Design Platform Canva Raises $6 Million, Expands To Businesses With �Canva For Work�

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/04/design-platform-canva-raises-6-million-expands-to-businesses-with-canva-for-work/

Creating professional graphics is not a skill set that everyone has, but online design platform Canva wants to change that. In mid-2013, the company debuted a service that allows anyone to more easily create graphics, including slideshows, invitations, handouts, posters, infographics, Facebook Covers, cards, collages, blog graphics and more.

Today the company will be able to further fuel its growth with the addition of $6 million more in outside funding, largely from existing investors. Canva is also now debuting its first product aimed at the businesses using its platform with the �Canva for Work.�

The new capital comes from prior investors Matrix Partners, Shasta Ventures and Blackbird Ventures, alongside AirTree Ventures, and comes at a time when the company has grown its user base to 2.3 million users over the course of the past 20 months. Over the last six months in particular, Canva�s growth has been surging, with 65 percent of users signing up during this time.

I didnt see a thread about it and I am not digging through 50 pages in the other thread to see if there was a comment about it.

4 weeks is not really 14 years back.

But I see the trolls have come out of the woodwork again lately. Time for me to give this place a time out for a while.

Quote from: Holmes on June 09, 2015, 17:57

hello?

this is 2001 calling.

did you not learn anything?

 

Sorry if I'm dense, but I don't know what you mean by the above.

Are you saying that Canva's idea is pass� and you don't expect it to succeed? And who is the "you" who didn't learn anything?

I owned a technology marketing  firm during all the dot com, pump-and-dump period of the late 1990s and early 2000. So when I see all these VCs throwing money at another startup with a poor man's inDesign, well... I can't help but think... "here we go again."

the "YOU" is a metaphoric directed toward the investors still chasing questionable dot com start ups with no clue how to monetize it.

The key difference is that everything in Canva is done via any browser and doesn't require much expertise to get a decent finished product

In Design has bucketloads of features but Adobe's light years away from actually being apps in a browser (no downloads required)

I think the frothy nonsense over the citizen journalism companies will waste lots of investor money, but Canva has a shot at being something new and different (and successful)

I wish them the best and perhaps they will get traction. So many of these browser-based apps fizzle. Adobe is trying to force that concept with a lot of push back. Anyone serious about desk top publishing can learn functional inDesign online in about 20 hours. Or a company can freelance it out fairly cheaply.

Perhaps it will be a threat to inDesign and Adobe will buy it and kill it. I assume they have a real world marketing plan... but few do.

Pond5 also got huge funding a year ago...and we haven't seen much change/improvement there, apart from swanky new NY office and new Directors, VPs, CXX titles deployment ...
P5 sales are going down, so no guarantee that funding brings success to all. Ok, maybe to founders ....

Time will tell!

Congrats to Canva!

I think Canva is doing something different - they are not just a "browser-based app".  They also seem to have a vision and a plan for how to get there.  They have identified a need and their rapid growth is proof that they are on to something.  I would invest in them if I could.  No way to predict whether they will be successful ultimately but they have a shot and I think that is why Lee has gone with them in a big way.