👉 Background: Canva began back in 2013 with a pretty bold plan to take on Adobe's design suite. They created simple ways to create your workplace BBQ poster or son's 1st birthday invitation. Since then, it’s also grown to become to offer templates for company presentations, resumes and even removes ugly backgrounds from images.

👉 What happened: Canva provided an unscheduled financial update to investors where they had cracked over 200 million active users. Its annualised revenue has now hit $US2.5 billion — up 47 per cent from $US1.7 billion a year ago.

👉 What else: Canva made this financial update as part of their plans to get the investment market excited for their impending listing in 2025 or 2026.

What's the key learning?

💡Publicising financial performance helps to build credibility with public market investors. As a private company, there’s no requirement to share your finances with anyone other than the company’s shareholders... and maybe the tax office.

💡But many companies gunning for an IPO will publish financial updates to help establish trust and credibility before being public. This helps show transparency around revenue, profit and customer metrics.

💡This storytelling approach not only helps to generate buzz but can also significantly impact the IPO valuation.

• Airbnb released periodic updates on its growth, number of listings, and geographic expansion before its IPO
  
• Uber also gave a little glimpse into its revenue and market share in certain regions to build anticipation for its IPO
  

So Canva is whetting the appetite of public market investors with their growth and AI vision for the future.