Canva Pitch Deck

The deck and the round

Round

Seed

Raised in the round

$3M

Year

2013

Investors

Matrix Partners, InterWest Partners, 500 Startups, Lars Rasmussen

Slides

29

Category

Productivity & Collaboration

Headquarters

Surry Hills, Australia

Founded

2012

Team today

10,000+ employees

Total funding to date

$372.6M

Canva’s pitch deck, slide by slide

1. 1

   The next generation of publishing

   Cover

   The Canva wordmark and the positioning "The next generation of publishing": the pitch frames Canva as a publishing shift, not a design tool.

2. 2

   Publishing eras

   Why now

   A timeline of leaders changing with each technology: metal pages until the typewriter, typesetting until desktop computers in 1983, desktop publishing until HTML5 and tablets in 2012, and a question mark for what comes next.

3. 3

   Desktop publishing

   Problem

   A full-screen screenshot of Photoshop's blank canvas and crowded panels, with no words: the tool most people face when they want to design something.

4. 4

   Pros and everyone else

   Market

   A pyramid: a thin tip of professionals served by Adobe, and the much larger base of "everyone else" that desktop publishing leaves out.

5. 5

   Gap in the market

   Competition

   A two-axis map, creative freedom against budget: Adobe and hiring a designer sit at high cost and high freedom, Word, Tweak, Moo and Vista Print at low cost with restrictive templates. The circled gap is creative expression without much learning or expense.

6. 6

   Pro design process

   Problem

   Every step of a professional design job on one timeline: buy Adobe for $1,200, study design, buy stock photos, choose fonts, buy a layout, slice images, gather content by email, design, revise by PDF and work with a printer.

7. 7

   The industries along the way

   Market

   The same timeline with the market behind each step: the stock photo industry at $1.8B, design services at $24B, desktop publishing at $32.6B and print at $80B.

8. 8

   We believe

   Solution

   The timeline again with every step crossed out except design itself, under the line "Design, the way it should be. Online, collaborative and remarkably simple."

9. 9

   Solutions

   Solution

   Canva's answer to each crossed-out step: no degree needed, one-click access to pro tools, pre-sliced images, online collaboration, one-click export to HTML, PDF or a printer, and design that's simple even for the untrained.

10. 10

    We've done this before

    Traction

    Fusion Books, the founders' online yearbook company: used by over 10% of Australian high schools, licensed in France and New Zealand, and 4 years of R&D to be transferred to Canva for $0.

11. 11

    Pixel manipulation

    Problem

    Photoshop again, now holding a child's crayon-style drawing: what designing pixel by pixel produces for someone without training.

12. 12

    Object manipulation

    Product

    A prototype on an iPad: a landscape picked by search, then a dog and a cat with crowns and wings dragged onto it, in four steps (base, layout, photos, toppings).

13. 13

    Why Canva?

    Competition

    Desktop against cloud, row by row: desktop vs web, tablet and mobile; solitary vs collaborative; paying for software vs micropayments for content; pixels vs objects; months of training vs minutes; professionals vs consumers and professionals.

14. 14

    Market segment

    Market

    A pyramid of users from consumers at the base, through small businesses and contractors, to pros at the top, with Canva's arrow aiming to serve the whole of it.

15. 15

    Use cases

    Customers

    Three personas with a quote each: a college admin who finds collaborating on the weekly newsletter "a nightmare", a florist who wants more freedom than templates give, and a marketer tired of waiting for freelancers.

16. 16

    The first apps

    Product

    What Canva would make first, with examples: Facebook covers, flyers and events, Twitter backgrounds, website banners, newsletters and marketing materials.

17. 17

    The power

    Product

    The Canva design engine (online, tablet, simple tools, sliced stock photography, a layout library, collaboration, syndication, export) under a row of consumer design products, annotated with Vista Print's $870M revenue and Eventbrite's 458,000 events in 2011.

18. 18

    Syndication

    Go-to-market

    How one flyer spreads: created on Canva, shared with colleagues, pushed to Facebook, to artists' and printers' social media, to contributors' website widgets and to search, each step growing the people exposed to Canva.

19. 19

    Micropayments

    Business model

    The revenue model: users pay for stock photos, art, backgrounds and fonts on export or print, with 75% to Canva and 25% to the artist, and Canva takes 15% of printing, the printer 85%.

20. 20

    Canva team

    Team

    Melanie Perkins (founder and CEO, ran Fusion Books from 19), Cliff Obrecht (founder and COO), Cameron Adams (founder and CPO, ex Google Wave), a lead developer, a stock photo expert, and advisor-investors Lars Rasmussen (Google Maps, Facebook) and Dave Bagshaw (ex Shutterfly CEO).

21. 21

    Funding

    The ask

    The ask: $1.5 million in convertible debt at a 15% discount and an $8 million valuation cap, tied to four milestones before a Series A: build the platform, reach 1 million images and art pieces, launch on web and tablet, and get to 3 million users.

22. 22

    Closing cover

    Other

    The cover again, closing the main deck.

23. 23

    Why now?

    Why now

    The publishing-eras timeline completed: after desktop publishing comes cloud publishing, with Canva's name on the new era.

24. 24

    Appendices

    Other

    A divider: the last five slides are the appendix.

25. 25–28

    Target market, the fragmented market, communities and the problem

    Market

    The longer argument behind the main slides: people with an eye for design but no tools, the niche online design sites (Vistaprint, Balsamiq, Floorplanner and more), Canva as the place designers, photographers, printers and agencies meet, and the stock sites and Adobe programs a pro design needs today.

26. 29

    The grant

    Financials

    Commercialisation Australia's Early Stage Commercialisation grant: $50,000 to $2 million, matched by the company, with no repayment or equity taken, a source of non-dilutive funding next to the round.

The numbers in the deck

The ask · slide 21

$1.5M convertible debt

Valuation cap and discount · slide 21

$8M cap, 15% discount

User milestone before a Series A · slide 21

3 million users

Revenue share on content · slide 19

75% Canva, 25% artist

Canva's share of printing · slide 19

15%

Print industry · slide 7

$80B

Desktop publishing industry · slide 7

$32.6B

Fusion Books' reach · slide 10

Over 10% of Australian high schools

What stands out

1. 1

   One timeline carries the pitch. Slides 6 to 9 show the same ten-step professional design process three times: as it is, priced by industry, and crossed out except for design itself. The repetition does the explaining.

2. 2

   It argues with pictures, not text. A blank Photoshop canvas, a child's drawing in Photoshop and a prototype on an iPad make the case against pixel tools without a bullet point; Perkins has said the earlier versions were far more text-heavy.

3. 3

   The earlier company is the traction. Before launch, slide 10 offers Fusion Books, used by over 10% of Australian high schools, and 4 years of R&D handed to Canva for $0.

4. 4

   The ask is specific and tied to milestones. $1.5 million at an $8 million cap buys four named milestones before a Series A, from the platform to 3 million users; the round closed at $3 million, double the ask.

5. 5

   The appendix answers the questions in advance. Slides 24 to 29 hold the target market, the fragmented competition and even the government grant that could match the raise, kept out of the main story.

Sources

• TechCrunch: Canva raises $3 million to make design accessible to everyone (Mar 19, 2013)
• Delimiter: Pre-launch web startup Canva raises $3m (Mar 20, 2013)
• Melanie Perkins in SmartCompany: How Canva turned its first “pretty terrible” pitch deck into one that impressed investors (Jan 19, 2018)

Frequently asked questions