Wondercraft reposted this
When Canva was starting out in 2010, Melanie Perkins learned how to Kitesurf, despite hating it, just to network with VC Bill Tai and his investor/tech community. Before Canva, Mel and Cliff were already running a graphic design-related business, specifically a yearbook publishing software. However, living in Perth, Australia, they knew little about technology, startups, and Silicon Valley. They were simply managing a small business. But Mel was a visionary. Having taught Photoshop, she realised how challenging learning how to use the software is. She dreamed of lowering the barrier to graphic design, enabling anyone to create a wedding invite or a flyer. Step by step, she made her way to Silicon Valley. After many rejections, she finally received a thread of approval from Bill Tai - and she did everything in her power to secure the funding and start Canva. I'm skipping over some great parts of the story, but the rest is history. Today, Canva is worth $26 billion, and anyone can create graphic designs instantly. Everyone is inspired by others. And I’m most inspired by Melanie Perkins. Her rare combination of vision, humility, and competence, which are abilities that often stem from opposing human traits, sets her apart. This blend of qualities makes me place her on a pedestal and obsess about learning from her. Canva's goal was to lower the barrier for creating graphics, and they succeeded. Learning from their path, it became clear that Wondercraft is doing the same thing, 10 years later, in another industry. What Canva did for graphic design, we aim to do for audio production. Based on this realisation, learning from Canva's journey took on a whole new meaning for us. We began studying their early growth model, their failures, and their successes. One of the most striking aspects was Canva's product design. Canva's interface is built on the principles of simplicity (target user) and collaboration (PLG). Every part of the process is elegantly simple, yet feature-rich. Creating such a beautiful flow requires patience and a special talent. Targeting a Canva-quality product design was an ambitious and possibly naive goal. Realizing this, we decided to hire our first full-time designer. Who better to deliver this quality than someone who has worked at Canva? Through incredible fortune, we noticed that the first full-time product design hire at Canva, who started when the company had just 15 people and recently led a team of 300, had left Canva after 8 years, moved to the UK and was enjoying life. After connecting with him and bonding over Canva’s core design philosophy—enabling anyone to create, regardless of experience—he was convinced to join us. He's only been with us for a month, but his impact has been tremendous. And Wondercraft's biggest product release is coming in 10 days. That’s all to say: Didier Sibellas welcome to Wondercraft. We are honoured and proud to have you join us and incredibly excited to build "Canva for Audio".