Cameron Adams
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Canva
Co-founder and CPO of Canva, a $2.3B ARR design platform growing 60% year over year and profitable; built a unique coaching-based culture where Canva doesn't have traditional managers but everyone has a coach.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Cameron Adams, co-founder and CPO of Canva ($2.3B ARR, 60% YoY growth, profitable), reveals the unique organizational practices behind Canva's success including their coaching model that replaces traditional management, the 'giving away your Lego' culture principle, and why they deliberately built a PM function different from Google's model where PMs are deeply connected to rather than independent from their teams.
Leadership Principles
- → We don't really have managers — everyone at Canva has a coach who works with them on skills and helps them know when to move to the next level
- → Giving away your Lego means finding joy in building teams, passing on experience, and helping others do great work — not hoarding the fun parts
- → PMs should be deeply connected to their teams, not independent of them — the Google model of independent PMs seemed very weird
Notable Quotes
"We don't really have managers, but everyone at Canva has a coach. They're constantly working with you to look at your skills, but also when it might be time to move on to the next level."
— On Canva's unique coaching-based organizational model
"I run everyone through the culture of Canva. One of those sections is on giving away your Lego — finding joy in the other things of building a team, passing on your experience, helping other people do great work."
— On Canva's culture principle of empowering others
"I didn't want to do product management like they did at Google, and that's because of the different cultures. I have seen product managers at other companies who are very independent of teams and that seems very weird to me."
— On why Canva built a different PM model
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