Canva

Canva is a simplified graphic-design tool website, founded in 2012 by Melanie Perkins.

It uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to photographs, vector images, graphics, and fonts, and is used by non-designers as well as professionals. The tools can be used for both web and print media design and graphics.

In its first year, Canva had more than 750,000 users. Social-media and technology expert Guy Kawasaki joined the company as chief evangelist in April 2014 and in 2015, Canva for Work was launched to give businesses a tool for producing marketing materials.

As of 2018, the company employs 200 people with offices in both Australia and San Francisco. In January 2018, Perkins announced that the company had raised $40 million from Sequoia Capital, Blackbird Ventures, and Felicis Ventures, and it was valued at $1 billion.1 Later that year, Canva announced it would be partnering with Dropbox to integrate its designs and images into the platform.2

In May 2019, Canva acquired Pexels and Pixabay, two German-based, very prominent and popular free stock photo sites, and the company raised another round of funding of $70m from General Catalyst and Bond, as well as from existing investors, Blackbird Ventures and Felicis Ventures, valuing Canva at $2.5 billion.3

References


  1. BBC: The 30-year-old woman who designed a $1bn business↩︎
  2. Smart Company: Aussie unicorn Canva is collaborating with Dropbox, and co-founder Cameron Adams says it’s “not a big deal”↩︎
  3. TechCrunch: Graphic Design Platform Canva Valued at 2.5b with New Funds↩︎
Last updated byAnonymous on March 10, 2020
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