Cam Adams

A robust AI strategy balances proprietary model building, strategic partnerships, and an open developer ecosystem.

"We approach AI inside the product through three pillars. First of these is that we need to build some of our own AI tech... Second pillar is just finding the world's best AI people to partner with......"

Aligning stakeholders around product milestones rather than just financial metrics keeps the organization product-led.

"In terms of board meetings, I think it's been very helpful that our financials and our growth have been amazing for so many years that we don't need to focus on it and we can just have that one slide..."

Freemium models can align company mission (democratization) with business viability.

"Freemium for us wasn't so much a growth strategy or a monetization strategy as much as it spoke to our core mission of empowering the world to design... providing that equality was really important to..."

The transcript contains a detailed breakdown of how to design a first-use experience that leads to an 'aha' moment, which is distinct from 'Onboarding New Hires'.

"We worked a lot on the onboarding process in the last couple of months of launch and that was really pivotal because the product features were there... but there was this thing holding people back."

Replacing traditional management with a coaching model focuses on skill development and career trajectory rather than just task oversight.

"We don't really have managers, but everyone at Canva has a coach. They're constantly working with you to look at your skills, but also when it might be time to move on to the next level."

Cultural alignment and psychological safety often drive higher productivity than individual technical brilliance.

"I think you can probably bring in the world's best person at X, Y, and Z, but if they're not fitting into your team and understanding your culture and have the same passion and vision that you do, the..."

A formal coaching system provides structured support for employees to push beyond their comfort zones.

"We have a system we call coaching at Canva where you have a coach and they're constantly working with you to look at your skills, how you can improve each of those individual skills, but also what it..."

Delegation is about finding fulfillment in enabling others to succeed and scale rather than holding onto tasks for personal identity.

"I run everyone through the culture of Canva. One of those sections is on giving away your Lego, finding joy in the other things of building a team, passing on your experience, helping other people do..."

True leadership growth requires transitioning from individual execution to coaching and system-building.

"Finding joy in the other things of building a team, passing on your experience, helping other people do great writing or great product building or great engineering is really what giving away your Leg..."

The primary role of a PM is to act as the connective tissue between disparate functions and constraints.

"For us, product managers are really connectives. They connect the team, ideas, data, a whole bunch of different things, and it's very messy. There's no exact recipe for how to do it, but connecting th..."

Effective SEO strategy maps user intent (Jobs to be Done) directly to a seamless product entry point.

"He set up a whole team of people who looked at people's motivations and the top jobs to be done that Canva could service. He then mapped that through the entire experience of going into Google, typing..."

Product vision should be communicated visually through prototypes and mock-ups rather than just abstract documents.

"At Canva, we're all about visual communications... one of the things that's very particular about Canva is really setting visions. And I'm in visions, not just in the sense of looking forward two, thr..."