Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com
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Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com
How Canva leveraged unconventional growth levers to grow to $42B | Cameron Adams (Co-founder & CPO)
In Depth
1 hour 4 minutes
3 days ago
How Canva leveraged unconventional growth levers to grow to $42B | Cameron Adams (Co-founder & CPO)
Cameron Adams is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, the design platform valued at $42B as of July 2025, used by over 230 million people every month.
Before starting Canva, Cameron was a designer and engineer at Google and co-founded Fluent, an email startup. In this episode, Cameron walks through Canva’s earliest days — from the remarkably fast courtship with co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, to the counterintuitive product decisions that helped Canva instantly resonate with users who thought they would never design anything.
In this episode, we cover:
How Canva turned social media managers into early evangelists
Balancing a huge vision with scrappy execution
Hard lessons from their near-silent launch day
The two growth levers that changed everything
And much more…
References:
Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/home
Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/
Campaign Monitor: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/
Canva: https://www.canva.com/
Cliff Obrecht: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliff-obrecht-79ba9920/
Dave Greiner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegreiner/
Lars Rasmussen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larserasmussen/
Melanie Perkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieperkins/
Mike Cannon-Brookes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcannonbrookes/
New York Stock Exchange: https://www.nyse.com/
Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/
Scott Farquhar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottfarquhar/
Where to find Cameron:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themaninblue/
Where to find Brett:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
Where to find First Round Capital:
Website: https://firstround.com/
First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
Timestamps:
(01:24) The birth of Canva
(04:32) Meeting Canva’s co-founders
(11:22) Building the first iteration of Canva
(15:26) The discovery that changed prototyping
(20:48) Why onboarding was the unlock for retention
(27:36) The anticlimactic launch day
(32:43) How word-of-mouth spurred early retention
(36:33) Targeting different user personas
(41:02) Building a community on social media
(43:38) Two impactful growth levers
(47:14) Why Canva should have gone mobile sooner
(48:12) What underpins Canva’s dominance today
(53:37) Rebuilding for enterprise
(58:38) Lessons from Canva’s tough times
In Depth
Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com
