Cameron Adams: evaluation

Transcript context

…As a lens into what is important. Canva, when you say that they didn't understand what Canva is, what's something that doesn't click for people a lot of times that forces them to be exited potentially? What is it that's so maybe unique or important to the way you all think about stuff? I have this theory that the type of product you're building very much influences the way that you think, and this stemmed out of a chat I was having with one of the product leaders at Spotify. And they said that at Spotify they do an incredible amount of talking about problems. They'll have a meeting, they'll talk about this new product feature and they'll just hash it out through conversation. And I imagined that that was because Spotify is a very auditory product. Everyone there thinks about music, sound, podcasts, that is their mindset. At Canva, we're all about visual communications. It's pitch decks, it's social media posts, it's video, it's t-shirts that you can make, and that's how we think about things in a very visual manner. So 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, three years, but also visions in the very visual sense. We need to be able to see it. We need mock-ups. We need prototypes. You need to get that idea out of your head and present it to someone in a visual form that helps you talk about and communicate about it. That's one aspect of why some people I think don't land on their feet at Canva because they aren't necessarily visual thinkers and they don't end up communicating what they want to do in a visual way to the rest of people at Canva. Another way is that the way that we've grown, the way that we've built product has been quite idiosyncratic over the years. And as I said, we've learned so much just through doing and established our own processes. And I think in any system, if someone comes up from the outside with preconceived notions or this idea that they're an expert and tries to bring that in, it's going to be rejected. So you really need to work together and I think the advice that I can give to people coming to Canva is just listen for a couple of months, figure out what is really working at Canva and why it works before you try and change it. We're very open to change and to new ideas, but just coming in wholesale and totally changing the process, just because that's what you've done somewhere else isn't going to get you the most level of success. That makes so much sense. We're talking about cultural elements and so I have one more question around culture. I saw a video interview you did once about how you love this concept of giving away your Legos, that's part of your culture and the culture at Canva broadly potentially, and this was originally popularized by Molly Graham in this first round review article. That's something you still believe in and if so, can you just describe that concept briefly because a lot of people haven't actually heard about this?…

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