Pre-IPO pedia | Canva, a $40B unicorn built on democratizing design
Less than a decade after its founding, Canva, a well-known visual communication platform, has reached a level that few start-ups can achieve and ranked among the most valuable unicorns in the world.
As of September 2021, Canva was valued at more than $40 billion, a nearly tenfold increase from its $4.3 billion valuations a year ago.
According to CBinsights, the company is already the fifth most valuable startup only behind Bytedance, Stripe, SpaceX and Klarna in the world based on its latest valuation. It is also the largest unicorn enterprise in Australia.
How did Canva create such mythology? IPO Buzz takes you to the story of Canva.
Melanie Perkins has become the richest self-made female entrepreneur under the age of 40. Melanie, 35, was worth $5.89 billion as of January 18, 2022, ranking 485th in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Born with adventurous genes, Melanie started her business at the age of 14, selling handmade scarves of her own design in her hometown of Perth, Australia. Just eight years later, Melanie began her second venture.
She developed an online system called ‘Fusion Books’ to help schools integrate design annuals. Today, Fusion Books is the largest annual publisher in Australia and has a presence in France and New Zealand.
In 2008, Melanie taught part-time at the University of Perth, Australia. Melanie is very upset because a lot of complex software is used in the design course and she and her students must learn to use them.
Melanie has recalled that Facebook became popular in that era because of its simplicity and ease of use, and that the design tools were very difficult to learn. That's why she wants to make it easy to design software that lets people collaborate online.
In 2012, Melanie started her third venture—Canva, a graphic design platform. She hopes that no matter what the professional level is, even the most charming people can produce professional works on Canva.
When Canva was founded, it became Australia's only tech unicorn company. Today, it is no longer a company focusing on the Australian market but has developed into the world's largest online design platform.
The gene of globalization was injected into Canva when it was born. Canva's vision is to "empower everyone in the world to design", which means that it will help solve the design pain points of all users in the world.
As a result, Canva is already available in 108 languages, including Sardinian, a language spoken by fewer than 1.5 million people worldwide, and has more non-English users than English users.
Today, Canva has become the world's leading online design platform, with users in 190 countries and 30 million monthly active users, with an average of 80 designs generated on Canva every second.
Canva helps users design presentations, social media graphics, and more with a variety of layouts, images, photo filters, icons and shapes, and fonts. The platform combines drag-and-drop design tools with photo, illustration, and image libraries.
Even users without any foundation can easily complete various designs including social media illustrations, posters, e-commerce maps, presentations, infographics, small videos and so on by using Canva templates.
The company provides design templates for physical products such as menus and flyers, as well as digital templates for promotional projects on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
Canva also has a lot of troubles in the process of development. Its enterprise business is slow to start, and its long-term growth prospects depend on whether it can grow from a small group of fans to an enterprise customer covering thousands of employees.
Adobe is not ignoring Canva's development. Adobe launched Adobe Spark, a template-based freemium design app, in 2016. Canva says 50,000 universities and 25,000 nonprofits use its products, while Adobe says it has made 23 million free Spark accounts available to students and faculty.
Canva also faces the typical growing pains of a startup. Until 2017, the editing tools for Canva's core code were so cumbersome that only five engineers could work on it at the same time. The company has spent much of the last year completely rewriting the front end of its applications.
In May 2019, Canva suffered its biggest customer trust crisis to date. Just days after Canva announced that Meeker's investment valued it at $2.5 billion, a hacker in Europe broke into the company's systems and downloaded 139 million usernames and email addresses before Canva could stop the attack.
In order to enrich its capabilities and improve technical barriers, Canva has launched two mergers and acquisitions in the past two years, bringing four companies into its pocket.
In 2019, Canva acquired Pexels and Pixabay, the two largest free photo libraries in the world. Today, these two galleries are an important part of Canva's design material.
It also acquired Smartmockups and Kaledo.Ai in 2021. Among them, Smartmockups was founded in 2016 and is a Czech start-up. Founded in 2017, Kaledo.Ai is based in Austria, and the matting function was brought by Kaleido. Ai to Canva has become one of the most popular functions.
Since March 2013, Canva has conducted 11 rounds of financing, of which Sequoia Capital has participated in as many as four rounds. Major investors include Jingwei Venture Capital, Puxin Group, 500 Startups, Investible, General Catalyst and so on.
On March 19, 2013, Canva received $3.6 million in seed round financing.
On July 23, 2014, Angel Round Financing was launched. Canva received a $6.85 million investment from Shasta Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Blackbird Ventures, Founders Fund and Matrix Partners.
On April 3, 2015, Pre-a round of financing was launched. Canva received a $6 million investment from Shasta Ventures, AirTree Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Blackbird Ventures and Matrix Partners.
On April 3, 2015, the A-round financing was launched. Canva received a $6 million investment from Matrix Partners, Global Founders Capital, Blackbird Ventures, Shasta Ventures and AirTree Ventures.
On October 6, 2015, Canva was led by Felicis Ventures in the A + round of financing. Matrix Partners, Global Blackbird Ventures, Woody Harrelson (individual), Chloe Steinberg (individual) and others invested $15 million.
On September 14, 2016, Canva received a $15 million investment from Blackbird Ventures and Felicis Ventures in the B round of financing.
On January 9, 2018, Canva received $40 million from Sequoia Capital China (Sequoia China), Felicis Ventures and Blackbird Ventures.
On May 20, 2019, Canva received a $70 million investment from Bond, Felicis Ventures and General Catalyst, followed by Blackbird Ventures.
On October 16, 2019, Canva was led by Bond in the E-round financing. Bessemer Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, General Catalyst, Blackbird Ventures and Sequoia Capital China followed with an investment of $85 million.
On June 22, 2020, Canva received a new round of investment of $60 million, led by Blackbird Ventures and Sequoia Capital China, and followed by General Catalyst, Bond and Felicis Ventures.
On July 9, 2020, Canva received another exclusive investment from Bessemer Venture Partners.
On April 6, 2021, Canva received $71 million in venture capital from Dragoneer Investment Group and T. Rowe Price, followed by Blackbird Ventures and Skip Capital.
On September 14, 2021, Canva received a $200 million investment led by T. Rowe Price. Bessemer Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, etc.
Canva's valuation has risen sharply since its inception.
In January 2018, Canva was valued at $718 million after successfully raising $40 million. Since receiving $200 million in investment on September 14, 2021, Canva's valuation has reached $40 billion, which has increased 56 times in three years.
At present, there is only one main profit model for Canva, that is, membership payment service. Canva's membership is divided into professional and corporate members, which can unlock unlimited storage space, access to more free photos and other features.
According to Canva's official disclosure, the company has been profitable in 2017, and the number of paying users has reached 294000. The company's cash flow has been positive, and it collects $12.95 a month from subscribers who subscribe to the paid service.
According to Canva's annual financial report released by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, Canva's Australian entity revenue in 2018 was $86.3 million, an increase of 118% over the previous year.
The ASIC accounts show that Canva made a loss of $4.1 million in 2018. But the Canva directors' report noted that after adjusting for onshore-related non-cash items, the company maintained underlying profitability, with adjusted earnings before interest, depreciation and tax of $1.3 million.
According to the data disclosed by the statistics website, in 2019, Canva's monthly PV can reach 92.38 million, and the third-party evaluation agency's annual income of Canva is $100 million.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the number of users of Canva has continued to increase significantly. By the end of 2021, Canva is expected to have annualized revenue of more than $1 billion and positive free cash flow.
Canva, which has yet to publicly announce plans for an IPO, is the most anticipated Australian tech company to go public since Atlassian.
Software stocks have been hit hard in the market crash triggered by global epidemic worries. Craig Blair, a partner at AirTree Ventures who has backed Canva in multiple funding rounds, said that while "there are some wild cards," Canva is still well-positioned.
Craig Blair said that Canva is in control of its own destiny in terms of IPO and that its business fundamentals are strong and in a better position than existing enterprises.
Melanie said Canva would go public at the right time in the company's development.
Mooers，what do you think of Melanie and the rapid growth of Canva? Are you optimistic about the value of Canva, which is popular around the world?![]()
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Riding the IPO wave, and find the new bull!
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ponytale : Designers hate canva. This software still has a long way to go. Not suited for professional use.
Jamesim :
ErnieVoltz : hahah coinbase, grab, robinhood, rivian all these can get below IPO price
102568460 : Canva is still building up its capabilities. Compared with the other more established software, it is geared more towards mainstream users, with a slight overlap with semi-pro creators. It would take some significant upgrades or could consider a separate pro versions to segment their market approach… a fruit for thought
Mike Hamersly : so is like a platform to promote my book or a program I'm trying to start
PlutoMoo102685100 : Woah cute PFP