How Canva got its first users?
Before Canva, there was Fusion Books.
Canva was the project of Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht to help schools create quality yearbooks for students. While in college, Perkins earned extra money teaching design to other students. She saw that they needed a simple graphic design tool: printing brochures or posters was a problem. Melanies' mother was a teacher and was very involved with the school's yearbooks. This inspired Perkins to create a tool for designing yearbooks.
Melanie didn't know how to program, so she paid someone who could. She borrowed money from friends and hired freelancers. They made a website for called Fusion Books. There, students were able to design their own yearbooks together. Along with Obrecht, Perkins would print these books and deliver them to schools. Obrecht cold-called the schools to present the idea of Fusion Books. He changed his voice when the schools wanted to talk to the project director. They reached 400 schools. They came from the locals. They even sent some free samples of the designs. Perkins dropped out of school to concentrate on Fusion Books.
To promote Fusion Books (Canva), Perkins attended as many conferences and meetings as possible. She attended conferences for bloggers, designers, and social media marketers and then introduced Canva to attendees.
She and Obrecht also reached out to influential people in graphic design. She was asked to talk about Canva, so influencers recommended it to their followers.
During this time, Perkins attempted to raise funds and find investors for Canva. To date, Canva and Fusion Books worked separately.