Canva, an easy graphic-design tool website, started six years ago, after two of its founders found success making customizable school yearbooks. Through this process they discovered the power of putting easy-to-use tools in the hands of their customers. Cameron Adams, Canva’s Co-founder and Chief product officer joined the team with his design and tech experience, and Canva was born. Today, Canva, an Australian-based company, has over 10 million users and is valued at $1 billion. 


In this episode, Cameron talks with Brian Ardinger about Canva's work bringing goodness to the world through individuals and companies of all sizes. The Canva tools give companies and people the opportunity to easily experiment with design.


One reason, Canva has seen such great success, is due to the experiences and "pain points" the founders had prior to starting the company. As the founders developed the product to address the problems in the market, they continued to do many interviews and prototypes. Canva likes to aim for the vision and then fine tune to make sure they are improving what people like. They do a lot of user testing and surveying, as well as listening to their intuition.


Canva hasn’t seen any disadvantage of building in Australia. Cameron said it was slightly hard to raise funds, when they started. They ended initially with a 50/50 funding split between American and Australian investors. Today it's relatively easy to recruit talent and raise funds. They love being in Sydney.


As a part of the Asian Startup Scene, Canva thought "global" from day one. Asia plays a massive role and diversity in the market, with many different economic and socio-economics to design for. This helps Canva build a better product. As for design aesthetics, there is an international style but each culture has its own details. Last year, Canva was launched in 100 different languages. This year their focus is on deeper localization. 


Cameron says as Canva builds more products, they seem to find more opportunities. This year they are tackling presentations. They believe it should be more like a dialogue between the speaker and audience. Canva also recently released an animation tool. There are many additional areas they want to pursue in the future.


For more information, contact Cameron Adams on Twitter at @themaninblue or connect with @canva for questions about their products.


Brian recorded this interview at the Rise Conférence in Hong Kong. For more information see https://riseconf.com


For more interviews like this on on design and product design, listen to Episode 90 - Teresa Torres with Product Talk


 
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