The biggest issue was that neither founder had a technical background. As a result, they became heavily dependent on layers of managers and employees who, in my view, lacked urgency and delivered very little value.
From the inside, the company felt deeply dysfunctional. There was surprisingly little meaningful work being done, and it often seemed as though more than 70% of the workforce could have been removed without materially affecting productivity.
A substantial portion of hiring also appeared to be driven by DEI requirements associated with government mandates rather than purely technical merit. Meanwhile, many of the people who carried the bulk of the technical work have since left, with a number relocating to foreign countries.
A conversation with the company's leadership quickly gives a sense of why these problems persist. The company also operated as a fully remote, globally distributed organization. It was not uncommon to hear of employees travelling around Europe while continuing to report that they were working.
Figma is a great product, professionals like me use it daily for product design. The only person I know who uses Canva is my 12 year old daughter, for school assignments and personal projects. I don't think she would ever pay for Canva, because there is a long line of other free graphic design tools both web based and software programs like PowerPoint that she could use. Canva is not used by serious creatives, or professionals, perhaps small businesses like flower shops for their social media posts and other stuff. But then with tools like ChatGPT and Claude now producing visual assets of a high quality, that are also free, why pay for Canva as well? There doesn't seem to be a viable business model anymore. I get they can scale globally and make a little bit from people who pay but it's going to get commoditised out.
I always get worried when businesses are valued at multiples of sales and not profits. I remember back in the dot com boom, they even tried to value companies based on clicks to their webpage. Oh the humanity (referring to my age)…
Leonardo.ai was a horrible acquisition. Poor judgement. Black Forest Labs might have been something better. They needed to buy into AI story in a big way, going into the model stack and infra provider stack (like fal or replicate). The ideas just are not in australia. the tax treatment is not, either. They are in a tough spot now, and should have sold to a US player.
The biggest issue was that neither founder had a technical background. As a result, they became heavily dependent on layers of managers and employees who, in my view, lacked urgency and delivered very little value.
From the inside, the company felt deeply dysfunctional. There was surprisingly little meaningful work being done, and it often seemed as though more than 70% of the workforce could have been removed without materially affecting productivity.
A substantial portion of hiring also appeared to be driven by DEI requirements associated with government mandates rather than purely technical merit. Meanwhile, many of the people who carried the bulk of the technical work have since left, with a number relocating to foreign countries.
A conversation with the company's leadership quickly gives a sense of why these problems persist. The company also operated as a fully remote, globally distributed organization. It was not uncommon to hear of employees travelling around Europe while continuing to report that they were working.
agree. lots of performative stuff at canva. they wore cool clothes and glasses, tho!
Figma is a great product, professionals like me use it daily for product design. The only person I know who uses Canva is my 12 year old daughter, for school assignments and personal projects. I don't think she would ever pay for Canva, because there is a long line of other free graphic design tools both web based and software programs like PowerPoint that she could use. Canva is not used by serious creatives, or professionals, perhaps small businesses like flower shops for their social media posts and other stuff. But then with tools like ChatGPT and Claude now producing visual assets of a high quality, that are also free, why pay for Canva as well? There doesn't seem to be a viable business model anymore. I get they can scale globally and make a little bit from people who pay but it's going to get commoditised out.
The creative industries use Figma and Adobe and a now Claude etc None would use canva - that’s ok. But I wonder who is Canva’s aspirational consumer?
How do people feel when using Canva? You don’t want them feeling cheap and unprofessional.
n = 1, but for me personally it is quite striking how I used to think using Canva was cool, and now I think it is a bit like using powerpoint.
I always get worried when businesses are valued at multiples of sales and not profits. I remember back in the dot com boom, they even tried to value companies based on clicks to their webpage. Oh the humanity (referring to my age)…
Leonardo.ai was a horrible acquisition. Poor judgement. Black Forest Labs might have been something better. They needed to buy into AI story in a big way, going into the model stack and infra provider stack (like fal or replicate). The ideas just are not in australia. the tax treatment is not, either. They are in a tough spot now, and should have sold to a US player.