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You can chase every new AI tool on the timeline and still end up further from what your customers actually want. After going back to a 2019 interview with Canva Co-Founder & CEO Melanie Perkins, I’m struck by how little the core principles have aged and how much they explain the best AI products and the best marketing today.
We talk about Canva’s vision of helping people take an idea and turn it into a finished design with as close to zero friction as possible, then connect that directly to what generative AI is supposed to deliver: intention to outcome, not more dashboards. From there, we unpack one of Canva’s most important values, "make complex things simple," and why it’s becoming the dividing line between AI that feels magical and AI that feels like homework. If your customer needs a 20-minute explanation to understand your value, we explore why the problem may be your story, not their attention span.
Then we go deeper into something most growth teams avoid saying out loud: incentives. When a platform succeeds, do its users succeed too, or do their goals start to diverge? We look at alignment, community, trust, and why this question is becoming unavoidable across social media, creator ecosystems, and AI platforms. We close with the quote that still sticks with me years later: "You can only grow as big as your dreams," but you also have to take the first small step, then the next.
If you care about AI marketing strategy, product philosophy, and building brands that last, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review. What’s one principle you want to keep stable while everything else changes?
This solo episode was recorded via Descript on July 26, 2026. It also includes audio from my interview with Melanie Perkins, recorded on November 5, 2019, during Web Summit in Lisbon.
Read the blog article and show notes here: https://webdrie.net/canva-co-founder-ceo-melanie-perkins-you-can-only-grow-as-big-as-your-dreams
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