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Key Takeaways Even great products stall when founders confuse demand with scalability — real growth only begins once product-market fit evolves into go-to-market fit, where value, acquisition and customer behavior finally align.
Did you know that in 2012, Canva’s founder faced 100+ rejections from investors? When Canva launched, it didn’t immediately achieve the right product market fit. But its founding team understood that most people wanted to create professional-quality designs, but with complex tools.
Melanie Perkins saw this firsthand while building Fusion Books, the yearbook platform that grew into Australia’s largest of its kind. But this experience didn’t guarantee growth for Canva.
Canva’s insight was strong, but the product had to meet the market in a way that felt accessible to even non-designers. Early growth remained slow because the go-to-market engine wasn’t aligned with how users discovered, evaluated and adopted design tools.
Canva’s eventual acceleration came from building unified alignment across:
A radically simplified onboarding experience
A freemium model that lowered risk
A template-driven SEO strategy that met users at moments of intent.
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