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The Canva You Don’t See
The untold story of how Canva became the backbone of modern creativity.
Think Tank
May 17, 2025
In partnership with
Almost every case study I write has one thing in common. Something you don’t see on the surface. It quietly works behind the scenes - powering carousels, pitch decks, resumes, and reels. A design tool.
Canva.
If you're a creator, you already know what I’m talking about. Over the last decade, Canva has become the invisible engine of the visual internet. From YouTube thumbnails to wedding invites, it’s the tool behind the content - not chasing attention, but enabling it.
But this isn’t just the story of a tool.
This is the story of how a startup from Perth rewrote the rules of design -
Not by taking on Adobe head-to-head, but by building a simpler, faster, more accessible alternative for the 99%.
Let’s dive in.
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Table of Contents
From Yearbooks to Unicorn
Before Canva, there was Fusion Books - a humble online yearbook design tool born in the living room of Melanie Perkins’ mother’s house in Perth.
As a design tutor at university, Melanie saw firsthand how inaccessible tools like Photoshop and InDesign were. They were powerful, but intimidating.
She thought: why couldn’t design be as easy as using Facebook?
So she and Cliff Obrecht, her then-boyfriend (now co-founder and husband), started Fusion Books. Their mission was simple:
Help teachers and students create beautiful yearbooks without needing design experience.
Armed with wireframes, savings from part-time jobs, and a loan from NAB, they went door-to-door and eventually found a dev shop that believed in their vision. They launched Fusion in 2008.
Their first customer? A school in another part of Australia that found them online.
They received a $100 deposit and debated whether to frame it or cash it. They cashed it - they needed the money.
It was scrappy. Cliff cold-called schools while switching voices when asked to speak to “the manager.” Their parents folded direct mailers. They built, printed, marketed, and packed orders themselves.
It wasn’t a startup — it was a masterclass in doing whatever it takes.
And it worked.
But yearbooks weren’t the endgame. They were the training ground.
From Fusion to Canva: The First “Yes”
Melanie wanted more - a platform to democratize design for the entire internet, not just schools.
In 2011, she flew to San Francisco with a paper pitch deck and a dream: Create the future of publishing.
She landed meetings with investor Bill Tai and Google Wave co-creator Lars Rasmussen. But there was a catch - investors wouldn’t commit unless she found a “world-class” tech team.
For months, Melanie cold-called engineers, camped in food courts with her Wi-Fi hotspot, and faced rejection after rejection. One prospect even failed Lars’ screening interview. At one point, she stayed up 36 hours straight to finish a business plan. Her eyesight blurred. She was broke. Her visa expired.
But she didn’t quit.
Back in Australia, she met Cameron Adams, ex-Google designer and founder of Fluent.io. Cam had what they needed - design + dev talent - and finally said “Yes.” He became the third co-founder.
Now with credibility, a vision, and a founding team, they raised $3M and launched Canva.
The Core Insight: Build for Non-Designers
From day one, Canva wasn’t trying to be a “Photoshop killer.” It was trying to be something Photoshop never was: intuitive.
“Design should be as easy as ordering a pizza.”
They built for:
Teachers
Social media managers
Startup founders
Students
Anyone who needed beautiful designs, fast - without a design degree.
The result? A zero-learning-curve product with templates, stock assets, drag-and-drop tools, and real-time collaboration.
The secret? Canva didn’t just remove friction - it removed fear.
Through microcopy, gamified onboarding, and delightful templates, Canva made people believe they could design.
The Flywheel That Designed Itself
Canva’s growth wasn’t fueled by ads, it was fueled by use. How?
Freemium First: 85%+ of users never paid but they still became evangelists.
Templates Go Viral: Every shared graphic had a “Made with Canva” tag.
Design is the Ad: A resume, Instagram post, or school project was a marketing asset.
Product-Led Loops: The better the experience, the more people used it → shared it → repeated it.
In 8 months, they crossed 350,000 designs/month.
In under 2 years, that became 3 million designs/month.
Today, it’s 300+ million/month. Here’s a more update overview of Canva designs
The Business Model: Freemium That Prints Money
Canva’s revenue engine is deceptively simple - but strategically brilliant.
At its core is a freemium model designed not just to acquire users, but to create habitual creators.
Here’s how the tiers break down:
Plan | Features | Target Audience |
|---|---|---|
Free | Thousands of templates, drag-and-drop editor, basic photo editing tools | Students, casual users, individuals |
Pro ($14.99/mo) | Brand kits, 100M+ premium assets, AI tools (Magic Studio), background remover, Magic Resize | Freelancers, content creators, small businesses |
Teams / Enterprise | Centralized brand control, SSO, admin dashboards, shared workflows, priority support | Marketing teams, large orgs (e.g. Zoom, Salesforce) |
Education & Nonprofit | Pro-level access at no cost, team collaboration, branded content creation | Teachers, students, social sector orgs |
Rather than gating core functionality, Canva’s free plan is fully functional - good enough to get people hooked.
The Pro and Enterprise tiers don’t just unlock “more.”
They unlock scale, speed, and consistency - brand kits, AI acceleration, team sharing, and asset libraries that make design production frictionless.
Canva didn’t sell software. They sold self-belief at scale and made that belief scalable with subscriptions.
And once you've designed your resume, your pitch deck, your product catalog, your social campaigns - you're not just using Canva. You're building your business on it.
Switching tools would mean switching the foundation of your daily work. That’s not just retention. That’s dependence, the good kind.
This is why Canva now generates an estimated $2.5+ in annual recurring revenue (ARR) — with the majority coming from just 15-20% of users.
They made it free to try.
But irresistible to leave.
Building a Product Moat, Pixel by Pixel
Behind Canva’s simplicity is a dense web of strategic moats:
Template & Community Moat: Users create templates. Templates attract new users. Self-sustaining loop.
Brand Kits + Teams: Companies store fonts, logos, colors - reinforcing long-term stickiness.
Collaborative Workflow: Google Docs-style commenting + versioning for design teams.
All-in-One Suite: Docs, whiteboards, presentations, videos - one login, endless output.
It’s a visual operating system for the internet. If you are a creator or if your work involves creative ends, you would be able to relate to this.
Canva’s AI Leap: Magic That Works
And just when the world thought Canva had peaked, they pulled another lever -
one that would future-proof their moat and supercharge productivity: AI.
While most competitors raced to bolt on flashy generative features for headlines, Canva stuck to what it does best: Make powerful things feel simple.
In 2023, they unveiled Magic Studio - a suite of AI tools not for engineers or early adopters… but for everyday creators who just want to get things done.
Here’s what that included:
Magic Write - A ChatGPT-style writing assistant built into Docs, social templates, and whiteboards.
Magic Edit - Highlight an object, describe the change, and AI does the rest. Replace a laptop with a plant? Done.
Magic Expand - Extend image backgrounds using generative fill - no Photoshop wizardry needed.
Magic Design - Describe what you need (e.g. “Instagram post for a coffee shop launch”) and watch Canva generate fully styled, editable options in seconds.
Beat Sync – Automatically matches video clips to the beat of a soundtrack - a boon for reels, TikToks, and YouTube.
AI Translation - Instantly localize your designs into 100+ languages with design-friendly auto formatting.
AI wasn’t a gimmick. It was a natural extension of Canva’s promise: help you create faster, better, and with more confidence.
No prompt engineering.
No dropdown jungle.
Just magic that worked - exactly when and where you needed it.
And by making AI a native layer rather than a bolt-on feature, Canva kept creators inside its ecosystem longer, turning one-off users into loyal daily drivers.
The result?
It elevated Canva’s positioning from a template tool… to a smart creative OS
Fundraising: Not Silicon Valley’s Darling
Raising funds wasn’t easy.
Melanie wasn’t from Stanford.
Canva wasn’t based in the Bay Area.
Their team was Australian.
Their deck had “strictly confidential” on the cover.
Rejection emails flooded in.
Some said they didn’t invest in international founders. Others didn’t believe in design as a category.
But the rejections made the deck better. Every "no" became a sharpened slide.
Eventually, Bill Tai, Lars Rasmussen, Blackbird Ventures, and Matrix Partners said yes - $1.6M.
A grant from Australia’s innovation fund added $1.4M more.
Total seed: $3M to launch Canva. Here’s what it looks like after that:
Final Thoughts: From Tool to Infrastructure
Canva didn’t just build software - they built belief. They made people feel like they could design - and that feeling scaled across classrooms, boardrooms, weddings, and workflows.
It’s proof that design isn’t about complexity, it’s about clarity.
Not about control, but creativity.
Not about tools, but access.
And Canva’s just getting started.
They’re evolving into a full creative suite - with AI, Docs, Whiteboards, and Video - quietly positioning themselves as the visual OS for the internet.
Next up? Expanding deeper into enterprise, education, and global creative infrastructure, where design meets automation, and communication becomes frictionless.
The mission remains bold:
Step 1: Build one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Step 2: Use it to make the biggest impact possible.
They’re still in Step 1. But the blueprint is clear - and Canva’s designing toward it, one magical click at a time.
What Founders Can Learn from Furlenco
Canva didn’t just build a design tool — it rewired who design was for.
But democratizing creativity at scale wasn’t luck. It was learned.
Here are five hard-earned lessons every founder in product-led growth should take to heart:
1. Story matters
Investors didn’t back Canva because of code — they backed a compelling vision.
A clear “why now” and “why us” beat features every single time.
2. Rejections aren’t roadblocks
Every “no” became a better pitch, every closed door refined their conviction.
Persistence wasn’t just a mindset — it was part of the product strategy. I know it is a generic learning you hear every now and then, but it is one of the most essential learning to building a successful business.
3. Growth is emotional, not just functional
Users didn’t stay because the tool worked — they stayed because it made them feel capable. Canva didn’t sell design features. It sold confidence.
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If this case study made you look at design tools differently — not just as software, but as silent infrastructure behind the creator economy — share it with someone who still thinks Canva is “just for beginners.”
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About Think Tank
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Think Tank is a bi-weekly newsletter that simplifies business case studies into engaging, story-driven insights. It’s designed for entrepreneurs, professionals, and curious minds who want real, actionable takeaways without the fluff.
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