful. So if someone's like, oh, well, Canva come for my space? Are people designing things? That was design. And also, what was it?

Publish?

Publishing. Anywhere.

Okay, Publishing and designing. Okay. So if you're doing any designing or publishing, watch out.

From a macro perspective, there was creativity tools and productivity tools. And what canva really does is where literally smack bang in the middle of that Venn diagram of creativity and productivity, rather than making our customers have to make a choice between those two tools, two suites.

Something I wasn't planning on asking about, but I think it's on everyone's minds. There's always this, like Figma and Adobe and then there's Canva and there's kind of a bunch of places we could go with this one is just at the beginning of the journey where a lot of founders try to figure out their wedge and their specific niche. Just how did you think about that? Like, here's how we might have a chance to. I know Figo wasn't even around back then, I don't think. Just like, how did you approach your early wedge of users?

One of the most important things that we did was we didn't really worry about competitors at all. We actually just saw, where is there a gap in the market that we can uniquely fill and what can we solve? A problem, a core problem that people currently have today. And so with our first company, that was Yearbooks in Australia and there wasn't great tools and these yearbook coordinators got thrown in to have to design something and they'd have no design experience. And we spoke to every single customer, we gave them an over the phone tutorial, we understood all of their pain points, we got continuous customer feedback and then we tried to iterate and improve. And then when we were thinking about Canva a few years into that, actually one of the schools said, I love this product so much, can I use it to design newsletters? And they had all sorts of other things that they wanted to use it for. And we kind of looked around and we're like, oh, there's still nothing on the market. This was like a few years into it that actually does the thing that we're doing, but for all these other things. And so it was much more like, where is the gap in the market that people are currently having a pain point. And if you can solve that pain point really well and solve it in such a way that people actually want to pay for it because it is truly solving a real pain point that they have, I think that kind of sets it up for success rather than be a problem or a solution looking for a problem.

So what I'm hearing there is you didn't overthink. Here's my icp. Here's like the wedge and the strategy of how we expand into this large thing. It's like, here's people with a problem that hasn't been solved in years that we keep seeing. Let's try to solve it.

Exactly that. And if you take that problem centered approach that helps people to achieve something they actually want to do in the real life, you're probably going to be in a reasonably good spot, especially if it maps to a larger market. That's a particularly great thing. If it only solves one person's problem, that might not be a great company going forward, but if a few people have that same problem. But I think that again, like back to that big ladder in that first rung, not getting too. I think it's better to solve a small number of people's problem really well than trying to solve a large number of people's problem not very well at all.

Something I can't not ask about is just how you think about AI in your product. You mentioned how you integrated all through the product. Just, you know, you guys are doing really good stuff with AI. A lot of companies are struggling to find something really that works great. Do you have just like a philosophy of here's how we integrate AI into canva where it ends up being really helpful and. And people love it.

Your question is actually the answer. At the same time, I think being able to integrate it into the product, where it actually helps people to get their work done, where it genuinely helps them to achieve their goals and then being really open to listening to your community and hearing what they're loving, what they're struggling with, and refining from there, I think is really, really important. Just because AI is all the rage and investors really like AI doesn't necessarily mean it should be front and center in. But if it can genuinely help your customers to achieve their goals. So, you know the thing that I was mentioning before, enabling people to communicate their ideas and have little friction between those two points, AI is just kind of like naturally a very critical part of that equation for us. In fact, it was funny looking back from really old decks, we were trying to do AI before AI was actually a thing because it really was critical to what we were trying to do. Even in our 2012 deck, you can kind of imagine how AI very much fit into the equation because of exactly what we were trying to do.

I'm going to keep us on the AI thread and take us to AI Corner, which is a recurring segment on this podcast. So here's the question. What's a way you've found in your personal life and work life to use AI where it ends up being really helpful, something really interesting that people might find useful?

So many things. So AI is often the first. If I'm like having an idea, we are first place that I go and explore the idea. And now with Canva and you can just tag canva, I can say, give me more ideas of this. And it's like shockingly great because it has all of the context from the design is actually integrated deeply into your workflow. Another really fun thing I do is an AI walk. And it's when I just put my earpods in and then I go for a walk and I just say everything on my mind and I use that to then kind of filter out my thoughts and figure out what are the things I need to action. And it kind of helps again, get out of the weeds and think about things from a more macro perspective rather than from the things that might be in my Slack messages or in my email. It just gives you that sort of helpful vantage point, I find. So yeah, so many things.

For the Voice Note tool, is there a tool that you find useful for that?

Yeah, I might use Apple Notes or directly into Canva docs and then I actually just do the brain dump into Canva docs and then just like summarize it. So yeah, it's got it.

And so you just use like native microphone.

Exactly.

Sort of thing. Nothing fancy.

Yeah, yeah, I like it.

This reminded me of you mentioned earlier in our conversation. You have this. You have this vision board that you said is like for 2050, is that right?

Yeah, that's right.

Can you share something from that vision board?

I'll tell you why the vision board came about, because it's only been in recent months. I did feel like as humanity we are on a Bit of a freight train. And that freight training is, I think if we take a lot of visions for a lot of different companies and a lot of things that are happening and you just fast forward 50 years or 2050 and you say, are we in a safer world? Is the world the place that we want our kids to grow up in? Is this the humanity that we want? I didn't feel that. The train that we are headed on always feels great. In fact, it scared me quite greatly for a whole host of reasons. And so I sat with that feeling for a little and then I kind of got to work on my 2050 wall. And back to the chaos to clarity. The first thing was writing my 2050 wall. And I've kind of really been loving. I've got a whole on the 2050 wall. Started with a lot of quotes. Everything good was once imagined. And many other quotes are along those similar lines. And then rather than just being fearful of the things that I'm worried about for society and for humanity, I started to think like, what would the alternative be? What is that vision that I would love to see us have basic human needs for all. Global education being a basic human right that everyone experiences all the really important things that we want as humanity. And again like using vision and using imagination and just dreaming about the future. And I find it really fascinating in my day to day by literally having it beside me as I work every day, the little tiny decisions that can kind of help to angle towards that future that we want. And can I help will any of that into existence? I honestly don't know. But I feel like just by starting to write it down, I've done a little brainstorm exercise with a number of other people and starting to just etch out how do we get closer and closer to that? On my vision of the future, it's community, it's the whole of humanity trying to dream bigger and to dream bigger goals and then us actually rising to that occasion in the world we don't want. I think loneliness is rife. Purpose is gone. What we teach people in schools is pointless. And in my vision for 2050, it's none of those things. Communities are bountiful. We all have deep purpose and that deep purpose springs from having bigger dreams that we collectively go out and achieve something that we're doing at our canva world to a keynote in two weeks time, which I think is going to be after this is released. We've been asking people, what is one goal you'd like to see the world achieved in our lifetime? And then people literally writing it down, I think is pretty powerful. And then people sharing that with other people, I think is pretty powerful. And then us actually figuring out how the hell do we turn that reality that we all deeply, desperately want into existence, I think is genuinely one of the biggest questions of our time. But then again, rather than trying to tackle that entire thing by yourself, how do you take that first tiny step that starts to see that in your own life, in your own family, in your own community? And I think that's where we'll get purpose from. And that's. I think that is one of the key answers to loneliness, is actually working towards something bigger than yourself.

Wow. I really appreciate you sharing all that. I was thinking, as you're talking, just considering how wildly successful Canva has been and just how ambitious that was when you started, I would not be at all surprised that this actually happens and that you achieve this very difficult vision.

It's not something that I alone can achieve. I think it has to be obviously a global collective effort, because there's zero chance I can go and achieve basic human needs for all. But I think that I'd like to change that. I'd like to help change the mood. I'd like to help change the way we're thinking about things. I genuinely think there's a little. We need to move course a little bit and decide not what are all the things that we kind of like, what's the freight train we're currently on, but what is it that we actually want? What do we want our societies to look like? What do we want the world to look like? Is it good enough that there's people, hundreds of millions of people that can't eat? Like, what the hell? It just literally makes no sense.

A, column. B, World, you might say.

Absolutely.

Melanie, this was incredible. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share? Anything else you want to leave listeners with?

You have been extremely extensive. I don't think I've got anything of that, frankly.

That's the goal. That's the goal. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Melanie, are you ready?

Let's go.

First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

One of the books I love is the Power of Moments and it talks about, am I supposed to be really fast and not tell you about it?

It's all good.

Okay. Two books, the Power of Moments. And one of the books early on I read was Designing the Obvious, which I found very insightful.

Okay, I like they shifted to fast mode. You don't have to go super fast. All good. What is a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love? Not Canva.

I love the Calm app. It is my daily companion. I use it to meditate. I use it to listen to music. I just find it very calming.

Okay, first question. I usually ask about movies and TV shows. I hear you don't watch a lot because you're so busy and have so much going on. So I'm going to try a new question I haven't asked before. I'm curious where this goes. So, excluding Canva, what's a product you'd love to work on someday? Whether it's like an existing other company, like, oh, I wish I could work on that thing, or just a new product you'd love to build? Maybe after the Canva chapter.

I feel like my Canva chapter is going to go on for a long time. So I don't know that because we've got two step plans and we're pretty, pretty extensive.

Maybe a company you'd love to fund. There we go.

I feel like there is a lot of opportunity to create global infrastructure that is truly empowering. And so as I look at my 2050 wall, I think there's a lot of things that are currently only exclusively available to a small number of people that should be available to everyone. And so the more that we can do to uplift the rising tide lifts all boats, I think is a thing that's just of such critical importance. And I think there is this weird belief that you can be fine and everyone else can be not fine. And that's all cool. I don't think that's cool. I think everyone suffers in such a case. So I think more things that help.

Everyone to rise, maybe along those lines, but maybe not. Is there a life motto that you find yourself coming back to and work your own life?

There's a few. I love the quote. Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony. I feel like that's a constant aspiration. And then I've just been so obsessed lately with the idea that everything is led by imagination. That imagination is the very first step of that creative process. So everything is good because once imagined is a quote you're going to be seeing from Canva all the time now. Because it is true that if you don't imagine it, you can't will it into existence. And in fact, everything great that we experience in life was first imagined.

Wow, there's so much power to that one thought nugget. There is just, there's all these tools now that can make things, make building so much easier. You can just build anything you want, just describe it. But so many people are just like, I'm in the same boat. I'm just stuck. What do I want? I don't even like, I don't know what I mean, what should I build? And that's exactly what you're talking about there. Okay, last question. So I saw somewhere that you were an aspiring figure skater in your early years. In high school you had to wake up at 4:30am to practice. Is there something you learned from that period of your life that was helpful in building Canva?

Oh, so many things are quite directly applicable. Falling down over and over again and getting off and trying again. The importance of hard work and determination. I think the falling down, it was quite literal in my figure skating days. And maybe it's a little more metaphorical today, but it is constant.

You're rewrite. I wonder what that metaphor is for figure skating. I don't know. Anyway, Melanie, this was incredible. I am so thankful that you agreed to do this. Two final questions. Where can folks find me if they want to maybe reach out, send you maybe feedback on Canvas or join Canva and how can listeners be useful to you?

Really great questions. So you can find me on LinkedIn. That's where I post the most. And you can go to and I can get the URL to give us your wishes and we want to hear them and we literally listen to them. It doesn't just go down to a suggestion box and then how can they be helpful? Use Canva. Spread Canva, Teach Canva. We're doing a Canva world tour through October, which is probably going to be outdated. And this is posted. Come to our events. We do events all around the world and we'd love to see you and to hear from you. And if you are in a company, starting a company, try and do the 1% pledge. Try and figure out your own version of the two step plan and try and build products and in every decision that you make that actually makes the world that you want to live in. I think there's this kind of belief sometimes that the world is created by other people, but we all have a very active hand in the creating the world that we live in. And every decision that you make for investors, every company that you fund, is that contributing the world to the world that you want to live in or is it creating the freight train that none of us want to be on.

I have to ask before I let you go this Are you going to have the rap dancers at the next CANVA event?

You'll have to wait and see.

Okay, Melanie, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much, Lenny for having me and your great, well researched questions.

Thank you. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening.

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