From the beginning we had this Venn diagram: on one side is creativity and on the other is productivity. And as you can guess, right in the center is Canva. We really believe that people on the productivity side actually want to be more creative, and that people on the creative side want to be more productive. And then we really found that that was the sweet spot – it was a big gap in the market that we saw from the early days, and it’s where we’ll continue to invest heavily.
What about you? How do you use Canva?
Extremely extensive, literally for everything. Our engineers make their engineering documents in Canva, we all work, I make all the mockups of my products in it. I’ve used it for decision presentations and vision and onboarding presentations, hiring and recruiting; for example, we are using Canva very extensively.
Its peak valuation was $40 billion in 2021. A year later, it dropped to $26 billion. What happened?
I think it was purely the macro change in the market. During that time, Canva has continued to grow rapidly, both in revenue and active users. We’ve also been profitable for seven years, so even though the market (began to care) more about profitability, fortunately we were already on that trend. Markets will value different things over time, and markets will be frothy and then not frothy. We always care about building a solid and lasting company with good foundations that serves our community. So it’s not a particular bother what’s happening in the market.
He has pledged 30 percent of Canva (most of his and Obrecht’s capital) to do good in the world. What does that mean to you?
It seems completely absurd that we have the prosperity we have around the world and that there are people who still do not have their basic human needs met. The first step we have taken is to partner with GiveDirectly, where we give money directly to people living in extreme poverty. (Canva so far donated a total of 30 million dollars to people living in poverty in Malawi.) I love the empowerment it gives them to be able to spend money on their community, on their family, on their basic human needs: sending their children to school, getting a roof over their heads. their heads. We have a long way to go, but we are very excited to have started that process.
Its goal is to reach one billion users. What is the plan to get there?
When we set that goal several years ago, it seemed completely ridiculous, but as the years go by it’s becoming less ridiculous. We need approximately one in five Internet users in each country to reach one billion. Now in the Philippines it is one in six Internet users and in Australia it is one in eight Internet users. In Spain, it’s one in 11. In the United States, it’s one in 12. So at 200 million now, we’re one-fifth of the way to a billion, and if we can continue to grow as quickly as we have up to now, hopefully let’s get there.
Any IPO plans?
It’s definitely something on the horizon.
This article first appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of WIRED UK.