For many years, photoshop and video editing were skills that not everyone knew. But in recent years, technology, smartphones, and social media adoption in our lives have completely remodelled the course.
Now you don’t need Adobe Photoshop to add a filter or crop an image, and similarly, you dont need to be a pro to design something complex, especially with the help of software like Canva.
The Australian online designing platform, Canva has simplified designing and has been one of the most successful platforms in creating images. Recently, it grabbed headlines when it secured $200 million in an investment round led by American publicly owned global investment management firm T. Rowe Price. And with this investment, Canva reached a valuation of $40 billion and became the most valuable female-founded startup globally.
Youngest female CEOs globally
Founded in 2013 by Melanie Perkins with co-founders Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, and, in just five years of its debut, Perkins hit the headlines as one of the youngest female CEOs at the age of 30. Let’s take a look at what’s Canva’s growth strategy.
By January 2014, Canva scored 150,000 users and opened publicly. In April 2014, Guy Kawasaki became the company’s Chief Evangelist; after two months, users also tripled.
120 designs created every second
In August 2015, Canva announced it had reached 4 million users. In 2017, the Australian startup reached profitability thanks to 294,000 paying customers. Then surpassed 60 million users across 190 countries creating over 120 designs every second, it doubled annualised revenue and remains on track to exceed US$1 billion by the end of 2020.
More than 6 million presentations are created each week and a 150% increase in overall presentations created in the last year and grown to a global team of over 2,000 with more than 1,000 hires in 2021.
In a blog post, Canva also announced that co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht will commit majority of the equity to do better things in the worldvia Canva Foundation.
“The visual communication model has emerged as a universal need for teams of every size across almost every industry,” explains Canva co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins.
Canva wants to grow its team and plans to build its product in 2022, soon launching website design. Soon, you will be able to turn existing and new presentations and designs into a website and buy a domain for this website as well.
Breaking stereotypes!
Though women entrepreneurs have proved themselves successful in the tech scene worldwide, there still prevails a gender bias as the number of men outnumbers that of women. Also, there are other challenges faced by women entrepreneurs such as relatively lesser investment options.
However, Melanie Perkins has changed this scenario with the astounding success of Canva. While it is a thing to start a tech startup, it is a big feat to start one that pits against tech giants such as Microsoft. Perkins has achieved this feat with her design product, Canva.
