Startups

Design Platform Canva Raises $6 Million, Expands To Businesses With “Canva For Work”

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Creating professional graphics is not a skill set that everyone has, but online design platform Canva wants to change that. In mid-2013, the company debuted a service that allows anyone to more easily create graphics, including slideshows, invitations, handouts, posters, infographics, Facebook Covers, cards, collages, blog graphics and more.

Today the company will be able to further fuel its growth with the addition of $6 million more in outside funding, largely from existing investors. Canva is also now debuting its first product aimed at the businesses using its platform with the “Canva for Work.”

The new capital comes from prior investors Matrix Partners, Shasta Ventures and Blackbird Ventures, alongside AirTree Ventures, and comes at a time when the company has grown its user base to 2.3 million users over the course of the past 20 months. Over the last six months in particular, Canva’s growth has been surging, with 65 percent of users signing up during this time.

Canva’s users are heavily engaged as well, having created 3.2 million designs in the last month alone, and are crafting new designs at a rate of one design every second. To give you an idea about what users are building with this service, this year alone, users have created 1,398,955 Facebook posts, 1,326,195 social media graphics, 1,023,789 posters, and 867,684 presentations.

Canva InfographicSome of Canva’s growth to date has come from word-of-mouth, as users end up telling their friends, family and work colleagues about the service. But the company is also capitalizing on people’s interest in learning graphic design skills, too. For example, its recently launched “Design School” brings together a range of educational content including tutorials, a daily blog, and workshop materials, which its users can access free of charge.

Now, according to Canva founder and CEO Melanie Perkins, the company wants to bring its product to the business world, too. A number of corporations have already been using Canva for their business documents, including 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies, Perkins notes. There are also over 200,000 organizations represented on Canva, some that have as many as 180 employees using the online platform.

Canva for Work will address this market segment, where it has found many businesses still struggling with their design needs today, whether that’s creating marketing materials, customer-facing presentations, social media graphics, and more.

Perkins isn’t yet offering details about Canva for Work’s full feature set, which is due to arrive next month when it officially launches.

However, the new product aims to bridge the gap that exists between the high-end, pro design tools like those provided by Adobe – which are powerful but complicated to learn – and software like Microsoft Office, which is easy to use but doesn’t always make for the most professional-looking documents or materials.

“We’ve had interest from major brands that are household names, and they’re incredibly excited about the potential Canva for Work holds in their organizations,” says Perkins. “We think Canva for Work has the potential to entirely transform the way design works at every organization, from startups to Fortune 500 companies.”

Though not yet live, interested businesses are now being invited to pre-register here to gain access.

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