Cliff Obrecht on Building Canva, Hiring and a Long-Term Founder Partnership

In this January 2023 interview, Canva co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht discusses the company’s origins, fundraising, hiring and product decisions with Harry Stebbings. He also describes his family and philanthropic plans. His claims about Canva’s performance and products reflect his position as a founder and shareholder.

Obrecht says Melanie Perkins saw an opportunity while teaching design: professional tools were difficult to learn, while the web was becoming collaborative. Based in Perth without knowledge of venture capital, the pair began with a narrower problem: school yearbooks.

They founded Fusion Books to help schools create yearbooks online. Years later, they noticed customers using the software for newsletters and posters, suggesting a broader visual-communication product. Obrecht credits Perkins with the original vision that became Canva.

The pair traveled repeatedly to Silicon Valley while still running Fusion Books. Obrecht says investors rejected them more than 100 times before some agreed to invest. At one point their prospect list was exhausted and their funds nearly gone; after a day of disappointment, they continued.

He describes meeting investor Bill Tai through a Perth event and going to a conference in Maui despite the expense. Connections from that trip helped them reach the technology community. His lesson is persistence paired with an idea that has some merit, rather than persistence alone.

Obrecht says relationships can resume years after an initial rejection. He tries to be honest, keep commitments and leave people with a good impression, whether hiring candidates, seeking investors or negotiating. He sees the work as a marathon.

His definition of high performance has changed. Earlier he embraced a work-hard, play-hard routine; now he values sleep, exercise and continual learning. He also says he has moved from simply expecting people to know what to do toward offering direct feedback and coaching adapted to the individual.

He says he tends to trust people initially and lets them lose that trust, while Perkins takes longer to build it. He presents these as different personal styles, not a universal hiring or management rule.

In hiring, he looks for “distance traveled”: the progress someone has made relative to their starting circumstances. He recalls teaching students from disadvantaged backgrounds, including refugees, and seeing how much determination it took to learn a language and find work. He thinks nontraditional experience can reveal strong potential.

Obrecht says he sees business as a serious game he wants to win, while recognizing the Australian safety net that shapes his circumstances. He does not want the company to define his entire identity and imagines he could find satisfaction in very different work.

He describes impostor feelings when meeting prominent technology executives and investors. Earlier at Canva, he says, the founders sometimes assumed candidates with impressive titles knew better than they did and made poor hires as a result. Over time they learned to trust their own product and business judgment more.

Canva has promoted people internally as well as hiring from outside, he says. He cites colleagues who grew from earlier roles into senior marketing and people leadership. His praise is an employer’s assessment, and he also values bringing in experienced external talent.

On dealmaking, he says his mother taught him to look for value and negotiate openly. He tries to align the goals of Canva and the person or company on the other side. In an acquisition, he prefers to explain the interest and proposed economics early rather than prolong an ambiguous conversation.

Harry asks how to tell whether an acquisition target’s stated goals are genuine. Obrecht says he looks at the business and its people, then spends time understanding the founder’s motivations and cultural fit. He credits some successful integrations but acknowledges luck; his positive account is not an independent evaluation of every acquisition.

Trust also matters when choosing investors. Obrecht says founders can seek expertise from advisers, including by offering equity, and should check how prospective investors behave when a company is struggling. He says Canva learned marketing and sales by consulting experts and making both good and bad hires.

A difficult early Fusion Books experience followed a decision to outsource development. Obrecht says the software allowed schools to design yearbooks but could not export the required PDF. The team hired designers to recreate a very large number of pages manually before printing.

Years later, Canva faced accumulated technical debt. Obrecht says the team rewrote its front end rather than replacing components piecemeal and shipped no features for roughly two years, twice the original estimate. He describes that period as difficult during a phase of rapid growth.

Competitors launched features while Canva was rebuilding, including video, and Obrecht worried about being overtaken. He says the team stayed the course and believes the new platform later improved its product velocity. That is the founder’s retrospective assessment, not a verified comparison with all competitors.

First to market matters, but Obrecht says customer acquisition matters too. Canva spent about a year building before launch, despite pressure to release sooner. Perkins favored a polished free product and expected satisfied users to become a major marketing channel.

The first target audience included social media marketers with a recurring need for visual content. Obrecht recounts contacting Guy Kawasaki and receiving a response. He says search optimization became another acquisition channel by helping people discover Canva’s content online.

Investors rejected the early team for many reasons, including its Perth location and nontechnical founders. Obrecht’s lesson is to start with a specific group and solve its problem well, then expand to adjacent users rather than attempt to serve everyone immediately.

Harry asks whether the absence of a technical founder was a real risk. Obrecht agrees that the technical foundation matters and credits co-founder Cameron Adams and later CTO Dave with helping build it and strengthen investor confidence. This is his retrospective account of the team’s development.

For product prioritization, Obrecht asks how many people will see and benefit from a feature. He also credits Perkins with making longer-term bets based on changes users may not yet articulate. The two approaches—near-term reach and a long-term vision—must be balanced.

He compares Canva’s original opportunity to bringing fragmented design tools and assets into one workflow. In 2023 he sees a similar opportunity to integrate AI into tasks people already want to complete. He describes Canva’s investment in AI as a product strategy and future ambition, not proof of specific results.

He describes a forthcoming capability in which a user could describe a desired visual and the system would draw on content libraries, generation and copy tools. He says Canva then had more than three million templates. The feature and number are as described in the interview and may not represent current product availability.

Harry challenges whether bundled tools can match specialized products. Obrecht says Canva aims for high quality across its main areas and argues that a shared interface and graphics engine make formats easier to combine. This is the COO’s assessment of his company, not an independent product comparison.

He describes Canva’s pricing at the time as roughly $14 a month and says organizations were charged according to active seats in a quarter. He argues that bundling can simplify purchases and align price with usage. Pricing and terms are historical company claims, not current offers.

On money, Obrecht says he and Perkins had long felt fortunate and valued experiences, even before Canva’s valuation grew. He says they remained heavily invested in Canva and had not converted most of that stake into cash. A private-company valuation is not the same as realized proceeds.

Obrecht says he and Perkins owned about 31% of Canva and placed 30%—roughly 99% of their combined holding—into a charitable arrangement. These are his figures and description at the interview; they refer to equity and its allocation, not evidence that the equivalent valuation had already been realized and spent in cash.

He says the Canva Foundation draws on capital over time and discusses work with GiveDirectly, including a pilot in Malawi. He describes the founders as still learning how to deploy resources effectively. The interview does not establish the program’s ultimate impact.

Obrecht worries that growing up with unlimited wealth could deprive a child of the satisfaction of earning and building things. Harry wonders whether he would have worked as hard with a large family fortune. These are their personal reflections, not evidence that children of wealthy families share one outcome.

Obrecht says he values travel and experiences more than luxury purchases, and describes using a personal trainer to make exercise more consistent. Harry notes that spending on health and prepared meals can support his own work. Their choices reflect their circumstances.

Perkins is both his co-founder and spouse. Obrecht says they have been together for many years and try to set aside time without work talk, though it often returns. They understand each other’s demanding schedules but must still make space for their relationship.

On fatherhood, he hopes to give his child independence along with values such as honesty, kindness and hard work. He describes the sleep disruption of the first months and says a routine helped their family. These are personal experiences rather than universal parenting advice.

In the quick-fire round, he discusses books, philanthropy and the difficulty of connecting goodwill and capital with the right problems. He says becoming a parent changed his mind about how easy it would be and names perseverance, kindness and curiosity among qualities he hopes to encourage.

He admires leaders who start with the value created for customers, rather than becoming absorbed solely in internal company management. He says he wishes he had learned earlier how to align goals, communicate transparently and help people do their best work.

Obrecht hopes startup opportunities will become less tied to the Bay Area and traditional credentials. Looking forward from 2023, he expects Canva to keep helping people communicate visually. His view of the company’s future is an ambition from a founder with a financial interest.

Harry thanks Obrecht for the conversation, and Obrecht thanks him in return.