The Ledger
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Canva is currently worth only $12 billion in public market value
“I'd say it's probably worth twelve billion right now. 20% growth at four billion ARR in the current public markets and not decelerating. There's some sort of rule of 40 number that's better, but I'd say it's worth about twelve billion.”
Lemkin: SpaceX, Canva, Databricks, and Anthropic will IPO in 2026
“I think we see four IPOs backloaded next year. SpaceX goes out first. Canva comes out of nowhere second. Databricks does it in the back half of the year because it's just time. Anthropic does it at the end of the year. OpenAI probably should have gone first, b…”
Lemkin: Canva is an existential threat to Adobe Creative Cloud
“I think Canva is an existential threat to the whole creative cloud.”
Lemkin's team churned off Canva and Notion due to AI agents
“My, me having churned, and Amelia having churned, we churned just not because, this is a tough one, Canva and Notion, both we churned, not because they're not great apps, we just no longer had any need for them in the agentic area, just no need. Canva and Noti…”
Lemkin: AI agents will not use Canva, Jira, or Confluence
“I don't think any chance an agent is going to use Can that I don't think any, there's any chance an agent is going to use Jira or Confluence unless it's forced to, like it has no need for these products.”
O'Driscoll: Canva and Rippling won't fetch 30x revenue premiums
“Good SaaS companies that aren't AI first are going to trade at fair value, which means if you've created value, you'll get value. And I think Canva and Rippling have both created enormous value. So they'll get value, but what they won't get is that stupid, 30 …”
Obrecht: 90% of AI Queries Will Shift On-Device or Self-Hosted
“For the most premium queries where you need that answer, but 90% of it will be run on device or be self-hosted.”
Obrecht: Founders should stay overcapitalized rather than running ultra-lean
“This is a high risk maneuver and I don't recommend this to founders anymore. I say be a bit over capitalized, but we would run it kind of to the bones in order to take as little money as possible.”
Obrecht: Canva to hit $4B revenue at 40% growth rate
“We will close the year very close, if not at four billion growing, ah, close to 40% growth rate and re-accelerating growth.”
O'Driscoll: AI search threatens media sites, not product companies
“In fairness, the kind of, the SEO, I think you have to distinguish between people like Canva where they have a product to sell and they're totally happy to sell it via ChatGPT, and then media companies where the only product they have is their content, where i…”
Deeter: Economics for Anthropic, Perplexity, and Canva Pencil Out
“And I assure you, one of the coolest things about the profile of anthropic and perplexity and Canvan, these businesses is the math actually pencils out.”
Lemkin: Upcoming tech IPOs could trigger a double bubble
“We might get the next wave of IPOs that are even better very quickly, and the amount of froth that that could create in the ecosystem, the amount of just returns to LPs could create a bubble on top of a bubble, because times might just get much better in the n…”
O'Driscoll: Tech IPO wave will eliminate private market scarcity premiums
“If all those companies were to go public, as you say, if the canvas of this world, if the database wanted to go out, it's not clear to me that they'd get that three X pop. Instead, you might want to have is, okay, they'd probably trade at the very high, quite …”
Lemkin: Stripe, Figma, Chime, and Canva will IPO within 18 months
“Stripe, Figma Chime, the list of folks north of five hundred million, ok, Canva, three billion, that are gonna IPO in the next 18 months.”
Gomez: Software companies shouldn't fear AI margin compression as costs plunge
“For folks like Canva who are keeping the same price I mean, I think it's a good bet. They want to grow their user base. They want to expand their user set. Just give them the most useful product possible. At the moment, don't worry about margins because the co…”
Lemkin: Canva is directly destroying Adobe Creative Cloud
“Canva is directly destroying creative cloud, ok?”
Adams: Canva operates in a different category than Adobe
“We really consider ourselves to be in a totally different category. Like, literally. When we started, design was something that one percent of the world could do, and we wanted to bring it to the other 99%.”
Adams: Canva ignored early investor pressure to follow Lean Startup playbook
“The Lean Startup book actually launched in the year that we launched, it was like, 2012, and 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 k…”
Lemkin: Canva, Not Figma, Directly Threatens Adobe's Core Creative Revenue
“Well, it's what, I mean, Adobe, the majority of Adobe's revenue is still from designers designing assets in creative cloud. And that is exactly what Canva does. It's not prototyping products, which is what Figma is great at.”
Canva halted new feature releases for two years to fix tech debt
“So we had to down tools and ship no features for a full two years. It was supposed to be one year, but it took two years in the middle of Canva's growth journey, call it from year four to six, about year 10 now.”
Cliff Obrecht claims Canva has never made a bad company acquisition
“Not really. Not really. Not really. No, I'm saying no.”
Investors rejected Canva because it was outside Silicon Valley biking distance
“The amount of investors that rejected us because they said, I like to ride my bike to my startups, I'm like, fuck off.”
Canva co-founders pledged 99 percent of their equity to charity
“Mel and I, we own 31% of Canva, and we put 30%, so like 99% of what we own in, into a charity that we can't spend on our own stuff”
Democratizing expert software increases a company's total addressable market by 100x
“And by the way, it also increases your market by an order of a hundred extra more, right? You know, we're You know, Adobe's building Photoshop for probably hundreds of thousands of people who want to, who are skilled or want to make design their profession, an…”
Hiring elite engineering talent in Sydney is easier than in San Francisco
“So we've been very fortunate that it's a lot easier here, I think, to find incredible engineers than it is perhaps in San Francisco.”
Obrecht: Canva valuation dropped from $40B to $26B in 2022
“We in 20, 21 were worth forty billion dollars, which was a, I think it was a 50 X multiple on our revenue at the time. 20, 22, everything came crashing down. The market came crashing down and that took us down to 26.”
Cliff Obrecht: Enterprise AI Tool Subscriptions Will Consolidate Within 24 Months
“Over the course of the next 12 to 24 months, we'll start consolidating down as the clear winners take charge, and so to answer your question that way, hundred percent there's going to be consolidation down from yeah, year two renewals.”
Obrecht: Canva is ChatGPT's fifth most referred domain overall
“We're the number one productivity app on ChatGPT, and we're the fifth Highest domain that ChatGPT refers to.”
Obrecht: Canva at $42B Valuation Is Barely 10x Revenue
“Well, that's barely 10 X for us. We sound very cheap.”
Obrecht: Canva holds over $1B cash and 8 years profitability
“We've got over a billion dollars cash in the bank. We don't need to raise money, primary funds. We've been a profitable company for eight years.”
Obrecht: Canva is actively gearing up to be IPO-ready
“I mean, we're gearing up to be ready to IPO. We want to be an IPO ready company. We recently, you mentioned Zoom. We brought in Kelly, who led their IPO, and she's been a fantastic addition to the team. She was their CFO. So, so our goal is to be ready. When w…”
Obrecht: Canva Is Transitioning to a Unified AI Credit Model
“We're moving to a unified credit model around AI. So your premium subscription, free gets a certain amount, premium subscription gets you a certain amount. And then if you're a super active user, and so that means it can't eat into our margins too much. So you…”
Obrecht: Early investors who raised SPVs for late rounds saw highest returns
“And the best investors that have done best out of Canva, like they were early stage funds, but they realized, holy shit, we're onto something here. So they raised SPVs or additional vehicles to move further up the value chain, like going later and later stage …”
Obrecht: Canva has received acquisition offers but will remain independent
“I'm not doing it, but we love OpenAI. We love them, but there's just not, I mean, we're cutting our own course. We've had acquisition offers.”
Deeter: Canva and Intercom AI products generate hundreds of millions
“I look at a company like a Canva, or I look at a company like Intercom that's at a scale where in some ways they're already becoming an incumbent in those markets, and yet they're disrupting themselves at awesome rates and have AI products that are already, yo…”
Deeter: Bessemer invested over $100M each in Anthropic, Perplexity, and Canva
“You know, you look at an Anthropic or a Perplexity or a Canva and we, you know, we have, you know, nine figures into each of these companies and yet we are still, you know, well below historical venture standards where you aspire to own 20% or something in the…”
Lemkin: Corporate employee re-skilling programs do not work
“I think re-skilling doesn't work, and I think Canva's basically saying, shit or get off the can, guys.”
O'Driscoll: Canva delays IPO because it generates massive cash flow
“They are, they're kicking off cash, which means that they're net buyers of their security from boys, not sellers. So they don't need to raise money.”
Adams: Less than 1% of Canva users skip major UI updates
“Oh, not 10%. I would say less than one percent.”
Adams: Unseating a common enemy is an uninspiring company focus
“Not as your primary focus. Like if you're, if your goal is all around you know, a cervically trying to bring someone down, that's not particularly inspiring. We always focus on what is our vision of the future?”
Adams: Canva was first to scale generative images to 100M+ users
“We were first product to like truly scale generative images to over a hundred million people.”
Adams: Signposting upcoming product changes via email or social is useless noise
“More generally we try not to signposts 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 going to fly over your head.”
Lemkin: Canva is growing 40% on $2.3 billion in accelerating revenue
“And so Canva is selling to normal consumers and small businesses, and they're growing 40% at 2.3 billion in revenue, 2.3 billion revenue. It's essentially accelerating.”
Lemkin predicts Canva will go public at $3B revenue
“Canva's going to IPO at three billion in revenue.”
Basu Trivedi: The Farmer's Dog is my biggest investment hit, not Canva
“I actually think my biggest hit right now at least as I can best predict it is not Canva. Dollar gains, Perspective, and on an IRR basis as well, it's a company called The Farmer's Dog, which is in the pet food space, and it's a subscription service for fresh …”