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# The unconventional growth levers that made Canva a $42B company
- URL: https://review.firstround.com/canvas-path-to-product-market-fit/
- Published: 2026-01-13T16:56:27.000Z
- Updated: 2026-01-14T07:28:47.000Z
- Description: Early evangelists and an ambitious SEO strategy
- Author: First Round Staff
- Tags: #newsletter

*Cameron Adams barely knew Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht before the three decided to build Canva together. In a recent conversation, Adams shared how he knew it was the right choice, how SEO and localization unlocked massive growth, and more.*

## [**Canva’s Path to Product-Market Fit: How a Two-Hour Founder Date Led To a $42B Design Platform**](https://review.firstround.com/canvas-path-to-product-market-fit-2/)

In March 2012, **Cameron Adams** returned to Sydney from San Francisco at an uncertain moment. The **Google** alum had just come back from a fundraising trip for Fluent, the email startup he’d co-founded, without securing the backing he’d hoped for. He also had a newborn at home.

“We spent two months traipsing up and down Sand Hill Road and all over the Bay Area. We thought we would come back with a novelty-sized check of $2 million. Didn’t pan out that way."

[![](https://review.firstround.com/content/images/2026/01/FRC-PMF-Canva-2.jpg)](https://review.firstround.com/canvas-path-to-product-market-fit-2/)

He’d left his role as a user interface designer at Google to give the startup his full attention — a decision that left him taking stock of what came next.

That’s when **Lars Rasmussen**, the co-founder of Google Maps and Adams’s former boss at Google, came to him with a serendipitous suggestion, encouraging Adams to meet a young entrepreneur he’d recently been introduced to: **Melanie Perkins**. Perkins, with her partner **Cliff Obrecht**, had built an online yearbook business called Fusion Books, which was pulling in $2-3 million a year.

But they had their eyes on a much bigger prize. If students could easily create and publish their own yearbooks online with zero design skills, it stood to reason that with the right tools, *anyone* should be able to design *anything*…

[Continue reading on The Review](https://review.firstround.com/canvas-path-to-product-market-fit-2/)