# Canva turns its mission into measurable product goals

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/canva-turns-its-mission-into-measurable-product-goals/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Melanie Perkins](https://realalpha.app/builders/melanie-perkins/) · Melanie Perkins is co-founder and CEO of Canva. · Co-founded Canva and leads its mission to empower everyone to design, while steering its pledge to do good.
- Host: [Alex Konrad](https://realalpha.app/people/alex-konrad/) · Founder & editor, Upstarts Media · Ran Forbes' Midas List for ten years and co-created its Cloud 100 list; founded Upstarts in 2025.
- Show: Upstarts
- Episode: [Canva’s Melanie Perkins on scaling startup vision and values for global impact](https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/), Feb 12, 2026
- Moment: 32:59 to 36:11 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/canva-turns-its-mission-into-measurable-product-goals/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/?t=1979

## Quote

> “we started off in English launched in Spanish 20 languages 100 languages and now today we're **truly becoming local** in all 40 of our top markets”
> — [Melanie Perkins](https://realalpha.app/builders/melanie-perkins/) at [34:05](https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/?t=2045) · Upstarts

## Takeaways

1. Break the mission into clear pillars.
2. Turn each pillar into successive goals.
3. Canva went from English to 100 languages and localization in 40 top markets.

## About this segment

Melanie Perkins describes turning Canva’s mission into pillars, then into successive language and market goals. The sequence shows how a broad purpose becomes work a large team can track.

From “Canva’s Melanie Perkins on scaling startup vision and values for global impact”, Feb 12, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[33:03](https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/?t=1983) I'll do a recap of your homework, Alex. So doing the wild success and terrible failure, popping that, you got that? I'm taking my notes. Excellent. Turning that into a vision deck of where you want to be. And it's okay for it to be unrealistic. That's the whole point. if it's realistic then it would happen too quickly and then actually taking a little time to think about your values like what do you care about what do you want and then thinking about through the full stack and make your values don't need to be my values they should be authentically your values I think that if you do that I feel like that's a little bit of homework for you but I feel like that becomes like a pretty helpful rubric for a company and then if you want to take it one step further i'll explain how we broke um how we have our mission our mission pillars and the goals

[33:49](https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/?t=2029) stack up to that because that's kind of the framework for the company so our mission is to empower the world to design we break that down into our mission pillars empower everyone to design anything with every ingredient in every language on every device bit of a mouthful but then what we have been doing for the last decade is pulling off goals which is like step after step towards each of those mission pillars and so if we take in every language we started off in English launched in Spanish 20 languages 100 languages and now today we're truly becoming local in all 40 of our top markets and so you can see how it can just continuously stepping stepping stepping towards that mission pillar and so you can kind of that becomes the totality of actually operationalizing that mission and vision and bringing it to life through a company now 5,000

[34:33](https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/?t=2073) people but if you can do your own mission and your own mission pillars and then pull out the goals it kind of everything starts to stack up in a cohesive way because I think a lot of people put their values on the wall and then don't do them they put their mission their mission on the wall and that's just like a thing that's written that sounds nice not something that actually drives the company forward yeah I think that those exercises are really important especially for early stage companies and then like crystallizing that in a vision deck Then having that vision deck challenged like over and over again by everyone, but it kind of gets people on the same page, investors on the same page.

[35:07](https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/?t=2107) I think I'm sure I would have shown you some vision decks, Alex, over the years. Yeah, but I can't say you necessarily made me excited to make them because you've made so many over the journey. It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work and it's constant iteration. You know, the whole thing really is a bet for me, I believe is like dreaming of utopia and then turning that into reality and like being able to do that time and time again, I think is a pretty cool skill to develop over the years but I think that the mission pillar mission thing that might not be as critical right now maybe you'll be at the mission but like what are you trying to do like what is the sum of all your work um like you know I actually would love to be doing this as an exercise diving into your business I think that all those pieces kind of ladder up together so when you're like I want to be

[35:55](https://realalpha.app/v/QjQ7si-H8Ow/?t=2155) speaking to every founder that's leading or i want to be giving the most valuable advice you know whatever it might be um and then every time you choose a guest every time you publish on a different channel it's actually bringing those principles to life well how about this