How I Built This with Guy Raz - How I Built Resilience: Live with Melanie Perkins and Bill Creelman

Episode Date: June 27, 2020

This week, the online design platform Canva closed a new round of funding, bringing the company's valuation to $6 billion. Founder Melanie Perkins is also focused on helping her employees work from home, while supporting more than 30 million users worldwide. Also: Spindrift can't sell its sparkling water in many restaurants that are closed because of COVID-19, but founder Bill Creelman has seen a significant uptick in grocery store and e-commerce sales. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with a place with a all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Hey everyone and welcome to how I built this resilience edition. On these episodes, we're talking with entrepreneurs about how to think creatively during this really disruptive moment. And today,

I'm bringing you two conversations. Later on in the show, we'll hear from Bill Creelman, founder of the Sparkling Water Company's Spin Drift about how his industry's been affected in the past few months. But first, we're going to go to Melanie Perkins, the founder of Canva. Canva is an online graphic design platform. And when we featured Melanie

and the story of Canva on the show back in January of 2019, her company was valued at a billion dollars. But just a few days ago, Canva announced that they closed a new round that now values the company at $6 billion. $11. Melanie joined me from her home in Sydney, Australia, and she talked about the challenges of managing more than 900 employees from home and how the company is sustaining itself during the pandemic. So first of all, I mean, have you guys had to face layoffs? I know you had about 900 employees the last time I checked. Have you had to go through that at all?

No, we've been in a fortunate position that we're a profitable company. We had strong cash reserves and Canvas continued to grow around. throughout this time. I think that the challenges of navigating, you know, from an offline world we're all meeting and that's such a big part of our culture online. That has been relatively smooth, I guess, because most of our things were already online. We're already working in an online world. But I think that what I really feel is a huge sense of responsibility. So while we're sort of a stable ship, you know, we've got so many students and teachers that are trying to navigate this whole work from home, school from home and world. And that's such a huge radical transition.

We have all of our businesses, small businesses across the globe, are having such a challenging time right now. And so we really feel a huge responsibility to do whatever we can in order to help everyone else across the globe. Yeah. And what about your employees in Australia? I mean, are you still working remotely? So everyone's working from home.

At a certain point in time, will enable people to go back into the office to work from the office. if they so choose, but we're not going to be making it compulsory work from the office, probably for this whole year, to ensure that everyone can have that flexibility as they need it. And I think Australia is starting to open up. Schools are going back in session in some places. Are other businesses that you know of going back to normal yet, or not quite? Not quite.

Still the government's suggestion is to work from home and wherever you possibly can. And we really believe that's doing our part to help continue to slow the spread, even as the cases go down, we certainly all don't want to see a second wave. And so, you know, being able to have the, you know, not so many people in public transport or commuting or whatever it may be, I think is really important just to do our part. When this pandemic set out upon us, I guess, it was really important that we set out sort of our guiding principles. And the first one was our safety and wellbeing is the number one and most important

thing at all times. That sort of meant that we, you know, early March, our team started working from home prior to the government recommendation. and then making sure we're supporting our community and then rallying together and growing. And there's sort of been the three pillars that we've made all of the decisions for our company based upon in the months gone. Now, I want to ask you to put your entrepreneurs head on. I remember during our interview, you came to San Francisco. You met this one investor.

You knew nothing about him except he spoke to your college in Perth, Australia. You went out there and you said, oh, yeah, I happen to be out here and can I see you? And you really hustled. But you also described yourself as an introvert. I remember you said you're really naturally introverted, but when you have a goal, you will force yourself to do everything you need to do to achieve that goal. We get a lot of questions from introverted entrepreneurs, you know, who have a hard time asking for help or asking, you know, for funding or things like that, especially in this

moment, like, what kind of advice could you give to somebody who, like you, is introverted and maybe a little bit nervous to put themselves out there? I think that goal is definitely paramount for me. When I have a goal, I think that everything else sort of fades into the background, my nerves, might still be there or whatever else it might be, that might be a bit scary. But when I have a goal, I think I put absolutely everything I can in to achieve that. So you're right.

In the early days, it was trying to find investors. Now it's, you know, my goal is how can we support our community? We've got 30 million people around the world that are relying on Canva, to help with their social media, to help with their marketing, to help with their education. And so I think it's so important that we're able to support our community, support our team. We made a statement early on that we're going to ensure all of our contractors were continued to be paid throughout this recession, throughout this time. And so I think that

the goal has still stayed the same. In the early days, the goal was, you know, trying to get funding. Now it's trying to ensure our team is safe and our community is supported. So I guess the introversion just becomes something that's faded into the background a little. Yeah. Well, you don't really have a choice now, right? You're running a company of 900 people. You kind of have to fake it until you become it, I guess. Yeah, and I guess introversion, a lot of people think is being shy, but actually introversion is that way you get your energy from. And so I get my energy just being by myself for a little or just with my partner.

And so being able to have a little bit of time alone every day is pretty important. And I guess in this whole ISO world, I guess everyone is at home a lot more. So maybe it's an introversion introverts world right now. So it's like you're drinking Red Bull all day. You've got so much energy. Exactly. So here's a question. about the sort of the business side of things, right? Because Canva has a freemium model, right?

It's, you can, and I'm sure a huge number, maybe most of your users are using the free version. It's really great. You have access to thousands of photos and there's a subscription. I think it's like 10 bucks a month in the U.S. and then 30 bucks a month for a premium one. How do you monetize the free version of Canva? I guess it goes back to what I was saying before around giving as much values you can. And so that's been one of our philosophies right from the early days was we want to ensure that people are able to get heaps of value from Canber and there's no blockers. And so we made Canva completely free. You can go and purchase some images. You can upgrade to the free version. But if you are wherever you are in the world, whatever your economic situation, we wanted to ensure

that you had access to design. Early on, I remember trying to get a brochure design. It was going to cost $1,000. I was like, who can afford $1,000 to get a brochure design? And I guess that's why we wanted to ensure that everyone had access to great design. And so it wasn't something that only a few people can go and afford. And so I guess that's exactly why we have a free version. And it's so philosophically important to Canber. And essentially the free version is funded by the people who are paying for the subscriptions, right? Yeah, that's exactly right.

Talk to me a little bit about your sort of your leadership. How is your sort of leadership and your leadership style and just your own comfort level at being a CEO and a leader of a big organization evolved? I think that everything's just a continuous work in progress. You never are going to have all of the answers. I think if I was dropped into a 900-person company with millions of people around the world using our product, that would be quite scary.

But every single day is just like a few more people are at the company, there's a few bigger challenges, and so you kind of just build up that muscle as we grow. The thing that I'm probably most proud of at Canber is seeing our culture. seeing how our team has been able to rally through this crazy period. It was like one day we said, okay, we realize we're going to have to shut down the office, we're going to have to have everyone working from home. The next day, we had an onboarding class, so we had 30 odd people that were joining Canva,

but that was already transitioned to work from home. It was just incredible seeing how rapidly we're able to transition to an online environment. But I think that behind that has really been our values. So being able to rally people behind big goals, of being a force for good, supporting our community. I think that that is what inspires people. Everything that we've done at Canva, from structure to the way we, you know,

onboard newbies and share context has really been around helping to facilitate setting crazy big goals and actually making them happen. This is a question from Jason Lee via Facebook. Again, to put your entrepreneur hat on, you started this business, and I think you launched Canva in 2012,

but you had a tough time like raising money at first, explaining to investors what this was. If you were starting this business now, how do you think you would have approached it differently? If you were starting something right now, where would you even begin? I think the same place we began back then and solving a problem that affects a lot of people or even a really small number of people to start with, but solves their problem really well. I think is as important now as it was back then. When we started our first company, an online design system to create school yearbooks,

We had no business experience, marketing experience, like any relevant experience whatsoever. And it was so critical that we just solved a problem really well, which was the school yearbook coordinators had a difficult time creating yearbooks. Just like starting at that really small thing, starting niche and then going wide, I think is really important. And you just have to like learn a little every day. I believe in this concept of just in time learning. You kind of learn everything just in time or often just after.

You need to know it. I think that, you know, starting a business today would be really similar to starting a business back then. You just have to find a problem, solve it well, and then just keep on learning as you go. You know, given that, I mean, when you started out, you were making, you were making physical yearbooks, right? Like, you were printing them. I think you were printing them out of your parents' house. But now, I mean, especially now, when people are kind of shut in, things are distributed digitally. They're going to be distributed digitally more and more. So how do you think sort of the design elements that you offer will change?

And even the approach to design will change as people kind of come to the realization that may be physical products, objects that require design, won't come in a physical form. Yeah, it's been incredible seeing just within our own community, the transition, a really rapid transition of what they were creating. So they're creating less event invitations, they're creating less business cards, they're creating less flyers, all of the things that sort of really resonate with the physical world. And what they are creating way more of is things like Zoom backgrounds, and presentations and learning materials for students and teachers and social media content to be able to communicate with their community. So that was a huge swing. It was almost overnight that the transition happened.

So our marketing teams, our design teams, our template designers, everyone tried to transition on a dime to this new world to help facilitate all of the new things that people needed to design. People are designing more, but completely differently, to what they were designing prior. So, like, what's an example? Like, I mean, even in the way people are designing things, are you starting to see anything unusual or different?

Yeah, just really the dock types, the things that people are actually designing has transitioned dramatically. The e-commerce posts and ads and social media posts and presentations and infographics, really should sharp spike in infographics as well. Even when we look inside our own company,

previously when it was someone's Canvaversary, people would all sign a physical card. Of course, that is no longer possible. So people are signing digital cards on Canva now. And then we send that around with lots and lots of gifts in them, which is a bit of fun. Mel, before I let you go, in five years time, when you look back at this moment and you're like, oh my God, that was crazy. But we became better and did this as a result. What is it you want to be able to say? I hope as a world the way we come out of this more connected, more caring about humanity,

more caring about every single person's health, every single person's ability to have basic human rights. That would be amazing. From our community perspective, I really hope that we can come out of it and say we did everything we could to support the small businesses and the students and the teachers that relied on us, all of our community. And I hope on a team level that we were able to say that we did an incredible job of supporting everyone through this trying time, their mental health, their physical well-being,

their connectedness. I would love to be able to say that on all three of those levels. Well, I know that I've been watching my children, my son, work on his fifth grade school yearbook on Canva. So there you go. One of the billion students shut at home. Melanie Perkins, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. That's an excerpt for my conversation with Melanie Perkins, founder of Canva. When we come back in just a moment, we'll hear from Bill Creelman, the founder of Spin Drift, about how sparkling water is finding success in e-commerce.

Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This, Resilience Edition, from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Resilience Edition. So when we first featured Bill Creelman on the show six months ago, SpinDrift was gearing up for its biggest year yet. But since then, trade shows have been canceled, and many restaurants in close. including those that sell spin drift cans are closed. I caught up with Bill at his home in Massachusetts where he's been trying to keep his team safe

and also trying to meet an unexpected demand for sparkling water. We had Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford on the co-owners, co-founders of Cliff Bar. And they had like, there was like a run on Cliffbars. Like people, you know, it was like toilet paper and cliff bars. And they just, there was just a massive spike in people buying up shelf-stable products. Did you see anything like that initially? We did. We absolutely did.

When the initial push came, we saw anywhere from, you know, sort of two to 400 percent lift, shelves suddenly blown, you know, a huge push to get trucks pulled forward. At the same time, I think the hard thing and really the hard thing for our brand, especially was that our food service partners obviously felt pressure the other way. Suddenly, you know, they didn't have business to fulfill. And so what we struggled with was really, you know, kind of balancing being a good partner for the food service, you know, many whom are friends and longtime colleagues and really helping them or thinking with them through how to respond as well as servicing the rest of the business that was having this huge uptick in sales. You're talking about like the small, like fast casual restaurants that also sell spin drift, right? Yeah, the small guys, I mean, even Starbucks of the world and sweet greens and Panera and, you know, these are, you know, we would count these people not just as customers of SpindRift, but really is the people that have helped, you know, bring Spindrift into the forefront and, you know, their alignment of food and their value system and ours, you know, really was a big part of our brand growth. And we felt compelled to really try to work with them wherever we could to help help them as they went through this together. And now have you. you seen a slowdown in sales? I mean, I would imagine you have because part of the business

requires people to pass by the displays in grocery stores. And if anyone watching has been to a grocery store like me, you go in and out really fast. Like, you just blaze through there and try to get out. Yeah. So I would describe it as really kind of people moving around in different channels. We are an omni-channel brand. We made a pretty big decision to move into some of the e-com channels early on. What I would describe is a move kind of, unfortunately, out of some of the food service and the convenience channels that were really affected and then into some of the channels that, like, you know, Target.com, Costco or Instacard. It's been incredibly dynamic and continues to be dynamic. So we feel very fortunate. I mean, people are drinking a lot of sparkling water.

And so we, you know, generally, I would say we continue to push towards. you know, our plan that we had for the year. And that's kind of something we're looking at continuously. Bill, as you look forward, I mean, I imagine that like most businesses, 2020 was going to be your biggest year ever. I mean, I think it doesn't seem as if the economy will open up, you know, much more significantly as infection rates increase. e-commerce may be increasing, but it may not actually increase as much as the decrease in sales at supermarkets and at big box stores. So how are you thinking about just keeping things in line? Well, it's an everyday conversation. I think, you know, we see it two ways. I mean, it's really hard just in general. The economy side, you know, the pandemic, the shopping habits. And so we want to be a sympathetic and supportive partner. On the other hand, we're optimistic.

You know, our biggest challenge is getting people that used to drink natural flavor, sparkling waters, to try an alternative brand. That's all we want them to do. We just want them to try our product, you know, and we believe that if enough people try our product and taste how different the liquid is and the flavor and the mouth feel, all those sorts of things, that a percentage of them will stay with the brand. And so the great thing about, I almost caution using that word, but the shifting, channels has really prompted consumers to try a lot of different things that they wouldn't otherwise try. Maybe because the product wasn't available, the brand they were used to, maybe because they're shopping in a channel that we weren't normally, as visible as we are and now we're more visible. I'm not sure. There's a lot of different drivers. So we remain optimistic that as we go into the

summer that a percentage of the consumers that have discovered spend drift are going to stay with us. On the ingredient side, because our product is about transparency and kind of knowing what you're drinking, you know, we see that move now more and more as, you know, as people are more cautious and they want to be healthy and given some, you know, the health concerns that are at large, we feel we might be able to offer something that does give them a little bit more assurance of what exactly there is they're trying. You know, Bill, I remember in the episode, you talked about how you sold your first company, or actually it was just sort of your second company to Diageo. It was called stirrings. It made cocktail mixers and things. And leaving that

business, when you left that, it kind of gave you space to come up with a new idea. And that idea, of course, eventually became spin drift. Right now, a lot of small business owners are kind of in that situation that you were in, where they're sort of being forced to step away from their businesses right now, which is incredibly stressful. Do you have any advice on how to kind of stay focused and think creatively and be open to looking for new ideas and coming up with new ideas. It's such a challenging time. It's a great question. So we started our development for spendrift in the middle of the economic downturn in 2007, eight, and nine. When we launched the first batch in 2010, there hadn't been innovation in the food and beverage market in sort of three years,

you know, because at that time, it was almost, it felt weird and almost inappropriate to have new products. And you sort of are, you're entering a little bit of that phase right now where retailers, I think, are going to be looking harder at the brands they have and won't have the bandwidth or due to shopping conditions or a variety of factors. So if I were an entrepreneur starting to think about a new idea or pivoting an idea that a business they have, I actually think there will be lots of opportunity coming out of this. I mean, we, in some ways, by the innovation pipeline kind of slowing down a little bit, as typically happens during cycles like this, it gives you a chance to be louder and it's a less crowded, you know, marketplace. And the investment often is less because there's just less noise. You don't have to spend as much to amplify your message.

So, you know, again, it's hard in the middle of it right now. But I think, I absolutely think there's going to be opportunities coming out. of this and and even, you know, kind of during it. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if you see one of these, you know, businesses that we all knew and understood pre-COVID coming out with a better version of itself. And it ends up moving the whole category, whatever category that is forward. How do you imagine this crisis will change your business model? I mean, do you, do you think that you're going to emphasize e-commerce more? You're going to rethink how you distribute your product, or maybe not?

We will do all of those things. And I think any, I think all of us in the food and beverage and CPG more broadly are having these discussions. I think it's hard. It's a little bit early to draw any real conclusions in our view. Our biggest, the thing we're the most excited about is that within an environment where people are being more thoughtful and are able to spend some more time thinking about their purchases for the brands that.

have a deeper story, a richer story, a more of a more nuanced story, which is how we think about our brand. There seems to be now, maybe there's an opportunity to, for longer, more in-depth storytelling. And that gets me excited. I hope our story is more interesting, the more people learn. And I think that's true of a lot of food and beverage brands that are pioneering a category, that are doing something really different. You need, you need people to hit pause and spend a minute or two longer considering the purchase. And so that's what we're hopeful will be one of the things that comes out of this. Bill, I want to turn to, I mean, obviously a subject that has been so overwhelming and

crucial and important in the United States and around the world and has been brought to the surface again recently through mass demonstrations, racial justice. As you know, and this is actually a question from one of our listeners, viewers, Claire Murashima, this moment feels different from a business perspective because businesses traditionally stay quiet when it comes to matters that are challenging or uncomfortable or political or whatever they might be. Basically, the playbook for businesses is say nothing. From Spindrift's perspective, you make sparkling water, right? And you could look at it from that perspective and say, we make sparkling water. That's what we do.

But at the same time, you know, consumer purchase is also a choice. And we have a lot of choices to make. And so I wonder whether you, you know, you've thought about this and thought, we have to, we have to take a stand. We have to do something. Yeah. I mean, what an inspiring time, really. We have had our own journey, as you might expect. And it started exactly as you suggest with kind of talking to our peers and advisors and board.

And you're right. I would say in general, the group's consensus was let's not say anything. But for me, I guess personally, I was on a bit of a personal journey. You know, I have kids and they were asking questions and wondering, you know, what they were, we're trying to find their voice. You know, we are 32% diverse at spendrifts. So we, you know, I felt an obligation to our team. And then as a brand, you know, our brand has never been afraid of self-evaluation.

We've, we've changed who we are any number of times. from the soda line to the natural flavor position to where we are. So I eventually reached a place where I felt we had a voice. And the door through for us was really this idea that we can do better. We felt that way with our product. We felt that way with our culture, with our communication. Why can't we do better now? Why are we suddenly, why are we satisfied with how we've done so far?

And so we've published our position outwardly. We've spent a lot of time evaluating really inwardly and looking hard. And I'd say going forward, our view is that we should be scorecarding ourselves the way we talk about sales in the exact same way. So we're not satisfied with where we are. I think it's inspired a lot of really important conversations. And I'm quite proud of really how our team took to this. and yet another opportunity for betterment. Last question for you, Bill.

In five years' time from now, what do you want to take from this time that you continue to bring with you to your job, to your leadership, to your business? What is it that you want to say, this is what I learned from that moment and this is why we're better now? It's funny.

I think like so many others, I've been searching for kind of what is the meaning to all this. And I think, you know, there's so much COVID. and pandemic side between families and loved ones and concerns and loss. But I guess, you know, from my standpoint, I am actually starting to feel inspired that perhaps what this was all about was this time at home that we all got with our family, you know, more self-reflection.

And that hopefully it will lead to real change in terms of social justice. I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful if our kids were educated differently? now as a result of this. And wouldn't it be wonderful if that businesses behave differently? If investors invested now in more diverse ownership businesses, I mean, I have really struggled to find a connection, you know, in my quiet moments between what's happened March and April and now what's happening in May and June. But I actually think that this could be an incredible moment for us. And looking ahead, five years, I would love to look back on this and obviously acknowledge all the challenges that we've had, but also talk about it as a time that really was incredibly important for the country in terms of moving to a new level of equality that I think previously we just didn't have, in my view. Bill Kiliman, founder and CEO of Spindrift, thank you so much for joining us, Bill.

Thanks for having me, Guy. Nice to talk to you, and I hope you remain safe. That's an excerpt for my conversation with Bill Creelman, founder of Spin Drift. To see our full interview, you can go to Facebook.com slash How I Built This. And if you want to see all of our past live interviews, you can find them there or at YouTube.com slash NPR. If you want to find out more about the How I Built This Resilience series or other virtual NPR events, you can go to nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by Candace Lim with help from John Isabella, Julia Carney, Gianni, Gianna Capadona, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, and I'll see you in a few days.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.