The Canva business model is a SaaS that provides graphic design software for people who are not professional designers and don’t have an interest or cannot afford to hire one. The user has access to innumerable ready-made templates, fonts, and even free images, in a user-friendly interface, able to feed any kind of social media, and more. Keep reading to understand how this company which started from two in-love Australian youngsters back in 2012 became a graphic design software used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies.
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Despite the foundation, in 2012, Canva’s journey began five years before, when Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht were students at the University of Western Australia. At that time, Perkins used to give InDesign and Photoshop classes to students — and realized that people considered that software really tricky to learn and use, indeed. The students would append nearly half a year only learning what the available tools in the applications were, and Perkins thought there should be a way of doing the same kind of work with simpler tools. This way, together with her boyfriend, Obrecht, Perkins had the idea of developing a simple online tool to create school yearbooks.
They took a loan and built Fusion Books. Users would design the books, while the young couple would print and deliver them to schools across Australia. It was a success — and remains: It is currently the largest school yearbook publisher in the country, with expansion in New Zealand and France. But, as Canva can tell now, they have not stopped there. Some years later, in 2010, Perkins attended a conference in Perth and met Bill Tai, a legendary venture capitalist from Silicon Valley.
Tai was a passionate kitesurfer and Perkins realized that practicing the sport would be a way to keep in contact with the investor, and, thus, have a network. Her dedication paid off, and, in a short time, they won major investments and were able to create Canva with a great team of engineers. But, to go beyond that, they would need some tech person, and that came with Cameron Adams, one ex-Google.
A few months after that, in 2012, their first funding round was able to put the Canva website online. Nowadays, Canva has helped create around 2 billion designs in 190 countries. Its valuation reached USD 15 billion in 2021 and keeps counting.
Founded in 2013, Canva is still owned by its founders, with Melanie Perkins as the company’s CEO.
Canva’s mission statement is “To empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere“.
Canva is a freemium business model: It is free to use, with subscription plans that offer additional features, images, and templates. There are five revenue streams at Canva:
Canva Pro is a premium subscription plan, with prices starting at $6.50 per month, depending on how many users will use the subscription. The Pro features include:
Canva Enterprise is another subscription plan, aimed at large businesses, interested in managing their brand. The cost starts at $20.50 per person, monthly. The Enterprise features include:
Educations institutions have discounts on the Enterprise plan, and non-profit organizations can access it at no cost.
Canva has partnered with printers to print and deliver the material printed. Users can make their designs in the applications and receive the physical material at their address. Canva charges the service according to the type of product, order volume, and location for delivery.
Sometimes people do not see the necessity of subscribing but want to buy some premium design. In these cases, Canva charges a one-time fee for single usage. Users can find paid images and templates, ready to use. The content is developed by designers, who leave their work available on the platform. For every sale, Canva takes 35%. For content sold in the Pro plan, creators received 50% (cutting off taxes and processing fees).
Canva also has a Design School, by which the company offers online and in-person classes, about design, branding, and social media, hosted by Canva’s experts. Online classes are free and the presential ones start from $5.
The Canva Business Model can be explained in the following business model canvas:
Canva’s customer segments consist of:
Canva’s value propositions consist of:
Canva’s channels consist of:
Canva’s customer relationships consist of:
Mostly self-service, but the platform offers the marketplace, the Design School, a blog, and social media accounts.
Canva’s revenue streams consist of:
Canva’s revenue is based on the sale of user subscriptions and single-use licensing of content. Additionally, there are the Design School in-person classes and printed delivered material.
Canva’s key resources consist of:
Canva’s key activities consist of:
Canva’s key partners consist of:
Canva’s cost structure consists of:
Below, there is a detailed swot analysis of Canva:
After the acquisitions of Zeetings in 2018, Pixabay and Pexels in 2019, and Kaleido.ai and Smartmockups in 2021, Canva now seems to be on the rise and has relatively significant domination of the market.
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Great analysis. Thank you.
I am curious if you think the advent of AI is a threat for Canva