Canva co-founders to give away their billions as valuation soars to $54bn

Sydney-based online design Canva began life as an online tool to create school yearbooks and is now the fastest growing company in the nation’s history.

Canva co-founders Cameron Adams, Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins.

Sydney-based online design Canva began life as an online tool to create school yearbooks and is now the fastest growing company in the nation’s history, with its valuation soaring to $US40bn ($54.6bn) – worth more than Telstra and Woolworths – following a $US200m funding round.

Canva’s investors say the company represents a “once in 100 years” success story for Australia, and two of its now-billionaire co-founders – married couple Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht – say they intend to give all of their wealth away.

The company’s latest funding round comes as it has amassed 60 million monthly active users across 190 countries, and now has more than 2000 employees after hiring more than 1000 in the last year alone, fuelled by demand for visual tools amid the pandemic.

“We’ve always had the rule of thumb that everything doubles every year including headcount, revenue and everything else, and that’s accelerated in the pandemic,” Canva co-founder Cameron Adams said in an interview. “Visual communication is just becoming more and more important and we’re riding that wave and investing in products and tools to help people communicate that way.”

Canva co-founders Cameron Adams, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht.

The mammoth funding round was led by T. Rowe Price and joined by and existing investors including Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis, and AirTree Ventures. Alongside the fresh capital, Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht also announced they will commit the vast majority of their equity, which is about 30 per cent of Canva, to charitable causes through the Canva Foundation.

The pair are worth an estimated combined $16.4bn.

“More now than ever people want to work for companies that are doing good in the world, and they want to know that their efforts and what they come to work every day to do is not just some sort of corporate benefit or making some particular person rich, it’s actually about giving back and having a net positive impact,” co-founder Cliff Obrecht said on Wednesday.

Mr Obrecht, who tied the knot with Ms Perkins in January 2021 on Rottnest Island, first revealed plans to The Australian in an interview that he hoped his wealth could be used to enact change. He and Ms Perkins are joining a growing list of tech billionaires using their cash towards progressive causes.

“I think with running such a large company with such a significant valuation now, it’s an obligation on us to use that to be a force for good and make the world a better place, rather than just hoard shit. There’s only so many beds you can sleep in on any one night, and only so many steak dinners you can have.”

“The billions upon billions of dollars is more than anyone needs in their entire lifetime by a longshot,” co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins added.

Canva, which has built an online Photoshop rival that can be used to create social media graphics, presentations, videos and more, has seen enterprise adoption quadruple over the last 12 months.

Blackbird Ventures founder Rick Baker.

Mr Adams said Canva’s success represents “a great story of following your passions.”

“I always wanted to build an amazing product and build a workplace that I was really proud to come to, and that had a positive impact on the world. And I think we‘ve achieved that,” he said. ”We’ve still got lots more to build … But I think it’s a real testament to what you can do in today’s economic environment that we’ve built that from Australia, and build it from the ground up, and being able to stay here in Australia as well.

“It’s a fantastic example for other Australian companies who might be thinking about going overseas, they can do it from here and they can grow an amazing vibrant really successful company.”

Rick Baker was one of Australia’s first Canva backers, through Blackbird Ventures, the venture capital outfit chaired by Atlasian co-founder and young tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Mr Baker told The Australian that Canva’s exceptional growth over the last two years has skyrocketed it into Australia’s corporate elite.

“We’ve been in love with Canva’s business for years now, but most people are just discovering that this is one of the very best businesses in the world. It’s valuation recognises that success,” he said.

“For years the start-up and venture capital model had only been proved in select parts of the world, places like Silicon Valley and Israel. Canva proves the model also works here in Australia.”

Canva CEO Melanie Perkins.

Hi-growth tech start-ups are forming in Australia at a faster rate than ever before, Mr Baker said.

“These companies are able to start here, raise capital here, build their teams here, and most importantly, there is now a vibrant start-up community they can join to give them the support they need. Seeing Canva today gives new founders the confidence that they can also do it.”

Atlassian co-CEO and co-founder Scott Farquhar said he couldn’t be more proud of what Canva has achieved.

Atlassian was once Australia‘s most valuable private tech start-up itself, and is now listed on the US NASDAQ and worth nearly $US100bn.

Alister Coleman, managing partner at Australian venture capital outfit Folklore, said the world is recognising that Australians can produce very valuable start-ups, disproving sceptics.

He said that over the last 20 years, Australians have created over $330bn of shareholder value from software start-ups like Canva.

Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar. Source: Atlassian

“Canva’s recent round of funding is the latest in a string of local successes that beg the question: How many Australian start-up successes need to be demonstrated before the acceptance of our ability as a nation to develop a valuable ecosystem can be taken as fact?,” he said.

“Make no mistake that the next $330bn-plus will be created from scratch much faster than we can imagine, with successful founders like Canva’s Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cam Adams encouraging the next generation of founders to think even bigger.”

The company is on track to reach $1bn in annualised revenues by the end of the year and is cashflow positive, but Mr Obrecht said Canva‘s co-founders are in no rush to list the company publicly.

“We don’t have any plans to IPO on the immediate horizon,” Mr Obrecht said. “There’s two key reasons or maybe three, why companies IPO. It’s to raise money, and it’s also for liquidity. We’re able to achieve both of those things in the private markets at the moment, that allows us to maniacally focus on problem business and that’s how we really deliver value to our shareholders, and what delivers value to the company.

“We want to focus all our time on the business and delivering as much value as we can to the community and because we can achieve those goals of availability of capital raising and liquidity. There’s no huge rush to go out and list.”

Originally published as Canva co-founders to give away their billions as valuation soars to $54bn