Melanie Perkins, Co-founder and CEO, Canva
Interviewer: Claire Zillman, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2021: One on One - Making it Simple

Conferences

Hi Melanie, thank you so much for joining us at our next summit. It's such a pleasure to have you coming from to us from Sydney. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me as well. Great, well um I want to talk um there's so much to cover about Kansas and it's extraordinary growth but I'm hoping you can start by sort of giving our audience Um just a little summary about the company. I mean you serve 85% of the Fortune 500, so I'm not sure how many people need an introduction to Canada, but I'm I'm hoping you can just start by by telling us about what Canada was like when you founded this in 2007. I have that. Right, and what kind of company it is today? Sounds like a good place to start. So I was teaching design programs and thought they were incredibly complicated. You have to go to all these different tools and products and things that are online and offline um to be able to create a design. Um and we also saw that design was becoming something that was needed by so many more people and so many more professions. Um so, you know, in years gone by design can be done by a really small um you know, a number of people, but now all of a sudden we're living in the world of visual communication and absolutely critical for almost every profession that they are able to create great sign. Um and so when I saw this problem, thought that it was a really good one to tackle and take the entire ecosystem integrated into one page and then make it accessible to the whole world. Um but when I started off I had no business experience and my experience, I started off applying that concept of a really simple design platform to yearbooks. Um and that went pretty well and then started the concept for Canada to take that concept of simple design for everyone um to the world. And so we launched in 2013 and it's been growing rather rapidly ever since. Right there is an online tool where you can design all sorts of things. Who is your biggest customer right now? What do people use the platform for the most? Yes, they're one of the fastest growing diktats presentations. So that because Crazy number of presentation to create, I think we've had over six billion designs created all up. So it's everything from presentations, social media, marketing materials, pitch decks, like absolutely the full spectrum of things are being created, which is pretty cool and it's everything from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Um I think that every single professionals able to create a lot more visual content nowadays, which has probably helped it to spread uh quickly. Right, great. And in terms of the growth of these numbers are pretty staggering. So in late 2019 you are valued at 2.3.2 billion. Uh June 2026 billion. And just in April your latest round valued at 15 billion. So in the course of less than a year year evaluation more than double. I mean, what do you mean? And that was over a period of tremendous disruption to the world, let alone the business community with the pandemic. What do you attribute that supercharged growth to in terms of campuses this bottle? I think that as the world moved online, when they are these sort of like science mix shift where everyone is moving rapidly, they're often moving to things that enable them. Um So small businesses needed to have tools to rapidly transition online businesses needed the exact same thing students were having to go from being in the classroom um to needing to work from home. So that was also critical that we really supported our communities throughout that time. And of course because Canada is an online visual communication tool, um it was the perfect platform to help a lot of businesses and students and teachers and classrooms to get online and make that transition. But I guess the fundamental thing is we've been solving a problem that affects a lot of people. The problem is that most people can't design or weren't able to design and they needed to create a lot of visual content. Um and we really saw that as a huge gap in the market and created a product to fill it. And so, you know, as the world has been going through all of the tumultuous transitions that it has been, it's been critical that can be just continues to solve problems for our community, um and make their life as easy as possible. Which has been certainly critical over the last over the last little while. Right. I mean, as you mentioned, obviously Campbell was already a digital tool of the digital business that was, you know, perfectly positioned for the pandemic. But did you, did you pivot at all, you know when this, you know, last spring, when it became obvious that this is going to be, you know, such a huge destruction. Um did you change anything about the trajectory that the businesses on at that point? The major thing that we did was transition to really support our community. So people, we're designing for example, let's resumes or less invitations business cards. But what they were needing to do was to create a lot of online content to help their business or school transition online. So we ensure that our team was creating a lot of the content that they needed to serve those very, very important needs. We also spend a lot of time working on things um that would help people with that transition as well. So things like talking presentations because all of a sudden people weren't able to give a presentation in person the needed to share presentation. Eight incredibly so in Canada, you can create a presentation and then you can record your speaking over it and then someone can watch it. Um and like go through your flies and hear your voice and your your video as you talked them through those sides. So really focusing on the products that people needed to help support them during that time was critical. And then another area. We have 100,000 non profits in a nonprofit program today. Um, but we opened that up to public health organizations. The public health organizations around the world had a tremendously challenging job because they needed to ensure that all of um, people, the correct information was being spread to the community. Um, and facts were being, um, being accurately spread throughout the world covert. And so it was really critical that we created templates for those organizations. And then we also opened up a nonprofit program to ensure they had access to these tools really through that time too. Right. And what about schools? I mean you mentioned the move online in terms of learning, How did you see your users adapt to that and the types of designs that they were making that reflects that shit. Yeah, that was really rapid adoption of Canberra in schools where in 60,000 schools across the globe today. Um and it's really cool to see the way that canvas being used. So you know, they're using camera for everything from presentations, posters um and all sorts of other things I think that what has been really helpful to see um is the innovative ways that people have been using it as well. So doing things like creating uh one of the coolest stories of the school in san Francisco, the cavity create um like posters, they created their own self portraits of Frida, Carlo posters, but then they didn't online gallery where they everyone could go and comment on each other's um self portraits. So just seeing a really interesting way people have been using Canada creatively in the classroom has been incredibly inspiring as well. Um but I think that it speaks to a really important thing is that visual communication isn't just reserved for a few people. It's becoming a really critical competency for everyone um across most professions, which is why it's becoming such an important part in the classroom as well. And of course, creativity in the classroom is a really important area as well, that um it's great to see the growth and the focus on that throughout schools across the world. Right. I mean, when you talk about creativity and the need to learn these digital visual skills early on, I can see there being some a little bit of fear or a little bit of self doubt when it comes to and my creator and my a designer. How do you? Um I mean, what would you say to someone who says, I don't know if I have the skill to put this all together, I'm not an artist. You know, what what were your response to that? Yeah, it's actually that's a really great question. When we were launching cava before we launched a campaign to anyone, we watched a lot of user testing videos where we could watch people use our products and see how they go years ago. And the first thing was that people were really scared to click buttons, they were scared to play around because it's quite intimidating. And so what was really critical was that we wanted to introduce the concept of to make it feel more playful and fun. Um and we spent a lot of time refining the product so you can jump in, even if you have absolutely no design experience, you can jump in and get started straight away. And so to someone who feels intimidated, um just jump in and start playing it. Um I think that the tools have been quite intimidating to date, which makes people feel like it's something that they can't do. Um this great quote that everyone is an artist. Um Hang on, I've forgotten the quote, I won't paraphrase, I think it's I think it's something that you just need to jump in and get started um and you'll probably surprise yourself. Um If you just pick something like what is your favorite quote that you have? Um you can google the one that I didn't just recount properly and put it into a design and you'll probably be pretty surprised. I guess the whole point of Canada has been done, it's really easy and simple to you. Um And if we've got 500,000 times, let's get you started. So if you've got any idea, literally just search for templates and then you can drag it on, we've got a library of 100 million images. You just search for whatever image you might like, whether it's a photo and illustration and you can drag that into design, put two and two together and you probably feel pretty proud quite quickly. Right? But I think, I mean, so Canada is free to use, right? Um, you know, there are add on which is and and different subscription packages, which is how the company makes money. But I think, you know, the fact that it's free, there's, there's no investment necessary. So I think that that might encourage more users to sort of jump in and and try their hand at it. Or at least that's what I've done. Um, I wanted to ask about, so where do you go from here? I mean, we we hope that the pandemic is easing. You know, that's not true everywhere in the world. Um, but you know, with the vaccine rollout feels like we're in a new stage um, of the of the sort of pandemic journey. Where does the company go from here now that, you know, this, this horrible period seems to be coming to and then what's next? Our vision is to empower the whole world design and we feel like we're making reasonable progress towards that, but we still have a long way to go. Um But I guess we have a two step plan. It's a very simple two step plan, build one of the world's most valuable companies and do the most good we can do. But we have an incredibly long way to go on both both of those fronts. Um And so as a company were continuously thinking about what can we do to empower different industries, um to truly take their idea and turn that into the design has zero friction between those two points and there is so much more um, that we can push that. We have been growing very rapidly in teams and really focusing on the tools that teams need to collaborate and to work in a really seamless way. Um, and it's been pretty incredible to see the progress that we're making the uptake that we're having across the globe on that front and then on the step two of the plan of doing the most good we can do. It's been wonderful to see the progress that we've been making towards that with 100,000 nonprofits using our product team really feels a huge responsibility to serve those in the most, um, in the best way we possibly can to help them achieve their goals. But there is so much more that we can do on that front, because truly we'd like to help everyone achieve their goals, whether that's a small business, big business or a non profit or a student at schools. And so there's so much more that we can do to help help each of those different, all of those, many people across the right and with a start up, like, you know, I think, I don't know if you can really call, can start up anymore, but a company like you're with, we, we totally are start up. Hey, what my definition of a startup? Yeah, hopefully, I think that a company is a start up when their dreams are much bigger than the size of the company and things that were totally in that category. I think as soon as the company's dreams are smaller than the size of the company, that's a startup, unfortunately, very clearly in that category where only one of them the way that, Sorry. Right, okay, fair enough. Well I was going to ask me a lot of people say a start up a start up until it was public. So you provide in the United States because I wanted to ask about potential I. P. O. Plans and and if that's on your agenda at any point in the future, yeah there's there's no real rush for that in in any way whatsoever. But we're certainly, you know the way we're managing the company's um that is to ensure that that's always a possibility um down the road. But fortunately we have a lot of great investors around us um and there's no shortage of supply there. So we're we'll keep keep our options open as we go into the future. Mhm. Right. And you talk about becoming you know, one of the most valuable um you know companies on the on the planet um and you know you and your co founder, who is also your husband um I mean you've retained a big stake in the company and because of evaluation, you know, use a map that enormous fortune um personal fortune to put it to put it lightly. Um How do you and and that's gotten a lot of press, how do you, how does that part of your public persona to sit with you that you're also identified as the system uber wealthy person in addition to being the ceo of a company. I think what's fascinating and what I hope, I hope to show over years to come is that our step two of the plan do the most we can do is something that I truly fundamentally believe in. Um we've never wanted to amass wealth because we think that that is a fun thing to do. I mean, what can you possibly do with that much money? We really feel like that is something that we want to use deserve the world and we will be absolutely doing that over the years to come. So that money, like I'll tell you a little story, we hear we backpacked in India, um and I met a guy and he was working at a internet cafe and was working really, really hard and he was making a dollar a day. It was ₹30 a day and uh, I it was extremely apparent that he couldn't have been working any harder. He couldn't be doing any more to try to actually build a life for his family. And I feel a huge responsibility to help people in the world. And the fact that we have been able to create um this money is we're going to hopefully over the years to come show that that will be used to help the world and people that deserve that opportunity. Right. Right. You have a huge responsibility I guess. So, um, I mean, you re at the start you sort of um, explained how Canada came to be, but uh, in a very interesting way, but it didn't take years. And you've talked before about just the rejection that sort of came during that time. You're talking to dozens, if not hundreds of investors and being turned away. Um, but you you still have to drive, you know, to make this a reality, your company reality. Where do you think that comes from? Is that something that you inherited? I mean, is that something that you uh, you know, is in your blood or what do you attribute that drive to? Yeah, I think a couple of things, I think determination is a bit like a muscle and so the more that you are able to put a lot of effort into something and then actually see that that effort turned into fruition. Um the more confident you get to take on the role of intelligence. I think that I had a very clear vision of what I thought the future would look like. Um and when you get that clarity, then when people tell you things like the market isn't big enough or you know who you possibly would need to design because so niche or like every has designed products, the non designers, that sounds like an oxymoron all of us, you just start to realize that maybe I'm just not explaining my strategy well enough, or maybe they need a little more of an understanding about the whole industry and where the world is having. And so it meant that every time we were rejected rather than feeling like it was, um, us, that was that we're not correct, that we decided to refine our strategy or articulate, uh, in an easier way to understand. Um, and so I think that certainly certainly helped with getting a really clear vision um, in advance, right? Yeah, Well, I mean you certainly found a nation is not probably the right word, but, um, you know, a hole in the market that obviously campuses that, you know, is a testament to how right you really were um, back then. So I'm so glad that you could take a few minutes to tell your story in Kansas story and we're really looking forward to seeing what the company does next. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you having me on today.