
Canva becomes Australia’s only privately backed tech startup to be valued at $1B - dannyw
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-08/sequoia-backed-canva-becomes-australia-s-only-tech-unicorn
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i386
Worked at Canva two years ago - what an incredibly bright team! CEO Melanie
Perkins is an inspiring visionary. Congratulations on the new valuation!

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somtum
Amazing product. Curious on what their stack is like?

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Torn
Depends on the role; check out the job profiles here
[https://about.canva.com/careers/sydney/](https://about.canva.com/careers/sydney/)

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faitswulff
I use Canva a ton for simple graphic designs. It's great that you can access
it wherever there's a browser, use it for (mostly) free, and it's extremely
user-friendly. Great product, good to see them doing well!

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nitin_flanker
This is what I like most about Canva too. They are always improving their tool
with new UI and features without ever forcing me to buy the "Canva for work".
They are also great at accepting feedbacks.

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mmjaa
How does it compare with h5mag.com, which is what I currently use to do all
this .. ?

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Jyaif
So all it takes for a unicorn to exist is somebody buying a billionth of a
company for $1.

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dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

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hit8run
After tax loss of 3.3 million while having a revenue of 23.5 million
Australian Dollars and this company gets this crazy high valuation... Puh it
worked for Facebook but they were attracting users like crazy. I don’t know
much about canva so maybe someone that knows better can explain to me what
makes their product so special?

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nkkollaw
It's basically the most promising competitor to Photoshop for creating
graphics.

Very cool product.

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pavanlimo
I just gave it a go and it didn't really look like a Photoshop replacement,
more like a _really_ trimmed version of Photoshop. But for the usecases it
serves, it's probably enough. Not an expert in this domain but I'm struggling
to see its value at $1B. May be the community is high quality and large?

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adventured
Some of it surely has to do with the hype around Adobe and their switch to
recurring revenue, SaaS style products.

It has thrown their stock through the roof. Their stock was essentially dead
in the water from 2000 to 2012. $30 to $185 since then. Pull back on their
chart to the max time frame, and it's hilarious looking in the spike versus
the past.

They've been given a ~60 PE ratio, for 15%-20% growth and a rather old-fashion
boring product. But it's cloud! Recurring revenue! Throw enough of that
together with a stock market bubble and you get a 80% jump in the stock in one
year.

That's the most plausible argument in favor of Canva getting their crazy
valuation, it matches the insanity of Adobe's valuation. It's obvious what
happens on the back side of that insanity too.

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JauntyHatAngle
It does seem like the tech industry has a particular culpability for market
valuations not matching actual technical potential.

Cloud was the old (but still functional) blockchain when it comes to buzz
words.

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freeelncer
I wish the day will come where we’ll stop callimg companies “Unicorns” that
are “valued” at a billion dollar based on equity negotiations done by
investors and founders and instead, call companies unicorns when they “profit”
a billion dollars a year. That, my friend, is an achievement worth giving a
mythical name.

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hoodoof
A thing is worth what someone else will give you for it.

You're asking for the core mechanism of wealth creation in technology to be
dispelled.

If enough people, over a credible amount of time, say that a company is
increasing in value, and if they back each such assertion with a small
percentage of that stated value, then eventually said company can be taken to
the public who hopefully will agree and put up their money to validate the
game.

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sigstoat
> You're asking for the core mechanism of wealth creation in technology to be
> dispelled.

what is, or is not referred to as a "unicorn" is not a core mechanism of
wealth creation.

all they said was "I wish ... call companies unicorns when they “profit” a
billion dollars a year."

obviously the valuation mechanism can't change, but we could all agree to be
less impressed by noisy valuations, and more impressed by realized profits.

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elvinyung
Is Atlassian not considered Australian?

(Well, I guess it's public now.)

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ProAm
Pretty sure they moved years ago because of taxes. [1]

[1] [http://www.afr.com/leadership/entrepreneur/atlassian-
leads-c...](http://www.afr.com/leadership/entrepreneur/atlassian-leads-charge-
of-startups-abandoning-australia-over-tax-20140107-jyc34)

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i386
Just because your company is incorporated in Delaware does not mean its
running the show there.

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ProAm
Sure, I was thinking that may have been why they were not considered an
Australian unicorn in regards to the article in question.

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quickthrower2
"Only Tech Unicorn" is questionable. In addition to this and Atlassian, there
is also WisetechGlobal
[https://www.marketindex.com.au/asx/wtc](https://www.marketindex.com.au/asx/wtc)
\- market cap $4Bn.

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esseeayen
Well technically if it's listed on the ASX then it's gone public, i.e. Exited,
so typically not called a unicorn.

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quickthrower2
Fair enough but relatively recently listed. I guess Australia is probably a
serial unicorn maker.

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clusmore
Somebody please correct me, because it sounds like they're saying a $40m
investment got them to a $1b valuation, which would mean the investors
(Sequoia, Blackbird and Felicis) got 4% between them? Why would they take such
little equity?

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bigiain
In the article the cofounder says it was "an offer we couldn't refuse". I
guess she meant in a "You'll give us _how_ much for less than 5%??? You're
joking? No? _DONE!_ " way, rather than a "Nice business you've got here, it'd
be a pity if anything happened to it." or a "We know where your children go to
school" kind of way...

