Cliff Obrecht

Since launching in 2013, Canva has grown to more than 190 million monthly users around the world, and has achieved the milestone of more than $2 billion in annualized revenue. From presentations to videos and websites, more than 25 billion designs have been created with the platform (that’s more than 200 designs every second) across more than 190 different countries and in over 100 different languages. In the last couple of years, as millions of people around the world embraced a hybrid way of working, Canva experienced its biggest period of hypergrowth yet and continues to go from strength to strength thanks to a global team of more than 4,500 people. In 2021, Canva became one of the most valuable private software companies in the world. Individual creators, small businesses, teams and the Fortune 500 are embracing the power of design, photos, collaboration features, videos and even sound to cut through the noise and achieve their goals using Canva. Cliff got his start in business in 2007, after graduating from a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education at the University of Western Australia. He and CEO, Melanie Perkins, then founded Fusion Books, which took the idea of a simple design tool, and applied it to the niche market of school yearbooks. Over five years, Fusion Books grew into the largest yearbook company in Australia, and expanded into France and New Zealand. Having known all along that the technology could be applied more broadly, the Canva product was soon brought to life.