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That is human centered. I run at El Caluby and on my podcast pioneers of AI We answered that question and so many more as an AI scientist entrepreneur and investor I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in The conversations I'm having here go something like this hey CXO Do you know much about Canva and they're like yeah? I know a little bit like my daughter uses it etc etc And we're like do you know you have six thousand active users with created over five hundred thousand designs this year alone and then they go What they do what and is that all around who's controlling that? There's actually brand officer not about this etc etc And the answer is like no no no they're all going rogue and then it's like holy shit I'm gonna do something about this.
That's Cliff Obric co-founder and chief operating officer of Canva as a fast-growing design platform valued at more than $35 billion Canva is at the heart of a cultural and business battle about AI and the democratization of creativity Talking with Cliff at the Canlines advertising festival He explains how he treads the line between support for individual creators and what amazing new tech makes possible We also talk about how he and his wife who is his co-founder and canvas CEO Meli Perkins how they navigate their personal and professional lives Plus why they're giving away a hundred million dollars of their own money in Malawi Cliff is a leader in his own mold So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian and this is rapid response I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Cliff Obric the co-founder and chief operating officer for Canva. Cliff great to have you here Thank you Bob.
I'm excited to be here Yeah, we are here in in can France at the at the Canlines advertising festival You know I noticed that you once said that marketing was a weak part at camp One of your weakest parts. Okay. Is that why you're here to sort of to get better or is it a reflection that like you figured out the marketing side of it? I think it's a well what it is It's a by-product of where product first company and I feel that good marketing can't out compete a bad product before Canva There were only professional design tools and on the other hand you had like Microsoft PowerPoint and paint So if you had an idea for something creative You want to create it add if you want to create any type of beautiful presentation any type of marketing material for print or web You had very limited choice We've canva we bridge that gap and we allowed people to essentially get an idea and turn it into a design a beautiful design people loved our product and people told others about that product and we grew really really fast and when you're growing really really fast and you know 95% of your top of funnel is organic you don't really have to work too hard on sales and marketing and it was only about four years ago We're like all right.
We're kind of big enough now But we should really like double down in this marketing thing spend a percentage of our overall revenue and also like figure out this whole sales thing So we've gone on a journey in the last four years. That's been an exciting one. It's really culminated at camp. I know we are having beach here and It's really nice.
It's really very nicely designed as one would expect that one would expect it's interesting is you're saying because you know Silicon Valley I know you guys weren't born out of Silicon Valley But the tech companies they are like even though they've made a lot of money off of marketing and advertising They themselves haven't always been that forward about the way they promote their own brands You know was that a model that you were looking at or not necessarily? Well, I think probably a lot of the tech companies they solved a real problem So they had the the same kind of high-class problem that we had where Business is one to advertise on the Google platform the meta platform and they kind of like scaled naturally and then then they started investing Global marketing so I think everyone now sees its importance Yeah, you one of the other things I saw that you said that campus philosophy is sort of start niche And go why and and and many successful startups have sort of tried to follow that route You're now a lot bigger, right? These numbers right 230 million users probably been bigger numbers than that right now 95% of the fortune 500 You're doing 3 billion plus in annual revenue at this scale Is there more pressure to sort of have everything be why to reach a lot more people is it harder to start niche? I think it actually is that harder to start niche Especially when you have great companies doing so many things and the benefit of a suite or sweeter tools where you have a common interface or You have a common login you share data has a lot of advantages to it And so I think having scale being able to do a lot of things sharing data across an entire platform is very beneficial But also companies that do one thing incredibly well There's always gonna be a space for those companies and when you're looking at sort of new additions to make to the Campbell platform Are you looking again for like niches to build off of or is it like oh no?
We got that's not worth it, you know because it doesn't reach enough people Well like yesterday We acquired a marketing analytics company that essentially Understands what a good ad looks like and the data behind those ads and then can help us and our customers create better ads And I think like we're for example moving and evolving the business from not just like creating beautiful content But having a good understanding of beautiful content that performs and helping our customers create beautiful content that performs and helps them achieve their goals And so we do pick off niches But we also do pick off underlying themes that elevate our whole suite I mean you're here can to elevate the Canva brand, but you also have a lot of customers in the advertising and marketing business, right? That's right. What is your goal when you're at an event like this? We're in as you mentioned 95% of the fortune 500 and so the conversations I'm having here go something like this Hey CXO Do you know much about Canva and they're like yeah?
No, little bit like my daughter uses a etc. And we're like, do you know you have six thousand active users who have created over 500,000 designs this year alone and then they go Hey, what they do what and is that all on brand who's controlling that? There's actually brand office and all about this etc. Etc.
And the answer is like no no no They're all going rogue and then it's like holy shit We're gonna do something about this and so that conversation then started turning into how we can actually be more efficient and get control over Brand and create better content. That's on brand. Let's go. So so your entree into a lot of these big things was like There's a phrase BYOT you bring your own tech to work.
That's what it was. Yeah, I mean people say that about AI now too That you're bringing your own AI to work and I wanted to ask you about AI everybody here is talking about everybody everywhere is talking about it There's a there's this I want to say conflict, but there are creatives who are like I want to create my stuff Thank you very much The algorithm cannot do what I do right and then there folks can be among them It's like no technology can democratize access to creativity and some of the more pure creators might push back on it How do you think about that that issue? I've got a couple of strong thoughts and I've got yes some some evolved thinking on that as well So I can't but when we launched a lot of designers said can't we hurt you you're ruling out industry? You're like letting everyone design and then we kind of said back why why is a designer?
Why is that professional that that sort of skill set defined by being able to use a set of really really difficult tools and so Over time it didn't take long within four years designers didn't feel threatened by camera They saw it as actually a way to do the high value work And then essentially democratize their work throughout the rest of the organization So they weren't stuck 80% of their time doing spell changes or like changing the name on a business card or creating yet another social media post They can do the high value brand campaign stuff. We really see AI is just another step in that evolution I mean it's here and it's here to say what I really believe that was that the creatives that the models have been trained on really need to Compensate in that model is still being figured out like we have our creators program at Canva where we pay out Well over a hundred billion a year in in revenue to our template creators and that's evolving into sort of how we pay the creators that we train our models on I think the industry at large is still figuring that out though And I don't think the creatives have got the full value of the the corpus of work that these models have been trained on But I do think creatives they need to embrace this new technology like not embracing AI as a creative is is all like you can see Where it's coming. Yeah, it seems funny. Yeah, you have to I mean I was talking with someone from from Google yesterday about their vio 3 tool if you are integrated into Canada like today's I mean it's amazing though credit can do now It does make it feel like oh anybody can be an author which of course is what we want It maybe it opens the things up but it could also, you know have people have people push back against it.
Well, I think it's like With AI there's gonna be a huge proliferation of content and I think To cut through that noise you're gonna have to create something unique and different And I think that's what creative's been to the table That's what designers been to the table that ability to stand above the pack if everyone can create this then a good creative can create something Elevated and I think it's gonna lift the baseline Absolutely, but I think the best creative is gonna be elevated beyond that and celebrate it even more I as we're talking reminded I had a conversation This is several years back with Ben Affleck I was asking him, you know Listen so many people are watching the movies that you make on their phones Do you start to think about like creating them differently as because so many people are looking on a smaller screen and he was almost insulted At the idea, you know that like no no it's gotta be for the big screen It's gotta be for the big screen But but now I wonder whether like you could you know like AI can do some of those things that make the big screen distinctive Without having to have the same sort of budgets right around it It's gonna be incredible and like we're about to start running competitions for student creatives Like what can you create as a 10 year old or a 15 year old and like create a your five minute masterpiece I think it's gonna really evolve to have a daughter So how can we create her a beautiful custom story that features her doing all the things she loves like it's gonna It's gonna be creative and movie quality what's currently really quality creative down to the individual Yeah, which is really just gonna see so much more creative and and I think it's a great thing because I think also like like I'm dyslexic So I can read but like I don't read like well I read fast but like I blur things up So I hate being a wrote learner when it comes to like reading text I'm a very visual learner and I learned that does like wants to learn by doing I think what AI is doing is really it's allowing particularly when it comes to education Befecating the way people learn and giving them the method that they they resonate with most and so for example You can create a document in Canva, but you can say create this as a presentation or you can say create this as a movie Or create this as a podcast and then people can learn and people can consume the way they want to consume Yeah, I sometimes I think to we we pigeonhole people you're either a creative or you're not and people like oh I'm not creative, but we all are creative if we are given the tools that work for us, right? That's such a good comment because when we launched Canva the the comment we would hear time and time again is I don't have a creative By only my body. That's because the tools were so difficult to use That's why we worked so hard and so long on the product because it couldn't be daunting It had to be simple and we had to make it a game So at first onboarding we had a monkey in the canvas and the first command in onboarding was put a hat on the monkey So you had to search for a hat and put it on the monkey and then you had to like add some text and all of a sudden You just done something that you never thought you'd be able to do you had fun doing it And that just unlocks a whole new mental paradigm and I think yeah I was gonna do either at on steroids. Yeah, but it needs that interface to be able to do it And that's why like Canva code for example like people people are scared by the even these AI coding tools that make creating a website So easy people find the canvas interface very approachable So like we launched Canva code because it's really hitting that sort of not the first movers But the masses that are already using Canva and we can take them on that journey and unlock a whole new level of sort of opportunity for them As Cliff talks about Canva code the company's generative AI platform It illustrates how quickly AI is penetrating design and creativity But who actually owns all this stuff that AI tools are creating?
We'll talk about that and more after the break stay with us The very best founders I know are brilliance at building systems They connect teams they remove bottlenecks and they eliminate single points of failure and yet when it comes to their own wealth Most are running a disconnected stack a tax accountant here and a state attorney there a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them Creative planning was built to fix exactly that one integrated team of tax professionals state planners investment specialists all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together proactive tax efficiency state strategy investments all under one roof creative planning where wealth works together learn more at creative planning comm slash masters of scale Hey listeners Bob here if you listen to rapid response on masters of scale You may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the rapid response feed The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator To the lessons from the devil wears Prada it takes about 10 seconds to find just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode I hope to see you there before the break canvas cliff Oh, right explained how canvas infiltrated the biggest corporations by appealing to individual users now We dig into who owns what AI creates plus how cliff and his wife canvas CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins balance their business and personal lives What they're doing with their newly earned billions and why being blunt is ultimately good business strategy? Let's get back to it When we're talking about AI, there's a question that I sometimes wonder about which is if someone uses AI to create something Who owns it? Like you know, that's when you show your dollar question like is it me? Is it the AI is the first degree of the source material?
Do you have a philosophy about that a position? I think our terms and conditions say if you created in Canada and are assisted by AI you went and that's the way you feel like it should be For everyone I think we've probably followed a lot of industry best practices there's a lot of people that were kind of cutting down the jungle forging Forward before us and we've kind of largely gone with industry best practices. I think that's probably the right approach And you're not you're not necessarily like a Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk saying there shouldn't be intellectual property or protections at all No, I definitely believe in intellectual property protection if you've created a character you own your rights to that character if you've created a Piece of work you own the right to that work and if people are training on that work for example, then you should be compensated Yeah, I very much believe in value for value. Yeah, I would say that for those of us who are in the news business There are certainly a lot of anxiety about how you know Content is being used to train models and our business is going away and well those models be able to continue to persist when they don't have the raw material I think regulation is often slow to catch up with technology and I think You've seen like like music for example evolving again with AI but historically Like there was a period of time where there was an app star and like all the musicians were up in arms thinking they're getting absolutely disrupted but that sort of figured itself out to evolve into Spotify and Apple music and whoever else is doing this and I don't know if that's actually more beneficial for musicians But at least there's a compensation side that seems to fairly attribute people listening to that music to the artists creating that music And the money of the from the people listening to the artist doing the creation and that feels like we'll get to that model eventually Like I think it's happening in fits and starts.
It's just messy right now. It's messy right now. I mean five years time I think well, does anyone want a world with no original content being created from humans? I don't think so like does anyone want a newsroom that can't survive No, like this ecosystem needs to exist And I think the economics will figure itself out, but it's always a rough time when you're figuring out any technology It's true.
It's true and it does make people anxious Well, I mean the candle makers when a lot of people came about were worried for a while, but yeah But then they start switching on their lights and they realized it wasn't so bad Yeah, and they went and did something else You co-founded Canva with your wife with Melanie Perkins who is now the CEO It's not not usual for a couple to be at the top of a big corporate organization like Canva I did an article several years back with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan about how they operated the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative together And how they would schedule meetings, but also try to sort of schedule when they were and weren't talking about work Like how do you and Mel sort of balance being co-workers colleagues me technically you work for her, right? And also being you know, my partners Yeah, I mean, it's definitely something that's constantly evolving and we're figuring out but like at the end of the day And I don't know if I'm speaking to all the married men out there like you got to know his boss like you And there's fights you can find and then there's things you just got to concede on for like the goodness of everything And then she is ultimately the boss and so on things like product she gets the final say and you just got to understand But we never actually never really pulls rank on me so to speak Except for our home when it comes to parenting I get ranked board on me all the time But yeah, we figured out and like on weekends. We've been doing this long enough now We had talking about going nation and going what we just school yearbook company essentially it's Canva for school yearbooks before we had Canva So we've been in business together for probably 18 years and we've been in a relationship for 20 years We have to say on weekends like come on we're gonna take a minute off like you can't sprint a marathon And there's some walks we go on over like this is a no-work work talk like we just need a minute to talk about it Sometimes like one of you will bring something up and the other will be like not now all it's not Yeah, it's like we don't like Both of you guys You don't realize it can even be a very positive thing because like running a business you constantly solve problems And so you can be on a like we go on lots of walks and and and we give a hey There's a no work talk about some of them will bring up something that's really good Yeah, that's good. We're talking about that because that meant really well It always quickly devolves into like oh there's a problem in your area like are you gonna fix this or don't know And it can blow up a good walk.
So like even a good thing. We're like, yes, let's leave that for later But sometimes too, you're you're just having I mean I know this for me I could be my kid's soccer game and I'm cheering and I'm into it and then sometimes something will strike me And like do you then say like hey, I just had this idea or you have to be like oh no no I better not bring it No, but it's pretty useless. I like it's something burning. We're both pretty bad at holding our team So and we often do like purely work walks as well I'm curious on whether it's on those walks or otherwise one of the challenges for business leaders right now is deciding Which sort of societal issues to uh, you know speak out on or not there's a lot of wearing this is every precautions for things the marketplaces become divisive about it.
Do how much do you and they'll talk about that? How do you think about that? I mean we're a bit insulated from crazy u.s politics and how sort of partisan and how everyone's just screaming at each other all the time And when it comes to like society issues our our philosophies haven't changed and they're not influenced by the latest Cummings and colonies of politics like we've always had a two-step plan to create one of the most valuable companies in the world and do the most Good we can do and we've pledged to give away pretty much all of our money And we already are in the process of doing that at a smaller scale for a give directly and and I think we're just announcing a hundred million over the next Three years to go to communities in Malawi Cash transfers, right? We really big believers in giving sort of the poorest people in the world choices and what they want to do So we're big believes in cash and education.
Um, and so just like a startup studying nation going wide That's kind of um, yeah our approach to that. I mean, uh, not everyone who has been as successful as you guys have Are willing to embrace giving that much of a way. I mean a lot of people feel like that gives them power, you know They can impact elections impact other things You think they're not necessarily doing what's best for the world when they do that I think everyone makes their own personal choices around what they think's best for the world and I don't think like the way we view the world is Is maybe what's best like so i'm not saying i'm right. I'm just saying it's like what's right for us What's right for our family and it feels good like I actually think giving like buying more shit Does not make me feel good like giving away money selfishly that makes me and you know that about it Yeah, so it's like so I could be selfish like i'm acting in my own self interest because that's what I find value in People might find value in other things and that's totally cool.
I don't charge them on it I didn't grow up with much money. I didn't grow up super poor mum as a teacher dad was like a well-dah They worked for the government males mum was a teacher like we we didn't grow up with money And we don't think that like money gives you more happiness like I mean those super yachts out there look pretty damn cool I'd rather just raise normal kids And I don't like to make my kid rich and like not appreciate things and I've never want to rob the right from my daughter to earn Her own way in life like so she needs to like buy her own house She needs to like you help out in little ways like maybe make sure she gets a safer card She'll be extra in like you don't rob kids of their right to feel that self-worth because I don't know if you know many rich people that have been given everything Like they're kind of like I don't know they're not generally the types of people I'm hanging out with If I'm remembering this right last fall you raised prices a lot and it's kind of a blowback That was like walking away. You're kind of like yeah, so it wasn't it was like we had grandfathered some customers at like three dollars And so for most people we didn't increase prices that much but there was like it was an oversight Like we should always respect the customer So we never want to put camver in our revenue in our quarters or whatever ahead of that customer relationship Because if you do the right thing long term by a customer They will they will advocate for you But you raised prices to a certain level and there were folks who had been much more and so for them For a small cohort of our longest like our oldest users So you're like you can argue love us the most because they'll grandfather that this cheap price It went 300 up or something like that And then we like we didn't really think about that cohort we just thought about hey, this is a new price We're gonna move everyone to the new price those people obviously angry and we said and you're fair enough We're gonna keep you at that price. Thank you for supporting us.
And that was not a tough decision Not a tough decision at all. You have this this reputation for being very transparent a kind of no BS style Is that the way you always were do you feel like that? That helps you as a leader in the organization or and sometimes when is it like a hindrance? I never had a professional job like I used to work on like instruction sites while I was at university And then I was a school teacher as well following my mum's footsteps And I guess when we first started business I tried to be like more professional And then I just realized like being yourself is actually like I don't know it works for me I think people don't hate me And so I like and and so I think it just like being transparent You can get stuff done faster It doesn't work with low performance like working with low performance You're not doing a very good job like my expectations are here and you're down here You need to bridge that or like your all this place probably isn't right for you If it's not working it's not working and like when it comes to managing people or even making a deal or anything It's like what are your goals?
What are my goals? Let's find a mutual like something that's mutually beneficial together because when you can find that that's where the magic happens And if one person's trying to push an agenda that's that that's not good for the other person That's a bad deal for everyone and it always ends in disaster because I mean people are smart So why are you doing this today? Doing this interview? Yeah Oh, PR team asked me to do it I'm not big on doing on podcast and like building a personal brand actually So I actually generally refuse to do all this stuff and I love your podcast.
I really do And you've done a great job And yet provide really valuable information. Hopefully I said one thing that's something to take No, no, this is this has been fun. So what's it what's at stake right now for you at end-camera? I think right now is a time where if you're not disrupting yourself You're getting disrupted and so we're aggressively disrupting ourselves like how we are all parts of the company leveraging AI from our products to our teams To our leadership to our hiring We need to be an AI company like that's what we need to be in order to succeed in this new world And to drive that change you kind of need like you've got peace time leaders and wartime leaders And this is a time where you need what time leaders that can get shit done come up with good ideas Build good teams and execute very very fast against them It's not a time to have a six-month roadmap and incrementally kind of chip away It's time to like it's a let's go time and you need the let's go team in order to sort of like compete in this month So are you looking at the teams the leaders that you have at Canva through a different lens than because of this?
I'm definitely holding them to a higher standard Yeah, because like in the in the happy growth times It was like hey, we could just go on holiday and the numbers and keep growing the numbers will still keep growing if we do nothing for a while But then it will stop dropping So it's like how do we get that next like hit a lick on that next stage growth? That's gonna come from AI it's gonna come from disruption and it's gonna only come from being the very best product to solve companies and individuals Visual communication days. Well, thank you. Thank you again for doing so much The phrase that's six of my head from cliff if you're not disrupting yourself then you're getting disrupted That's arguably always been the case the basis for clay christians and seminal both the innovators dilemma yet in an AI world The stakes feel higher and more urgent as much as can but is racing forward as a business It's also straddling the transition that we as humans are facing helping us all be more creative while raising questions about what actually defines creativity Perhaps it helps the cliff and his wife canvas ceo aren't personally motivated by building generational wealth Maybe that allows them to take a beat every now and then to examine if what's best for growing the business is necessarily best for the world Then again, they have thousands of employees.
They have investors. They're part of the global marketplace We'll see how those pressures manifest themselves over time. I'm Bob saffian. Thanks for listening Rapid response is a weight what original i'm bob saffian our executive producer is eve tro Our producer is alex morris associate producer is moshimaku tonina Mixing and mastering by aran bastanelli and brian pew our theme music is by ryan holliday Our head of podcast is leetal melod for more visit rapid response show.com