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

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/bc31293235a99900

There's a very famous story about Canva. Early on you pitched over a hundred investors. And over a hundred 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 gonna 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 gonna go.
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.
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.
It 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 Canada as like a design graphics for, you know, social media and and marketing and things like that. But you also have spreadsheets, docs, whiteboards, charts, AI coding tool. Which 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.
Canvas currently valued at over forty two billion dollars.
Making over three point three billion dollars 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 I expected to just take six months.
And they even went through a big pivot early on from a your book 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, and
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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. Uh 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.
Uh, 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 what is what is building calling me company? What does that mean?
Really great place to start. So I guess there's two ways of planning.
The way that um you can plan is you can dream of like what is the perfect vision of the future? What 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 alternative is
So you know, just imagine you uh 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 kinda
You know he can create s 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 a an important lesson.
In the example of Canva, just what is what 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 dream land could be.
So Column A would have been nothing, frankly. Because you know, 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 not very much.
Um, and so it was all column. It was all thinking about the wild future that we wanted to create. You know, I imagine what would be publishing in the future, what would communications look like in the future.
Um, and it seemed really impossible that it would stay on 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 de
but completely different. Could I build that feature? I had absolutely no idea.
But the idea
It 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, uh with our first company for UK. And then we applied it to Canva, uh, where we wanted to take it much, much bigger.
Let's talk about just how to actually go about building a Colin B company. Say a founder's listening to this and they're just like, Okay, I 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.
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 you know, for example, right now I have a wall in my house with in my office, which is t my vision for what I'd like the world to look like in twenty fifty. 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 yeah, 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 um we do that for the whole company, for different areas of the company.
And I think just taking that very lar long time scale of ten years.
Um and getting a really crisp idea of what you want and 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 just have this
Crazy big dream.
um and then do nothing about turning it 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.
But 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 you know seemingly inconsequential if it is working towards that future that you want to will into existence.
Then you'll keep on c 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 kinda I know where I'm going, I have this big idea.
What do you think uh 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'cause they're completely too
Complete odds, like they're completely different ends of the spectrum. So one is dreaming about the future, not that you think you can will into exist, it's 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
you know, whatever it might be, and then to take such a microscopic step.
Because I think that you often have the feature 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 it's also, you know, naturally, we all get distracted by day to day
Yeah, it's your your email, your Slack, the things that are kind of in your face, you know, 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.
Like just literally dreaming like what is wild success in ten years? What is terrible failure in ten years?
Um is a really
great place to start, is just like spending some time there.
And then
Like 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, you know, for us it's been compounding over a decade as we continue to work towards that same mission and vision.
I wanna hear how you operationalize this, I heard from one of your team members.
Uh 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'cause 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.
Um, 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 could be a problem, it could be a philosophy or a belief.
And
Um, I've got a joke that I find funny. I'm not sure if you will, but how do you uh how do you go from chaos to clarity?
Yeah.
Clarity. And so the idea is that like each like little step from chaos to clarity
He's 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 um starting to create a pitch deck on on it. And the next step might be starting to refine that, turning it into some designs, turning it into a prototype.
And then as you kinda go from chaos to clarity, it starts to become more and more real and more and more people can see it.
And so you 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 s 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'sn't 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. And like I think he says they want to kill that. I don't know why you do that with an ugly baby.
Uh but there are these like very soft subtle uh
uh fragile things and it's really important too.
Not
Kill them early and give'em chance to
Survive. And it's kind of what I'm hearing here is like have this big vision that many people are 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 the that very first step at the very like 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.
Um because you don't have mastery at that point. You don't have all the answers. In fact, you have likely not 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 gonna work for years to build into existence.
Actually Melissa did a really amazing pitch deck recently about the vision of uh I won't go into the details right here, but the vision of her space. And uh
I was really excited about it.
Um 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 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 but goals.
Which I 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 them uh 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 you know, if we macker 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 r a rather crazy goal.
Um
And I think
The thing that I love about a Crazy V goal
is that you feel completely inadequate before it.
Um, you know, another crazy big girl we'd love to see everyone's basic human needs met on the planet. Like completely crazy.
Big.
Uh that truly shouldn't be. Um it's kind of abs absolutely absurd that that's the case, but we can go into that later.
Um
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 kinda get to get to it and you're like, Oh, cool, whatever. Or
More importantly, if something
Happens.
you know, all the problems and roadblocks come along as they always do.
Then you're like, Okay, I'll I I'll I won't bother with that.
And
Then you can just like go and ch choose another course.
And so a crazy big goal.
It's both crazy big.
But it's also something that you think is incredibly important, that you actually want to well into existence because it is
So much work to wheel a crazy big goal into existence. So it better be one that you want to actually achieve.
Is there.
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 feature back in the day. Yeah, I mean so many things.
So y we have um um
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
And like docks 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 twenty languages, and then a hundred languages, and then hard languages, like Arabic and Hebrew and Urdu and you know, right to left languages.
And now you know we're in a hundred plus languages now.
And now we're really doubling down on the localisation 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 like take a step after step um 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 platforms. So we have the same feature set across every device.
And so
You can see how these like big amorphous things
The same
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
Uh components of the mission.
Exactly. Exactly. Um
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 uh very reliable. We have certainly not been able to have uh pin dart. What's the what's it? Bullseye. We have not been very accurate with timing. But it's really interesting. I look back at a twenty twenty one twenty twenty one 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 twenty twenty one some of those things may have happened a little quicker, but
over the over the you know last five years they've really been coming into reality
And so
Yeah, we might think things are gonna take six months and then they take a year. We might th think things are gonna take six months and they take two years, as has been the case. We might
think something's actually gonna take our entire lifetime is 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.
But even if you make a little step in their direction, they're worthwhile nonetheless.
Whether you like him or not, Elon, this is similar to his, um
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 um 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.
Um, because if you're just trying to clod towards the top of the mountain always and you never like take a little moment to pat yourself on the back
It would feel a little arduous. And so, you know, over the years we had all sorts of fun little
celebrations where we we have
smashed Greek plates and released doves and had a little La Tomatina festival and you know, all sorts of fun things just to take a moment with the team to celebrate that.
huge achievement. Um, and so I think that that's
Yeah, you want to celebrate
what you want to um really focus on and what you want
Everyone to take that moment. So when you achieve that crazy V goal, when we launch in Spanish, when we hit a hundred languages, you know, and then the 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.
Um that thing seem that seemed really hard we've now achieved. And you know, the mission is often you know, each of the different mission pillars
Yeah.
Obviously a long
area of investment it's gonna take a long time to get to. But being able to celebrate each of them the rungs on that, um on the way there, I think is extraordinarily important. And then it makes everyone
Um yeah, everyone works extraordinarily hard to bring them to life and then it gives everyone a a little moment to to feel proud of themselves.
It'd be very motivating to get to just break a bunch of plates. I really like that. We haven't done that one in a while.
It's a good one. Uh I just love how concrete you're making this. So it's you know set these crazy big goals.
Could find the components of the goals, set numbers there.
And then figure out the kind of the steps you take to achieve these things.
All fail is very easy.
Kind of uh on the flip side of that, there's a segue.
Uh, people hear these stories, they hear your story, they see Canva over the years, and it's just this like up and to the right huge success story of 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 p over the course of building Canva.
Once it started to click and started to feel like it was gonna 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 a little example in the early days we'd stand up and everyone would present their um
present their goals, what they're working on every day, every week, and then it kinda 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 decided that 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, uh 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
Uh

With the same philosophies of deep context for everyone.
Um with the s same philosophies of the celebrations and the goals.
And like trying to find that right flavour at e 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 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 gonna take six months and then it took
Two years.
And um 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. He's like
Shipping something, seeing great customer feedback.
Yeah, and then that kind of
makes everyone feel happy and like we've got momentum.
And it just felt like we're in a dark, dark tunnel. Um, that we could hardly see the end of the tunnel and we didn't really know how long it was gonna take,'cause it had to take as long as the tunnel was gonna take.
And
It was you know
A very hard time because
you know, if other people would be launching this and that and
It was
We weren't. Eventually we got out of that tunnel and
It was extremely important.
That we did that work.
Two and a half thousand engineers.
and were able to deliver amazing things that would have just like been completely infeasible.
But oh and c 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 is 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 and 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.
Had it just was the mood really
Uh.
I don't know.
Sad internally, just that must have been like two years. That's a a long time not to ship anything. Just what was it like internally during that period?
I think it was kinda everything internally. Like we
We we made it into a bit of a game. We had this game board and we I bought these little like uh rubber ducky sort of bath toys. And we had this um
So we had all the little the components represented as a bath toy on this um board. And there was like all these stages of like
Home uh it kind of went
launched in product it was an emergency lane at the end of it was home and hosed.
And we like did these weekly stand-ups where everyone would come in and talk where their bath toy was at. And kind of just like we tried to make it fun.
And
For the team.
So it was
Partly fun with partly distressing.
Um as all of our investors were like, Hey, you know that thing.
So I think it was it was it was both things at the same time. It was bonding, let's say.
Yeah.
Okay, speaking of investors, speaking of other hard times
There's a very famous story about
Canva early.
pitched uh over a hundred investors. And over a hundred investors said no to you when you were just starting Canva.
Uh that's
I think that's more the 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're something like a forty billion dollar company making three point three billion AR
Uh, I think there's something like two hundred forty million monthly active users.
One of the hottest private companies in the world. Just how does 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. Um
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 gonna 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
Well and coupled with rejection. And I would say, Hey, now I've got a new slide in my pitch deck that shows all the all the players and the huge gap in the market that we believe we're going to 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 the layer of the land today, here's the problem that we're going to solve.
And so
While it's extraordinarily frustrating
Their feedback made us stronger.
and made our pitch deck stronger. And it was sort of like you know, from that chaos to clarity.
Mm.
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, you know, 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 you know 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 that initial pitch deck.
was really important.
And I think that's probably one of the reasons why, you know, when I look back at our two thousand and twelve pitch deck,
It's so valid.
r and really still captures what we're doing today. And so I think that
Projection 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
And uh taking feedback that you're hearing to continue to evolve the pitch.
To a place where okay, I finally get what you're doing.
Uh, that is such a cool part of the story. Is there how much of the product like how much of that vision and product change throughout that journey versus just the way you pitched it and and convinced people?
It was pretty consistent, but the way we articulated it changed greatly.
And so
for example, I wouldn't in in the early days articulate the problem very much. And I spent 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 uh 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 ca oh chaos to clarity. Let's go read that one. That'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 on behind them when they were
When I was pitching them.
Um
they were never gonna 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 gonna never like you. And that's okay. I think it's important to find some people that do l like what you're trying to say and try to do.
Um and you're 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.
hundred a hundred investors passed on that you might still

Talking about your
Growth as a leader.
Say
If you compare Melanie of today to Melanie of I don't know, twelve, thirteen years ago when you were just starting Canva.
What would you say is most different in terms of
Uh leadership.
I don't really know. Probably if you asked for other people around me, they'd probably be more observant.
Um but it it is funny because there's some things that I think that I need to change.
And then I realized like, you know, go into it the same as some other company. And sometimes we even try that for a while and then we we try that out and we're like
That's
You know, it didn't really work for us.
And it's kind of like building a house. 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 gonna not look very matched. And so trying to find things that are authentic to us.
and are authentic to the you know everything that's come before it is just that constant
constant thing and like then each scale of each you know stage of scale of the company, rather than going taking someone else's bricks and trying to stick that in your in your house, um, 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 the you know
we're constantly having to give away hats. And so I you kind of think about it in the very early days, we're just a few of us.
Oh, just two of us in in fusion and then three of us in just a little tiny group.
And you kinda wear a hundred 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, um, 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 um
Way we did it in the early days, actually.
I I love that story. I think again, if anyone working at a company
that has gone through a lot of growth, uh 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 may I mean maybe that's probably in answer to your other question.
Like not ha we did things our way because that was the only way we knew. And there was many, many times over the years that we're like
didn't have confidence in the way we were doing things and we've like, Oh, they 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, you know, 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.
I imagine also helped that you were in Australia, away from
the Bay Area and 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, you know, the 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 he's
A
deeply underloved uh 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 the you know, the where people actually spend their time is in a very, very different direction from that original vi
that original mission.
And I think the magic is when you can bring those two things together. And so you can have your mission, 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 adders up together. Um, 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 a lot of authenticity with what you're
Saying you're doing you're actually doing.
I wanna come back to that. That's a whole s uh really cool process that you have with closing the loop with customers, but something else I wanna talk about while we're in this topic of
growth over time. Uh I saw you post something about how you
had to realize they 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. You know 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 into schools around Australia. And you know, in the early days of Canva, we certainly, you know, were working all weekend, all hours of the day.
It was just
constant.
Um but when you've been doing this for a while, if you just keep working at that pace
Yeah, I don't think it's good for anyone's health, mental health, or any anything else. So I think finding ways to
continue like, you know, I still work extraordinarily hard.
But to continue to have that balance in my day to day where I actually go to sleep. I you know, I find time to do things like going for walks or doing yoga, um, journaling.
I find extraordinarily helpful.
Um, to make sure that I can always bring my best to everything that I'm doing.
It's uh it's easy to say that kinda stuff. It must be really hard to actually

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 emails like on my phone. And so when I shut my laptop
I actually tune out and then I if there's a real issue, I'll get an emergency call or page. Um 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 you struggle with it?
Yeah, 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.
to be uh is actually really beneficial.
I wanna come back to this closing the loop. Uh
Process, let's say is
That you have?
Were you
Uh
figure out what to build a lot. 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 my 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 tally them.
Um 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
Two hundred 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 um teachers using AI in the classroom. And we got so many requests from teachers saying, Can I please use this magic right in the classroom?
And so with then we um
Unlock that and put on safety controls for teachers.
And so it's just constant, actually. It's just part of that 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
Yeah, there's so the closing the loop comes in so many different forms. There's the explicit ask 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.
then is so representative for such a large number of people. So I've personally run hundreds, if not thousands, of user tests um
Myself.
And it's been deeply embedded in our product teams also.
Wow, that must be really stressful for someone, uh
Looking at a test of Canva trying to try something when you're in the room. It's actually all we do it all online, actually. We I I mean we the ones I've run are are typically online. So
People are so much more frank, I think, when they uh just it's just them and their camera and they don't really um
Yeah, they 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 helpful and useful. Yeah, we we use a lot of user testing.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. Uh I wanna definitely talk about this. What is the two step plan? Why is this so important to you?
Yeah, so when you were
Ask 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
realise 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 Canber for some years now.
Yeah, in the early days we took the one percent pledge, which I think is an incredible programme. Every single person, every single company should should take that, where you give one percent of
Time, money, equity, and um profitability.
And
I think that's a really easy thing to do in the early days, it then can compound greatly over time.
we also knew that canvas equity was obviously going to be a really key part of it. So
Um Cliff and I owned um a little over 30% of Canva, and so we decided we were going to take thirty percent of Canva and do 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 Found. We've just
over the last few years we've um donated fifty million dollars to give directly, where they give money directly to people in Malawi who are in extreme poverty. And then they can use that money
Um on their family, to go to school, to get health care, to start small businesses, to get a roof so they can sleep.
In
Without being wet.
Uh
You know, just like real, truly basic human needs things.
Um and we've just
announced that we're going to be um giving another hundred million dollars over the next four years.
Um two 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 five hundred and fifty dollars.
it is, you know, doesn't buy us that much, but it's a life changing amount of money for for people in extreme poverty.
And it's truly transformational what it can do.
And you know you may
People and you hear their stories.
And it's truly the best money I could ever imagine spending.
And
Do 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 our act together as humanity.
And so that is a truly crazy
Big dream.
Yeah, 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 you know, finding ways to do that at the same time I think is extraordinarily important.
That's incredible. It makes me think about um 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 and make the world a better place.
What a better master plan, if you 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 dock 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 a 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 you I've been very blessed to be able to
You c do some work and that creates wealth.
They can then go and have people's basic human needs met.
Yeah, it's completely
Yeah. It but they w they're working just as hard, but they don't have the opportunity.
And
Yeah. Even yeah, education product that's now used by a hundred million people.
Each month.
And we are in, you know, most school districts and rolled out across countries.
And being able to bring quality education tools to every s um and we give that away for free as well. Giving um being able to help empower schools all around the world, and we're gonna be doubling down and doubling down into that product to bring quality education to all.
I think it's
It gives so much more meaning behind work.
Yeah.
between our education product and our nonprofit program, where we also give away our paid product for free.
We we've we're giving away one point five billion dollars of product a year now.
And so
The impact that that can have and the rule effect of that I think is pretty great.
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. Uh
What I heard described as the the
The biggest launch in Canvas history.
No big deal. That's a high bar considering all things 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. We 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 enabled enabling people to take their idea and turn it into design a design and have as little friction between those two points. So we are doubling down radically on our video product and bring some incredible capabilities to our mobile and desktop platform. We are
Um launching email, which has been one of our most hotly requested features.
um from enterprise customers around the world and business customers around the world who want to be able to design
with Canvas 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 um use AI to design a presentation, a video, a
Um email, a website, all of these things can actually now be done inside the core editor inside the design tab.
Um, which is used by a hundred and seventy
Million yeah, it's used a hundred and seventy million times a month.
And then on our elements tower, which is used nine hundred million times a month.
Um, we are also embedding AI, so you can actually j generate a video, you can generate a um Canva code and you can generate photos all directly inside that platform.
And then we're also launching comments as you lots of use our customers use Canva um to comment and collaborate. And now you can actually just tag at Canva.
And you can collaborate.
Um, 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 Sitchi you can actually just have a collaborator that can help get your work done. So we are pretty excited about all of this.
Amazing. I have something I'm gonna 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 Canaba as like a
design graphics for, you know, social media and and marketing and things like that.
But you also have
Spreadsheets, docs, whiteboards, charts.
uh code AI coding tool and now
Uh what I'm hearing is email forms
That's probably a few other things I'm not thinking about. Yeah, truly design anything. We're we're literally living up to that. Like a hundred million people design a presentation in Canber each month now. And it's it's pretty fascinating to see that
When you speak to them I saw a a t a tweet some time ago that they were talking about how it's a generational thing that a certain generation uses Microsoft, a th a certain generation uses Google, and then it was
Gen Z like
Presentations have become uh
The way they design a presentation is in Kerba. Um but it's not just generational for for those of other other generational ilk.
I uh but it's it's it's been fascinating to to see that come to life.
The email product, is that like a
email client product or it's uh design emails that you can then send through your products? It is design emails. So you can design email and then you can take that code and you can pop it into any plot email platform that you use. How do you think about products you're going to expand to I know there's like trade secret theory 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 boat 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
Um
Published anywhere. And so, you know, we now print in
Yeah.
Oh, fifty something countries around the world and you can get it printed delivered to your your house and we plant it. Actually did that. Did you're awesome.
That's random 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. Exactly. You just quick 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 three D years old. So like e all of these things, um
we will be bringing to life literally and just picking off like what is the most strategically important next thing?
Um to enable everyone to design anything, to enable everyone to publish anywhere.
Um and we
have been doing that for a decade and will 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 will Canva come for my
My space. It's are there 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.
From a Macra perspective.
There was um
Creativity tools and productivity tools and what Canva really does is we're literally smack bang in the middle of that then diagram of creativity and productivity rather than making it 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
Bigma and Adobe, and then there's Canva.
There's kind of a bunch of places we could go with this.
When it's 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 Fig it 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 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 you then have no design experience.
And you know, 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 try to re iterate and improve.
And then when we were thinking about Canva
Oh if he isn't that actually one of the schools said
I love this product so much. Can I use it to design newsletters? And you know, they had all sorts of other things that they wanted to use it for.
And we kinda looked around and were like, Oh
Like
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 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 sold it in such a way that people actually want to pay for it.
Because they it is truly solving a real pain point that they have.
I think that kind of sets it up for success.
Rather than um
be a problem or a solution looking for a problem.
So what I'm hearing there is you didn't overthink here's my CP, 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 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 gonna be in a reasonably good spot.
Um, especially if it maps to a larger market, that's a particularly great thing.
Yeah, if it only solves one person's problem, that might not be a great company going forward. But it if a few people have that same problem.
But I think that again, like back to that big ladder and that first rung.
Not
getting to w 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 integrate it or 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.
Yep.
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.
Y 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's all the rage and investors really like AI.
Doesn't necessarily mean it should be front and center.
Um in
But if it can genuinely help your customers to achieve their goals. So you know
w 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
Yeah, naturally a very critical part of that equation for us. In fact, it was funny looking back to from really old decks. We were trying to do AI before AI was actually a thing for 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're trying to do. I'm gonna 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 found in your personal life and work life?
to use AI where it ends up being really helpful, something really interesting that people might
Fine useful.
So many things.
So AI is often the first if I'm like having an idea.
It'll be the first place that I go and explore the idea.
And now with Canva
And you can just tag Camber and 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.
Uh another really fun thing I do um is an AI walk.
And it's when I just put my
um earpods in and then I go for a walk and I just say everything on my mind.
And it
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 the um 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
I might use um
Apple notes or directly into Canva Docs and then I actually just do the brain dump into Canva Docs and then just um do
Like summarizing so yeah it's
Got it. And so you just use like native uh microphone explication 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 twenty fifty, 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,'cause 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.
Fifth, or you do twenty fifty.
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 it scared me quite greatly.
Um, for a whole host of reasons. And so
I sat with that feeling for a little.
And then I kinda got to work on my twenty fifty walls.
And you know, back to the chaos to clarity. The first thing was riding my twenty fifty wall and I've kind of
Really I mean loving uh I've got a whole h on the twenty fifty we've all started with a lot of quotes.
Um everything good was uh 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. Um, you know, global education being a basic human right that everyone experiences. Um
All the really important things that we want as humanity.
And again, like using
vision and using imagination and just dreaming about
The feature.
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
Uh 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 d' some little brainstorm exercise with a number of other people.
And starting to just like
etch out. Like how do we get closer and closer to that?
Okay. 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 in the world we don't want. I think l loneliness is rife.
That purpose is gone.
What we teach people in schools is pointless.
And
In my vision for twenty fifty.
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.
We something that we're doing, um
at our uh Cav to a keynote uh in two weeks time.
which I think is gonna be after this is released. Um 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 his
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?
Um
And I think that's where we'll get purpose from. And that's you know, 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.
Uh, 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 uh this actually happens and that you cheat this.
Very difficult vision. It's not something that I alone can achieve.
I think we
It 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 like to help change the
The way we're thinking about things.
Um I I genuinely think there's a little we need to move course a little and decide
No.
What
What
are all the things that we kind of like, you know, what 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?
Like it just literally makes no sense.
Uh 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?
Oh, you have been extremely extensive. I don't think I've got anything of that.
That's the goal. That's the goal. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Melanie, are you ready?
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 oh, am I supposed to be really fast and not tell you about it?
It's it's all good. Okay, two two books. The power of moments and um one of the books early on uh I read was Designing the Obvious, which I found very insightful.
Mm, okay. I like they shift it 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 karma. 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 T V shows. I hear you don't watch a lot'cause you're so busy and have so much going on. So I'm gonna try a new question. Okay 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 Canvas chapter's gonna go on for a long time. So I don't know that the two step plans and we're pretty pretty extensive.
Maybe a company you'd love to fund. There we go.
I've
Feel like there's a lot of opportunity.
Two
Create.
Um
Global infrastructure that is truly empowering.
And so as I look at my twenty fifty wall
I think there's a lot of things that
A 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, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats, I think.
Is the thing that's just so

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 you 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 a constant aspiration.
And then I I 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 was once imagined is a quote you're gonna be seeing from Canva all the time now. Uh because it it 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
Uh nugget there is just
There's all these tools now that can make thing 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 what do I want? I don't even like I don't know what I mean. Whatever should I build?
And that's exactly what you're talking about there.
Okay, last question.
So I
Saw it somewhere that you were a aspiring figure skater.
In your early years in high school.
You have to wake up at four thirty AM to practice.
Uh
Is there something you learned from that?
Period of your life that
was helpful in
Building Canva.
Oh, you're so many things are quite directly applicable. Falling down over and over again and getting off and trying again.
Um
The importance of hard work and determination
I think the falling down, like it was quite literal in in my figure skating in days. And maybe it's a little more metaphorical in in today.
But it it is constant.
Mm.
So you're you're right. Yeah. 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, or 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.
Um, and you can go to and I can get the U 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?
Um
Use Canva, spread Canva, teach Canva.
Um
We're doing a Canber World tour in through October, which is probably gonna be outdated when this is posted.
Come to our events. We do events all around the world. Um 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 one percent 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
Yeah, every decision that you make, every 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 uh
Are you gonna have the rap dancers at the ne the next Canva event? You'll have to wait and see.
Okay.
Melanie, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much, Melanie, for having me and your great well researched questions. Thank you.
Bye, everyone.
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