The Twenty Minute VCCameron Adams: How Canva Builds Products: Lessons Learned, What Works? What Flopped? | E1179
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
95 min read · 19,019 words- 0:00 – 3:56
Intro
- CACameron Adams
Speed is definitely important. Like, you can't take five years to launch a product. It also needs to reach a certain level where people get excited about it. You don't just wanna launch something that people feel like it just gets the job done, but they're not that crazy excited about it. Launching something at Canva that people will spread, they will tell others about, has been the biggest growth driver for us.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Ready to go? (instrumental music plays) Cam, I am so excited for this. I was just chatting to Cliff beforehand, and I was like, "Where do I take this conversation?" He's like... I'm not gonna do the accent 'cause you just ridiculed me for it.
- CACameron Adams
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
I was actually gonna do it before, but he said, "You've gotta ask him, how did he come to meet me and Mel?" And he said there was a little bit of confusion on your end about-
- CACameron Adams
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
... why you were there as an advisor or actually a hire. Talk to me about that.
- CACameron Adams
Well, firstly, don't ask Cliff about content.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- CACameron Adams
But secondly, um, I got intro'd to Mel and Cliff through my old boss at Google, Lars Rasmussen. So, he was one of the founders of Google Maps, and I worked with him on a project called Google Wave, and we did that for, like, four and a half years. I left Google to do this other startup with a couple of other, um, engineers from Google, and we were going very happily doing that. We were in the process of fundraising and Lars said, "Go talk to these people about some tech that they need." And I went and talked to them, they'd just moved to Sydney over from Perth at the time, and they had a school yearbook business. So, they were running this thing in Adobe Flash, it helped schools make their yearbooks, and they kinda wanted to take it to the next level, but they weren't gonna do that with Flash. So, I knew a bit about JavaScript and HTML, so I went to chat to them about that. Walked into their office, Mel was sitting at their conference table, trying to look very professional 'cause they had, like, five staff at the time, and I walked in and she's like, "Oh, are you here for the PHP developer role?" And I'm like, "No, I'm here to tell you, like, how to actually run the tech side of your business." So, we sat down, we chatted a bit about the latest tech at the time, what browsers were capable of, and particularly in the scheme of creating design, so how can you do visual design inside a browser, which was quite tricky at the time.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- CACameron Adams
Um, we explored it a bit. We went for coffee afterwards. Mel told me about her bigger vision beyond yearbooks, and it was democratizing design. It was bringing design to people who hadn't been able to access it before, which was really intriguing to me because my background is a graphic designer and also computer scientist, so merging design with democratizing technology was perfect for me. But me and my co-founders in my other startup, called Fluent, were, like, very happy, we were gonna take over the world, and we were just about to land $5 million in funding. Little did we know that we weren't just about to land $5 million in funding, but that's beside the point. So, I kind of put it in the back of my mind, of what Mel and Cliff were doing, and went off to do what I wanted to do. And a few months later, after our, um, startup had kind of created a little bit, um, that idea of democratizing design really came back to me. So, my wife, uh, her- she- we were looking at possibly moving to San Francisco 'cause there wasn't much happening in Australia at the time. My wife wasn't that keen to move to San Francisco, neither was I, so she said, "Why don't you go hit up Mel and Cliff again and see how they're going with trying to democratize design?" Uh, so I did, and they hadn't got funding or anything so far, they hadn't, uh, found a tech co-founder that could help them build the product, so we decided to join forces, and that was 2012.
- 3:56 – 5:12
How Luck & Skill Contribute to Success
- CACameron Adams
- HSHarry Stebbings
A weird one. How much of success do you think is luck versus skill? Obviously, you're an incredible leader and incredibly skilled guy, but actually your- your startup not getting funded was probably th- the luckiest thing in many ways happening.
- CACameron Adams
Yeah, it's all these sliding doors moments. I wouldn't necessarily call it luck, I think it's about putting yourself in a position to capitalize.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm.
- CACameron Adams
And that is talking to people, networking, having the right skills, like working with technology, trying different products, experimenting. 'Cause I- you know, Canva, we started in 2012, but my careers was going for, like, 12 years before that, and there's a ton of ideas that I tried with a ton of people that didn't work out because it was the wrong time or it- there was- actually the wrong people, we weren't a good team. Google Wave itself, like, the project I worked on at Google, was really prescient in what it wanted to do in terms of real time communications and collaborations, but it was early for a bunch of reasons, like browsers weren't quite ready, people weren't quite ready to work in that way. So, six years later, launch it, it becomes something like Slack or Microsoft Teams, it can take over the world, but in 2007 when we tried to do it at Google, it
- 5:12 – 6:46
Balancing Speed & Quality
- CACameron Adams
just wasn't the right time.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So, I spoke to Mike Hebron also before this, and he spoke about creating the first Canva landing page and the amount of time that you spent on it, making it-
- CACameron Adams
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
... and- and kind of quoting him, "just right," and so much attention to detail. My question to you is, we're told in the generation of The Lean Startup of the importance of speed of iteration, speed, speed, speed, and it feels like it kind of goes in conflict with the making it just right and the time to make it perfect. How do you feel about speed versus quality and that importance and balance between the two?
- CACameron Adams
The Lean Startup book actually launched in the year that we launched. It was, like, 2012. And s- investors were quoting it at us and, like, telling us to launch as quickly as possible. We kind of ignored them because we knew what we wanted in the product and we knew we wanted something high quality.... and speed is definitely important. Like you can't take five years to launch a product, but it also needs to reach a certain level where people get excited about it. You don't just wanna launch something that people feel like it just gets the job done, but they're not that crazy excited about it. Launching something at Canva that people will spread, they will tell others about, that they will shout from the rooftops about has been one of the most important parts of our success because those people telling other people what an amazing product it is, what a delightful experience they had, what fun they had designing something has been the biggest growth
- 6:46 – 9:18
The Secret to Fanatical User Engagement
- CACameron Adams
driver for us.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you create such fanatical users? I mean, for me, when I look at your growth, one of the most astonishing things is Canva Talk-
- CACameron Adams
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
... which is, like, you know, the unbelievable UGC content that your community creates. How do you create such fanatical users? I'm sorry for such a base question.
- CACameron Adams
(laughs) Part of it is that detail, like creating that landing page that has a great animation on it, that people spend five minutes just on the landing page playing around with that before they sign in. Like, it's, it's those things that people, A, feel the love, like they can tell it's a well-crafted product that they wanna use, uh, and B, it brings something to their life that they didn't have before. Like, it's a very small thing. It's a moment of delight, but it's not like using a spreadsheet or doing some boring job that they, you know, do every single day. It's about giving them something new in their life that interests them, that unlocks something, and, like those details in the Canva product have driven so much user love. Like we get tweets about the little things we put in, like the Easter eggs that we have. We have a duck that floats by every time you upload 100 images.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- CACameron Adams
We've thought about all the features that you need. We've thought about the onboarding process and making that fun so that when people first come-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CACameron Adams
... into Canva, they discover that they can actually design things, and this moment of delight when they discover that is what we wanna trigger. That's like our aha moment.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How important is the speed to delight moment? Does it need to be-
- CACameron Adams
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... in the first user journey?
- CACameron Adams
Definitely needs to be in the first user journey. I don't think it has to happen in the first 30 seconds, but I think you need to give them a feel for the product right from the very get-go. If you have a crappy signup page that looks like it was made on MySpace in 2006, like that's setting the tone for your product. So they don't have to be immediately wowed, but you need to start giving them kinda the vibe of the product right from the very get-go, which is where those details really fit in. And then that experience should build up to that wow moment. Like, they've signed in, they've given you some details, and for us that wow moment was when they had created something that felt unique to them, that they had put enough of themselves into, and then they realized that through this process of onboarding, they had become a designer essentially. They had done something that they didn't think they could do before, and that was the trigger moment where they're like, "Wow, this product is for me and I can use this in 101 different
- 9:18 – 10:41
Mastering Simplicity in Product Design
- CACameron Adams
ways."
- HSHarry Stebbings
In terms of that ability to have superhuman powers of design and to democratize design, it, it has to be simple in some respect. And I, I think it's really interesting when I spoke to Andrew, uh, (laughs) before, he said that you're a master of making things just simple enough. And I really am always struck with this in product, which is like, is simple always good? How do you think about just simple enough when product designing?
- CACameron Adams
The way that we think about the product experience is that we want anyone in the world to be able to access design and to get the benefits of it. Uh, but also as people spend more time with your product, it needs to unfurl and unlock more stuff in it. They need to continue to become better designers as they use it, get better output. So there's this kind of 80/20 rule that we apply where, when you first get into Canva, you should be able to get 80% of the value, but then as you spend more time with it, you unlock the remaining 20%, which makes you an expert, makes you put more into the product and what you're doing and discover things and create those moments of delight constantly, where it's like previously you didn't care about typography, after using Canva for six months you discover all these things about typography and we give you access to those. So it's a real power unlock. So, like, simplicity is the top layer, but you also need depth under there for the people who spend the
- 10:41 – 11:21
Challenges of Moving into the Enterprise
- CACameron Adams
time to explore it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's been the hardest thing about the move into enterprise?
- CACameron Adams
We've had a couple of cracks at enterprise.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CACameron Adams
Um, so we actually launched... Uh, w- we had a journalist who did some good in- investigation and said, "You launched Canva Enterprise like three years ago." And what we launched three years ago wasn't really an enterprise product. It was just a way for someone to get in contact with a salesperson. Um, so we hadn't, I don't think at that stage, really listened to the enterprise audience. We're just like, "You wanna scale Canva to lots and lots of people? Here's a self-service thing that you can do to, like, get your credit card on and get 1,000 people using Canva." It wasn't a true enterprise experience.
- 11:21 – 14:01
Concerns About Unbundling into Specialized Products
- CACameron Adams
- HSHarry Stebbings
Something that I worry about is the unbundling of this space. Like, we're obviously a content team as well, and we just see so much specialization, whether it's short form video generators from YouTube links to podcast artwork AI tools. To what extent are you concerned about the unbundling into highly specialized products that do one thing very, very well?
- CACameron Adams
I think we're seeing, particularly in the AI space, we're seeing a lot of hype and churn and real micro-services, and you're also seeing a lot of those startups kind of fall by the wayside as well, as the real, you know, value of them comes to light, and it's, it's not very huge.... for us, we see immense value in creating a true platform that enables proper workflows.
- HSHarry Stebbings
We mentioned those AI tools, one of the questions that I worry about with those AI tools is just the infinite supply of content that comes out of them. You know, you give them a YouTube link and suddenly you get 30 clips. And they're not great quality necessarily, definitely not nearly as good as what we do, say, for example, with-
- CACameron Adams
No.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... but just human is still so much better. But there's an infinite supply that does gobble up human attention. And to your point on, like, being able to create 30 brand assets in a world we used to create one, it's kind of good, but I worry that the value of content decreases as the infinite supply becomes more prominent.
- CACameron Adams
I don't think the value decreases. There's definitely more people creating stuff, but as you very well know, great content rises to the top. Uh-
- HSHarry Stebbings
But I don't think it does. I think that's like saying, "Build a great product, and they will come." Well, yeah, but in a time when there's very few or when there's less great products. I think now discovery is everything, and actually discovering consumers finding you is the simple hardest thing. There are thousands of podcasts that are amazing, but podcast is a shit business (laughs) to be in now-
- CACameron Adams
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
... because it's so hard unless you started years ago.
- CACameron Adams
I think it's... I mean, you s-
- HSHarry Stebbings
You can argue with me, Cam.
- CACameron Adams
I can argue with you. You-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CACameron Adams
... see the same thing in the music industry. Like, what you hear on the radio isn't necessarily the best song in the world, but it's about discovery. It's about being a fully rounded artist. Um, someone who can have a personality, who offers people something unique, gives them a different take on the world, as well as creating great music. So Taylor Swift is an amazing marketing machine. She-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yep.
- CACameron Adams
... she thinks about the attention she can garner, the way that she presents herself, the whole strategy of her tour, like all of that is part of Taylor Swift. It's not just Taylor Swift sitting at a desk writing a song.
- 14:01 – 14:44
Biggest Product Change & User Adoption Spike
- CACameron Adams
- HSHarry Stebbings
What was the product change that caused the biggest spike in user adoption, and what did you learn from that?
- CACameron Adams
Oh, that's an interesting question. Um, I can't think of, like, the exact most biggest spike of, of product adoption-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's the one that comes to mind?
- CACameron Adams
Text-to-image was quite pivotal for us. So we launched text-to-image about 18 months ago. We were first product to, like, truly scale generative images to over 100 million people. Um, and that was really pivotal for us, 'cause it was our first dip of our toe in the water of generative AI. Um, and that has since sparked an incredible amount of product innovation and strategy over the last 18 months. Um,
- 14:44 – 16:25
Introduction of AI into Canva
- CACameron Adams
pretty much every touch point in the product now involves some level of AI.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What was the response?
- CACameron Adams
It was amazing. I think w- we wanted to get it out early. It was, it was very early in the piece, and it actually only took us six weeks to launch from whoa to go. From someone saying, "Let's do... Crazy idea. Let's do, like, type in a box, and you get an image out of it." Six weeks later, we'd deployed all the infrastructure, uh, we'd integrated it into the product, and we'd launched it to 100 million folks. Um, and we did that because it was an incredible piece of technology that we wanted to, like, bring to people, but also-
- HSHarry Stebbings
So you leveraged OpenAI's infrastructure?
- CACameron Adams
... for that one, that was based on, uh, Stable Diffusion.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- CACameron Adams
Um, and we've since, like, iterated upon that a whole ton. And it turned by us-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you see, do you see a world where you move between different providers?
- CACameron Adams
Yeah, definitely. I think there's so much, you know, there is a, a heap of competition now in terms of large language models, image providers. Any sort of AI model that you're thinking of, there's probably, like, 50 different versions of it. Um, and I think that's great, because not having a monopoly from OpenAI or Google or Anthropic or whatever model you wanna look at is beneficial for developing a product.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'm naive, and the speed and ease to transition between the two is little?
- CACameron Adams
It's getting a lot faster. Um, you know, early days, it was a bit harder because there were different infrastructural needs.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CACameron Adams
But for them to be successful products t- themselves, offering tools to developers, they need to make it easy to just wrap your product around it. Um, so the APIs are getting better. Uh, the way that you call different models is getting standardized, so it's becoming a lot
- 16:25 – 18:58
Navigating Product Roadmaps in an AI-Driven World
- CACameron Adams
easier just to switch over.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask, when you rely on someone else's infrastructure, like many are now are on OpenAI or on Stable Diffusion models or whatever that is, it kind of dictates runway. Not runway, sorry, product roadmap. You know, before you had set the product roadmap, and really only you and your execution determine whether you're able to complete it.
- CACameron Adams
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When suddenly OpenAI can release a new model, and whoa, it changes the game. You know, we had the CPO from Loom on the show, um, you know, the video creation.
- CACameron Adams
Yeah, yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And she said, "It's the hardest time ever as a product leader, because I'm suddenly... my whole product roadmap's turned upside down by an OpenAI improvement." How do you feel that the world of product creation has changed now when this is the case?
- CACameron Adams
I wouldn't say it's changed. I think that particular area has experienced rapid acceleration, but I think it's the same for any... the early stages of any technology. Like, there's rap- there's room for im- innovation, improvement, and discovery. In five years time, I would say that AI innovation will have slowed by then, and a lot more will be standardized. Social patterns will be established of, like, how we interact with AI. The possibilities of what a LLM can do are very well understood and known, and it's just become a part of everyday product development.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How will we interact with AI?
- CACameron Adams
I think a lot more than just typing into a chat box, uh, and even a lot more than just talking to it. I think that interface of working with AI is...... it's a really great demo, and it's been a great inroad into exploring it. But it's gonna become a lot more nuanced. Most people aren't great at coming up with the very first idea. Like, it's one of the things we learned at Canva. When you present people with a blank page, they just, like, freeze up.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- CACameron Adams
They don't know what to do. And at the moment, AI is just like that. You have to, like, go to it and say, "I want this thing," and it will give it back to you. It's not that great at helping you explore ideas and iterate on them, give you the very first prompt that you should be prompting it with. And that relationship between you and the AI needs to get a lot better as a collaborative partner, and for us, that means you need to develop the interface a lot more. So, our Magic Media tool, which is the evolution of text to image, is a great example of that. It started off as a textbox, but most people can't describe an image. Like, they don't know the exact style they want it in. They can't tell you the... between the different types of artistic drawing that's possibly available for, like, a duck that you want.
- 18:58 – 22:03
Using Prompts to Gauge Product Expertise
- CACameron Adams
- HSHarry Stebbings
Well, so- so actually on that then, uh, you know, we had Gustav from Spotify on the show.
- CACameron Adams
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
And he said, like, probably one of the biggest questions you'll ask in interviews for product people is, "Show me your prompts." And that'll be a determining factor of the quality of a product person in the next few years.
- CACameron Adams
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you think that's right? And how do you think about that, the quality of prompts being a- a determining factor in terms of quality of person?
- CACameron Adams
I think prompting is definitely a skill that we're all gonna need, but in terms of it being the defining part of a job interview, I would hope it doesn't (laughs) go down that path. It's, yeah, it's- it's- it's a skill we're gonna need to be able to explain your thoughts and use the systems to get something out of them. But if, in five years time, the way that we interact with AI is purely just through prompts, I think it will have displayed a total lack of imagination from us as product builders.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How will we see the stabilization of LLMs, like you said?
- CACameron Adams
What do you mean by stabilization?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Well, like, the- the landscape, um, kind of being more concrete. You said now that we're in a state of flux, there's a lot of different ones, we're kind of seeing a difference in terms of the speed of transition between them. Well, how will that end state look in five years time, do you think?
- CACameron Adams
I think it'll look very similar to what cloud-based infrastructure looks like now, in terms of AWS, Google Cloud, uh, Azure. Uh-
- HSHarry Stebbings
How often do you switch your cloud provider?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, not a huge amount, and there is definitely, like, a bit of lock-in there. Um, but it is possible, and the starting point is also, uh, very different for different people. Like, when you're starting your project, if you're familiar with Azure, you can go on that. If you're familiar with AWS, you'll start with that. If you're f- if you're familiar with Google Cloud, you'll start with that. But you do have choice there. It's not just one provider that you have to do, and they become monopolistic, and they're not rolling out anything new, and they just take a- a bunch of money from you. There's still a- a huge amount of competition there, and I think exactly the same will happen with LLMs. They'll be innovating. You know, Google will add a feature, OpenAI will add a feature, some other startup that we don't even know about yet will add- add a feature, and everyone else will rush to catch up and then innovate on top of that. But you'll have choice.
- HSHarry Stebbings
My question is just, do you charge more for Magic Media and for AI capabilities?
- CACameron Adams
It's all wrapped up in our Canva Pro or our Can- uh, Canva Enterprise subscription.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Does that hurt your margin structure, then?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, not really. Like-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Because if you have someone-
- CACameron Adams
... it is- it is a tiny bit of-
- HSHarry Stebbings
... who's, like, a hard user of, um, you know, th- the Magic Media-
- CACameron Adams
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... and is creating a lot of images with AI, the idea is that would actually then dampen your margins.
- CACameron Adams
There is a little bit of cost in there.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CACameron Adams
But it's the approach we've taken for the last 12 years. Putting an immense amount of value into our subscription is why people love it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CACameron Adams
Um, and you need to constantly be adding to your product. Like, getting people to pay the same subscription for the exact same product as it was seven years ago just isn't gonna fly. Plus, we've also seen the costs on AI just continue
- 22:03 – 25:15
Does AI Drive Revenue or Just Improve Products?
- CACameron Adams
to shrink.
- HSHarry Stebbings
But- but do you think AI expands the revenue lines of existing great companies like Canva, or do you just think it allows them to have much better products with happier customers? 'Cause that's the question. Like, does AI actually allow big companies to make more money or just create better products?
- CACameron Adams
I think in the short term, it might allow them to make more money. So, like, I think Microsoft and Google both have add-on packages that you pay for to get access to their AI stuff. I think that's a very short-term thing, where it'll just become commoditized, people will become used to it, and it'll just become part of the basic package. And I think they've done that to kind of shelter themselves to any possible price repercussions from people just smashing their- their AI servers. Um, but yeah, we view it as just a way of building a better product, and it's a continuation of democratizing design. 10 years ago, we used the cloud and mobile technology to do that. AI is just the next thing now that enables us to deliver an even better product experience.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you think the structure of product teams changes with AI being such a core part of the development, design, distribution process?
- CACameron Adams
It does a bit. I don't think it totally changes it, you know, diametrically, but definitely the way that we develop product has changed over the last two years.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How so?
- CACameron Adams
It's become a bit more, kind of, R&D focused in the sense that technology needs to be explored a lot more. So, for the last 10 years, we've pretty much known the technology stack and what the technology is capable of, and you can look at a mockup of something and go, "Yeah, we know how to build that. We can get the Java servers to do this, and JavaScript in the browser will be able to do that." So it's kind of a known quantity. Whereas now, you can come up with an idea for a new feature that you wanna roll out. So say you wanted to roll out, um...... we just rolled out enhanced voice. So you can take a video, clean up the audio on what someone's saying, and it does it with one click. But when you initially do that, you're not quite sure whether you can pull it off because the AI model needs to be developed to do that. There's a whole bunch of smoke and mirrors that you need to do to get it to work, um, and there's a lot more uncertainty in there. So you need to be comfortable with that uncertainty and the product needs to evolve with where you're seeing the technology go. So, you know, six months ago, we might have set out to do enhanced voice. Some of the engineers will try it out and see how far they can get with the quality. Maybe there's a particular use case where it doesn't work. So say, you're in a taxi, it doesn't work for that, right? So then you have to slightly pivot your product and change what you're delivering based on that. So it's a bit more of a dance between product and design and engineering than it was previously.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What uncertainty would you say you're not comfortable with today?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, uncertainty, I wouldn't say I'm uncomfortable with it, but uncertainty in how this helps a user. Um, I think there's, there's space for experimentation where you can throw a tool out there and see how people respond
- 25:15 – 27:07
Using Smaller Countries for Feature Rollouts
- CACameron Adams
to it. But-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you test the rollout of new features? Do you-
- CACameron Adams
Yeah, definitely.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... with, with respect to Australia, uh, you know, often people are like, "Oh, fuck it. Throw it to Australia first." Uh, or Sweden or one of these, you know, smaller countries, but is actually relatively reflective of larger countries.
- CACameron Adams
We do it in a bunch of different ways. Um, we have different experimentation frameworks that we apply. Sometimes it is geographic.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's the best experimentation framework that you have?
- CACameron Adams
Um, we don't u- do you mean, like, a technical framework or just the process of it?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah. Yeah, the process of it and how you roll it out in those countries.
- CACameron Adams
Uh, we always roll out features as a percent. So if something is going out, um, so we launched the Glow up recently, um, which is a total, um, re- revitalization of Canva's interface. We start by rolling that out to 1%, then 5%, 10%, 20%, 100%. Um, that lets you test load on servers, it lets you do quantitative and qualitative analysis of how people are receiving it. If there's any bugs, you can, you can quickly catch them. So that's like standard operating procedure to roll out to, to increasing cohorts. Depending upon the type of product feature that you're rolling out, you then might look at it, slicing it in different ways. Geography can be useful in some of those examples. So, um, in some of our geographies, we've rolled out, um, different payment methods and how people interact with those, you know, whether they prefer to opt for this credit card or a local provider or maybe they prefer to buy credits from the local newsagent instead of, like, using their prepaid credit card, like, rolling that out, we've done that in a geographic basis to see how that affects how people subscribe and how long they stay subscribed for. Um, so depending upon the feature, you can, like, slice and dice it
- 27:07 – 30:15
Change Management: Will Users Love or Hate It?
- CACameron Adams
different ways.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you have ardent fans and you make big changes like Glow up or like some of the big changes you've made, even if they're technically better, people always hate change.
- CACameron Adams
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Especially when they love the product that exists today.
- CACameron Adams
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you determine between a change that they will learn to love versus a change that is actually just worse? Which can be the case sometimes.
- CACameron Adams
Yeah, there's improvements that you can roll out and you can be fairly confident they're not gonna, you know, upset anyone. So like an improvement to image quality in Magic Media, you just roll that out, right? Something like the Glow up, we think a lot about change boarding. So how people perceive the change, how you present it to them and showing them the value of it. Um, we... For something like the Glow up, we definitely don't just roll it out wholesale without telling anyone about it or explaining what's going on because yeah, people wake up, they log into Canva expecting one thing and if it's totally different, they freak out. Particularly if they're, like, about to deliver a sales presentation and they log into Canva and all the buttons have moved, like that is a moment you don't want them to have. So we think a lot about how people migrated into the change, giving them-
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you migrate them well? Is that like newsletters beforehand? Like, you know, new Canva coming soons, previews, make them feel a part of it? How do you do that migration pathway well?
- CACameron Adams
We do a little bit of that for very, um, staunch advocates of Canva. So we have like, um, little beta pools and, and particular industry pools, like people who are super enthusiastic about Canva for teaching. Um, and we will message that out to that very closed audience, um, a bit earlier just so that they can get used to it, particularly 'cause they often need to talk about Canva to other people. Um, more generally, we try not to signpost ahead of time because it's just a lot of noise. Like, you get so much email, so much social spam, a message telling you about a change that's coming is just gonna fly over your head. So we try not to do that. We try to give people choice when they first come in. So with the Glow up, you know, we give them a screen saying, "Hey, here's the Glow up. Here's all the value for it. Here's how it's gonna change your design, um, experience." But we give them a skip button. Like if they don't want to take part in that change right in that moment, they can click that. And that's often really important because people li-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What percent of people click skip?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, not a huge amount.
- HSHarry Stebbings
But like 10%? 50%?
- CACameron Adams
Ah, not 10%. I would say, uh, less than 1%.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Whoa. Less than 1% click skip?
- CACameron Adams
Yeah. I think if you're explaining the change to them and you get them excited enough about it, then they want to enter that. We mainly put the skip button in for those critical moments where someone literally is, like, just about to present on a conference stage and they're like, "I do not have time to deal with this. Skip this just so I can, you know, deliver the presentation." So that's mainly why we put it in, and that change boarding, that communication of the value, of stepping people through the changes so they're comfortable with it.... like, that is a whole experience that we develop and think deeply about, and user test, before that even goes to a broader audience, um, and it's a massive part of rolling out any change.
- 30:15 – 32:31
Biggest Product Mistakes
- CACameron Adams
- HSHarry Stebbings
What has been the biggest product fuck-up that you've made, and what did you learn from that?
- CACameron Adams
(laughs) Uh, product fuck-up, I can't think of one recently. There was definitely one in our early days, which is, we were getting a lot of pressure from investors to be social. Like, Pinterest, Instagram had come out. People were like, "You need to be social." Like, "What's your viral coefficient?" "How are you, like, engaging people on platform?" It had been a little part of our vision, but it wasn't, like, a part we were passionate about. But we're like, "Okay, we need to introduce some social layer here." So we spent, like, a huge amount of time, at the time, so like nine months. We had a very small engineering team. We had, like, six engineers. We dedicated one whole engineer for nine months to build this whole social experience, um, and it just didn't do very well. Like, it wasn't part of our DNA. It wasn't something that we were super passionate about, that we wanted to put a lot of thought into, and it didn't really mesh with our product vision of, like, people creating stuff. We have a lot of people who create private content. Like, they never wanna share that stuff. They don't wanna talk about it. They don't want people to be thumbs-upping their, their kids' fifth birthday poster. So, like, it wasn't a natural part of Canva.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Or their Q1 board meeting.
- CACameron Adams
Exactly. (laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
"Well done! Good, good. Yeah, lost your head of sales and you're down 20%. A good job!"
- CACameron Adams
Fire!
- HSHarry Stebbings
Good job! (laughs) Um, heart emoji, bae.
- CACameron Adams
(laughs) So it just wasn't a natural fit, and we didn't invest enough mind, thought to it, so it was, it was never gonna be successful and-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What do you learn from that?
- CACameron Adams
We learnt to be a bit more, uh, a bit more gung-ho in just what we believed in and our instincts. And it's something that we've, we've-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you think you could have been more successful if you had invested more and dedicated more to it? Like, it sounds like you dipped a toe in, respectfully, and that's why it probably didn't work.
- CACameron Adams
I think it would've been a totally different product, or maybe a very separate product. Like, a totally different thing from, from what Canva is used for today. I don't think it would've made us any more successful.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm.
- CACameron Adams
I mean, um, you know, humbly, Canva's been, been a pretty good success. Um, so-
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- CACameron Adams
... I, I don't think it would've added anything.
- 32:31 – 34:42
Structuring Effective Remote Product Reviews
- CACameron Adams
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you, when you have a, a mishap like that, and then you also have amazing moments, like you said there with, you know, the text to, to image, um, you have to have product reviews. How do you structure and do product reviews? I'm, I'm really intrigued because they're all done remotely, no?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, mostly, yes. Uh, every now and then, the stars align and there'll be a team that can all get in the same room, but yeah, most of the time, they're done over Zoom or through-
- HSHarry Stebbings
How of-
- CACameron Adams
... a Canva doc.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... how, how often do you do product reviews?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, constantly. Um, we don't have any fixed, uh, cadence. So I know a lot of companies have a weekly product review, or they do it every two weeks, and they get everything together and have a big pitch session and, and a review session. We don't do that, uh, unless we're heading towards a very particular milestone. So for Create, we had, like, weeklies leading up to that, where we would review stuff.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Who's invited to those?
- CACameron Adams
It's a bit of a mix. Uh, Mel and I and our head of product, Rob, are often, you know, pretty much in all of them. Um, depending upon the team, what surface area it is. So if it's an AI part of the product, it'll involve more of our AI folks. If it's more on the-
- HSHarry Stebbings
How many AI folks do you have?
- CACameron Adams
We've got about 100 machine learning engineers, um, and then, you know, product, product and-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Have you ... Well, how-
- CACameron Adams
... product managers and designers get involved at all stages-
- HSHarry Stebbings
How long does it take for you to hire 100?
- CACameron Adams
... 'cause it's part of the experience. We started really early, so AI has really spiked in the last two years, but machine learning has been part of our product development process for six or seven years now.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Where are the majority of that 100?
- CACameron Adams
A lot are in Vienna, which is out of an acquisition that we did called Kaleido, and they're kind of world leaders in visual AI. Um, but we also have a ton over in Sydney as well. Um, and those machine learning engineers run the gamut from, you know, hugely data-in-, data-focused ones, who you'd never visibly see their impact on the product, but they do a ton of work behind the scenes, through to the folks that work on our photo editing, our remove background, text to image, uh, magic write, like stuff that's very visceral and obvious in the product.
- 34:42 – 36:39
Balancing Infrastructure & New Features in Resource Allocation
- CACameron Adams
- HSHarry Stebbings
You mentioned there kind of things that maybe aren't so obvious. I think one thing that's really challenging as a, you know, product leader, and leader more generally, is resource allocation. And you have that question of, you know, "I have a constrained amount of dollars, always," um, "and I can allocate that to infrastructure, which may be, may not be seen, but may be security, may be stabilization, whatever that is, or into a glossy new feature which could create more users and more revenue." How do you think about that balance between infrastructure, stabilization, not net new revenue but important, versus new features and new revenue?
- CACameron Adams
We're constantly looking at it. We don't have, like, a fixed percentage that we assign, like 15% goes to security, 25% goes to R&D. Um, so you're always, like, there'll always be priorities at any given moment. Five years ago, we invested a huge amount into the security team because that was really important to us, and, like, building strong foundations of trust with our users who are like, "Yes, this is a safe and trusted platform." Like, that was really important to us.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How has your R&D spend changed over time?
- CACameron Adams
R&D, it's, it's a huge part of our budget. I wouldn't be able to put a figure on it in terms of, like, exactly what percentage we spend on.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is it, um, so you don't, but is it like 25%? Like 10%? 50%?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, if you think of R&D as all product and technology development, it'd be well over 50%. So, like, half of our... So we've got 4,500 people at Canva now. Roughly about-... I think 1,700 of those are engineers, plus then our product and design orgs, with product managers, product designers. So well over, you know, 2,000 folks at Canva are focusing on just building the product. So if you consider that to be R&D, that's like a huge amount. Uh, if you think about like very, very future-looking R&D, I wouldn't be able to put a figure on it, but we're, we're constantly looking at new experiments, new product features, new innovations, because that's the future of Canva.
- 36:39 – 39:32
Lessons from Competing with Adobe in Product Marketing
- CACameron Adams
- HSHarry Stebbings
Final one for you before we do a quick fire, but you're always compared or like put in the same category as the 800-pound gorilla of Adobe. What have been some of your biggest lessons on competition in business and effective product marketing when always put in the same two company pool?
- CACameron Adams
People often, you know, talk about Adobe in terms of, of us, like investors will ask us that question, but we really consider ourselves to be in a totally different category, like literally. When we started, design was something that 1% of the world could do and we wanted to bring it to the other 99%. And we have created this new category of visual content creation, and really changed people's perceptions of what they need to do to reach their goals. Like you don't, you don't write out a strategy document anymore, you like create visuals around it, you inspire people, you create a literal vision of what you're trying to do.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you not think it's helpful in a company to have a common enemy?
- CACameron Adams
Not as your primary focus. Like if you're, if (laughs) if your-
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- CACameron Adams
... your, if your goal is all around, uh, you know, acerbically trying to bring someone down, that's not particularly inspiring. We always focus on what is our vision of the future? Where do we wanna be? How do we wanna empower people? Where can we possibly grow and like have a real impact on the world? Uh, thinking about it in kind of that-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you-
- CACameron Adams
... negative lens of taking something away from someone else.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you use competitors' products?
- CACameron Adams
Not really. We, we try to be customer zero for, for everything that Canva does. So whether that's-
- HSHarry Stebbings
I'm just always intrigued whether founders should intensely test alternative products in the same market.
- CACameron Adams
You give 'em ... Yeah, you give 'em a go, definitely.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CACameron Adams
Um, but obviously where you're, where you're building a product in an area like a, a presentation creator-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is there a com-
- CACameron Adams
... you need to use it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is there a competitor (laughs) ... Sorry, can you imagine that for a presentation?
- CACameron Adams
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Sorry, I used pitch for this one, sorry. Uh, can, can you tell me maybe one that you've been impressed by recently, though, where you're like, "Maybe we should learn from that one"?
- CACameron Adams
Recently, there's been a lot of activity in the marketing sector, so particularly in, in terms of using AI to improve the workflows that you have there.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- CACameron Adams
So marketing is kind of infamous for just having a ton of different tools that you have to go through. Like one thing measures performance, another thing helps you with your copy, this other thing helps you like with your ad spend. Like there's all these tools that you have to pay for. Um, and there's a few more tools coming through now that are looking at that whole workflow of like, okay, I want to create something that resonates with my audience, I can measure the performance, I can, uh, like assign more spend to this one that's particularly like performing well and like doing that with all, all within the same platform. So yeah, seeing a few coming through in that space.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Any specifically?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, I won't name names.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- CACameron Adams
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Listen, I've gotta learn from Piers Morgan in some ways.
- CACameron Adams
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
You know, it can't all
- 39:32 – 49:50
Quick-Fire Round
- HSHarry Stebbings
be nice. I'd love to do a quick fire with you. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?
- CACameron Adams
Go for it. Go for it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?
- CACameron Adams
It's a lesson that I constantly learn, but be a bit crazy. Um, always do something different. Um-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's the most recent example of you being a bit crazy?
- CACameron Adams
The most recent example is the rap video that we had at Canva Create. Um, Mel pitched it to us. I was like, "This could be really awful." But I was also like, you know, Mel has h- you know, had many great decisions over the years. So I'm like, "Okay, Mel, if you believe in this, let's go for it." So he started developing it and workshopping it, and it got to a really great place, and it told the story and the message that we're trying to get out th- through Canva Create about Canva Enterprise and all the SOC 2 and SKIM features that are involved in it, like really dry stuff, but delivered it in a really interesting way. And it has gone fantastically well. It's fueled a lot of conversation and debate about like whether it's cheesy or whether it's effective. But for us it's got tens of millions of views. It's got the message out there.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is all publicity good publicity?
- CACameron Adams
I think most publicity is good publicity. There's definitely some bad publicity. But when you think of something like a video that people are saying it's either good or it's bad, like I think that's net-net good. Um, so yeah, most of the time it's good.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's the biggest piece of BS advice that you hear most often?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, I think something along the lines of Lean Startup, like just get it out, throw it out there, get some signals back on like, is it working or not? And particularly with the focus on just being able to build a business that way. For us, building Canva is the passion of a lifetime, like it's something we deeply believe in. It's a problem that we experienced and that we wanted to improve, and that constantly drives us to make the product better, to make the company better, to make this a generational organization. And I think that that notion that you can kind of iterate towards a product or even a company or a business model, if you don't have a strong vision to start out with, your heart won't be in it, and it won't get you through those dark moments over the next 20 years of building a business, where it looks like there's no future and you need to, you know, win your first customer. Having that passion and that drive and that belief in what you're trying to create is hugely important for us as founders, and I just couldn't imagine doing it if it was just to like make a few bucks or do 5% more revenue this year.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You can swap roles with any other CPO today-... who would you swap roles with, just out of interest?
- CACameron Adams
Uh, I would love to swap roles, actually, with someone ... It's not like super scaled, but I would love to swap roles with someone either at Ableton or Serato.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm.
- CACameron Adams
'Cause I'm a massive music head. I love DJing, I love making music, and just being deep in that music production world would be amazing.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What most concerns you in the world today?
- CACameron Adams
What most concerns me is our relationship to nature and the planet. Um, so my wife and I have started an organization called Wedgetail and she gets to be in it full-time, I just get to do it a couple of hours a week. Um, but Wedgetail is focused on the nature crisis, which is kinda the next big thing coming after the climate crisis, uh, and it's probably gonna be even more seismic.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Sorry, what is the nature crisis versus the climate crisis?
- CACameron Adams
Climate crisis is obviously we're pumping out a bunch of emissions, which is-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yep.
- CACameron Adams
... changing the climate on the planet. Nature crisis is our relationship to everything else on the planet. Uh, so within the biosphere, you've got forests, you've got animals, you've got our water supply, you've got the air that we breathe. All of that is really coming to a brink of crisis, and you're seeing this ... Climate plays a role in it. Like, climate obviously changes where water flows and how rain falls-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm.
- CACameron Adams
... and desertification on, on continents. But the nature crisis, I think, is our deeper relationship to the environment in which we live in. There is a world where we solve the climate crisis through bunch of machines and we suck down all the carbon dioxide, but we've destroyed the forests, there's not enough land for us, water isn't getting to the right places. There's no more animals exist that we depend on, from bees and insects through to, you know, furry little critters that run around the forest and do all these jobs that we're not aware of.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask you, do you know Konstantin Kisin? He spoke at the Oxford, um ... Ah, it was some Oxford event about climate change in particular, and he essentially said that actually, uh, y- the UK has 1% impact on the climate. And actually, climate change, and by kind of impact of that kind of, the organisms around us, will be impacted by India, by China, by Russia. And actually, we have deprived them of economic growth for years and years and years, and there is, you know, millions of children dying in China alone. And Xi Jinping is not going to say, "Ah, our carbon emissions and the biosphere need saving," because all he cares about is being reelected, and economic growth is the only thing that China cares about. Do you worry that that is the case?
- CACameron Adams
People often talk about this like, particularly in Australia, where we have even, you know, less kind of economic impact than even the UK does. But the impact that we have in Australia through, like, exporting coal, um, broader impact we have through the resources that we have is huge. And I think that the decisions we make in, you know, much more developed countries, like where we live, um, actually have huge ripple effects, even despite the fact that, you know, the UK is 1% of carbon emissions. The decision that you make here in London ...
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you worry about that economic ripple effect there, which is like, okay, I move away from fast fashion, so I move away from Zara, from Shein-
- CACameron Adams
Mm-hmm.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... from any of these companies, and I move to actually much more sustainably produced, often more local providers. There are now thousands and millions of children who will die or move into poverty because of that transition away and the loss of their livelihoods in those countries?
- CACameron Adams
I don't think you can say just because, you know, Britain colonized a bunch of places 200 years ago-
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs)
- CACameron Adams
... and extracted a lot of value, like, we should encourage everyone else in the world to do that to get to the same level of development. We have learnt and evolved and changed and figured out better ways of doing things, and China and India should be embracing that change. Like, they should know that if they did exactly what we did in terrible ways, like, it's gonna make the planet even worse. Like, they have an opportunity to do things better in a more sustainable way, not just for the planet in terms of sustainability, but also sustainability for their society, for people to benefit from it, have a great relationship with the land that they live on, with the social structures in the cities that they're creating. They have an opportunity to do it better, and the more that we can help them do that, the better we're all gonna be off. So I think, yeah, you can't just, like, repeat the patterns of the past. We need to constantly be moving forward and creating more sustainable supply chains, making sure that everyone within that supply chain gets value from it, from the farmer, to the warehouse manager, to the middleman who sells it to, into a European, um, you know, chocolate maker.
Episode duration: 49:51
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode d91YsmQ6rC0
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome