Canva CEO Melanie Perkins used a customer-centric approach to turn her business idea into a $42 billion company. She recently explained on "Lenny's Podcast" that Canva regularly listened to customer feedback and improved its product. The focus on product improvement further incentivized people to share the photo tool with their friends.
"Everything good was once imagined," Perkins told host Lenny Rachitsky.
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Set Crazy Big Goals
Perkins attributes a large part of her success to setting ambitious goals that inspired her to work harder than most people. Back in 2012, she envisioned design tools that anyone could use to create beautiful visuals within seconds.
"The thing that I love about a crazy big goal is that you feel completely inadequate before it. You want to work really hard to will it into existence," she said on the podcast.
Perkins' goals stretch beyond Canva. She views it as a resource to achieve long-term goals that she set for 2050. She said on the show that those goals include ending poverty and ending human loneliness. Her plan involves growing Canva into a massive company and using those funds to create social change.
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How Canva Turns Its Customers Into Its Best Promoters
Canva leaned into its customers for new product ideas and marketing. The company listened to customers, improved its product, and encouraged people to spread the word. That model was enough to attract 240 million monthly active users and generate $3 billion in annual revenue.
"Use Canva, spread Canva, teach Canva," Perkins said. "Come to our events. We do events all around the world.”
Perkins also said that she didn't pay much attention to the competition and focused on creating a high-quality product that solved customers' problems.
“We didn't really worry about competitors at all," she said. "We actually just saw a gap in the market that we can uniquely fill."
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Make Your Business As Simple As Possible
Canva aims for a straightforward user experience that is easy for a new customer to figure out, and Canva Print is a good example. This feature lets Canva customers print pictures and have them delivered. Perkins emphasized how simple the process is when describing it, demonstrating how easy Canva wants it to be for people to use its product.
"You just click print and it pops up beautifully packaged to your door," she said on the podcast.
Removing friction from the customer experience makes it easier for people to use your product and make payments. If the first experience goes well, a user will return to Canva more often. The free option offers a lot of great features, but you'll get even more by switching to a paid account. The free account makes it easy to get committed, and a frictionless customer experience, combined with a great product, results in more membership upgrades.
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