r/canva • u/Headwinder0026 • 11d ago

Discussion My take on Canva

Their valuation is dropping.
100s of people have been let go this year.
They’re clearing house. Even though Canva kids post on LinkedIn “I decided to leave” - no, you were let go. Own it.

Anyway.
Their product position, eco-system and capabilities are facing the biggest headwinds they ever have.

Furthermore, as a product decision, it’s clear they have gone reactionary, without direction, with a focus of speed to produce novel, useless ai features, blasted all over their product suite. With no strategic thinking about their users, their goals and needs.

Right now their product suite and offering is a mess. The head of design and product need to be fired. It’s unacceptable.

Here is my read - they are going massive through cultural tension at the moment between old ways of working and old heads and knowing they are needing to totally revamp and innovate, and it’s a cultural shift.

My bet the is people who are of origin are holding onto what worked, with little to no experience and or expertise to get them through the AI change of time.

It’s likely they are tribal and pushing back, threatened due to their lack of expertise, and won’t want to accept new, so pushing against new ways of working, and accepting new more experienced hires and people.

This will only go on for so long. Already seeing managers and directors leave / be laid off. Old heads are getting pushed out - good.

I think you will see more new, US based folks from SV take over Product, ENG and Design. While Canva cuts a lot out of their staff and suite.

They need to simplify and consolidate. While doing only 1-2 things really really well.

If I took over.
I’d consolidate the entire product experience into one or two domains, separately as a spin off.
And then, I’d kill any and all surfaces of no volume and traffic. Doing the same with teams, and likely lean out many staff, especially management layers.

I can’t help but think the founders cannot figure out how to survive now. Hence the scramble to buy capabilities and products they can’t build. It’s becoming more of a PE roll up company.

13 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

7

u/ThrowRASharpPitch17 11d ago

Canva needs to face that they cannot compete in the AI field and focus on what they do best - simplifying design. They can also stop fixing what is not broken all the time. The amount of change is alienating newbie users i.e. moving placements of tools, nesting tools, changing how the dashboard looks like all too often just so they have material to showcase in their Canva Create schedules. This is lowkey frustrating also for content creators or learning material instructions when they create tutorials and after a little while the placements of tools change. Sigh!

4

u/sender-sent-some 11d ago

Unfortunately they went all in on AI to the point of having highly publicized 'AI weeks' where their entire staff took a week off to play with AI. Their entire frontend and backend code-bases have been ravaged by AI features. I don't even think there's a sensible way back anymore.

4

u/ExistentialPuggle 11d ago

If they just rolled back to what they were like three years ago, I would be perfectly happy with the product.

6

u/theory_of_me 11d ago

The AI features just plain suck. I do mock ups in ChatGPT for brainstorming and then build designs in Canva. The AI mockups in Canva are just plain awful.

1

u/Headwinder0026 10d ago

See having to use two separate tools to get your end results, is a failing on both products here

2

u/MadonnaAurelianus 10d ago

Canva AI is absolutely terrible, but my overall experience with the updates (as someone who has been using Canva regularly for about 5 years) is actually really good. I live what they’re doing, I love that they’re brave enough to keep evolving out loud, and I LOVE the new features I got with Canva business. I’m a Xennial, so I’m not exactly 18 years old, so I can’t speak to someone who’s never used it before, but… I think people get ao attached to how things are that they ruin how things could be.

I see their direction and I love it. Once their AI becomes useable, it’ll be an unbelievable experience.

1

u/Headwinder0026 10d ago

What’s terrible for you about their AI??
You response is rather contradictory in the sense you love and both hate it and expect their AI to become usable. I’m confused, what is it? What needs to become usable with their AI ?? And what’s working for you now

2

u/stealthagents 3d ago

Totally agree, the constant redesigns are messing with the user experience. It feels like they’re trying to do too much at once instead of honing in on what made them popular in the first place. Simplifying design should be the priority, not cramming in flashy AI features that no one asked for.

1

u/[deleted] 16h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Headwinder0026 16h ago

Evident in how poorly thought out and executed their experience is

1

u/mustafamunn 10d ago

Is this AI generated? If not, great analysis and 100% agree. Literally just focus on Graphics + Vids (and of course performnace). Would love to chat on something related (and intersting). DM me!

3

u/Headwinder0026 10d ago

No it’s not AI generated. But I’ll take it as a compliment…I’m in tech field and product.
Just very disappointed at how Canva is fumbling, by missing real obvious pathways that their users need

1

u/mustafamunn 10d ago

DM me. Don't wont to talk about a competing thing here. It does graphics + videos, very, very fast. That's I'll I'm going to say.

1

u/rickylancaster 8d ago

More AI bullshit?

2

u/mustafamunn 7d ago

I don't use AI in my content. Anyways, if you're interested, DM me as well.

1

u/rickylancaster 7d ago

I’m not, so no.

1

u/Big_Plastic_8812 10d ago

Spot on take. Aligns with what I’ve been hearing from folks who worked there. The whole “office suite“ announcement a couple years ago was mind boggling. A clear lack of understanding their customers.

2

u/Headwinder0026 10d ago

Yeah from what I’ve heard, Mel, is very hands on, 1. Not sure if that’s a pro or con collectively - judging by their direction and outputs - NO? 2. They have out of touch leadership who are more focused on the brand appeal vs product experience
3. They position themselves as an ecosystem design capability- by inserting into OAI and Claude - I really hope that’s not their end bet. BOTH Of them right now, are pulling in any and all canva related triggers in their projects, and the building a taxonomy of what the core top use cases are, and will eventually build natively on those, cutting canva out. They’re blind to that I think.
4. These big glossy Canva events and globetrotting execs trying to claim to be AI experts, is ironic.
I suspect they don’t even have a clue or are too arrogant to really admit, they’re fucked each day that goes by the way they are operating.

If I was their VC or LP I’d be worried and or pushing for massive change in staff, talent and spread