If you haven’t heard of Canva yet, get ready. It’s about to be everywhere.
The Australian start-up, the brain child of Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, is a fiendishly simple drag-and-drop graphic design platform aimed at giving everyone the ability to create industry-standard graphics for small – or big – scale projects.
The platform is already among the hottest start-ups in the country, if not the world, having already amassed some 5 million users (including 40% of the Fortune 500 companies) in a shade under 800 days since launching.
What’s more, financially it is absolutely killing it, attracting investors from all over the place – including within the tech industry and, as revealed today, in Hollywood as well.
Actors Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson have been revealed to be among those chucking cash in as part of a wildly successful US$15million capital raising phase.
Far beyond being paid brand ambassadors, the company insists both are genuine investors, with quotes attributed to Wilson even being included in press releases.
“Canva is on fire. This could be a game-changer. Five million users in just over two years, the numbers speak for themselves. Great investment and top-notch team.”
Other notable individuals who have been getting well and truly in on things include Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen, SEEK co-founder Paul Basset, Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman, and US angel investor Bill Tai.
Basically, it’s like a real-life version of Silicon Valley, and they’ve just cracked the middle-out compression.
Except instead of a series of hilarious pratfalls that keep yanking the rug out from under them, everything is well and truly coming up Milhouse.
Canva’s platform is already being utilised by well-known entities like Huffington Post, Lonely Planet, Yelp, and Hubspot for their production purposes. The company hopes this new round of backing will enable it to grow globally, transition into different languages, and ultimately compete with the likes of Adobe.
‘STRAYAN TECH DONE REAL GOOD, YOU GUYS.
Photo: Gregg DeGuire via Getty Images.
