Canva’s $35B design biz is quietly taking over the workplace, with co-founder & COO Cliff Obrecht

Masters of Scale

WaitWhat

Entrepreneurship, Business, Management, Reid Hoffman, Mindset, Diversity & Inclusion, Jeff Berman, Bob Safian, Startups

4.6 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For over a decade, Canva has made design and publishing more accessible than ever. Now, the company is wrestling with how to harness AI while staying true to its mission of empowering individual creators. Co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht joins Rapid Response to reveal how Canva is navigating this shift—and why the stakes are so high when it comes to AI-adoption in the creative industry. He opens up about leading the company alongside his wife and co-founder Melanie Perkins, their decision to give away $100 million to causes in Malawi, and what it means to scale without compromising values. Obrecht also shares Canva’s role in the future of technology and how marketing could define the business’s next chapter.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. We are gathering the leaders who are building what's next at the
0:06.5	Masters of Scale Summit. You'll see visionaries like Waymo's to Kedra Mawakana, Chabani's Hamdi Ulukaya,
0:13.7	Restaurant Tour David Chang, Patagonia's Ryan Gallert, promises Fadra Ellis Lampkins,
0:19.1	the National Women's Soccer League's Jessica Berman. The list goes on and on. Please join us October 7 to 9th in San Francisco.
0:26.9	The room is filling up fast, so apply now at mastersofscale.com slash apply 25. That's
0:34.5	masters of scale.com slash apply 25.
0:40.0	The conversations I'm having here go something like this.
0:44.7	Hey, CXO, do you know much about Canva?
0:48.6	And they're like, yeah, I know a little bit.
0:50.2	Like my daughter uses it, et cetera, et cetera.
0:52.8	And we're like, do you know you have 6,000
0:54.8	active users who have created over 500,000 designs this year alone? And then they go,
1:02.0	what? They do what? And is that all on brand? Who's controlling that? Does our chief
1:06.9	brand officer know about this, et cetera, et cetera? And the answer is like, no, no, no and no. They're all going rogue. And then it's like, holy shit, we're going to do something
1:14.7	about this.
1:25.3	That's Cliff Obrick, co-founder and chief operating officer of Canva.
1:29.6	As a fast-growing design platform valued it more than $35 billion, Canva is at the heart of a
1:36.4	cultural and business battle about AI and the democratization of creativity.
1:42.3	Talking with Cliff at the Canlions Advertising Festival, he explains how he
1:47.1	treads the line between support for individual creators and what amazing new tech makes possible.
1:53.6	We also talk about how he and his wife, who is his co-founder and Canvas CEO, Melanie Perkins,
2:00.0	how they navigate their personal and professional lives,
	...

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