‘You’re going to be disrupted’
Joining CommBank’s Matt Comyn, Canvas’ Cliff Obrecht said Australia had to make sure technologists and entrepreneurs were “dovetailing” to produce great commercial outcomes.
Obrecht told the story of pitching Canva – at that stage a school yearbook company – to US investors. After many rejections, one investor realised Canva was already dominating its niche and delivering a healthy profit. That alone put it ahead of 95% of the companies he worked with, he said.
Obrecht said it was a lightbulb moment and Canva learned a key lesson. “We learned how to talk ourselves up,” he said. Today the company has 240 million users and 95% of Fortune 500 companies as customers.
It’s that ability to reset that will make the difference in the technology race, Obrecht said. “If you’re not disrupting yourself, you’re going be disrupted.” Technologists should not be afraid of technology, and at Canva, AI is “accelerating our ability to do more and get more shots on goal”, he said.
But with technology and competitors evolving fast, businesses “need leaders with a sense of urgency”, he warned.