Zach Kitschke joined Canva as employee number five. Today, the company serves hundreds of millions of users worldwide.
In this episode, Zach shares the inside story of Canva’s growth, from the scrappy early marketing that put the company on the map to scaling a brand and product used across the world. We discuss the power of Canva’s freemium model, their bold “Make the Logo Bigger” campaign, and how the company approaches both brand and B2B marketing.
Zach also explains how Canva scaled from a team of five to thousands of employees, the leadership lessons he learned from the founders, and how AI is shaping the next chapter for the business.
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Timestamps
00:00 - Start
00:53 - Being employee #5 at Canva
01:46 - The marketing that got Canva noticed at the start
03:50 - How big is Canva?
04:45 - The challenges growing Canva into a unicorn
07:26 - What makes good design according to Canva
09:24 - The freemium business model
11:46 - Why the Canva founders are giving away 30% of their wealth
13:21 - Do Canva invest more in product or brand?
14:41 - Canva’s make the logo bigger campaign
16:33 - How Canva approaches B2B marketing
18:59 - The AI tools that are driving Canva forward
22:19 - The most innovative things Zach has done as Canva CMO
24:58 - Zach’s tips for delivering a keynote
26:59 - Being a CMO scaling from 5 to 5000 employees
29:52 - How to run multiple business functions; HR, marketing, customer service
31:49 - What Zach has learned from the Canva founders
33:32 - How to define the cuture at Canva
35:39 - What’s next for Canva?
36:35 - What has made Canva so successul?
