Forbes - USA (2019-12-31)

en app, called Adobe Spark, since 2016. While

Canva claims that its tools are used at 50,000

universities and 25,000 nonprofi ts, Adobe says

it’s given out 23 million free Spark accounts to

students and teachers. In December 2017, Ado-

be reunited with Scott Belsky, the entrepreneur

whose social media business Behance it acquired

in 2012, to instill a scrappier ethos in its product

teams. “They feel like they’re the underdog be-

cause they’re like, ‘We’re not the coolest startup,’ ”

says Belsky, chief product offi cer of Adobe’s Cre-

ative Cloud unit.

Then there are the typical startup growing

pains. Until two years ago, Canva’s tool for edit-

ing its core code was so clunky that only fi ve engi-

neers could work on it at a time. Much of the com-

pany’s focus last year was on a complete rewrite of

the front-end interface of its app. “We’re growing

so fast that things are breaking constantly,” Ob-

recht admits. And in May, Canva suff ered its big-

gest test of customer trust to date. Days after Can-

va announced that Meeker’s invest-

ment had valued the company at $2.5

billion, a hacker in Europe breached

its systems, downloading 139 million

user names and email addresses before

Canva could stop the attack.

Stuck in California, Perkins and

Obrecht called and texted with At-

lassian’s co-CEOs and cofounders

(and Canva investors), Mike Cannon-

Brookes and Scott Farquhar, reach-

ing Farquhar as the billionaire was

on a runway in Peru en route to Ma-

chu Picchu. At their urging, Canva

called the FBI and launched a for-

mal review; two weeks later, Can-

va announced two-factor authentica-

tion for all users. Though Perkins says

Canva’s users responded by rallying

behind the company, it was a warn-

ing: With better recognition comes a

bigger target on your back.

Those close to Perkins are confi dent

that she can handle the pressure. Guy

Kawasaki started his career as a hype-

man for Steve Jobs, traveling the world

to tout all things Apple in the 1980s.

The former Forbes columnist says he’s

happy to end his career doing the same

for Perkins, investing in Canva and

joining the company as “chief evange-

list” back in 2014. “More people can

use the democratization of design than

can use a Macintosh,” he says. “You

don’t have to be in Silicon Valley—you

don’t even need to be in America—to

be successful. Holy cow.”

DECEMBER 31, 20 19

company matched more of Adobe’s own features

by announcing a video-editing tool and an apps

suite; it’s still working on improvements to its free

alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint, which has

already been used to make 80 million presenta-

tions. But Canva’s long-term growth prospects de-

pend on whether corporations will progress from

small pockets of fans to accounts reaching thou-

sands of employees. After years of adding more

features to Canva’s suite, Perkins is betting on the

opposite approach for corporate America. By of-

fering limited sets of templates and options, Can-

va hopes execs will trust more employees to cre-

ate their own content. At Realty Austin, a midsize

Texas residential and commercial real-estate fi rm,

a marketing team of six used to create all printed

handouts and digital assets for its agents to pro-

mote events like open houses. Now, with Canva,

the company’s 550-plus agents create material for

their own listings, faster and on their own time.

Adobe isn’t sleeping while all this goes down.

It has off ered its own freemium, templates-driv-

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Darktrace

Valuation

$1.61B

Co-CEOs

Nicole Eagan,

Poppy Gustafsson

Cambridge, U.K.

Founded: 2013

Cybersecurity

Houzz

Valuation

$4B

CEO

Adi Tatarko

Palo Alto, California

Founded: 2009

Home design

site

ezCater

Valuation

$1.25B

CEO

Stefania Mallett

Boston

Founded: 2007

Online

catering

VIPKid

Valuation

$3.5B

CEO

Cindy Mi

Beijing

Founded: 2013

Online language

classes

Glossier

Valuation

$1.2B

CEO

Emily Weiss

New York City

Founded: 2012

Skincare and

beauty products

Canva

Valuation

$3.2B

CEO

Melanie Perkins

Sydney

Founded: 2012

Design

soft ware

Guild Education

Valuation

$1B

CEO

Rachel Romer

Carlson

Denver

Founded: 2015

Education benefi ts

23andMe

Valuation

$2.5B

CEO

Anne Wojcicki

Sunnyvale, California

Founded: 2006

DNA

testing

TECH’S NEW ROLE MODELS

CANVA CEO MELANIE PERKINS IS IN ELITE COMPANY, RUNNING ONE OF THE HIGHEST-

VALUED WOMAN-FOUNDED AND -LED STARTUPS, FROM CALIFORNIA TO CHINA.

See story, page 41