The Unconventional Factors That Led to Canva's Meteoric Rise
From meticulous first impressions to a coaching culture.
Show - Lenny’s Podcast
Host/Guest - Lenny Rachitsky/Cameron Adams (Co-founder & Chief Product Officer - Canva)
Link to the episode - Link
Reading Time - 3.5 mins
Context and Introduction - Canva is one of the most successful product companies of our generation, currently boasting a staggering $2.3B in annual recurring revenue and a growth rate of over 50%. In this episode, Cameron, their Co-founder and CPO, discusses the factors behind this meteoric rise and highlights some of Canva's key differentiators and strategic advantages. From their culture of coaching to their product obsession, Canva elevates user experience and user journey to an entirely new level, and in return, users reward them with their loyalty and support.
Summry
a) Some Mind-Blowing Canva Stats - Canva started in 2012 and has probably been one of the most successful product companies over the past decade. They are currently at $2.3B ARR and grew 60% YoY this year compared to the previous year. They have been profitable for the past 8 years.
b) Product—Their key growth factor - Canva is a product-obsessed company. They take care of every single detail that goes into their product and make sure that their users get the most value and joy out of using Canva. They waited for a year before launching their product, perfecting the experience they wanted to give their users. Right from onboarding users on Canva to navigating within the platform, every step is meticulously worked on.
c) Focus on User Onboarding - Canva understands the value of onboarding and first impressions. Through extensive user testing, they have refined their onboarding process to make it engaging and resonant. They’ve also lowered the barriers by making the initial steps easy and enjoyable so that users can create designs confidently.
d) Democratizing Design & Early Audience - Canva’s core mission is to democratize design and make it accessible to every human on the planet. When they started, they realized that social media managers found their product very attractive, and so they became their first set of users. They then expanded the feature set such that others started using the platform as well, and the growth ballooned.
e) Giving away your legos - As the company grew in size and scale, it faced some unique challenges. They created what Cameron calls a culture of ‘giving away your legos’ to someone else while you focus on other lego pieces. You have to give away stuff that you’re working on to someone else so that you can focus on other areas. This isn’t easy but is needed when you scale rapidly.
f) Canva’s SEO Strategy & Internationalization - SEO was one of the key levers of Canva’s growth strategy. Today, hundreds of thousands of free templates dominate search results. Andrei helped them build that strategy by analyzing the top jobs to be done for their users, creating content (templates) to solve those problems, and optimizing those.
g) Coaches instead of Managers - This is probably the biggest difference between Canva and most other companies. Canva has a strong culture of coaching. Instead of managers, each employee has a coach. This coach is constantly thinking about your personal and skill growth. They will work with you to develop your skills and take them to the next level. Today, they have around 800-1000 coaches in the company and 5 super coaches for special situations.
h) Internationalization - This was another growth lever for Canva. They built an internationalization team early on. In year 1, they added 8 languages on the platform against an initial goal of 5. By 2017, they added localization and language support for around 100 languages overall. This changed their growth trajectory completely, with the majority of their new growth coming from markets like Brazil, India, and Indonesia.
i) AI & Canva - They are incorporating key AI elements into their strategy with the goal of providing great user experience and support. Their AI strategy has 3 pillars
Building Proprietary AI Tech - Leveraging their vast data and insights.
Partnering with Top AI Experts - Collaborating with leading AI companies like Runway and OpenAI.
Developing their App Ecosystem - Creating a coherent ecosystem that aligns with their mission.
j) Enterprise focus - After a decade of focusing on individual and small businesses, Canva is now targeting enterprise clients. Their product is already being used by teams within 95% of Fortune 500 companies. They are redesigning their product such that they could approach these companies top down as well.
Actionable Takeaways
Perfect Your Product Before Launch: The culture of MVP and fail fast has led to many companies shipping a suboptimal experience. Your product’s first impressions are crucial so make sure to provide a great first impression.
Enhance User Onboarding: Conduct extensive user testing to refine your onboarding process, making it engaging and easy for new users to get started. This is one of the key points of failure.
Embrace a Coaching Culture: While it may be difficult to implement a Canva like coaching process, train your managers to coach their team member effectively.
Delegate to Scale: Cultivate a culture of delegation to allow team members to take on new responsibilities, enabling the company to scale efficiently.