Good morning! AOC wants to ban Congress’s “insider trading,” Meta whistleblower testifies, and Canva’s latest tool would have benefitted its founder.
– Learn to code. When Melanie Perkins cofounded Canva over a decade ago, she didn’t have a technical background. What she had was an idea—a vision for graphic design to be easier for people who weren’t literate in Photoshop, and an understanding that with the rise of social media, communication was becoming more visual.
Her lack of a technical pedigree was a factor in more than 100 VCs’ decisions to pass as Perkins and cofounder (and now husband) Cliff Obrecht sought backing for their business. Sydney-based Canva is now the highest-valued female-founded and -led startup in the world and did $3 billion in annual revenue last year. And its latest product launch could make things a lot easier for the next founder who has a vision, but lacks technical experience.
Canva yesterday announced the debut of Canva Code, a generative AI coding platform that can prototype apps and other products. Users can enter prompts like “build an interactive map of travel destinations” and be presented with the code to add that widget to a project. Perkins tells me she’s been using it to build apps for people’s birthdays—plus quizzes, tutorials, and games.
And while AI-powered coding doesn’t teach people to code, she hopes it plays a role in making coding less intimidating and more accessible—as has been the goal of organizations like Girls Who Code. “It’ll be their entrée into coding, because all of a sudden you can see code that’s generated and go in and edit it. It just starts to unlock people thinking in the land of code,” she says.
Perkins says that “so much” would have been different in the early days of Canva if she had this tool at the time. Now, she’s even close to trusting it to build small features for Canva. “It’s really great at designing single-purpose ideas,” she says. “It completely changed our workflow. … I had an idea on the way home the other day, and I was able to turn into a prototype and then get it user-tested within an hour, which is just completely crazy.”
That’s the reality of the AI era; just before this product rollout, Canva laid off 10 of 12 technical writers, according to the Australian Financial Review. “Every single person is going to have to be upskilling into this new era,” Perkins acknowledges.
In addition to its coding tool, Canva unveiled Canva Sheets, a Google Sheets competitor. Canva’s version incorporates its visual elements and AI studio, allowing users to generate and resize images by the thousands in a spreadsheet.
Perkins says that 230 million people and 95% of the Fortune 500 are now using Canva—and that Canva’s own IPO is still “on the horizon” but there’s “no news” to report.
Every time Canva announces a new suite of products, it calls it its biggest launch yet. Its recent launches have centered around becoming essential enterprise products worth paying for and incorporating AI. It’s taking the next step here, with a wider remit than just competing with Microsoft and Adobe.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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