Adams: Grassroots growth creates chaotic enterprise networks requiring centralized control
Cameron Adams · How Canva leveraged unconventional growth levers to grow to $42B | Cameron Adams (Co-founder & CPO) · Aug 20, 2025 · at 56:13
Cameron Adams, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, explains why product-led grassroots adoption alone does not automatically convert into enterprise contracts.
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“Building community is all about getting individual users to love it and talk about it to other people. And that kind of growth doesn't quite work in an enterprise setting because you end up with a very disorganized and chaotic network graph inside an organization. And pulling that together, finding this one decision maker who wants to champion it and make sure that they get on the one contract and that they admin their teams, they have all the templates and the brand in place. It's a very different play to what we were used to as grassroots adoption.”
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