Business

You can now watch the Australian founder docos on Canva’s Mel Perkins, SafetyCulture’s Luke Anear, Finder’s Fred Schebesta & Brighte’s Katherine McConnell for free

- April 15, 2025 2 MIN READ

Back in 2023, SafetyCulture founder Luke Anear had a vision – a four-part documentary series with profiling the founders of some of Australia’s most successful tech companies, including himself.   It was an insight into the highs and lows and drama of local startup life, which was released as a pay-per-view on Apple TV, Prime… Read more »

Business

Making spreadsheets sexy again: Canva zeroes in on productivity tools for latest product roll out

- April 11, 2025 2 MIN READ

Canva is getting into the spreadsheet business as the software giant looks to move beyond pretty graphics to workplace productivity tools and take on enterprise software giants like Google. The 13-year-old design platform’s annual product song and dance show, the fourth Canva Create – this year themed as “Uncharted” – also revealed that annual revenue… Read more »

Canva cofounders Cameron Adams, Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins.
AI/Machine Learning

Generating your AI grave? Canva sheds 10 technical writing staff after directing them to use artificial intelligence

- April 3, 2025 2 MIN READ

Most of Canva’s technical writing team has been laid off as the company continues to expand its use of artificial intelligence, but the graphic design giant does not see the redundancies as a result of its increasing AI use. Technical writers are typically responsible for writing and updating documents such as guides and manuals for… Read more »

Melanie Perkins
Leadership

AI walks, meditation and rituals – the 5 things Canva cofounder Melanie Perkins does to prevent burnout

- January 8, 2025 3 MIN READ

Entrepreneur, mother and billionaire Melanie Perkins has been taking stock of her working life and goals for the year ahead, admitting that she got it wrong when she “used to work seven days a week, barely pausing to breathe, thinking it was the only way to succeed”. Perkins revealed the lessons she’d learned to maintain… Read more »

Kelly Steckelberg
People

Canva finally gets a new CFO as IPO plans loom, hiring Zoom’s US-based finance boss

- November 19, 2024 3 MIN READ

More than nine months after the sudden departure of Canva’s chief financial officer, after nearly 8 years, the graphic design giant has found his replacement with Zoom’s Texas-based CFO, Kelly Steckelberg, signing on later this month. Steckelberg took Zoom to its public listing on the Nasdaq in 2019. She was previously CEO of online dating… Read more »

Events

10 takeouts from Stripe’s World Tour landing in Sydney

- September 3, 2024 3 MIN READ

This year marks a decade of Stripe in Australia. The US global payments behemoth founded 14 years ago by Irish-American siblings John and Patrick Collison now services over 500,000 Australian businesses and has processed more than A$200 billion since landing here The Stripe World Tour rolled into Sydney recently to showcase the fintech’s products and users, and including a… Read more »

Canva rap
Business strategy

Cloud 9 rap: Canva shows why employee share schemes matter for startup success

- June 5, 2024 4 MIN READ

The recent outburst of rapping at the Canva Create event in Los Angeles has proven to be another dazzling cultural flashpoint between Australian and US tech. Well, here at least. We believe it’s not a coincidence that an event like this occurred right after a billion dollar share sale rightfully turned many early Canva employees… Read more »

Business

C-rap: the most talked about part of Canva Create isn’t the product (but it totally is) because of a song

- May 27, 2024 4 MIN READ

There’s a famous maxim in advertising, courtesy of industry legend David Ogilvy that: “If you have nothing to say, sing it”. Combine that with Oscar Wilde’s observation that: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”, and you have the defining moment of Canva… Read more »