Hi there,
I want to tell you something that took me a while to truly believe:
Everything in business building takes longer than you think it will. And that is not a sign that something is wrong.
A lot of founders come to me with some version of this:
“I’ve been working on this idea… but I don’t have anyone paying yet.”
“I’ve talked to a few people, they said it’s interesting… but no one has converted.”
“I have a few customers but I don’t know how to get more traction”
They explain that it feels like: you’re building something, doing the work, staying committed, and still wondering if you’re are doing it right or moving fast enough.
If you have felt this, today’s newsletter is for you.
I dug into Canva’s origin story - I’ll share what worked for them and what founders today can apply to their new business especially money-making tech / tech-enabled service business. 👇
The trap new founders fall into
Most people know Canva as the design tool used by 260 million+ people every single month. Creators, marketers, teachers, small businesses, employees at 95% of Fortune 500 companies, even my almost 10 year old niece - all use Canva.
It is easy to look at Canva today and think: oh, it is for everyone. And then try to replicate that as a new founder.
That is the trap.
To pull out learnings for your new business, you need to go all the way back to the origin story of the business. Unpack what you can learn from their 0-1 days, and apply specifically to your business now that the context is different.
Lucky for you, that’s what I did with Canva’s story here 👇
Canva’s secret: their true beginnings
Most people think Canva started when they launched their Beta in 2013.
Here is the actual beginning of Canva that most people do not know:
In 2007, Melanie Perkins was a 19-year-old in Perth, Australia, teaching design software to university students on the side. She kept watching the same thing happen: students spent more time fighting the software than actually designing anything. This was the key input into her big idea: design tool for non-designers.
But, that’s not what she started with. In 2007, Melanie and her co-founder, Cliff Obrecht, launched a much more niche business - Fusion Books.
As you’ve likely read numerous times in my content, the ultimate question every new founder needs to answer to be successful is this:
Whom do I solve what problem for?
This has two parts: who and problem.
From several sources, I’ve pulled out Canva’s transformation of the who + problem:
Fusion Books (2007) | Canva at launch (2013) | Canva today | |
|---|---|---|---|
WHO | High school teachers in Australia with zero design training | Social media managers and bloggers producing Facebook content constantly | Non-designers at companies, schools, and across professions worldwide |
PROBLEM | Needed a professional yearbook finished on a deadline with no design skills or budget | Had to produce visual content every week but had no affordable alternative to Photoshop | Need to create professional visual content quickly without a designer |
📝 Key learning here: Look closely and you’ll notice that while their vision was big, their early who + problem was clear and specific. The advice I give founders I work with is to get uncomfortably specific because that’s what leads to clarity from your dream customer’s point of view.
Why their early customer segment worked
They chose teachers and yearbooks because:
default demand: every school needs to print a yearbook
beatable status quo: yearbook design at schools was a nightmare. Fragmented tools, painful back-and-forth between students and teachers, and hours of manual layout work to produce something that needed to look professional.
existing budget: schools were already spending money to get yearbooks printed so they didn’t need to convince them to find new funds.
Melanie and Cliff focused on this niche because it had built-in demand, a bad status quo, and existing budgets, making it a practical way to validate whether a simpler design tool was a good business idea.
📝 Key learning here: they were intentional right from the start to prove not only that there is a need for the product, but that there is willingness to pay, too. This is the core work I do with the founders in my portfolio - getting early Happy Paying Customers - to prove out with actual dollars that your business idea is viable in the real world.
If you want to get honest feedback on whether your who + problem is clear enough to build a money-making business in the real world, ask my free Idea Sanity-Checker.
side note: if you have friends who are exploring or launching a new business idea, the above tool is a no-brainer free resource for them. Share the link with them!
Fusion Books: how they got customers
In studying the Playbook for Fusion Books, here are a few things that stood out to me:
1) They tried an education expo, and it flopped.
2) They cold-called schools to reach their dream customers directly.
3) They sent a sample yearbook as a lead generation tactic.
4) Instead of charging for the design software, they aligned their pricing to what their target audience already had a budget for - printing yearbooks.
5) They did this repeatedly, every year.
📝 Key learning here: Before you get to scalable, sexy growth channels, it’s completely normal to focus on finding ONE Playbook for repeatability and consistency. This is why my Happy Paying Customer System advocates for one customer + one positioning + one playbook; because it works. Often the first Playbook is the most boring, direct way to find, engage, and convert them. What might that be for your new business, and how might we micro-test it?
Launching Canva
Over six years, Fusion Books became the largest yearbook software in Australia and expanded to New Zealand and France.
To go after their bigger vision, Canva launched its beta in 2013. They attracted 50,000 users in the first month.
That did not happen by accident. It happened because they already knew exactly who had the problem, how to talk to them, and how to make money from it.
Even then, look closely at the chart below for how slow their growth was in the early years compared to where they are today. This is normal.
Canva’s user growth (source)
These monthly users are impressive. And equally so is their $4B annual recurring revenue. No doubt about it.
While these numbers get talked about a lot, what does not get talked about nearly enough is that it was built on top of a yearbook tool for Australian high school teachers.
19 years from first product to where they are today. Far from an overnight success, no matter how you look it.
What this means for your business
Here is what strikes me most about the Canva origin story.
Melanie began with getting clear on:
Whom do I solve what problem for?
And then she found customers. Got them to pay. Found more like them. Refined her playbook. Repeated it until it worked consistently. Only then did she build something bigger on top of it. Almost 6 years later.
That is not a Canva thing. That is the pattern behind businesses that actually work.
It is also exactly the five stages I have mapped out in the Happy Paying Customers System, built from working with 110+ founders across variety of type of businesses:
This is a birds-eye view of the actual deeper decision tree founders use as part of the Happy Paying Customers™ System that helps founders quickly assess where they are in the journey and identify their priorities for right now.
Stage 1 is getting one person to pay you. A real human opening their wallet.
Stage 2 is replicating that to 10 people with the same who and problem. This is where you confirm it was not a fluke, and that you personally want to serve this audience too.
Stage 3 is finding the repeatable playbook to find, engage, and convert strangers into Happy Paying Customers.
Stage 4 is systemizing so it does not all depend on you showing up every single day.
Stage 5 is scaling what you have already proven works.
Fusion Books was Stages 1 through 4. For almost six years.
So if you are reading this and thinking: I am still figuring out my who and problem, I do not have a replicable customer yet, I do not know if my Playbook is working yet...
You are not behind.
You are in the stages that matter most.
The question is whether you are moving through them with a clear framework and consistently growing Happy Paying Customers.
If you know any new founders who want to validate the fundamentals of their business with real paying customers: I’ve got 2 spots open to work with founders who want to apply my System to do exactly this. You come in with your idea or early traction, and we begin to design micro-tests for your specific business and stage. This is ideal for tech or tech-enabled service businesses.
More than 110 founders have used it. One hit $1M ARR in 18 months. Several went from zero customers to their early paying customers within weeks of starting. Snag your spot to get on the path to 100+ Happy Paying Customers here.
What do you think of this newsletter with a popular brand’s origin story? Reply to this email with your reactions and feedback. I’m also taking requests for specific businesses you want me to do next!
I am rooting for you,
Sweta
