‘Peak cringe’: Canva goes viral for on-stage rap video

“You’ve opened up my eyes/to Canva Enterprise/Now we are on the rise/’Cause Canva does it all and we’re feeling alright.”

Sydney-based design software maker Canva went viral over the weekend for an “incredibly cringy” two-minute rap video that surfaced from its Canva Create event in Los Angeles, in which duelling rappers and backup dancers hyped up new features aimed at large businesses.

The video, which racked up nearly 500,000 views, was panned online as being cringy, tone-deaf and emblematic of how detached Silicon Valley has become from reality.

It hearkened back in some ways to the heady days of a decade or so ago, in which executives at the likes of Uber, Facebook and Theranos were ridiculed for their unbridled enthusiasm, branded company t-shirts and excessive parties. It also invited comparisons to Microsoft, whose executives Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer danced like maniacs on-stage nearly 30 years ago to launch Windows 1995.

Canva ticks some of those same boxes: its employees are passionate evangelisers for the company, and no expense is spared in throwing lavish events to celebrate milestones and new features. Thousands of people flocked to the YouTube Theatre in downtown Los Angeles last week to watch Canva unveiled its biggest platform overhaul in a decade, with an estimated 2 million more streaming the event online.

That so many people could get excited about a brand might for some be a depressing reflection on late-stage capitalism.

‘We decided to be ourselves, do something different and not take ourselves too seriously. Haters gonna hate.’

Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht

But for Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht, the cringe-factor was the entire point.

“Our enterprise rap was my favourite part of Canva create BY FAR,” Obrecht said in a LinkedIn post.

“Tech company product launches have essentially tried to be Steve Jobs launching the iPhone since that happened.

“We decided to be ourselves, do something different and not take ourselves too seriously. Haters gonna hate.”

Cliff Obrecht, co-founder of Canva, on stage during the Canva Create event in California. Credit: Alisha Jucevic/Bloomberg

Obrecht added that the rap has done its job in that people are now talking about the new enterprise features.

“The whole thing was supposed to be funny. Now it has so much reach and everyone knows about Canva Enterprise,” he said. “Achievement unlocked, kudos marketing team.”

For one of Canva’s earliest investors, Wesley Chan, a former top Google executive, Canva’s cult-like status is its secret sauce, and what will help it become one of the world’s largest technology businesses.

For Chan, the test of a strong company culture is how many of its employees dress up and get involved for its events. Canva events are big parties and its employees wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

In Canva’s co-founders Obrecht, Melanie Perkins and Cameron Adams, Chan sees direct parallels between Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

“One of the most striking things about coming to Canva’s product launches is how excited their users are when new features come out. They cheer, applaud, and travel all over the world to share their excitement together,” Chan said.

“It reminds me of watching Steve Jobs launch a new version of the Mac or iPod on stage at Apple’s MacWorld over 20 years ago. Rarely do you find a customer base so thrilled and rarely do you find a company who can keep their users so happy and engaged for more than a decade.”

The software industry, like many other sectors of the economy, is currently struggling. Many start-ups have been forced into lay-offs over the past two years, with valuations down across the board.

(L-R) Obrecht with fellow Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cameron Adams.Credit: Bloomberg

Not Canva, which is continuing to grow at a rapid clip and remains one of Australia’s top places to work. More than 185 million people globally now use its platform every month, and its valuation has climbed to an estimated $US39 billion ($58.9 billion).

Clearly, Canva has held on to some level of magic and whimsy that has deserted much of the rest of the technology sector, and is one of the key reasons so many engineers and designers want to work there. And a key test for the company going forward will be to hold on to the best aspects of its culture when it eventually becomes a publicly listed serious tech heavyweight.

One big difference between Canva and many of its contemporaries, as well as the genuinely cringy Silicon Valley start-ups of years past, is that its revenues are very real, as is the enthusiasm its team and its products garner from everyone around it.

But Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s job is probably safe for now.

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