We are now a community of 131! Thank you❤️

This newsletter is free and I don’t use paid advertising. I completely rely on organic growth through users who like my content and share it.

So, if you like today’s edition, please take a moment to share this newsletter on social media or forward this email to someone you know.

If this email was forwarded to you, you can subscribe here.

If you want to create a newsletter with Beehiiv, you can sign up here.

Decoding Canva's $3M Seed Round Deck

If you are even remotely interested in tech or design, you must have heard the name, Canva. It is a simple-to-use online collaborative design platform that allows anyone to create professional quality designs.

Today, I share and analyze the early pitch decks from 2012 and 2013 that helped Canva raise a total of $3 million in their seed round.

Canva Pitch Deck 2012 by Melanie Perkins.

I recommend you click on the link above if you’re interested in going through all the slides.

Let’s analyze.

“Strictly Confidential” This might look professional sitting on the corner of each slide in a deck but it usually means nothing to angel investors and VCs.

Apart from this, the 2012 deck by Melanie (one of Canva’s co-founder) was on point. It pretty much ticks all the boxes.

The deck straightaway points out the problem and how no existing product solves it:

Highlighting the potential of a wider, unexplored market:

In the slides after the problem, the deck highlights how easy it is to use Canva and how it could be used by anyone with minimum skills.

A simple workflow to attract investors:

Notice the words “play”, “addicted”, “share”, “friends”, and “workplace” - they ring a bell for any investor. The deck points out how Canva can become a massive product in the future.

“But will people pay?” would naturally be the next question.

“Yes!” - says the pitch deck.

Melanie and Cliff Obrecht (Canva’s co-founders) also founded another design tool, Fusion Books, four years before Canva. It is also mentioned in the deck that both the experience and IP from Fusion Deck would be used in Canva’s progress.

Although this short deck covered most aspects that the team needed to convey to the investors, Melanie kept iterating and improving the pitch deck as the team met, discussed, and debated with investors.

Canva Pitch Deck 2013 by Melanie Perkins.

For example, for investors who did not understand the design process or who did not understand how this would be a billion-dollar industry, this slide was added:

Another important slide was added to explain where exactly is Canva going to sit in the market:

The 2013 pitch deck contains much more graphics and less text, a popularly recommended technique for any presentation.

Ultimately, on March 20, 2013, this was published:

Australian startup Canva today announced it has raised a $3 million seed round from top Australian and U.S. investors including Matrix Partners, InterWest Partners and 500 Startups. Accomplished angel investors Bill Tai, Director of Engineering at Facebook Lars Rasmussen, Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman, and former Seek co-founder Paul Bassat and partner at Square Peg Ventures, have also backed the company.

Things we can learn from Canva’s Pitch Deck:

• Show the problem and market size

• Explain how your product solves the problem

• Present your USP

• Highlight your target customers

• Give investors the belief that customers will pay for your product

• Showcase your team experience and early testimonials

This is the first pitch deck analysis that I’ve done, let me know if you liked it by replying to this email.

Cool Products I Found on X

I am trying out something. It’s very difficult for new product makers to reach out to potential users. Now that I have over 100 newsletter subscribers and 1000 followers on X, I have decided to support some new startups for free every week. Let me know if you like this idea.

DISCLAIMER: I haven’t used most of these products. I am not vouching for their quality. You can check them out if you find something interesting. Also, this disclaimer is not applicable to the last two products😜.

• Flowmapp by Paul: Visual UX platform for web designers and product teams, 300k users, 7 years of development.

• Aaply by Paul: Mobile design tool, a newbie, testing hypothesis searching for product-market-fit.

• Saasydb by Stuart: A searchable database of employee contacts at 30,000+ SaaS companies.

• CrawlScout by CrawlScout: A service that lets you quickly index your sites and monitor them for indexing issues.

• IMG2HTML by Manuel: End the hassle of manual copying and enjoy a One-click conversion of screenshots into code.

• BodyOK by Vlad: A simple and handy intermittent fasting tracker.

• Lancr by Lancr: Flexible contracts, time tracking and multi currency payouts and to put your freelancer management on autopilot.

• CourseCrumbs by Aleks: Create and Share Amazing Mini Courses and Quizzes.

• Odinomics by Odinomics: We're helping professionals to forecast everything by making machine learning easy and accessible for everyone.

• Vojo by Kristztian: Track the performance of all your assets such as stocks, crypto, real estate and even your own businesses, all in one place with Vojo

• DocuConvo by Karan: Power Your Documentation with AI Search – Fast, Accurate, and Effortless for Developers of All Levels.

• Relux by Himanshu: Relux combines the core UX activities with the concepts of a relational database system so that you have clear structure and deliverables for your projects.

• Ved.so by Sandeep: Record your screen and share it with anyone.

• CodenQuest by ElPouky: Dive into a world where coding meets gamification. Prepare for interviews wherever you are!

• Radius by Scott: Host your community for free.

And, finally, two products by yours truly:

Did you like today’s newsletter? Feel free to reply to this mail.

This newsletter is free but you can support me here.

I’d be happy to connect on Medium, LinkedIn and X.