If you visited Canva CEO Melanie Perkins in 2007, the road to unicorn status would have seemed rocky at best.
This week Canva raised $200m valuing the company at $40B, making it one of the world’s most valuable startups, per Forbes.
She realized the process to design and print a poster or flyer took way more tools than it should, and set out to build an all-in-one solution that anyone could use.
She tested her idea with yearbooks, and after finding product-market fit, started courting VCs…
After finally scoring a $3m seed round (that was matched by the Australian government), Canva launched in 2013.
Three factors helped the team take off from the start:
… and forcing Adobe to protect its throne. The design powerhouse launched Adobe Spark in 2016, which offers a similar template-driven approach with a freemium model.
Canva expects to use the new round to double headcount and possibly fuel acquisitions. The company is already profitable and has no plans to IPO.
Perkins also plans to give away most of her shares to charity because, in her words: “If the whole thing was about building wealth, that would be the most uninspiring thing I could possibly imagine.”
Now that’s one heck of a yearbook quote.