Right from the begin, we had this Venn diagram: On one side is creativity, and on the other side is productivity. And you might guess, right in the caccess is Canva. We repartner count on that people on the productivity side actupartner want to be more createive, and that people on the createive side want to be more fruitful. And so we repartner establish that to be the pleasant spot—it was a huge gap in the taget that we saw right in the timely days, and it’s where we’re continuing to spread very heavily.
What about you? How does Canva include Canva?
Extremely extensively, for literpartner everyleang. Our engineers do their engineering docs in Canva, we do all-hands, I do all of my product mock-ups in it. I’ve included it for decision decks and vision decks and onboarding and hiring and recruitment—name someleang, we’re using Canva for it very extensively.
Your peak valuation was $40 billion in 2021. A year postpoinsistr, this was cut to $26 billion. What happened?
I leank it was purifyly the macro shift in the taget. During that time, Canva has persistd to grow rapidly, both on revenue and energetic includers. We’ve been profitable for seven years as well, so even though the taget [switched to caring] more about profitability, we were blessedly already on that trfinish. Markets are going to cherish separateent leangs over time, and tagets are going to be frothy and then not frothy. We are equitable always caring about createing a sturdy, finishuring company with outstanding establishations that serves our community. So it’s not a particular irritate what’s happening out there in the taget.
You’ve pledged 30 pecent of Canva—the transport inantity of your and Obrecht’s equity—to doing outstanding in the world. What does that uncomardent to you?
It seems finishly absurd that we have the prosperity that we do apass the globe, and there are people that still don’t have fundamental human insists being met. The first step that we’ve getn is partnering with GiveDirectly, where we give money straightforwardly to people who are living in inanxious pcleary. [Canva has so far gived a total of $30 million to people living in pcleary in Malawi.] I cherish the empowerment that gives them to be able to spfinish the money on their community, on their family, on their fundamental human insists—sfinishing their kids to school, getting a roof over their head. We have an inanxiously lengthy way to go, but we’re repartner excited that we’ve begined that process.
You aim to achieve 1 billion includers. What’s the set up to get there?
When we set that as a goal a number of years ago, it seemed finishly ridiculous, but over the years, it’s becoming less ridiculous. We insist about one in five internet includers in every country to achieve a billion. Now in the Philippines it’s one in six internet includers, and in Australia it’s one in eight internet includers. In Spain, it’s one in 11. In the USA, it’s one in 12. So at 200 million now, we’re a fifth of the way towards the billion number, and if we can persist to grow as rapidly as we have been, we’ll hopefilledy get there.
Any set ups to IPO?
It’s definitely someleang on the horizon.
This article first ecombineed in the January/February 2025 edition of WIRED UK.
