The Canva Story - Part 1

From Tokyo, Japan and New Plymouth, New Zealand. This is Down to Business English with your hosts Skip Montreux and Samantha Vega.

Hello Samantha.

My skip, how's it going?

Very well, thank you. Too much to do, but somehow I managed to Tick a few boxes on a regular basis.

Mmm, good to hear.

I didn't want to talk to you about something though.

Oh, what's that?

The last time you and I spoke, you mentioned that you were about to attend some kind of workshop using social media tools for business.

Yeah, that's right. It was actually three workshops aimed at small business owners who needed an introduction to using social media.

Hmm, okay, and how were they?

They were fantastic. I learned all kinds of things about Instagram, MailChimp, and Canva.

Oh, do tell.

Well, they're all useful tools, but I was especially impressed with the image creation tips and tricks, with Canva especially. Uh, I was also surprised at how integrated Instagram, TikTok, and Canva are, and how well they complement each other.

Oh, that's very interesting.

Why are you asking about this?

Well, I hate to admit it, and I am a little embarrassed about this, but until recently, I Never heard of Canva.

That's a little surprising. You, out of almost everyone I know, tend to have your finger on the pulse of the latest trends in tech, especially.

Wow, that's nice of you to say. But it completely slipped under my radar.

If I were to be completely honest, Canvas slipped under my radar too. But now that I have had an introduction to it, it seems like a fantastic tool, very user-friendly.

Canva also happens to be one of the hottest unicorns around at the moment.

I knew it was a new fancy shiny piece of software, but I didn't know that.

Would you like to hear the story behind Canva?

Oh, I absolutely would.

However, there's a lot to go through. So what we are going to do is break today's report into two D2B episodes. Today, we will report on what Canva is and how it all got started. And in part two, we will go through Canva's journey from a small Australian startup company to the giant unicorn that is. Taking the graphic design world by storm.

Sounds like a plan.

So let's do it. Let's get D2B down to business with the Canvas Story, Part 1.

This may or may not be necessary. Our listeners are quite knowledgeable. But just to be on the safe side, let's define what we mean by a unicorn.

Ah, good idea, Samantha. Tell us, what is a unicorn?

A unicorn is a private company, usually a startup of some kind, that has been valued at one billion dollars or more.

And why is it called a unicorn?

Because just like the mythical horse with a horn growing out of its forehead. A startup being valued at a billion dollars is rare.

Although it isn't as rare today as it was thirty years ago. True. And can you give us some examples of past unicorns?

Well, Google and Facebook are two of the original big tech unicorns. But other well known brand names that achieved unicorn status would be Airbnb, Reddit, and BuzzFeed.

Reddit was a unicorn. Oh, I did not know that.

They were.

Now, I am sure each of those companies have an exciting story behind their success. But I wonder if any of those stories are as compelling as Canva's backstory.

Skip. I think it would be a mistake on our part to assume that all of our listeners even know what Canva is. After all, neither of us had heard of it until recently.

Hmm, I agree with that. Well, you're the one who just took a workshop on Canva. Why don't you tell us what exactly it is or what Canva does?

Canva is a web-based graphic design tool for non-designers.

A graphic design tool for people with no existing graphic design skills.

And from what I saw in the brief workshop too, well, it became clear to me that it's a very powerful tool. It's easy to see why it has become so popular.

What would you say makes it such a powerful tool?

It's just very simple to use. I'll tell you, if I was a graphic designer who ran a company, I would be worried right now. Everything is drag and drop in Canva. There is a library of professionally designed templates to work from. All a user has to do is start from a template. upload their own photos, and customize the design as they see fit. By the time you are finished, you have a great design on your hands.

You sound absolutely impressed. And what kind of design work can you do on Canva?

Oh the sky's the limit really. Presentation slides, business cards, postcards, infographics, flyers, menus, videos. Photo collages, posts for Instagram, TikTok posts. It's a it's a huge long list.

Oh it does video too.

Yes, it does video too. At the most basic level, Canva is a simple no-nonsense photo and video editor.

And not difficult to use.

Not in the least. The user interface is very intuitive.

Well, that all makes a lot of sense. It's exactly the type of product the founders of Canvas set out to create. A web-based tool that anyone could use without having to spend hours and hours learning professional software like Adobe Photoshop or Final Cut Pro.

Well, they certainly accomplished that. So what is Canvas backstory?

The idea for Canva came to an eighteen year old Australian university student by the name of Melanie Perkins in two thousand six. And it was an idea born out of sheer frustration.

Sheer frustration. What was she so frustrated about?

Well, to make a little extra money, she had picked up a part-time job teaching a graphic design course to other students. While teaching that course, she discovered that the design software being used was just way too difficult and too time consuming to learn.

As someone who has dabbled in Photoshop and Illustrator, I can attest to that.

Tell me about it. I have taken so many online courses on how to use Adobe products. I seem to forget everything within a few weeks of not using the program though.

Same here and it takes up so much space too. You need to use the software regularly for it to become automatic.

In media interviews, Melanie often remarked that students would end up spending an entire semester just learning how to click buttons and not actually design anything.

And this is what gave her the idea to create Canva.

Pretty much. Their goal was to take the whole design ecosystem, integrate it into one website, make it collaborative, and offer that service to the whole world.

Wait a minute, their goal? It wasn't just her?

Oh no, the idea was hers, but she quickly partnered with someone who completely supported her dream.

And who was that?

None other than her then boyfriend, now husband, Cliff Obreck.

Aw, isn't that romantic?

Canva actually has three co-founders, Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, who comes into the picture a little later on.

So how did they take Canva from the idea stage to the unicorn it is today?

Well, it wasn't a straight path, that's for sure. And we will get into all of that in part two of this report.

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That's right. We would really appreciate it.

Very much.

Okay, first on our D2V list today is the idiomatic expression to tick a few boxes. When you say you have ticked a box, you are communicating that you have fulfilled a requirement or finished a task.

In the introduction to today's episode, Skip mentioned that even though he has been busy lately, he had managed to tick a few boxes.

In other words, I'm getting a few things done, or I'm accomplishing some tasks.

You could use this expression when you open a meeting with your coworkers by saying something like, Okay everyone, in today's meeting there are two boxes we have to tick. First, we need to discuss the customer feedback that came in last month. Then, we need to decide what steps we need to take to deal with it.

Nice. If I was participating in that meeting, I would be very happy that it had a clear, well-defined purpose. Too many meetings I attend seem not to have a purpose and end up being just a waste of time. What's our next word or expression?

Next up is the adjective compelling. When something is compelling, it is so interesting that people want to learn more or know more about it. In today's report, Skip described the story behind Canvas success as compelling. In other words, it's a very interesting story.

There is another nuance to compelling as well. Often you hear about a compelling argument or a compelling answer or even a compelling reason.

Right, those are common collocations.

Compelling communicates strength.

So a compelling reason is a strong argument that can convince the listener to change their own opinion on the matter.

That's right. Apple just updated their operating system for Macs. The new OS is called Ventura. Now I usually wait a couple of months before updating my laptop or my computers to a new OS.

Ah. You're not an early adopter? No.

No, I use so many third-party software applications that I want the bugs to be all worked out in the OS before I update. But with Ventura, there is a compelling reason for me to update right away.

What is that compelling reason?

Mac OS Ventura has a new feature that allows you to use your iPhone as a web camera on your computer.

Ah, that is a compelling reason. The cameras on the latest iPhones are super excellent.

They are. Moving on, let's talk about another idiom. The sky's the limit. You can use this expression to indicate that anything is possible and there are no limitations.

It's a pretty easy idiom to get a mental picture of. The sky is a vast area, way above the Earth, and it is virtually impossible to reach its limits. At least it was before rocket science.

Even so, that is a good mental picture for the idiom. In the story, when I asked Samantha what kind of graphic design work could be done on Canva, she replied by saying The sky's the limit. In other words, there were so many options that they seemed limitless.

Speaking of rocket science, I see that Elon Musk has finally acquired Twitter.

Yes, that is right. We will probably do a story on that in the not so distant future.

Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter. Think what you want about that man, but it sure seems that the sky's the limit for him. He is successful at almost everything he gets involved in.

Mm, I don't know about that. I think it has a lot to do with the people he has put in place at Tesla and SpaceX, especially s SpaceX.

Well, you need to give him credit for that at least.

True. What's next?

Next is the adjective sheer. Sheer is most often used to describe an emotion or some kind of characteristic or personal quality.

like sheer beauty or sheer happiness or sheer delight.

Yes, those are good examples. Sheer emphasizes the importance and power of the quality or emotion. In the story, Skip told us that the idea of creating Canva came out of Melanie Perkins' sheer frustration with Adobe Graphic Design Software.

In other words, her frustration was very, very powerful.

Yes. Can you give us an example in a business context?

Immediately comes to mind is Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, aka Mess. Do you know how much money Batman has lost this year?

I know that Meta's stock price has fallen, but I don't know how much.

Over the last year, shares in Meta have plunged 74%, and Zuckerberg's personal fortune has plummeted by$100 billion.

Ouch. And what is driving that?

Wall Street thinks Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse future of the internet is sheer nonsense.

Ah I see what you did there. Good example. A painful example, but a good example too.

Our final item on D2V today is yet another idiom. Wow, so many idioms in English. Anyway, this idiom is to Come into the picture. When you say someone has come into the picture, you are saying that he or she has become involved in the situation. In the story, I mentioned that Cameron Adams, the third co-founder of Canva, came into the picture later.

In other words, he became involved in the startup at a later point in time.

Precisely.

Now, that nuance is in the case of a person. If something comes into the picture, that thing must be dealt with.

Can you give us an example of that?

The housing market here in New Zealand has entered a bit of a downturn recently.

Oh, is that right? I've always been under the impression that New Zealand's housing market is quite strong.

Has been over the past ten years or so, but once inflation came into the picture and housing loans and mortgages became more expensive, housing prices began to fall.

Hmm, a compelling reason not to sell one's home at the moment.

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Thanks for the report on the origins of Canvas Gip. I look forward to part two of the Canvas story.

No, thank you Samantha for explaining to us what Canva is and your experiences with it. I'm pretty eager to try it out.

I look forward to experimenting with it as well.

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Or whichever platform you listen to podcasts.

It would help the show a lot if you could do that. Samantha and I will be back very soon with part two of the Canvas Story. Thanks for listening everyone. See you soon.

Take care.

Have a comment or question about today's show? Don't be shy. Visit the D2B website or Facebook page and post any comments or questions there. Or Samantha will be sure to leave a reply.

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