Canva co-founder Cameron Adams gained important insights into building technology while working on Google Wave, a communication tool that combined messaging, document editing and real-time collaboration. Despite its ambitious features, the product struggled to attract users, teaching Adams that even innovative technology needs to meet users’ needs to succeed.
Despite pressure from investors to launch sooner, the founders chose to focus on creating something customers would value. For Adams, his experiences with Google Wave and Fluent taught him the importance of understanding what users need, choosing the right time to launch a product and solving real problems. He learnt that even a technically impressive idea needs to be easy to use and have a clear purpose to succeed.
The service was eventually shut down in April 2012, although some of its technology continued to influence other products. Rather than rushing the product to market, the founders spent months developing and testing it before its 2013 launch. Because it had not achieved the expected user adoption, in August 2010, Google announced that it would stop developing Wave as a standalone product.
“We knew, however, that we needed to launch a product that had a certain level of quality in it,” Adams told the BBC. He said the team understood its intended users and what they needed from the product.
The lessons from his earlier ventures also influenced the team’s approach to launching Canva.
He eventually shut down Fluent and joined Perkins and Obrecht to build Canva, drawing on his experience in design and technology.
He later co-founded Fluent, a collaborative email startup that attracted around 80,000 prospective users almost overnight. Accommodating those users would have cost the company around $400,000 in its first month, and the founders could not secure suitable investment, according to Adams. The experience stayed with Adams as he moved from Google to entrepreneurship. However, the unexpected demand created a financial challenge.
