Dream Big, Build Incrementally: Canva’s Path to $42B
"I don't want to look at the bricks around me and ask how high I can stack them. I want to design the most magical, wonderful, mythical castle on a hill and then figure out how to build it." Melanie Perkins (@MelanieCanva) is co-founder and CEO of @Canva, one of the hottest private companies in the world—last valued at $42B, generating $3.3B in ARR, profitable for 8 years straight—and is on track to become the most successful female founder in history. But it wasn't always so rosy. She was rejected by over 100 investors, her team had to spend 2 years rewriting their product from scratch (unable to ship anything during that time, something they expected to take 6 months), and they went through a major pivot a few years in. In a rare interview, Melanie and I discuss: 🔸 How “Column B” has been the key to Canva's success 🔸 How Canva survived a painful two-year period without shipping any new features 🔸 How to build a ladder to the moon with small rungs 🔸 Canva’s “two-step plan”: build one of the world’s most valuable companies, then do the most good possible 🔸 So much more Listen now 👇 • YouTube: https://t.co/EqOkwwkzpy • Spotify: https://t.co/mDxzxnRqwk • Apple: https://t.co/ip55ackS2t Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting the podcast: 🏆 @TrustVanta — Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://t.co/JHcQhNsK42 🏆 @Stripe — Helping companies of all sizes grow revenue: https://t.co/zOscBW98BX 🏆 @justworks — The all-in-one HR solution for managing your small business with confidence: https://t.co/pbYqfqXTP9$
AI Budgets Skew Toward New Tech, R&D, Training
What is the secret allocation of AI budgets? I found the data for you. Check it out and save this post. 💰 What is the average AI budget allocation? New tech and tools = 20-22% Existing tech and tools =...
DeepMind Valuation Could Exceed $1 Trillion, Boosting Google
And DeepMind would be $1+ trillion if split off (my opinion based on valuations of xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.). Bullish on Google.
Free Plan Claim Clashes with Credit‑card Request
confusing. copy clearly says "this plan is free" so why do they need my cc? low-trust onboarding experience @AppTweak https://t.co/A65vSbb3hm
Speed Wins: Free Your Calendar to Scale
Founders at $5m+ revenue move fast. Speed wins. You can’t move fast if your calendar is back to back all day Ryan is smart
CEOs Must Incentivize Employees to Harness AI Autonomously
Why CEOs Should Incentivise Employees to Replace Themselves With AI A provocative idea: it isn’t just about AI automating roles—but about leaders empowering employees to creatively use AI and transform their work, rather than being replaced by it. Read more...
B2B Wins With Faster, Authentic, Modern Content
B2B doesn’t need to act like B2C. It just needs to create better content. - Faster content isn’t B2C. It’s efficient B2B. - Authentic content isn’t B2C. It’s human B2B. - Vertical video isn’t B2C. It’s modern B2B. - More...
Creative Is the Last Controllable Growth Lever
Creative > Media Buying. • Attribution is broken. • Bidding is automated. • Targeting is automated. The only controllable growth lever left is the thing people actually see.
Creative Laziness Signals a Plateaued Brand
The fastest way to spot a plateaued brand: Flat blended CAC Zero creative diversity Same ad sucking 90% of the spend without finding new winners Creative laziness caps you far before the algorithm.
Even Top AI Remains a Black Box, Paper Shows
Excited that our paper "Open Problems in Mechanistic Interpretability" (link in reply) got accepted to TMLR. We still lack in understanding of how today's strongest AI systems work! https://t.co/X9dhWSiwIf
Short‑term Ad Win, but No Scalable Growth
I got this spot for FounderStack for $699. So far, it's generated: - +400 website visits - 1 sale ($799) So I'm breakeven. And it's only been 3 days. 2 more sales, and the ROAS is similar to the ads I run on Facebook, and I...
Built Our Own Better Partner Platform After Rewardful Fell Short
I signed up for Rewardful. But they didn't have the features we needed. After a quick chat with support: They didn't have any plans to add it. So we're now vibe coding our own! (And honestly, ours is already better 😂) Stay tuned, we're about to...
DeepSeek OCR Cuts Token Usage 10×, Keeps 97% Accuracy
DeepSeek has just unveiled an OCR monster 🤯 DeepSeek-OCR is a 3B-parameter model that redefines document intelligence. It reaches 97% character-level accuracy with 10× input compression, preserving every detail. Most OCR systems require over 6,000 tokens per page. DeepSeek-OCR achieves the same with...
Learning to Code Remains Essential Despite AI Assistance
unfortunately i dont agree about “first day” part. people need to learn to code to vibe code properly. AI assisted coding >>>> pure vibe coding. And its not going away anytime soon.
Humanoid Robots Learn by Watching Real‑world Video
Humanoid robotics are racing to train with real-world video, says WSJ's Joanna Stern https://t.co/H0tzNfU6n5 #humanoidrobotics #humanoid #AI #Robotics #Robot @enilev @ipfconline1 @JagersbergKnut @Khulood_Almani @Nicochan33
Quiet Persistence Turns Into 8‑Figure Success
Everything is easy when the crowd's cheering. But the real work? That happens in silence. I remember the looks. Friends asking "are you okay?" Family mentioning job openings. Posts with 3 likes. Those moments? That's where growth happens. I wrote...
Free AI Analyzer Grades Your VC Pitch Deck Instantly
Wondering if your VC pitch is good enough? SaaStr AI will tell you. Try the FREE SaaStr AI VC Pitch Deck Analyzer here -> https://t.co/S5UFYzoN7a Try it now. We'll grade it, tell you the exact odds you'll get funded, and...
AI Agents Unlock Unlimited SaaS Consumption for Enterprises
This is a great anecdote from Atlassian. The fear everyone was that AI agents would somehow compress the role of enterprise software. Generally the opposite will be true, assuming the software company executes effectively (either startups or existing players). Enterprise...
NVIDIA Leads AI Factory Blueprint for Government Modernization
NVIDIA and US Technology Leaders Unveil AI Factory Design to Modernize Government and Secure the Nation https://t.co/L2laH0K1Y3 #AI #IoT #CES2026 @nvidia @PalantirTech @CrowdStrike @ServiceNow @LockheedMartin @northropgrumman @dataiku @DataRobot @DominoDataLab @h2oai @EnterpriseDB @Dynatrace @fiddler_ai @jfrog @protopia_ai @TrendMicro @wandb @Canonical @MirantisIT @nutanix @RedHat @spectrocloudinc...
Customers Prefer Better AI Sales Reps—Deploy Yours Directly
- Do customers even care if your sales reps is AI or human? Not if the AI is better than a human - #1 top advice to get going on AI + GTM: deploy an AI agent -- yourself. ...
Leadership Improves When You Stop Pretending to Know Everything
For a very long time as CEO of HubSpot, I thought I was supposed to have all the answers. Life got easier for everyone (especially me) when I got over that.
Diversify Beyond AI SEO or Face Obsolescence
AI SEO Bubble Alert?... Amplitude pivots to 'AIO', Profound snags $58M from Sequoia, Ramp spams to 120K visitors/month. But it's recycled 2000s SEO stuff - it works til Google/OpenAI nukes it. If businesses want to survive, they must play the 'search everywhere...
Scale Smart: Hire Slow, Promote Internally, Balance Talent
A lot of startups get stuck in the mud between 200 and 2000 employees. Here are my tips: 1. Ye old "hire slow and fire fast" is still true. 2. Push off the director layer as long as you can....
Turn Every Sales Call Into Valuable Content
How to make every sales call productive—even if you don’t close What if every call added value to your sales and marketing? Imagine telling an executive: “Whether or not you make a sale, every sales call will move your business...
Target High‑Net‑Worth Listeners: Business Podcasts Outperform Mass Hits
BTS: I was hanging out with a few creators and operators last week... We discussed a few creators: MrBeast, Hormozi, Steven Bartlett (Diary of a CEO), Acquired podcast, Founders podcast, etc. When it came down to the 'audience value', the group leaned...
VCs Must Choose Between Steady Growth and AI Frenzy
Is Triple Triple Double Double good enough anymore? $1m ARR -> $3m ARR -> $9m ARR -> $18M ARR -> $36m ARR -> rocketship Here's the thing. On the one hand, of course it is. That compounds to 50%+ growth...
Optimus May Replace All Factory Workers by 2030
Elon DMd me this morning and said the next @Tesla_Optimus (version 3) can “probably” roll a cigar. Rolling joints is harder. If I was @elonmusk I would put three cameras on every one of his 12,000 workers in @tesla’s Fremont factory. That would...
Build Trust, Not Shortcuts: Earn Authority Through Relationships
Don’t chase shortcuts. Take “black hat” tactics and flip them white, build real relationships with quality sites for links. Brands win by playing the long game with trust and authority. That’s how you rise above the noise. https://t.co/t7IwE1BzZ4
Articulate Your Ideas to Achieve True Clarity
The best thinkers, communicators, and indeed experts understand that you can't find clarity on an idea in your head. You have to articulate it. Often. One of the foremost experts on the business of expertise in the world is David...
AI Supercharges Product Prototyping, Boosts Ideation Speed
Seeing more and more product managers use AI for showing functional product prototypes. It’s accelerating the ideation phase of a product by probably 5-10X. Partly this is because you can show off an idea much more quickly, which gets the...
Agentic AI Boosts FP&A Efficiency with Real‑World Use Cases
Agentic AI and FP&A? Let's find out! Join me for an exclusive live demo and conversation with FutureView Systems, showcasing their new Agentic AI Platform B*EZ, built specifically for FP&A and controller teams. We’ll explore real, tactical AI use cases...
Founders Fail When They Chase Trends Over Real Pain
Too many founders fail because they build what’s really trendy rather than what’s really painful to customers.
Customers Want Done‑For‑You, Not Just Better Claims
There are so many products I would buy if the vendor just said "I'll do all the work for you" Instead, they all want to tell me why they are 10x better
AI Week Highlights: OpenAI Recap, Microsoft Deal, NVIDIA Surge
Welcome to this week's edition of AI to ROI: Just the News Edition I write the newsletter twice weekly with my friend Peter Buchanan Our Saturday edition is called "AI to ROI: Just the News" Our Tuesday morning edition includes...
Excluding the Wrong Audience Boosts Product Appeal
What’s more important? Who a product is for? Or who it is not for? According to recent research, saying who you are NOT for may be stronger. “When a product advertises who it’s not suitable for (e.g. an adventure holiday...
Pakistan Pursues Sovereign AI Powered by Blockchain
Was a pleasure meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister @CMShehbaz and Minister of State @Bilalbinsaqib & co Look forward to helping Pakistan have Sovereign AI, providing aligned universal AI to all citizens coordinated by blockchain Huge potential for a true leapfrog moment 🇵🇰🚀
Linear Attention Makes a Comeback with Efficient LLMs
With the release of the Kimi Linear LLM last week, we can definitely see that efficient, linear attention variants have seen a resurgence in recent months. Here's a brief summary of what happened. First, linear attention variants have been around for...
Remember: We're Tiny, Not Worth Attribution Stress
Perspective check for your Saturday morning (post 30 KitKat bars). We’re a speck in a spiral galaxy, and we are stressing about inbound and outbound attribution modeling. 🙏
AI‑fused Sensor Network Secures Europe’s Borders 24/7
No drone is safe from @delian_ai StrikeWeb fuses any sensor into a single intelligence picture. AI-enabled detection and tracking that works across static towers, observation posts, or mobile deployments. Deployed 24/7 on Europe's borders. https://t.co/8CWK2ngZeB
New AI Models Hype, but Performance Often Unchanged
Have you seen OpenAI’s Atlas? And googles new update? And and minimax m2!! I just switched to the most recent Qwen model and… it performs the same 😂 This field is quite special to work in. So much hype around so...
Presenting State of AI Report at Copenhagen AI Summit
🇩🇰 see you in copenhagen this week! excited to be sharing @stateofaireport at the ai in science summit! https://t.co/SNSLDEBUtK
Bootstrapped SaaS Sold for $3.5M Proves Modest Success Works
We helped a founder sell their bootstrapped startup for $3,500,000 this week at @acquiredotcom. Another life changing outcome. Proof you don’t need a billion dollar startup to win. A profitable SaaS is enough. Huge congrats to the founder and to the next one...
Tech Unicorns Often Founded by 45‑year‑olds
A study of 2.7 million startups: The average age of people who started the fastest-growing tech companies is 45. Everyone's in a rush, but shouldn't be. https://t.co/vofCBMRyQN
Coding Agents Can Now Control Chrome via DevTools
Forget static prompts. `chrome-devtools-mcp` lets your coding agent (Gemini, Claude etc.) control and inspect your Chrome browser! 🤯 ↳ Network & console debugging ↳ Automated navigation ↳ Deep perf insights ↳ CPU/network emulation 100% free and open-source. Repo in 🧵↓ https://t.co/4oxzczuh1w
Disable ChatGPT’s Em‑dashes with a Custom Instruction
If, like me, you’ve been annoyed AF by em dashes in ChatGPT, here’s how to finally get rid of them for good: 1. Go to 'personalization' 2. Find 'custom instructions'. 3. Select 'enable customization'. 4. Copy-paste this prompt ↓ 'Systematically replace em-dashes (“—”) with a...
Three Words Drive Email Open Rates to 78%
3 Words That Boost Email Open Rates to 78%! 🚀 The average email open rate is 18%. My client is getting 78% consistently with this three word formula. Three words that outperform every other subject line-tested on over 1,500 campaigns!...
AI Slows SaaS, but Adds Massive Functionality
SaaS apps are much, much slower since AI It's OK because they do much, much more But not something I would have expected 24+ months ago
People Reject Autonomous Cars—Adoption Inevitable Within Three Years
I did a lot of consumer research more than a decade ago for the auto industry. It drew the most heavy rejection of my career. “If a car drove up without a steering wheel would you take a ride with me?” One guy...