The Process of New Ventures Creation

It takes time and effort to start a new business. A method that goes much beyond the epiphany that occurs during your morning shower. However, there is no one-size-fits-all 10-step programme that will guarantee you a new profitable venture. It is a highly stochastic (not all company ideas succeed) and iterative process (based on what you learn as you proceed, you will likely have to modify your thinking and repeat parts of earlier steps).

BUS ASSIGNMENT TWO
1.0 Start-up introduction
Canva is a graphic design platform that was founded in 2012 by Melanie Perkins, in Perth, Sydney. The
platforms headquarters is in Sydney and as of February 2021, it has over 1,500 employees. Canva is used
for people and teams to design and create graphics from logos and social media content to documents,
prints, infographics, flyers and more. The app additionally has printing and shipping available. The app
provides templates and media to users for free and also offers paid subscriptions for more premium
services. Canva’s journey began back in 2007 when Melanie Perkins was 19 and studying at University,
she taught students how to use programs to make designs. Perkins believes in upskilling the modern
workforce. Perkins and co-founder Cliff Orbrecht created another business called Fusion Books before
joining with another co-founder Cameron Adams to create Canva (Canva, 2021).
The targeted customers range from businesses to individuals who want a fast, easy and cheap way to
create designs at home or the workplace. The company is based in Australia and caters to Australian
audiences but is also used globally as it is available worldwide and in 99 other languages. Global teams
are working across offices, cultures and languages (Canva, 2021).
The customer wants a quick, easy and cheap way to create a design. The customer needs a design that
fulfils what they want it to look like and the purpose it serves. The customer may have a small budget
and may fear that the product will not look the way they want it or fulfil the need or purpose of the
product. The venture aims to provide a design within the budget of the client and make it easy for the
client to make and customise to exactly what they want. By providing templates and tools to customise
the design at any time or place for a cheap price or no cost fulfils and satisfies the customers wants,
needs, problems and fears.
The business is the first of its kind to provide any person with an easy to learn system to create any type
of design they want at any time or place. Canva is different to other platforms as it started as a web
application in comparison to other design tools that were traditionally desktop applications (Viktor,
2021). In comparison to other offerings in the market like Adobe Photoshop or InDesign, Canva is free
and a lot easier to use. Other similar offerings like DesignCrowd and PicMonkey are also free to use and
simple but don’t provide as many premia styled templates, graphics, types of media and more as Canva
does. The industry is attractive, as it is all based online and allows for the company to stand back while
they make profits and artists make the designs for them. Although the market is getting competitive -
there aren’t too many other competitors at the same level as Canva.
The major benefits of Canva are that anyone can use the website for free, there thousands of templates
available that can be customised with millions of different designs. The website offers all types of
products so that it can fulfil any individuals or business’ needs. The experience is great, it is easy to

navigate and people who have no prior experience in designing can create beautiful custom designs
seamlessly.
2.0 The process of new venture creation
The company began their journey in 2007 when Perkins and Orbect attended university together.
Perkins was earning a side income from teaching others how to use design programs, during this time a
lot of people couldn’t understand or work out how to use these programs. Tasks that are simple now
were long and complicated programs back then and had to be downloaded to the computer rather than
used on the internet which made it harder for people to collaborate across different projects. Perkins
was inspired to make these processes easier and more accessible for people to use. This was when they
created Fusion Books, they borrowed money from family and friends to pay for the software engineers
and built their platform that became an immediate hit. FusionBooks took off in schools across Australia,
New Zealand, and France, this helped Perkins prove that her new approach to design and possible and
necessary (Kawasaki, 2021). After meeting Adams, David Hearden joined the team, and they raid their
first round of funding and announced Canva in 2013 (Viktor, 2021).
As technology grew, the company grew, they were given opportunities to make more graphics. When
social media became big, they added features to make graphics for social media which opened Canva up
to a new demographic of social media users seeking an easy way to create posts for different platforms
(Canva, 2021).
Canva recognised opportunities to acquire other start-ups, in 2018 they acquired Zeetings and
integrated the presentation start-up into their ecosystem (Viktor, 2021).
Canva has evaluated their business and recognised the need to provide to people globally. Canva is now
available globally and works towards serving many cultures and continues to expand its service to over
99 different languages. Canva adapts to local markets when expanding, for example, when Canva
debuted in China, it provided local fonts, templates and a Chinese support team based in Bejing (Viktor,
2021).
Canva is always staying up to date with designs ensuring they do not become outdated, with over 2
billion designs and a community that creates more than 50 designs per second, Canva is the most
innovative in the market. Canva has recognised the opportunity to target different audiences and has
created various streams that have allowed them to easily cater to particular crowds with specific needs.

For example, Canva For Enterprise is one of those streams and is aimed towards businesses that want to
use the platform to aid their design (Viktor, 2021).
3.0 Business model
Canva’s acquisition strategy relies on 2 pillars, firstly, a lot of people needing a better way to create great
designs and secondly, their company vision, helping everyone create great designs without problems
(Al-Saad, 2019).
Canva’s business model follows a standard platform business model, this will be evaluated using Canvas.
Customer segments are people who need good designs that may not have the skills or time to create
designs for themselves. Channels and key resources both contain the online website and mobile
application. Value propositions are great looking designs without the skills, quick, free/cheap and easy
generic templates for all needs. Key partners are the designers creating designs to sell. Revenue streams
are the percentage of sales of the graphic designs used in the customer's final design, for , paid for
templates or pictures (Osterwalder, A, & Pigneur, 2010).
Canva follows a freemium business model where the majority of customers don’t have to pay money
and can use the site for free but there is also a smaller group of customers who pay for a premium
version of the site called Canva pro. Canva Pro has over 75 million premium photos, videos, elements,
fonts and templates available, special editing tools, animation and storage are also provided. Canva has
55 million users and only 3 million of those users currently pay (Schwab, 2021). Canva relies on these
paying customers to make a profit and they aim to transfer the customers who don’t pay into paying
customers. A 30-day free trial of Canva Pro is available to all customers to try out, in turn, this will
hopefully draw customers in to stay on the plan. There are also other paid plans available for specific
purposes such as enterprise, education, non-profits and more (Canva, 2021).
A value proposition is a promise by a company to a customer or market segment. The proposition is an
easy-to-understand reason why a customer should buy a product or service from that particular
business (Shaper, 2013). The value proposition is on the opening page of Canva’s website. It
immediately provides the user with knowing what the website is “Canva”, how the website will help
them “design anything in minutes”, and what makes it better than alternatives “the thousands of
templates and images”. The value proposition is focused, short and demonstrates a concrete outcome.
Direct response marketing principles are also used to create a great hook, the primary promise is “to
design anything in a minute”, the perceived differentiator is “1,000’s of beautiful templates”, the
interesting element is “your secret weapon” and the crush objections is “try for FREE. Cancel anytime.”
Canva’s value proposition is great as it draws people in and tells users exactly what they will expect (Al-
Saad, 2019).

4.0 Entrepreneurial marketing and finance
Canva has employed different entrepreneurial marketing strategies at different stages of the business’
development, such as promotion, understanding the market, price, goal setting and more.
Promotion originally began by word of mouth, although it is the hardest of all to create, measure and
maintain, it is one of the most effective ways of promotion (Shaper, 2013). Canvas only promotion at the
start of the venture was by word of mouth and social proof, the early users shared their designs with
their friends (Brand Minds, 2018).
Canva has utilised understanding the market, by completing market research the business can identify
the target market and understand issues such as market trends and dynamics, consumer demand,
product changes and government requirements (Shaper, 2013). Canva’s target market can be defined in
several ways such as geography, demographic characteristics, psychographic features, behavioural
segmentation and individual customers or business to business. Canva understands their target
audience is looking for an affordable way to receive their products, which has influenced their freemium
strategy. Canva is an Australian business that originally had a demographic of Australians, since then
Canva has formed partnerships and has gone global. Canva recently partnered with FedEx Office, this
offers easy design-to- print products that allows users to print designs from more than 2,000 locations in
the US, opening up Canva to a new global market in the USA (Crook, 2020).
Price is an important aspect in drawing in potential clients, Canva has a different approach to most. They
have marketed their main product as free but have provided different levels of premium products at
higher price points, in a unique version of price segmentation. This opens Canva up to different markets
that have different budgets (Shaper, 2013). Offering their products for free also attracts consumers to
potentially gain interest and pay for the premium products too.
Goal setting has been employed throughout Canva’s development. Goal setting in a marketing plan
allows the business to consider their wants and needs, therefore, having a major impact on what
strategies are adopted and whether it is successful. The marketing goals of a business depends upon the
life cycle of the business venture, the stage in the life cycle of the product, the personal goals of the
business owner and the owners marketing philosophy (Shaper, 2013). Canva has set goals to become a
sustainable business, Canva has completed its goal to be carbon neutral by 2020 and is pledging to
become climate positive by 2023 (Startup Daily, 2021). Canva’s mission of the finance, accounting and
legal team at Canva is, “To protect and serve Canva and its stakeholders,” (Canva, 2021).
5.0 Recommendations
A recommendation for Canva would be to partner with a social media company such as
Instagram. Partnering with a company such as Instagram could open up many opportunities for
Canva, such as creating direct links from the Instagram app to Canva for users to create social

media content for their Instagram feed. When users make a post on the app, there could be an
option to create a post via Canva either in-app or a button that links to the Canva app/website.
Instagram users who currently use Canva would be more enticed to use it and be reminded to
create posts with Canva every time they go to post. Users who have not used Canva before
would be introduced to the app and be intrigued and influenced to use it. Social media apps
such as Instagram have a great influence on trends. Another recommendation for Canva would
be to partner with influencers on Instagram or Instagram users with a large following. Those
users could create posts using Canva or have Canva create personalised digital designs for the
influencers and have them promote Canva’s designs to their followers, causing the followers
to use Canva. The new users may be fans or potentially could be business’ that may take a
likening to Canva and use Canva for their posts.
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