5 Lessons from the Rise of Canva to a $40 Billion Startup
A few days ago, I read a great post by Melanie Perkins about the rise of her startup Canva.
Here’s 5 lessons:
1/ Improve an existing product
Before launching Canva, Melanie was a part-time graphic design teacher.
Graphic design at the time was a hassle:
The tools were difficult to use.
They were desktop-based and didn’t allow for collaboration.
Melanie wanted to make a web-based design program that is easy to use and collaborative.
2/ Embrace a niche
Initially, Melanie decided to narrow down. Specifically, to yearbook design.
Why yearbooks? Melanie witnessed her mother’s struggle as the yearbook coordinator.
The coordinator is usually a teacher, and many lack the experience needed to design the yearbook.
With a $50k loan from family and friends, she hired an agency to build the software.
3/ Focus on What Works
Melanie’s boyfriend Cliff joined the new business which they named Fusion Books.
While attempting to acquire customers, they tried everything from direct mail campaigns to education expos.
They found that their best sales channel was cold calling.
They would call a school and send them a sample yearbook.
In the first year,16 schools signed up. By the third year, over 100 schools were using Fusion Books!
Soon the company reached $2 million in revenue.
After the success of Fusion Books, Melanie decided to expand beyond yearbooks. But in order to do that she had to raise funding which takes us to the next lesson.
4/ Be Persistent and Constantly Improving
Melanie first met a VC, Bill Tai, at a conference in 2009. But it took her over 3 years to raise her first funding round!
She spent countless hours hiring engineers and convincing investors to fund her.
She even prepared a pitch deck to lure in a top Google engineer!
Before securing the funding round, Melanie had pitched her idea to over 100 VCs without success.
Every time someone asked a difficult question, she would edit the pitch deck and address the question at the front.
Soon she had solid proof of concept, a great tech team, and a pitch deck that won the top investors over.
5/ There’s Nothing Wrong With Being Naive
Today Canva is valued at over $40 billion. But it might not have existed had Melanie known what lay ahead of her when she first started. To quote her:
“One of the wonderful things about this whole experience is that I didn’t know a lot going into it and I think that learning every single day as you go has actually been one of the most critical parts because I think if I knew all the lessons that I’ve had to learn over the last 12 year I would have been incredibly intimidated and potentially not even wanted to start.”
Thanks for reading, Mahmoud.