This document will go into depth about the four case studies we use to support our recommendation: Canva, Notion, Figma, and Miro.
Images of the Canva Create 2023 Conference
Userbase Size: 160-240M active users
Annual Revenue: $3B 2025
Growth: 5M+ year-over-year userbase growth. Added 40 million new users in six months between Sep’22- Mar’23
Canva is one of the giants of the design ecosystem, growing explosively since its founding in 2013 to the present day.
Canva’s growth was almost completely organic: the first paid users it targeted were enterprises that used it for their ads, effectively marketing Canva for them. The main category they targeted overall was content creators, who needed the ability to create attractive designs quickly the most. Whenever Canva was used, the design or content created was almost always shared, since content is inherently audience-facing. People would ask how it was made, which led to people recommending Canva.
Canva's community grew massively because it fulfilled three inherent intrinsic motivations: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose, which Laura Nestler, Former Head of Community at Duolingo, Yelp, and Reddit, identifies as three key drivers of community growth. Creating designs gave people Autonomy because they were free to use them for whatever purpose they needed: they didn't need to pay for graphic designers or expensive tools. Using Canva also solidified their status as a graphic designer with mastery of the tool. And while Canva’s community is not organized around a single core purpose, Canva’s product helps users meet their purpose and is genuinely transformational for them: designs turn into jobs, into donations, into events, and many more examples are out there. Notice that many of these are parallel to Lovable's situation.
Canva also started by identifying a core group of power-users that would help disseminate it to other creators who would most need it: social media marketers and content creators.
Canva also launched a Design Community, with Canvassadors at its core who inspire and educate users in return for free Canva Pro access and swag, who are selected on an annual basis and have to earn their spot every year. Their community efforts occur 80% online and focus on seven core programs: