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Canva Celebrates 10 Years of Empowering the World to Design

Canva Celebrates 10 Years of Empowering the World to Design

August 30, 2023

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams' launch of Canva, the only all-in-one visual communication platform in the world, with the aspirational goal of enabling everyone to design.

Canva has grown from its modest beginnings at a table in Perth, Australia, to a team of more than 4,000 employees spread across eight campuses. Since its launch ten years ago, Canva has established itself as the industry leader in the mass market visual communication category and has come to represent quick and simple design. Canva's platform is used by more than 135 million users each month, and together, they have produced more than 17 billion designs.

Today, more than 200 new designs are made in Canva every second, including presentations, documents, videos, and websites. After adding more than 45 million new monthly users in the previous year—a feat that originally took eight years to complete—the company's growth is still accelerating. With more than $1.5 billion in annualised revenue and a six-year track record of profitability, Canva enters its second decade.

"We're so happy to reach this significant milestone, but this is just the beginning. As critical as it was when we first launched Canva back in 2013, empowering the entire world to design has been our mission for the last ten years, according to Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva. From our earliest investors to those who are joining us today for our next phase of growth, to our amazing global community and team who create magic every single day, we are incredibly fortunate to have had the support and contributions of millions of people who have shaped Canva's journey.

Canva has rapidly increased its presence in businesses and workplaces, especially over the last two years. With the help of Canva's visual communication platform, global brands like Zoom, FedEx, Starbucks, and Salesforce are now managed and scaled by the company. More than one million people now list Canva as a core skill on their LinkedIn profiles, a number that has increased by 72% year over year, demonstrating the sudden surge in demand.

Establishing a $40 billion brand name

When Canva first debuted, its mission was to take a disjointed design ecosystem, combine it into a single straightforward page, and make it available to everyone. Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva, first developed the concept for the website while instructing design courses to her peers at Perth, Australia's University of Western Australia, where she was a student.

After observing how difficult it was for students to use the available tools, Melanie and Cliff Obrecht (who is currently Canva's Chief Operations Officer) created Fusion Books, which took the concept of a straightforward design tool and applied it to the specialised market of school yearbooks. Over the course of five years, Fusion Books expanded into France and New Zealand and became the largest yearbook publisher in Australia. Melanie, Cliff, and Cameron Adams, who is currently Canva's Chief Product Officer, set out to raise money before the company's official launch in 2013. They did this because they were aware that the technology they had created could be used for a wider range of purposes.

After reaching a lifetime's worth of milestones in 2021, such as a string of strategic European acquisitions and 75 million monthly users, Canva's valuation soared from $6 billion to $40 billion in just 18 months, making it one of the most valuable private software companies in the world.

Ten years of enabling design around the globe

Canva is now the only global all-in-one visual communication platform after ten years of development, the introduction of its Visual Suite, and the development of AI tools. The power of simple design, photos, collaboration tools, videos, and AI has been embraced by independent creators, educational institutions, nonprofit organisations, and workplaces to stand out in an overwhelmingly visual environment.

Canva's product suite has seen increased adoption due to its simplicity, ability to foster collaboration, and breadth, with workplace usage rising across a wide range of professions and industries, including 85% of the Fortune 500.

The business has also made progress towards what it calls a "Two-Step Plan," which is its deeper mission: The first step is to create one of the most valuable companies in the world; the second is to maximise its charitable giving.

Canva's progress towards Step One through the expansion of its business continues to unlock its philanthropic ambitions for Step Two. From the 400,000 nonprofits and 45 million teachers and students using Canva for free, to its partnership with GiveDirectly to distribute a $30 million cash transfer programme for people living in extreme poverty in Malawi, with 30% of the company pledged towards social good.

In the future, Canva doesn't appear to be slowing down as it celebrates this significant achievement.

Canva's About

Canva, a free online visual communications and collaboration platform, was introduced in 2013 with the goal of enabling design for all people worldwide. Anyone can take an idea and turn it into something beautiful thanks to the program's straightforward drag-and-drop user interface, wide selection of templates for presentations, documents, websites, social media graphics, posters, apparel, and videos, as well as a sizable library of fonts, stock photos, illustrations, video footage, and audio clips.