There is a somewhat pessimistic discourse, especially in Europe, that suggests there is nothing new to be done in the digital world for startups, that big tech companies have monopolized the market, and it is almost impossible to make a place for oneself outside of this oligopoly. However, an Australian company that started just 12 years ago as a website for easily designing yearbooks for universities and high schools has been determined to prove otherwise for over a decade.
Canva has grown significantly and rapidly from its humble beginnings and now gathers 230 million users monthly in front of their screens to create designs, as explained by their Europe Director, Duncan Clark, in an interview with Actualidad Económica.
The company's mission has always been to make "design accessible, intuitive, and simple," and thanks to this, Canva has managed to establish itself among the favorite tools for creative teams worldwide, displacing one of the immovable giants like Adobe and its well-known products (Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign).
Now, the group's goal is to take it a step further, setting its sights on none other than Google and Microsoft. The company has recently launched its own spreadsheets along with an assistant that allows for developing new creations including natural language code. "We are growing significantly in data visualization after acquiring Flourish. Spreadsheets allow us to tell stories in reports, presentations, or marketing materials in a different way. We then created a new layer of Canva with code to create interactive and customized content," explains Clark.
The tech company's strategy is not so much about creating an 'Excel' and entering the world of accounting and finance but positioning itself as a unique platform for organizing teamwork, a market where new players are increasingly emerging to disrupt the dominance of big tech companies. "Our idea remains to bring the best design to every device and beyond to combine productivity with creativity." Currently, their design proposal has already captivated 780,000 teams worldwide and 95% of Fortune 500 companies.
"We are moving from the old era of files to the era of projects."
Now, the strategy, according to Clark, is not only for these companies to create their marketing products and edit them with Canva's tools but to turn the platform into the center of all their work. Their ambition goes as far as aiming to eliminate one of those necessary but headache-inducing elements for every worker with a computer in hand: files. "We have unified everything into a single view. From the possibility of making a presentation to a text document. Now you have to have different tools and file formats. We are changing this to move towards an era where everything can be in the same format. An entire marketing campaign can be there with your financial data. We believe it will definitively change the future of work," points out the tech executive, summarizing the company's mission in one sentence: "We are moving from the old era of files to the era of projects."
Artificial intelligence has played a fundamental role in all these plans. Canva was one of the first platforms to integrate this technology into its editing and image creation solutions. "Customers ask us for AI, but combined with easy, secure, and collaborative use," explains the executive, acknowledging that the excitement generated by the use of this technology has allowed the company to maintain its user growth. "We see it as an exciting amplifier of what we have already done," he emphasizes.
Clark recalls that Canva acquired Kaleido in 2021, a company specialized in visual representations with AI "before large language models existed," and since then has taken steps towards offering an integrated and frictionless experience.
Among the possibilities enabled by AI is the ability to create interactive stories with just one click or generate automatic analysis in the new spreadsheets, a function that should be further perfected with the acquisition.
The latest development (after the interview took place) has been the ability to introduce AI-powered video creation within Canva, thanks to Google's technology, allowing users to generate videos up to eight seconds with the new Veo3. In total, Canva users have utilized AI-powered products a total of 16 billion times.
Despite this, the group continues to increase its revenue and remains profitable, according to Clark, who points out that the company currently has annual recurring revenues of around $3 billion (¤2.585 billion at the current exchange rate).
The company is also in full international expansion with Europe as a key market, where it has grown through acquisitions such as Affinity in 2024, Flourish in 2022, or previously in 2019 when it acquired the Spanish company Slides Carnival, allowing the group to double its staff in the region in just two years. "We have 450 people across the continent," notes the tech firm's executive, who also purchased the image generator Leonardo last year to further bolster its position in the world of artificial intelligence.
In the group's European strategy, Spain plays a fundamental role, as it is one of the countries with the most intensive use of Canva. In fact, one out of every six Spanish internet users accesses the design application each month. "We also have 250 million designs created in Spain," adds the tech company's Europe Director.
By comparison, the ratio in France is one out of every eight internet users, and the gap with Spain is even greater in Germany, where Canva is rapidly growing, as well as in the UK, the company's European headquarters. Among its main clients in the UK, Clark highlights Tecnocasa, which uses Canva to ensure that its corporate image remains consistent among its over 4,000 agents.
On the company's horizon is a potential listing on the Nasdaq, a path that has been mentioned several times by management but has not yet been resolved and does not seem to be in the tech company's immediate plans. "It's on the horizon, at some point, but our focus remains on creating great products. We are a company whose core is the product and the community, and our priority is to keep it that way," diplomatically responds the executive.
However, he downplays the impact of global uncertainty or a possible increasing rejection of US tech companies worldwide due to Donald Trump's policies. "We see that we continue to grow continuously and reasonably, unaffected by the effects of other global trends and despite economic fluctuations, crises, or different political moments," assures the executive.
In this regard, a significant factor that Clark emphasizes is that the company continues to bet on maintaining a very powerful free service and various affordable tiers, especially for students and educational institutions. "We are a very affordable product," states the executive, with the belief that this will allow companies or users to do without other tools before theirs in case investment recedes.