How Canva drives growth for their paid subscription product

This episode is a discussion with Dave Burson – Head of Product, Growth & Monetisation at Canva – where we get into the weeds on how Canva drives growth for their paid subscription product – Canva Pro.

LINKS

• Dave Burson on LinkedIn
• Canva
• Canva Enterprise
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

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You’re listening to The Growth Manifesto Podcast, a Zoom video series brought to you by Webprofits – a digital growth consultancy that helps global and national businesses attract, acquire, and retain customers through digital marketing.

Hosted by Alex Cleanthous.

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SHOW NOTES

• 00:02:41 Dave’s introduction to the Growth Manifesto Podcast
• 00:05:11 How Dave got into Canva
• 00:10:15 How Canva started with just 3 people and grew into a team of 60
• 00:11:56 What were some of the things you did to change the team’s thinking in terms of growth?
• 00:14:45 What were some of the things that you did to make sure the team was effective and efficient while you were scaling?
• 00:17:47 How large is the ideal size of a “Lean Growth Squad?”
• 00:19:37 How is the communication managed across the teams?
• 00:23:02 The tools Canva uses for internal communication & their overseas team growth
• 00:24:53 How do you ensure an above-average success rate along with the pressure of Canva’s growth?
• 00:31:53 How did you identify the features you should be adding to give the most amount of value?
• 00:34:35 How did you identify the places to test in Canva?
• 00:36:23 How do you balance all the potential ideas?
• 00:37:46 How often are you surveying happy customers?
• 00:40:41 “Growth Loops”
• 00:46:00 What’s the difference between Canva Pro and Canva Enterprise?
• 00:48:34 How do you experiment between the segments your product caters to?
• 00:51:39 How long are your customer persona documents?
• 00:54:02 Customer research is like eating your vegetables
• 00:57:24 How do you figure out what price changes to make on the product in terms of all the variables like churn rate, website volume, etc.
• 01:01:10 If you had to choose a price to start with and you didn’t have the market yet, how would you figure it out?
• 01:03:44 With the amount of data Canva receives, what does the reporting look like?
• 01:08:02 Quickfire questions with Dave
• 01:13:54 What would you like companies to do to check out the benefits of Canva Pro?
Adrian Clark