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Why do all my clients want to kill you?
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What do they have against you?
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What did you What did you do to all of them?
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I mean, I can't comment on those other companies, but I guess when you do something that's going pretty well, you've got a quarter billion people using Canva, I think maybe they they want a piece of that.
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Is Canva tech's most underrated company?
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Nine years of profitability, hundreds of millions of normie users outside tech that are so hard to get, and now a big pivot from design platform to AI platform.
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Today on Access, we have co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins to discuss [music] everything they just announced today at their big event here in LA.
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But first, Alex and I discuss our waning interest in Open Claw, my new addiction to the AI assisted poke, which was made by [music] last week's guest, and the big reputational crisis facing the AI industry. Welcome to Access.
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>> [music] >> My name is Ellis Hamburger, and I'm here with my lovely co-host Alex Heath.
0:54
We've got Melanie from Canva on the pod today with some actual news, which isn't always the story of our show.
1:02
We're trying to get the real talk and the real takes, not just the embargoes.
1:05
But we have a bit of both today.
1:07
But first, Alex, will you be attending ClawCon in Los Angeles tonight?
1:11
We need to make LA tech happen. Hell no.
1:16
I was going to I think it's going to be a madhouse.
1:19
I'm too old for this [ __ ] man. Really? A madhouse?
1:21
Part of me really wants to go, especially when it was first announced.
1:26
So these ClawCon pop-ups have been happening all over the world really for the last couple of months, and >> I thought you'd live for the claw.
1:34
Ain't no laws when we're using claws.
1:38
We've talked a lot about the ClawFather, Peter Steinberger, and Open Claw.
1:41
I have been very interested in it, but my view of it is actually changed in the last, I would say, couple of weeks.
1:49
And I would say our episode with the CEO of Poke, Marvin, last week actually played a role in me souring on going to this event as well.
1:59
I just feel like claw is a thing that we're going to look back on and go, "Wow, wasn't that a really cool nerdy time, like when people used to jailbreak their iPhones?"
2:09
But then >> Nerdy 2 weeks?
2:10
Yeah, and then Apple, you know, started adding stuff to the OS and opening up over time.
2:16
And I think the analogy here is services like Poke, which again, we had we featured on the show last week, basically simplifying what Open Claw is for people like me who don't have time to chain together a bunch of stuff with a Mac mini, you know. Okay.
2:32
So maybe we can cut in all the times you've talked about Open Claw and me being unimpressed for this exact reason from previous episodes of the show, because it just felt kind of so inevitable and also weirdly surprising that it didn't already exist in some way.
2:47
And we're already starting to see people just just natural language it and have the agents hook up MCPs on their own and have it all just work in the server with no Mac mini.
2:55
But um yeah, I've been pretty poke-pilled as well since last week.
3:00
I mean, it's it's honestly been pretty mind-blowing having a tool that's just built for this.
3:04
I think I mean, it is it is shockingly ahead of the game and was a few months ago.
3:10
I think my first exposure to some of the agentic natural language programming.
3:13
Every morning, do this, look at this, add to this.
3:17
My first exposure to that was actually with no Notion custom agents.
3:22
But seeing with Poke that can handle Notion MCP pretty darn well, if not if not in some ways as well as Notion AI at this moment, uh it's like now I can do things like, "Hey, Poke, when you see client invoices hit on my Mercury account, um shoutout to Mercury, who I'm also a new customer of.
3:40
I just use whatever's on the show, I guess, now.
3:42
Is this the third guest company that you've shouted out in our intro so far?
3:46
We've got Ivan from Notion, Amod from Mercury.
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>> We do have good companies.
3:52
>> And so I say, "When you see the bill hit my account on Mercury, mark it as paid in my Notion database."
3:58
And just like little experiments like that.
4:00
And I think one of the things Marvin said that was a good prompt was just think of it like an EA.
4:06
Like what would you ask an EA to do?
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And so that's one of those things, you know, that I would have asked an EA to do.
4:12
The other thing I would have asked an EA to do is update all my goddamn services with my new Mercury credit card instead of my Chase one.
4:20
And Poke said it could do that and then messed it up and couldn't do it.
4:24
>> full full Mercury like with the credit card and everything?
4:26
Yeah, I mean, dude, my overhead with meaning is like insanely low.
4:30
It's It's like It's like a thousand dollars a month.
4:34
But what about those Chase points? I mean, come on.
4:36
I mean, uh my personal spending is going going crazy on Chase. Okay. >> way. >> Shoutout Jamie.
4:41
>> My business spending, very low. Okay. All right.
4:44
And when Poke doesn't do so well, I say, "Hey, Poke, draft a bug report email to the team and send it."
4:51
Which is also very satisfying because I've been a bug reporter for my entire life, Snapchat, browser company, etc.
4:56
And I spend a lot of time reporting bugs.
4:58
And now I can just fire it off, have Poke do it for me.
5:03
So I try not to do this, but sometimes when we have people on the show, I haven't had time to really dig into the products that they build.
5:10
Poke was one of those things where it just looked cool, and I figured it was going to be a thing people were talking about, and I think correctly so, I think uh I saw Poke in the news quite a bit last week, at least in our little bubble.
5:24
But I hadn't quite tried it, so it's good to hear from you that you think it's legit.
5:27
I've also been getting like the daily summaries from it. And it's decent.
5:31
It like forgot that I'm back on the West Coast after a trip to the East Coast last week, so it's not quite as smart as I would like.
5:39
Still a little rough around the edges, but you're right.
5:43
I mean, the form factor and the I don't know if taste is the right word, but just the approach that it has with the way it communicates and where it decides to prompt you a little more or or go the extra mile seems to be quite good.
5:56
I honestly didn't know the tone could be as much of a lever as it is in Poke.
6:02
People talk about Claude having a nicer tone.
6:04
>> Right, but people talk about Claude having a nicer tone, but Poke isn't just a nice tone that actually in some ways is the closest thing to it is probably the friend AI pendant.
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It's a little sarcastic, a little pushy. >> Fourth show. >> Definitely brief.
6:17
Definitely mention you've made now. Yep.
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And it and it makes fun of me sometimes, which I actually genuinely appreciate, but it also just knows when to be quiet and work.
6:26
So I was like talking about some potential dinner spots I was looking at for some trip.
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And I said which one looked best to me, and it said, "Hmm, that surprises me.
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Not very Rick Rubin of tech of you." I'm like, "Jesus."
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You're pulling quotes from my website and and and roasting me for that. So >> Wow.
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Yeah, you weren't looking in Malibu for a restaurant. >> No.
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That would make you Rick Rubin of >> And it does feel like it knows me better than the others.
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It feels like they have some good prompts in place to remember your taste and and things like that.
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So it's given me very good recommendations, and it really does feel like a friend as opposed to your AI assistant who's going to write you a five-paragraph essay every time.
7:05
Okay, so we're we're long Poke, short Open Claw?
7:08
I mean, different audiences, right?
7:10
It's like It's like iOS and Android.
7:12
Android people want to tweak their home screen with interesting widgets that don't work. >> Well, that's great.
7:17
Another thing that I wanted to talk about with you, Ellis, is that the Social Network sequel is apparently going to be good, I regret to inform you.
7:25
So there was a teaser shown at CinemaCon this week.
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I saw friend of the show, Matt Belloni, said that it might be the thing that actually breaks the internet, referring to Jeremy Strong's Mark Zuckerberg in this movie.
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Gave it five stars, which is high praise >> Stunning casting. Couldn't be better.
7:45
Yeah, man, Kendall Roy's going full Zuck, and I'm here for it.
7:47
I think you know, I think Zuck should >> to see the haircut. Is the haircut out?
7:53
The haircut's not out, so I think everyone had to have their phones put away to see this. >> I see. Okay.
7:59
>> But I assume a teaser will drop.
7:59
The movie comes out October 9th.
8:01
I'm sure it's going to have awards buzz.
8:06
I'm all for this, and you know, I think Zuck, uh shoutout to our now our fifth uh Access guest in this intro, should embrace this.
8:14
You know, he famously back in the day for the Social Network, the first one, rented a theater uh for Facebook employees to go watch it and really leaned into the the ridiculousness of it.
8:25
And look, it's not going to be a favorable movie.
8:28
It's about Frances Haugen, who I've met and interviewed, and the Facebook files, which I covered extensively, that were all the internal documents that came out about all the, you know, uh what's the right word?
8:41
Uh rough things that Facebook was doing and the way it was >> Hashtag as I reported. As I reported.
8:49
As you know, shoutout really to Jeff Horwitz, the Wall Street Journal reporter who uh famously wore a a headband on national television as he was breaking this story looking like he was uh in a dojo.
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Um I know Jeff was always a great guy. >> Just the vibe, man.
9:06
Um >> Oh, just in the arena.
9:07
Yeah, he's just in the arena, and now he's being played by uh The Bear's Jeremy Allen White, and Frances Haugen is being played by Mikey Madison, which will be I think a very great cast.
9:21
And yeah, I think Zuck, even though this is going to, you know, paint him as a Savage monopolistic uh capitalist who doesn't care about children, I think you should lean into this.
9:31
I think you should rent a theater again.
9:33
I think you should play into the memes uh because it's going to be, you know, obviously uh a hard one.
9:41
And I think if you just ignore it, you kind of give it more life.
9:45
I mean, what choice do you have?
9:46
What choice do you really have as I think an executive these days?
9:50
But to laugh at the joke as well. Yeah.
9:53
Um I'm just I I Aaron Sorkin's obviously, you know, goated.
9:55
I love a lot of his early stuff.
9:57
I haven't liked some of the movies he's done in recent years.
10:01
Um, there was one set in a courtroom that I can't even remember.
10:04
I think I fell asleep um, a few couple of years ago.
10:08
He hasn't had a ton of great stuff.
10:10
So, I'm hoping this is actually a return to form.
10:12
And I didn't actually look to see if like uh, if uh, Trent Reznor was doing the soundtrack again. That would be dope.
10:18
But, yeah, we'll have to go see this else.
10:20
We'll have a little access uh, premiere. I cannot wait.
10:24
For any number of reasons, Social Network is one of my top 10 movies ever and it really is hard to overstate how influential Yeah.
10:33
it has been on the tech industry.
10:36
May, you know, probably even more so than her and and many others because it incorporated music that has set the tone of coding >> [laughter] >> for 15 years since then.
10:46
Uh, so many of the archetypal narratives that executives take part in or have to come that.
10:54
It really has just been so influential and really just is a stunning movie.
10:58
And so, I'm I'm hopeful that Aaron Sorkin is not washed and can make this happen again.
11:02
Yeah, and we're going to keep the tech meets Hollywood theme going next week on the show.
11:07
We've got Jonathan Glazer who is the showrunner of the audacity, a new show on AMC that is the spiritual successor to Silicon Valley, uh, the former HBO show, I think.
11:19
Uh, I I talked about it briefly on the last episode, but really excited to have him on.
11:23
He'll be our first non-tech founder type on the show. So, we're branching out.
11:30
>> Can I get like a pre-read, pre-watch? I've got the screeners. I'll send them to you. Is that is that legal?
11:33
Did you just cause yourself a problem?
11:35
If my poke was working, it would have already sent them to you.
11:38
But, we'll we'll make sure to address that.
11:40
So, I had poke send a calendar invite to someone and I asked the person if they successfully received it and they said, "Yeah, but I think poke misspelled the name of my company."
11:52
And I was like, "Ha ha ha. Yeah." No, that was my fault.
11:56
See, that's also what I'm terrified with agentic AI is it's just really messing something up or compromising a deal or Oh, it asked me for permission. Don't worry about that.
12:06
>> you're not going to look at everything, you know?
12:08
You're you're giving your life over to this thing.
12:09
Well, the only other thing I wanted to talk about before we get into our convo with Melanie was I think a confluence of two things that to me are >> Yeah, gosh.
12:19
Um, >> [laughter] >> for those who didn't see, um, it's important to laugh, I guess, but this is pretty serious.
12:26
There were two attacks on Sam Altman's home.
12:28
Uh, one of them threw a Molotov cocktail over the gate.
12:34
And then another was like a drive-by, you know, firing rounds into the side of the of the property.
12:42
Thankfully, no one was hurt.
12:42
Um, and Sam posted a blog about it over the weekend that I'm sure a lot of listeners of this show have already seen.
12:48
To me, this is obviously a horrible thing and attacks on tech executives have been happening.
12:55
I remember I covered in 2018, there was a horrific shooting at YouTube's headquarters.
12:59
Um, and it was about something to do with demonetizing a video or banning someone and um, the person got mad and this stuff happens, right?
13:09
But, I think what's happening with AI and I wrote about this in sources this week is a real reputational crisis that I think the industry has not come to terms with and is not focusing on enough.
13:19
So, on Monday, Stanford, they do this big AI index every year.
13:23
It's kind of the Bible of where AI is at uh, and they release it once a year.
13:28
And they had a bunch of interesting data this year about how horribly AI is being received by the general public and how the gap between how people feel about AI who work in it and are building it is really diverging from everyone else.
13:47
And then you see these attacks on Altman's house and it's like, yeah, these are the consequences of what's happening, which is a lot of people hate AI.
13:55
And they hate what it represents.
13:58
They hate the mass unemployment narrative that companies have been putting out.
14:02
And it's feels like it's reaching a boiling point.
14:05
Uh, I wasn't sure if you got to look into all of this, but um, my takeaway is that I think the industry should stop finger-pointing and focusing so much on the rat race of what everyone else is doing around, you know, you.
14:20
I specifically I'm talking about Open AI and Anthropic.
14:21
And they should think more about this because this seems like the biggest problem of all.
14:25
Yeah, I think the first thing I want to say is violence is never the answer to some companies doing some things you don't like. Nope.
14:37
Um, I will also say, I wonder if in some ways AI is kind of becoming the symbol for the wealth inequality and lack of agency and mobility that so many people are feeling.
14:50
And while it's always been on the left or on the right uh, to talk about, you know, how we describe the rich or the elite.
15:00
The AI leaders seem to be something that both sides can agree on are accelerating uh, the demise of a specific group, the middle class or otherwise, that was already really, really, really struggling.
15:11
And telling them to go start their own agentic small business tomorrow while they're struggling to make ends meet and can't afford groceries is not really going to work.
15:22
And so, yeah, it seems like it definitely demands a different tack.
15:24
And I will say I was also scrolling some feeds and half the time I favorite something on X, I now get a notification later that it was actually fake from community notes. >> Yep.
15:35
And I will say I think regulation does happen fastest when everybody is dog-fooding this [ __ ] you know?
15:40
And so, I mean, certainly it's in the news all day, every day.
15:45
And could be the future of many companies' livelihoods and and you know, populations at stake.
15:53
So, I would expect there to be a very strong reaction over the coming years I hope so. >> I hope so.
15:59
I mean, so this guy that attacked uh, with a with a Molotov cocktail, he's a 20-year-old uh, from Texas.
16:06
He then went to Open AI HQ, smashed the glass doors with a chair and told security he was there to burn it down and kill anyone inside.
16:14
And he had this anti- AI manifesto where uh, he had a specific note to Altman saying, you know, if for some reason um, I don't succeed in in killing you, I guess, then you should take this as a sign to uh, quote, redeem yourself.
16:31
Uh, and then the memo was talking about uh, you know, AI replacing us, mass causing mass extinction.
16:38
And then, you know, Altman puts out his post and he says, you know, uh, that he sympathizes uh, with this anti-tech sentiment that is clearly so pervasive.
16:49
But, then he said, "I believe technological progress can make the future unbelievably good for your family and mine."
16:54
And that, you know, that may be true.
16:57
Like, I believe that mostly, I think.
17:00
I think you probably do, too.
17:00
We talk about AI all the time. We're nerds about it. We love to try it.
17:04
It's helping us with our businesses.
17:06
But, most Americans don't think this, Sam. And this is the problem.
17:11
Uh, so this Stanford report said that 38% of Americans view AI positively and that's the lowest ever recorded. And in China, it's 84%.
17:23
It's happening with just the rest of the world.
17:25
And then the trust in the US government to regulate is like 31%.
17:29
So, people seem to just be incredibly pessimistic about AI.
17:33
Yeah, it seems like a little bit of a catch-22 for whichever administration is in power today or tomorrow.
17:41
Uh, they don't want to cap the American growth and hegemony over tech.
17:48
But, it also in some ways is just kind of like a repeat of some of the stuff Bill Clinton gets criticized for uh, accelerating globalization, which took so many jobs abroad.
17:58
And sure, it did lower a lot of the costs of goods here, but for many people, they don't think it was worth it.
18:06
And for many people, their salary or their wages haven't realistically, relatively gone up in, you know, 20 to 30 years.
18:13
I I always say think it's the only chart that matters.
18:16
You know, you talk to people building AI and a lot of them privately believe that there's going to be more jobs in the future.
18:22
But, they all also acknowledge that there's going to be this period where a lot of people lose jobs really quickly.
18:30
And I think that's the tricky part is communicating this vision on the other side of you know, technology tends to enable new kinds of jobs.
18:37
I mean, like we would not be doing a podcast 50 years ago.
18:42
The idea that this could be a business was ridiculous then.
18:45
So, it will unlock a lot of new things, but that transitional period is going to be really messy and no one in the industry seems to know how to talk about that.
18:52
And again, I just keep coming back to the industry is so focused on itself and competition and recruiting and virtue signaling to everyone in the bubble that they aren't paying attention to the fact that people are rioting about this stuff.
19:11
Has Dario written the only bad news essay?
19:14
Uh, I guess the citrine as you say.
19:18
>> [laughter] >> But, that was not a frontier lab.
19:19
Altman has a lot of stuff about, you know, needing universal basic income because of such mass unemployment that's going to come, right?
19:27
Uh, he has that Worldcoin startup that he's involved with.
19:32
I mean, they all they all talk about this stuff.
19:33
I just I think there's a a recalibration that needs to happen and I'm not really sure what's going to look like, but I mean, I think the attacks on Altman really show the stakes here.
19:44
And I just hope that the industry wakes up.
19:46
I mean, you kind of probably get if I had to guess, you get lulled into a sense of uh, this is just the way it is when you're an Open AI employee and you're leaving the office and you see a sign reminding you to hide your badge as you walk out."
19:57
which is something I noticed when I was walking out of Open AI a few weeks ago.
20:03
I remember even going a couple years ago and this was well before all this mass unemployment rhetoric and I was asking like, "Why is this an unmarked building?
20:11
Like why is like there's no way of knowing that this is the headquarters and it people were telling me at the time that they were already getting crazies showing up talking about AGI and trying to find AGI and um you know, this is just the stakes of this technology feel so high now that uh I just hope that people don't uh get used to going into their unmarked office every day and ignoring it, you know?
20:33
Well, on a lighter note, today we have Canva co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins to talk about some upcoming news they're dropping. Excited for this one.
20:42
It's been in the works for a while.
20:44
We've wanted to have Melanie on the show.
20:45
Uh she's obviously a super impressive founder and Canva's a very important company.
20:49
We recorded this last week right before their big event in LA which is happening the day this episode drops and they've got a lot of big AI news which we get into.
20:59
So thanks again to to Melanie. Let's roll it.
21:06
>> [music] >> Hi Melanie, how are you? Great to see you.
21:09
I'm well, how are you doing? Good to see you.
21:11
Are you in the throes of Create rehearsals or what's what's going on? Yes, it's all happening.
21:18
Create rehearsal, keynote prep, like the every product's coming.
21:24
It's all all happening right now, but it's exciting.
21:26
Ellis has done some keynote prep in his time.
21:27
Yeah, I'm curious like what what does that look like these days?
21:31
I feel like some folks including Apple are just like we're just going to do this all in post and just record it and then make everybody sit in an audience and just play the video.
21:40
>> [laughter] >> Uh but there seem to be a lot of different approaches on like where is the leverage with a keynote these days?
21:47
I don't know, what's your take?
21:48
Oh, that is totally That'll be a very relaxed approach, wouldn't it?
21:50
No, the we um have an audience of 5,000 people all of our community come. It's a big event.
21:57
We have a whole day of workshops and training and it's a it's a very live experience.
22:02
Um I think the the keynote goes live like an hour or something after it's recorded, so it's mini- minimal post.
22:08
I got to see Jensen do his keynote at GTC a few weeks ago and he doesn't have a script.
22:16
He just freewheels it for like almost 3 hours. Are you very scripted?
22:22
How regimented are we talking?
22:24
>> urge to freewheel your 2-hour keynote.
22:26
>> [laughter] >> I have to say we're a little more prepped than that.
22:30
Um but we also have a lot more um let's say creative flair, you might see coming out on next next [laughter] Tuesday.
22:38
There's a there's a lot of elements and creative industries coming together uh which we're uh excited to bring to life.
22:47
So there's a little a little more than just freestyling it for 2 hours.
22:51
How many cooks are in the kitchen approximately at this moment?
22:52
Cuz I feel like keynotes are just so high pressure because they're live and I feel like everybody wants to have their two cents which can get a little a little crazy at times.
23:03
It starts off pretty small, but then as we come up to the the day, we've now got uh hundreds of people working cuz there's going to be like hundreds of people on state Oh, I don't know exactly the number on stage.
23:15
So there are a lot of people prepping um all sorts of things to to bring to life on the day.
23:21
So there's I'd say hundreds of people involved actually at this point.
23:24
Melanie, how big is Canva these days?
23:26
Like how many how many users do you guys have?
23:28
I don't know if you disclose revenue.
23:30
I know you're private, but give us a sense of the scale.
23:35
Cuz Create is such a big thing.
23:35
I mean thousands of people.
23:36
We've got more than a quarter billion people using Canva each month and we reached 4 billion in annualized revenue in December.
23:43
How do you think about the growth?
23:45
Like has it always been kind of the last few years pretty steady or have you had kind of an inflection moment recently?
23:50
It's been pretty steady for the last decade.
23:52
We've we've been launched for 12 years now and it's just been growing rapidly actually since day one which has been pretty epic and and continuous and steady, but I think because so many people have been using Canva like we one of our favorite charts is cohort chart.
24:05
You can see people that joined in 2013, there's more people using Canva and paying for it today than they were back in 2013.
24:13
There's more people from that cohort upgrade to our paid products and use it more over time and then the same for every year since.
24:18
So I think that's why it has been very continuous over the over the last decade.
24:22
I'm curious, how would you describe the growth?
24:24
Is it moving into new teams within companies or is it just kind of more companies using the baseline stuff that's been there and been popular or how are you thinking about that?
24:35
It's all of the above, so it's new people that have never used Canva before.
24:38
It's people using Canva for more of their workflow.
24:41
So they might come in to create a presentation and then they stay for all of our docs and whiteboarding and um all of the other things that you can create in Canva.
24:49
Having that interval visual suite at the heart of it means you can learn one product and then you can take that to every other product like websites um and so forth.
24:56
And we've got 100 million teachers and students using the platform around the world.
25:00
We've rolled out into 21 countries um and then thousands upon thousands of districts um small businesses, individuals.
25:07
It's it's really the full gamut.
25:09
It's quite fun when you look at a chart breakdown of a um the different departments of a company using Canva, it actually mirrors their company.
25:17
So if there's more sales folk at their company, there's more sales folk using Canva.
25:20
If there's more engineers at the company, there's more engineers using Canva.
25:23
So it really is a very broad split.
25:25
Ellis has a question that he needs to ask you about your client uh his clients.
25:28
Ellis, >> [laughter] >> just want to make sure you ask this.
25:32
Thanks for teeing me up, Ellis.
25:32
Why do all my clients want to kill you?
25:34
I work with tech startups and I feel like we've got the deck ones.
25:39
We've got the video ones. We've got the doc ones.
25:41
We've got the design ones obviously.
25:43
What do they have against you?
25:46
What did you What did you do to all of them?
25:49
There's such a vengeful spirit.
25:49
Is it really vengeful or just like there's people want what Melanie's got?
25:54
I mean I can't comment on those other companies, but I guess when you do something that's going pretty well, you've got a quarter billion people using Canva.
26:02
I think maybe they they want a piece of that.
26:06
You just made two acquisitions, right? We did, yes.
26:08
Yeah, so maybe you could buy some of these that that Ellis is talking about.
26:13
>> Well, I think like part of the question is just kind of about the classic bundling unbundling idea.
26:16
I mean every company starts small, gets big, adds more features, becomes a suite, wants to be for everybody and then the startups come and peel out the individual use cases, make them simple again.
26:33
Uh where do you feel like you stand in in that in that trajectory right now?
26:34
I think if you look at like, you know, the first decade of Canva and and the genesis of the company was that there was a very fragmented industry.
26:42
To just create a piece of design, you have to go to all these different products, go to different template sites, photography and illustrations and layouts and a different piece of software for everything you wanted to design.
26:51
Our whole thing was taking all of that fragmentation and bringing it into one simple platform and making it accessible to all.
26:57
I think what's really interesting is actually if you look at the parallels of creation today, actually that the fragmentation is occurring now with all the different AI tools, all of the different things that have your memory and your context.
27:08
And so the modern process of creation, we're really excited to again re-bring it all into one simple platform and making it accessible to the world uh which is exactly what we've been doing with Canva AI 2. 0.
27:20
Um so we're very excited about everything being in one place once again.
27:23
Melanie, you're from Perth, right? That's correct.
27:27
>> Uh and it's one of the most remote cities on Earth if not the, right? Mhm, you're correct.
27:32
I would love to know how people feel about AI in Perth right now.
27:37
I don't know if you still live there or you spend a lot of time there, but Perth and Australia in general, I mean we talk about it, you know, this show's very We talk to people in the SF bubble all the time.
27:46
Uh and obviously Ellis and I are pretty AI-pilled.
27:48
We're using stuff constantly.
27:51
Uh I'm curious in Australia.
27:51
I mean we don't have many Australian founders on the show and I just be curious to hear um what it's like down under. Great question.
28:00
I So I live in Sydney now and I think that like everyone has their own experiences with AI and with different products.
28:07
And you know I guess some people find it if they were they're using a certain tool, one of the issues a lot of people have is they have to prompt and re-prompt and go over and over again to try to get the output that they want.
28:19
I think there's a lot of problems that we're trying to solve with the existing tools um with Canva AI 2. 0.
28:25
So for example, that prompting re-prompting thing, now with Canva AI, you can just prompt it once and then you can create the design that's in a fully editable layered format and then you can just go in and edit any aspect of it.
28:36
You can have the normal tools that you know and love in Canva.
28:40
And so I think that like everyone has their own experiences.
28:42
I can't speak for all of Australia here right now.
28:44
But you know, in in the states where it's always like, "Oh, like you know, non-technical people are pretty negative on AI.
28:50
They fear about job loss.
28:52
They don't see it as like an uplifting thing."
28:54
and then in other parts of the world it's a little different.
28:57
I was just curious if it happens there.
28:59
>> Ellis thinks everybody has heard of Open Claw when no one has.
29:03
>> [laughter] >> That [snorts] that is fair.
29:04
I think you know, for everything with like old technologies, like is it help people aren't except for perhaps in Silicon Valley waking up and thinking about AI every single day.
29:14
They're waking up and like they have a job to do.
29:16
A teacher has a classroom to teach.
29:19
And so you know, a small business has a small business to run. A and so forth.
29:23
Like everyone has their own job to do.
29:26
And so where we really the way we really think about it at Canva is like how do we empower people to achieve the goal that they have in the real world um with technology and AI is just another tool in our toolkit to help people achieve their goals.
29:40
It was why we were so excited to launch Learn Grid um which is actually specifically for teachers around the world.
29:45
Um so it has curriculum aligned content materials.
29:47
So if you're in year five, you're teaching maths in a certain district or in a certain country, you'll then have curriculum aligned content being able to create get created really easily.
29:56
And then if you're a small business, being able to come into Canva AI and just be like get research done on something, get a deck created, um, have things happen on brand and be able to collaborate with your team.
30:07
I think sometimes it can feel a little scarier when it's like away from you and you're kind of hearing about these things and and the the messaging in the media.
30:17
But then when you actually can use it and actually helps you to achieve your goal and you help your helps you and your team to be more efficient and to be able to get your work done, I think that's when it becomes a lot more approachable.
30:27
You know, our goal is always to make complex things simple.
30:31
And so we're really excited about bringing the power of AI to help people achieve their goals in the world.
30:34
I think that it sometimes it can sound like there's this thing that's going to happen to us, but actually what we are really working very hard at is ensuring that that thing is actually just another tool to empower you to achieve your goals.
30:48
So it's a very strong focus for us actually.
30:51
Yeah, I I have a lot of respect for anybody who's building for everyday folks, call them normies or otherwise, cuz I do feel like that's a lot harder realistically to do. What do you think?
31:03
I mean, you talked about making the complex simple, but do you have any like internal principles for that bar or what it means to design something that you feel like everybody from the teacher to the professional could use cuz I feel like that's quite a hard skill.
31:17
This is one of the other reasons I appreciate Apple's, you know, forward moves with iOS and otherwise.
31:23
They've been able to stay up to speed on a lot of this stuff.
31:25
While I don't know about I don't know about liquid glass and the new phone app in particular, but um, yeah, I mean, it's a tough line, isn't it?
31:32
To try and like bring new tech to everybody.
31:34
How do you think about that?
31:35
It's what we've been doing really for a decade.
31:37
So like we've always tried to give people the latest and greatest technology, but in a really accessible way that helps them to achieve their goals.
31:44
You know, when we when we launched AI back in 2019 with background remover and people of course loved it because they didn't have to do this manual task.
31:52
But you like have a photo and you want the background removed.
31:55
Classic thing or feature.
31:55
It yeah, it just disappeared.
31:57
Um, but even if you fast rewind even further back to Canva Chef, which was actually Canva's name before we launched Canva.
32:04
Um, and that was all about being able to like you would have a search box and the idea was you just search for whatever you want from a lab report to a brochure to whatever and you'd be able to create it on the fly and then you'd go jump into the the Canva Chef editor and there would to um, like move things around and drag and drop and collaborate exactly as you are today.
32:28
It was just like my prototype before we actually built Canva.
32:32
And I think it's kind of interesting that like now if you look at Canva Chef and you look at Canva AI 2.
32:36
0, the UI is actually remarkably similar in that you just got a search box you can jump in, but then you would go into the editor and you can collaborate and do all of the standard things that you want.
32:45
So I think like while AI is obviously very new and certainly generative AI and all the things that are now is able to happen with agentic orchestration and so forth, I think to the standard person, they're just trying to get their goal done.
32:56
And so if we can help facilitate that, um, it's pretty powerful.
33:01
Are you telling teachers about agents or are we just letting that be a word that just kind of doesn't need to exist in their mind space, you know?
33:07
They don't need to know about it.
33:09
We're going to talk about agentic orchestration, but we also don't expect them to specifically care.
33:12
Um, I think that like, you know, we've got hundreds of people working behind the scenes to make this agentic orchestration really awesome.
33:22
But from a user's perspective, they just like say the thing that they want, they get it in a layered format that works the way they know and love from Canva.
33:29
Um, and then they can just use it how they would normally use Canva.
33:33
Are you going to have an actual orchestra at Create though? Yes.
33:37
So we have a >> [laughter] >> We one of our team members said that it is like an orchestra.
33:43
And so um, for the internal team celebration, we put together like a a team orchestra. It was hilarious.
33:49
Um, but we are actually getting a professional orchestra, which I am yet to see that are going to be coming on stage next Thursday.
33:56
Oh, so And they're dressed as agents like from the Matrix or how are we?
34:00
I think we're giving standard standard orchestral uh, uh, blacks, I believe.
34:08
But there will be a little glitter.
34:10
There's there's going to be a lot going on.
34:12
This is a big moment for you guys.
34:12
I mean, looking at what your team sent over, there's a lot here and how you're changing the interface and it really is consistent with I think a lot of the themes Elson I have been covering on the show for the last six or so months.
34:24
You know, we've had Dylan Field from Figma on and we've had a lot of these kind of platform tool companies talking about how they're adapting to AI.
34:31
And a line that struck me from your all's release that the team sent was, we're moving from a design platform with AI tools to an AI platform with design tools.
34:43
What does that actually mean?
34:43
That is a really good question.
34:47
So, from a user standpoint, there's a lot of things that just stay exactly the same as Canva.
34:52
Our mission is to empower the world to design.
34:54
If you come into Canva and you hate AI, you actually can just completely use Canva exactly the way you always use it.
35:02
But I guess behind the scenes, Canva AI is a new tab that you can access on the homepage or inside the editor while you're actually designing.
35:07
And that is where all of the power of agentic orchestration comes to life.
35:12
So you can type it whatever it is that you want in um, and then you can get your job done.
35:18
And so previously in Canva, you had all these different really great AI tools, but they were all like quite fragmented and so you'd have to you'd get the tool at your hand when you needed that tool, you'd have to know where to find it.
35:29
Um, and so with Canva AI 2.
35:31
0, it brings that all together um, into both of the one the one space.
35:37
And so you can just type it in and it will go and find you the tool rather than you having to go and Oh my god, this is incredible. It's pretty cool.
35:45
I literally had this problem where I'm not like a power user.
35:47
I have Canva installed and I needed to get something updated with my logo for my newsletter to send to someone.
35:53
I needed to do it fast and I was like, how fast can I do this?
35:57
What tool do I need to use? I used Google.
35:59
It was like, you should try Canva. And then I opened it.
35:59
I looked at all the menus and I'm like, [ __ ] this is going to take me like a [laughter] while to figure out and it was Melanie, it was so basic.
36:06
I don't even know what it was.
36:08
It was like confer It was like increasing the size of something. I feel so dumb about it.
36:12
But it's one of the main AI use cases is being able to click all the buttons in the menus for you that you didn't even know existed.
36:19
And that applies to like literally every product.
36:21
And it's it's pretty wild.
36:21
Like now with dictation, you can just like literally speak into your phone.
36:25
Like I've been designing presentations like when I get an idea at midnight, it's like literally on my phone and I can just dictate what I want and then it will just like create it for me and then I can do iterative editing because of the way it now works inside the editor.
36:38
I could like, oh, actually I didn't mean that.
36:40
I wanted this other thing or I want to rearrange or try this idea.
36:41
And so all of a sudden you can have all of the design happening just by dictation on your mobile phone, which is pretty wild. Well, so let me ask you.
36:49
I know, you know, with the mission about empowering everybody to design, then you have some new use cases here.
36:55
One of the ones that y'all mentioned was building a custom pitch deck for a customer based on every email you've ever exchanged with them.
37:05
Sounds great, but it also sounds like, is that not the work that that person was already, you know, is that not their job?
37:11
And like where is the design left in that in that type of world?
37:13
Or are you thinking of design as potentially something bigger than that?
37:17
Like coming up with the framework for the decks and then that gets adapted, you know, customized.
37:23
Like what is that job that that person's doing anymore?
37:26
I think that's what's kind of exciting in this new era.
37:29
Every like in our company, every role is changing what it actually means.
37:33
And in fact, if you look at the role of a designer over the years, that's changed.
37:36
Like if you go back to the in each of the different ages, like the role of a designer has been completely different depending on the tools that were available.
37:44
I think that what we're going to see is a lot more brand system designers coming to bear as a really important role.
37:56
system for the entire company to operate from.
37:59
And it means that the sales team that often gets neglected by the the brand designers all of a sudden can have this system where the brand designers are working on the templates that then the rest of the organization are able to um, utilize.
38:11
And then all of a sudden every single customer can have a personalized pitch deck with all of the up-to-date information that can feel a lot more personal to that person or to that customer.
38:20
And so I think, you know, we look at a lot of the jobs that are disappearing, but with AI and in fact with every technological revolution, a lot of new jobs come to bear.
38:28
And so things like a brand system designer, I think are exactly in that category where it's like there's so much of a brand that is instilled in the template and in the way it's actually laid out and the information is like much more of a curation job as well.
38:42
Is what you're describing how Canva is changing internally too?
38:46
Like are you are you creating new kinds of roles? Very much so.
38:51
Pretty much like every role today is different from the way it was three years ago.
38:54
If we look at the way our engineers work, it's completely different.
38:57
If we look at what our product designers do, they're creating prototypes.
38:59
If we look at what our PMs do and the way they do their research, it's completely different.
39:03
Um, it's all, you know, the same like underlying principles are the same like building great products for our customers, that doesn't change.
39:09
But the way we actually get our work done, um, or the way we create brand templates across the organization, like all of these things are are certainly changing.
39:17
You know, we've invested very heavily in upskilling our team, upskilling our systems to help everyone come on this this very important journey that we're all going on together.
39:25
I can definitely vouch for the fact that all designers just want to design brand systems or design systems.
39:31
I think that's definitely true.
39:33
But I I know like one big question with this kind of like the whole debate if you've heard it about friction versus frictionless and what you might gain or lose.
39:43
Where do you feel like the design creativity is going to live?
39:45
I mean, is it that clear of a wall between the exploration stage and the scale stage?
39:53
For me, design is always about like taking an idea and turning that into reality.
39:57
And there's so many stages of design.
40:01
Um, sometimes I can think because I just have an idea that I like actually going through the prototyping phase actually helps bring that to life and adds more color and then I refine my like sometimes 100 times um after after that point in time.
40:13
And sometimes for me, I have an idea but actually writing it out in like prose is really helpful.
40:17
And sometimes so I think you know at its essence we're always taking an idea from um chaos all the way to clarity.
40:25
And there's lots of different tools and mechanisms that help to bring that to life.
40:32
And so I think that the role of design is actually more important now than ever before.
40:36
When when we launched Canva at the start people are like what are designers going to do?
40:40
Canva's going to take away all the design work.
40:41
And actually if you look at the last decade there's way more designers creating way more um visual content than ever before.
40:49
And I think that next leap is also going to be true that brand designers are going to be creating the there's going to be a lot more brand designers required because they're going to be creating the templates.
40:57
Actually the brand intelligence that we're launching right now it really leans heavily on the template side because a template actually imbues so much design principles of brand um brand knowledge in a template itself.
41:12
So we yeah, we're really excited about the way that will come to life as well.
41:16
And the new roles that will be created because of this.
41:18
You've got all these connectors that you're plugging into Canva now where it's sucking in context from Google, Slack, >> [snorts] >> CRMs, etc. right?
41:27
So it's like the through line of create this year seems like Canva's becoming this hub.
41:34
And I'm curious about that philosophy because uh just to bring up like Figma again, he started basically making Figma like an MCP node where uh all of a sudden like Claude can talk to Figma. Do you want that?
41:46
Do you want the big assistance AI assistants to be uh kind of at a higher abstraction level level of the interface into Canva and vice versa?
41:57
Cuz right now it seems like you're wanting everyone to bring stuff into Canva not necessarily have Canva open up. Is that is that fair?
42:03
Am I understanding the philosophy?
42:04
Oh, it actually works both ways.
42:06
So we already collaborate really closely with OpenAI and Anthropic.
42:10
Um Canva is one of the top apps um on both platforms.
42:12
But then equally on the other side of the fence, having Canva be the platform that is able to bring all the information in.
42:19
So when you're creating that pitch deck it can you know bring in the latest calendar invite and your Gmail contacts. So it's both.
42:27
I was I was curious if it's going to be both cuz this seems more like pulling in and I know you had the open the chat app and all that but I wasn't sure if this was a shift.
42:34
Yeah, no no very much so by directional.
42:36
Are you able to break down what people are asking for when they're doing it through ChatGPT or Claude?
42:42
I wonder just like how much design work is actually the stuff that gets marketed like generating logos and stuff like that or if if that's just kind of the flashy piece and most of it is is scaling, executing, automating?
42:56
Yeah, so one of the things that was pretty cool like a the more content that is being created on these um third parties like on Claude and ChatGPT, actually the more content that then gets brought into Canva.
43:06
It's actually so much so that we launched something called Magic Layers recently because so many people are creating images in all sorts of places on the web and then actually get really frustrated because they want to be able to like actually edit the text or you know edit whatever format it might be.
43:21
We've had 8 million uses of that in the first four weeks of um since that product launched.
43:27
So I think that you know across in Canva you can design presentations and I think we've had 100 million people creating a presentation each month now.
43:35
So yeah, there's there's a very large plethora I think.
43:40
Um being able to take some take an idea and turn that into a design we kind of cover that cover that full gamut.
43:44
What's your view of the SaaS apocalypse convo right now uh being someone who is very AI native and you're working with the assistants and the chatbots but you're also doing your in-house AI.
43:57
Uh you're probably are pretty glad if I had to guess that you're not a public company right now because uh it's rough out there.
44:04
Uh but curious yeah, how you're viewing all that.
44:06
Where what you think people are maybe getting wrong, what are they getting right?
44:09
I know we've been doing this for a while now.
44:11
We've been you know Canva's been around for 12 years and kind of things like go um yo-yo.
44:16
Like you know at one stage they'll be like growth at all costs and then the next stage is like profitability.
44:21
And we've been fortunate we've been profitable for nine years so we've kind of avoided that yo-yo but at one stage people like spend all your money in the bank account and we've been fortunate to you've got a very sufficient bank balance.
44:32
So it kind of means that we don't need to worry too much about what's happening in the macroeconomic environment.
44:38
And we just really focus on what we can control which is delivering a great product to our community.
44:43
Um I think like being out of Silicon Valley it does create a little bit less noise for us.
44:47
Um and we just really focus on delivering a great product to our community and I think that they're going to love hopefully you what we're what we're bringing out.
44:56
>> profitable certainly helps.
44:56
That's definitely not in vogue in Silicon Valley.
44:59
So uh you're doing something different there.
45:02
>> And sometimes it is like I think after COVID it became cool but we're like we've we've been profitable for like you know five years now.
45:07
Now it's nine years so it's we kind of just we really focus on just building a good company.
45:12
I know there are a lot of rumors of the one-person billionaire company.
45:17
Are you seeing the team size actually change as a result for Canva users as more people are able to do stuff on their own?
45:26
For us like having we've got very very large ambitions.
45:30
We always say we're 1% of the way there.
45:32
And so actually our team's like way more productive and can do way more things.
45:35
But that we say 1% cuz we just keep growing our dreams for what we'd like to be able to do with the company.
45:41
Um and so it just means that we're able to do more things and like serve our customers better.
45:45
And one of my favorite things is we get 1 million requests from our community each year um of things that they'd love to see in the product.
45:53
And we're actually launching I think it's 41 um at our event.
45:56
And so you know just being able to serve our customers better to be able to help them achieve their goals.
46:03
We've been really investing heavily in our team and upskilling everyone.
46:06
We have something called AI Discovery Week.
46:07
We have specialty training so each specialty is going through the transition of learning the new skills for this new era.
46:13
Um yeah, we really see it as that we can do so much more.
46:17
Let's coin it right now long-tail feature development.
46:19
I feel like you're going to be able to just come up with ideas and as long as you can get sign-off I mean it doesn't even have to live somewhere in the app.
46:27
If someone can ask for it it could still work, you know?
46:30
And obviously that's still resources but I do think that is going to be a fun.
46:35
Well she gives the sign-off Ellis so that's easier for her.
46:39
Uh yeah, I mean I mean see the point about 1%.
46:43
I mean it's in the press release up high it says the ambition is simple to be the place where all of your work gets done.
46:48
I mean that's putting you in competition with everyone.
46:51
I mean uh how do you think about that?
46:54
I mean is Canva is your goal really to have Canva become like everything that you know Microsoft and Google and Notion and all these companies are doing like you want all of that activity to be possible inside Canva?
47:06
The way we think about it is just like what what do what is best for um a user?
47:12
And like having to go and navigate lots of different systems and lots of different tools is kind of annoying.
47:17
And so having that all in one place kind of makes sense.
47:19
But then that doesn't mean we don't go and like have access to lots of different tools and places that you might be doing your work elsewhere.
47:27
But being able to have that all at your fingertips um or the end of your query um and it just having all of that context.
47:33
You know for a long time our goal's been just to bring productivity and creativity together in a way that hadn't been done before.
47:38
And so that's you know where we saw as a huge gap in the market and we're we're certainly doubling down on.
47:44
Seems like it's it's got to be a stressful time to be a founder right now.
47:47
How big does the suite go? What do we try and eat? What do we let leave? You know? I don't know.
47:55
She seems pretty zen Ellis.
47:58
>> [laughter] >> You don't seem too stressed especially week before create.
47:59
But are you yeah, to that question are you at all about any of this?
48:03
I mean Open Open AI you know as as you may have read on sources.
48:05
news uh is kind of going through a bit of a you know simplification, retraction of some of these some of these bigger ideas back towards simplicity.
48:17
Um it's tough to know when to stop when you can kind of create everything.
48:21
There's a lot of things that have changed like the what we can do technologically has changed radically for the better as far as like actually being able to bring our mission to life.
48:29
But our mission is actually very stable.
48:31
Like our mission to empower the world to design we break down into what we call our mission pillars.
48:34
Empower everyone to design anything with every ingredient in every language on every device.
48:38
And then every year we pick off like what is the next most important strategic goal under each of those mission pillars to bring to life.
48:45
And so you know we started off with social media graphics and marketing materials and then there was presentations, docs, whiteboards, websites, Canva code and so forth.
48:54
And so it's kind of like there's some things that change radically and then there are other things that are like actually quite quite the same.
49:00
And you because we've been pursuing the same mission and the same strategy for such a long time now it it does take a little bit of the pressure off cuz you kind of know that like how these things will play out.
49:11
It's tough though, isn't it?
49:13
I mean you guys have a scheduler inside the product now, right?
49:16
For scheduling meetings for yourself.
49:19
>> Yeah, so >> [laughter] >> it's actually crazy.
49:20
I I can schedule with 15 different apps right now.
49:22
I don't know which one to choose.
49:24
I mean is the idea that it's just whatever one's in front of you?
49:27
Yeah, so what's really cool is like so the other day I was I I we just got connected to work and I was able to like I was like tell me about my week coming up and create me a document you can read about it to help me plan for the week."
49:41
I was able to go into my calendar, like look at my schedule, actually tell me how to optimize my time.
49:44
And I found out like I was like it said that I had a massage coming up and it said I had a hectic week and I was like, "I didn't think I I had booked a massage."
49:51
And then I was like, "Is there a problem?"
49:54
And I looked at my calendar and I was like, "Ah, actually my partner had booked me one."
49:59
And so it's kind of fun just being able to have like the document that you typically have to go and like have go and create with like all these disparate tools to like be able to be creative on the spot. Or even like research.
50:08
Usually if you're in research you have to go and scour lots of different places.
50:13
And all of a sudden the research can actually just get handed to you in a document that you can just like share and collaborate on. It's kind of cool.
50:18
I'm a You might be able to tell I kind of love being able to take technology like utilize it to help achieve goals.
50:25
And like the amount of new technology that we now have inside our product and have built um it's pretty extraordinary like the way these things will come together in completely unexpected ways.
50:37
>> A lot of what you just described I'm using Claude 4 right now and I'm curious uh since you've been using you know the AI 2.
50:43
0 stuff are you using the other big assistants less?
50:46
Do you think this eats into their time if Canva users embrace all this stuff?
50:51
I think we're just at the such the early stages of all of this.
50:55
Like the number of people that are currently using AI tools or even using you is like quite small compared to the number of people on the internet for example.
51:04
I think there's going to be a lot that transpires over the years to come.
51:10
That's a very diplomatic answer.
51:10
I mean cuz I think you know it it it's tempting right to like add some of this stuff to the product just philosophically.
51:16
I mean shout out to a couple clients Cosmos and Mobbin you know which are two very different types of inspiration like one for kind of like more lifestyle art photography design one for user interfaces and you know that's kind of what they want to be is the research workspace where you can assemble stuff using powerful tools better libraries this or that.
51:38
And then yes there is certainly a value to not have to copy and paste to be able to have it within your workspace.
51:44
I don't know if the the the jury the jury's still out on kind of how people are going to use each of these but it's interesting there's just so much overlap right now I feel like.
51:54
Uh and and indeed I mean you have a huge edge just being the place where a lot of people already are.
52:01
Uh and you have the edge of trying to bring it to them seemingly successfully in a simpler way.
52:05
You know so there's that as well just kind of the first mover advantage or even the distribution if you will.
52:10
I think what it's we're so early in the innings of like what is the new software stack for companies?
52:14
What's the new software stack for you know people at home?
52:20
What's the new software stack for a teacher?
52:21
Um I think you know we're it's so early for all of this that you know I think there's going to be space for a lot of companies over the years to come.
52:29
And companies that serve the community really well Canva AI like is obviously the goal is like everything in one place to like help streamline fragmented workflows um which we think is a hopefully a pretty compelling proposition to to our community.
52:43
I saw that you all trained your own model for this.
52:48
Uh I'm curious what that process would like was like.
52:50
Had you done a foundational model before?
52:51
Like what was what was that like?
52:54
A huge effort over many years.
52:56
Um we have a team of researchers of over a hundred people now that have been working really heavily on this goal.
53:03
We had this intro full format between all of the different different types of products in Canva which was huge investment for the last decade.
53:08
Um you know the same format for presentations or websites or a video or a document.
53:14
Um so we knew that if we could crack that it was going to be a huge unlock for what we could do with AI inside our product.
53:21
And so we're really excited to crack that and then in October last year we had this really exciting breakthrough as to how we could actually bring that to life in our product with a dentic editing.
53:31
And so that was a pretty significant and exciting unlock which is where we were at.
53:38
>> Do you have a good name?
53:38
You know these frontier models they need names.
53:39
You got a good name for your model?
53:43
Uh the Canva design model we have.
53:46
>> [laughter] >> We haven't thought like a the this >> Well this gets to your idea of like simplicity and the user shouldn't know right?
53:52
I'm being kind of facetious but like it I I'm just curious too for these for you know these big consumer companies that invest in their own models you know it's uh the AI race is always contextualized by the labs and the models that people can name and it's like well there's a lot happening with these other big scaled companies and not all of them are doing models but some of them increasingly are.
54:14
>> Well you could do what all the LA parents are doing and name their child like Picasso or Matisse.
54:17
Could always just do that.
54:21
>> [laughter] >> I mean I think it brings back to your earlier point around like simplicity.
54:25
Like customers don't really care what's underneath the hood.
54:29
They come in with a job to do out the real world teach a classroom market their business whatever it might be and you I think that's what's exciting is that we're able to abstract a lot of the complexity.
54:41
Like Canva uses our own models in where where we need to have expertise around design and then we partner with a lot of other great companies um and we're able to bring that technology in.
54:50
But from the customer standpoint they don't need to know like the hundred different things that are happening behind the scenes to help deliver their goal.
54:57
They just need to see the thing at the end looks great and helps achieve that original goal that they set.
55:03
So we try very intentionally to abstract a lot of the complexity behind the scenes.
55:06
I know any model has its tendencies and tastes.
55:09
Do you feel like you've identified any cuz I mean there's got to be something right?
55:16
In the world of design there's so many opinions on what good design is.
55:20
What's the what's the bent of the model that that you trained?
55:22
So the heart I think really fun feature.
55:24
Does it like liquid glass?
55:28
>> [laughter] >> One of my favorite things I don't know if this particularly answers your question but it is my new favorite thing.
55:34
We've got this thing it's go it's in the onboarding for Canva AI and you can create what's called an about me page and it go it's the first book in your memory library.
55:42
And what it does it takes all of your designs like you have to click the button say like create my about me um book.
55:48
And then it creates all of your designs and documents and it actually creates a page that explains your preferences um for things.
55:55
And it's so fun um because it like I didn't actually believe until I saw it with my very own eyes how much knowledge about you as a person is instilled in all of your designs and documents.
56:07
And it was really interesting.
56:09
Um so I guess and then that actually becomes the memory that then powers all of your other um designs.
56:16
>> So what's your aesthetic?
56:18
It was actually it got into my aesthetic but it also got into my it like kind of felt like a a fun weird personality profile cuz it like it understood like that I have a two-step plan build one of the world's most valuable companies and do the most good we can do.
56:29
And like it understood like the way I think behind things.
56:33
So I guess the idea is it doesn't have a stand preference but it really is your preference like you've got your brand system in there and then you've got your memory documents.
56:42
>> Says Mel I personally think vaporwave is pretty passé but if that's your thing all right.
56:47
Well actually I'm going to have to say your about me document when you guys are on the product. I'm just I'm curious.
56:55
Well you have a keynote rehearsal to get back to and I have to catch a flight but I did want to know maybe we can end it here.
57:00
You do this big event every year you get thousands of people it's a spectacle you're going to have an agent orchestra etc.
57:07
Um I'm sure there's going to be other you know special surprises.
57:09
What do you do right after all this?
57:11
Do you immediately go on a vacation?
57:12
Do you you know do not disturb and you disappear?
57:18
Like what's your post create uh flow? It's a great question.
57:20
Like immediately after I I'm actually an introvert and I really just like a dark room.
57:27
Yeah well thank you for being on with us yeah.
57:30
>> Just like low stimulation cuz it's like it's always it's so fun and there's like over 5,000 people there and like really lots of you know a lot of really high energy.
57:39
And so there's like a very very relaxed very chill at home. Maybe a massage. Exactly.
57:49
What's happening in the cave?
57:49
Are you reading gaming catching up on reality TV?
57:53
What are you >> Meditating it sounds like.
57:54
Yeah [laughter] I I've actually I've gotten into meditating.
57:57
I've gotten into singing bowls recently which has been a very that maybe that's why I I sing them.
58:03
Singing bowls great if you haven't had ever tried one of them before.
58:04
We'll have to give that a try.
58:06
Well Mel we really appreciate your time especially this week.
58:09
Uh congrats and uh good luck on the keynote.
58:12
>> Thank you so much for Break leg.
58:17
>> [music] >> That's it for this week's show.
58:18
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58:22
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58:40
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58:44
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58:46
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58:48
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