‘Shouldn’t hire Americans’: Aussie tech giant Canva roasted for cringe rap at its Create conference

Homegrown start-up success story Canva just threw a glitzy party in LA, complete with an awkward rap battle that must be seen to be believed.

Australian tech giant Canva is being roasted on social media for commissioning a cringe-worthy rap and breakdancing performance at its glitzy conference in the United States.

The design firm, co-founded in Sydney and worth about US$26 billion (AU$39.2 billion), hosted several thousand customers and staff in an auditorium in downtown Los Angeles for its annual Create event.

But the gathering on Friday resembled more of an evangelical church service than a presentation unveiling the site and app’s redesign alongside a host of new tools.

Canva’s Create conference included a rap battle that has social media cringing. Picture: dotnetschizo/Twitter

Canva’s goal is to appeal to big business with enterprise-focused tools, including the ability to batch update a company’s documents with new graphics instantly.

To drive home the company’s pivot, a troupe of beige jumpsuit-clad breakdancers suddenly burst onto the stage accompanied by a bespectacled rapper in a red cap who would be right at home at a late 90s Rock Eisteddfod.

After dropping some sick rhymes about Canva’s “glow up”, which he explained involved rebuilding “errthing from the floor up” to allow businesses to get “up in the zone”, a woman playing the role of ‘sceptical chief information officer’ yelled out from the audience.

“Hold up, sir!” she sang while rushing on stage.

She challenged the unnamed rapper, who we’ll call MC Awkward, with some lyrical shade about Canva’s security credentials.

“I’d like to have some certainty. Nice that you’ve got some pretty shiny things but can you meet the demands of a global machine?”

The spirited performance was met with cheers in the auditorium. Picture: dotnetschizo/Twitter

In response, MC Awkward upped the stakes by admirably rapping about automated licencing and compliancy, system integration, tailored APIs, and even privacy relating to training artificial intelligence models.

As the battle comes to an end, the several dancers strip off the top half of their onesies to reveal pastel-coloured T-shirts.

It ends with: “Now we are on the rise, cause Canva does it all and we feelin’ all right. Let’s go!”

Canva co-founders Cliff Obrecht, Melanie Perkins and Cameron Adams. Picture: Getty Images

The performance runs for two long minutes. A clip of the spectacle is now going viral online, prompting an avalanche of trolling.

“This is why Australian companies should stop hiring Americans,” one critic commented on X, formerly Twitter.

“Is it supposed to be so bad it goes viral?” another theorised.

And one quipped: “This is the precursor to the most toxic workplace experience ever.”

“Imagine spending your entire childhood waking up early, travelling, competing … all just to get into Juilliard to become a professional dancer, and then you end up being a backup dancer at the Canva corporate employee summit’s tech rap battle number,” one blistering burn read.

Another commenter quipped: “Canva gets it. Rap is so in right now.”

One noted that the entire thing had “the same energy [as] those groups that come to schools to rap about why ‘drugs are whack’” while another spoke of wanting to fire off a legal letter “for emotional trauma”.

MC Awkward spinning some sick rhymes. Picture: dotnetschizo/Twitter

There were some hints early on about the flavour of enthusiasm that was to come.

Jimmy Knowles, Canva’s global head of experiential – whatever that means – bound onto the stage in a pink velvet suit ‘styled’ with oversized boots.

Mr Knowles was reportedly the mastermind of the Create event.

Behind the scenes in more subdued settings, a crew from the New York Stock Exchange reportedly interviewed senior executives and key customers in a private suite next door.

The performance stretched on for two long minutes. Picture: dotnetschizo/Twitter

“But the story of Canva’s founding has been told many times before,” the Australian Financial Review, which sent a journalist to Create, reported.

“What’s new is that the NYSE wants to tell it, and to woo Canva from its rival, the Nasdaq, for a listing widely expected to happen in the next two years.”

Originally published as ‘Shouldn’t hire Americans’: Aussie tech giant Canva roasted for cringe rap at its Create conference