Why A 2019 Interview Matters

Melanie Perkins 0:00

You can only grow as big as your dreams. It's so important to, um, spend a lot of time dreaming about the future that you want to create.

Joeri Billast 0:08

In 2019, I had the opportunity to interview Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva. At the time, Canva was already growing fast, but it was a very different company from the Canva we know today. And of course, this was years before generative AI completely changed the conversation around design, content, and marketing. And so recently, I went back to that interview. The audio quality isn't what I would expect from a podcast today, because at that time, I did not have my podcast yet. I started my podcast, at Web Summit 2021, and the first episodes were released January 2022. So, rather than simply republishing the conversation, I wanted to do something different. I listened to it again through the lens of 2026. And what struck me wasn't how much had changed, it was how much what Melanie told me back then still makes sense today. In some cases, perhaps even more than it did in 2019. So I selected a few moments from that conversation that stood out to me, and I want to explore what they teach us today about AI, marketing, technology, and building for the future.

From Idea To Outcome Faster

Joeri Billast 1:40

Let's go back to 2019 I asked Melanie where she saw Canva going in the future, how she described the vision

Melanie Perkins 1:50

yeah. So our vision is to enable people to take their idea and turn that into the end design with zero friction between those two points.

Joeri Billast 1:57

Yeah. Remember, this was 2019. There was no ChatGPT. Generative AI was something most marketers were thinking about, but listen to the principle Melanie described. Take an idea and turn it into an outcome with as little friction as possible. That is remarkably close to what we are now trying to achieve with AI. We don't want more buttons. we don't necessarily want more tools. We want to express an intention and get closer to the outcome we have in mind. And I think there's an important lesson here for marketers. We can become obsessed with technology. Which model are you using? Which AI tool? Which agent? Which workflow? But customers don't really want technology. They want to get from where they are to where they want to be with less friction. The technology is the enabler, and the outcome is the point Later in the conversation, I asked Melanie about

Make Complex Things Feel Simple

Joeri Billast 3:02

Canva's culture and values. One of those values immediately stood out.

Melanie Perkins 3:07

we've got five values. Um, one of them is set crazy big goals and make them happen. Yeah. And you can probably see how that- Yes. Set crazy big goals and make them happen- Yeah pursue excellence, be a force for good, empower others, be a good human, and make complex things simple. And you can probably see like, you know- Everybody. You laugh, but b- be a comp- Yeah] make complex things simple- make complex things simple. You can see how that really is embodied through our culture, through our product.

Joeri Billast 3:33

Make complex things simple. I think that's even more relevant today. AI is making what happens behind the interface extraordinarily complex. But the user shouldn't necessarily experience that complexity, and maybe that's one of the mistakes we are making with AI now. We are fascinated by what the technology can do, but the are interested in what it can do for them. The best technology often makes enormous complexity feel almost invisible, and that principle goes beyond product design. It applies to marketing too. If your customer needs a 20-minute explanation to understand why your solution matters, perhaps the problem is not the customer. Perhaps we haven't made the complex simple enough There was another part of the interview that I'd almost forgotten.

Alignment Builds Trust Over Time

Joeri Billast 4:32

Melanie was talking about Canva's relationship with its community, and she said this.

Melanie Perkins 4:40

I think what I'm incredibly grateful for is that our goals are perfectly aligned with the goals of our community. Mm-hmm. So my goal is that you can create an amazing design and have that delivered in its endpoint. Like, and the same with all of our, all of our customers- Yeah and community across the globe. I think that a lot of other tech companies don't have that alignment with their, with their community. Yeah. Their goals might be... Their... Someone's goal might be to search, and someone else's goal might be to get ads.

Joeri Billast 5:07

Yeah.

Melanie Perkins 5:08

Like, and so I guess that cr- kind of creates a slight tension because of that, the goals just actually aren't aligned.

Joeri Billast 5:15

Yeah.

Melanie Perkins 5:15

I mean, you can try and make them aligned, but I think that philosophically I'm just really, really happy with, like, the vantage point that we've come through, 'cause as we progress as a company, it means that our community will naturally be progressing. So it kind of creates a very, um, symbiotic relationship- Um, which I feel very, very grateful for.

Joeri Billast 5:33

That word alignment feels incredibly important today because one of the biggest questions surrounding technology platforms is increasingly this: do the interests of the platform still align with the interests of the people using it? Think about social media, think about creators, think about algorithms, think about data, and now think about AI When the company succeeds, does the customer succeed too? Or has the tension started to appear between the two? For marketers, I think this goes deeper than customer centricity. It's about incentives. The strongest relationships exist when the brand and the customer are genuinely moving in the same direction, and those incentives move apart. Trust. And when those incentives move apart, trust becomes much harder to maintain Another moment came when we were discussing Canva's international expansion. Canva

Philosophy Before AI Tools

Joeri Billast 6:40

was investing heavily in languages, localization, making design accessible around the world I mentioned that this must make things considerably more complicated. her response was interesting.

Melanie Perkins 6:59

I think that's why getting the philosophy, like, figured out early on is really important.

Joeri Billast 7:03

Because,

Melanie Perkins 7:03

like, once you've kind of figured out the hard... you know, where you want to get to, it makes every... it doesn't make it easy, but it makes it easier Yeah to make all of the little decisions- 'cause you're building towards that.

Joeri Billast 7:14

Towards that, yeah.

Melanie Perkins 7:14

Um, 'cause like, you know, it's quite expensive to be in 100 languages. It's quite expensive to do all these different things- Yeah but it's a worthwhile investment because we believe so heavily in that philosophy.

Joeri Billast 7:26

I love that Knowing where you're going doesn't make the journey easy. It makes the decision easier. And I think we are currently seeing almost the opposite happen with AI. Companies start with a tool. We need AI, we need agents, we need automation, we need more content, and then they ask what they should actually do with it. But perhaps the order should be reversed. What do we believe? What future are we trying to create? What problem are we trying to solve? Where are we going? And only then, what role can AI play in getting us there? Technology changes incredibly quickly. A clear philosophy gives you something more durable to navigate by At the end of the interview, I asked Melanie a question I often like to ask people.

Dream Big Then Take Steps

Joeri Billast 8:20

If there was one thing I could quote you on, what would it be? Her answer stayed with me ever since

Melanie Perkins 8:30

You can only grow as big as your dreams.

Joeri Billast 8:33

Okay. Nice.

Melanie Perkins 8:34

It's so important to, um, spend a lot of time dreaming about the future that you want to create.

Joeri Billast 8:40

Yeah.

Melanie Perkins 8:41

Um, because all of those things like you were mentioning, like, all the philosophies, all of those things get baked in quite early on. And, um, it's really important to get a clear picture of that future that you want to create. But equally, it's really important to take that very first sm- small step and not to be concerned and worried about the fact that you're trying to create this big thing, and that little tiny step will give you a little more confidence to, and, um, certainty and ready to take that next step.

Joeri Billast 9:08

You can only grow as big as your dreams. Seven years later, that's the line from this interview that I still remember. But listening to it again, I realized that the second part is just as important. Dream big, but take the first small step, and then the next. There's a tension between those two ideas that I think every entrepreneur, marketer and leader needs. Your ambition determines the direction, your actions determine whether you ever get there. And perhaps that's what connects everything Melani talked about in this conversation. Canva had a very big vision: democratize design, make complex things simple, remove the friction between idea and its execution, build a company whose goals align with the goals of its community. Those aren't features, they are principles. The features change, the technology changes, the market changes, and today AI is changing all of those things again. But the principles can remain surprisingly durable. That's what struck me the most when I went back to this conversation from twenty nineteen. Sometimes the most interesting way to understand the future is not to make another prediction, but it's to look back at an idea that survived the changes and ask why My name is Joeri Beelars.

Final Principle And Sponsor Thanks

Joeri Billast 10:34

You have been listening to Web3 CMO Stories, and I leave you with Melanie's words once more. "You can only grow as big as your dreams." And at the end of this podcast episode, I also want to thank Rio, my main podcast sponsor. they have a big dream, making crypto accessible for everyone so that even your grandma can use crypto every day