How Canva Built a $40B Company By Ignoring Designers

Hey there,

Most startups try to impress the experts.

Design tools built for designers.
Writing tools built for writers.
Dev tools built for devs.

But what if the real growth hack…
…is building for the people who aren’t experts?

That’s exactly what Canva did.

Instead of targeting elite designers, they went after everyone else.
Teachers, marketers, founders, VA’s, students.

And that decision changed everything.

Let’s break down how Canva outgrew Adobe by ignoring Adobe’s market and what you can steal from their strategy today:

Step 1: Choose the “Bigger Pain”

In 2012, design software was already a crowded space.
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign. Professional tools owned by pros.

But Melanie Perkins saw a gap.

Not in design tools, but in non designers who needed to design.

She was teaching design at university, and saw the same thing every week:

The pain wasn’t “I need better software”

It was:
“I don’t know how to use design tools”
“I don’t have time to learn them”
“I can’t afford Adobe”

So Canva flipped the game.

They didn’t build a better tool for designers.

They built an easier tool for everyone else.

Lesson: Don’t build for experts. Build for the silent majority struggling without a solution.

Step 2: Make Simplicity Feel Like Superpowers

Most tools reward users for mastering them.
Canva rewards users instantly.

You don’t need to learn gradients or typography.
You don’t even need to know what you’re doing.

Just open it, pick a template, change some text, done.

Design feels like play.

But this simplicity wasn’t accidental.

They obsessed over UX:

• Real time drag and drop editing

• Pre-built layouts that look pro by default

• “Magic Resize” that adapts to every social platform

• Brand kits that even interns can use without messing up the vibe

Every feature solved a real world frustration.

And the result?
Designing a pitch deck or Instagram post stopped feeling like work.

It started feeling like cheating.

Lesson: Simplicity isn’t dumbing it down. It’s making people feel smart faster.

Step 3: Build for Teams, Not Just Users

Here’s where Canva pulled off a subtle power move.

They started as a solo tool.
But quickly realized: real growth lives in teams.

So they added features that made Canva a collaboration hub:

• Shared folders

• Comment threads on designs

• Version history + auto saving

• Real time editing (like Google Docs for design)

Suddenly, every marketer who used Canva…
...invited their team.

And when a whole team uses a tool?

Budget gets approved.
It becomes “part of the stack”.
Churn drops to zero.

Canva went from solo free users → team wide paid accounts.

And they didn’t need a sales team to do it. The product did the selling.

Lesson: If your tool helps one person, they might use it. If it helps their team, they’ll sell it for you.

Step 4: Make Templates the New Landing Page

Here’s the genius part nobody talks about:

Canva didn’t just win with product.
They won with SEO + content without writing a blog.

They rank for millions of search terms like:

• “Business card design”

• “Instagram story template”

• “Presentation examples”

• “Birthday invitation layout”

Why? Because every Canva template has its own indexed page.
And every page is optimized around long tail keywords.

Open Google right now and type “YouTube banner template”
first result? Canva.

Every template is a silent sales rep.

It gets traffic, offers a free edit, and drops the user inside the app.

By the time they’re done, they’ve created an account and started designing.

No top of funnel content.
No webinars.
Just a product + template SEO machine.

Lesson: Make your product pages do the content marketing for you.

Step 5: Monetize Without Pressure

Here’s the last piece of Canva’s strategy: freemium that doesn’t suck.

Most free tools feel broken. They’re bait.
“Pay to unlock basic functionality.”

Canva flipped that.

Their free tier feels like a full product:

• 250,000+ templates

• 100+ design types

• 5GB of storage

• Instant export and publishing

You don’t hit a paywall until you want more fonts, storage, or brand level features.

The genius?

By the time a user hits the limit, Canva has become their entire workflow.

They’re not paying for more.
They’re paying to protect the system they now depend on.

It’s a psychological switch from:

“I don’t want to upgrade” →
to
“I can’t afford to lose this.”

Lesson: Your free plan should feel like a gift. That’s how it becomes a trap (in the best way).

The Takeaway: Build for the Overlooked Majority

Canva didn’t win by being the best tool.
They won by being the easiest, fastest, and most inclusive tool.

They asked:

“What if design wasn’t for designers?”
“What if collaboration didn’t need onboarding?”
“What if growth didn’t require ads or a sales team?”

And they built something normal people could win with.

If you're launching something right now, ask yourself:

• Are you building for experts… or the 95% who feel left out?

• Does your product require education, or reward intuition?

• Are your pages just pages or search driven funnels?

Because the truth is:
Most startups lose by trying to look smart.

Canva won by making everyone else feel smart.

Until next time,
Omar Waseem

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