Designing the Next Chapter: What Canva’s Reset Means for Apps

For more than a decade, Canva has been the poster child for consumer software done right: a product that turned design from a specialist skill into something anyone could do, used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. So when CEO Melanie Perkins told staff this week that 1,271 people, or 22% of the company, would be affected by layoffs, role changes and relocations, the news landed well beyond Canva’s offices.

It is the company’s first mass layoff in its thirteen-year history, and Perkins was candid about why: growth has slowed for the first time in a decade. For an industry that has long treated Canva as proof that great product plus great growth equals endless scale, that admission is worth sitting with.

Growth is no longer a given

The most striking line in Perkins’ memo is not about job cuts, but about momentum: success in Canva’s first chapter “doesn’t guarantee success in the next.”

If a category leader with a global user base and a much-loved brand is hitting a ceiling, the lesson for mid-sized app companies is hard to ignore. Investors and boards are likely to keep pushing for efficiency, profitability and clearer paths to revenue over headcount-led expansion.

The AI question nobody named

Notably, the memo never mentions AI directly. Instead, Perkins refers to how quickly the world is changing and how “new technology is transforming what people can create, how they create it, and what they expect from the products they use.” Commentators were quick to pick up on the omission.

Reading between the lines, the pressure is clear. AI-native tools are compressing the gap between idea and output, and apps whose core value is “making a hard task easy” are now competing with products that can do the task almost instantly. Creative, productivity and utility apps face the same question Canva does: what does your product offer when generating the output is no longer the hard part?

Product, Growth and Platform become one

Arguably the most significant part of the announcement for app businesses is how Canva is reorganising. Product, Growth and Platform are being merged into a single Product Org, with the aim of reducing handovers and giving teams ownership of bigger problems from start to finish.

Alongside that, Canva is cutting back on subspecialisation, folding narrow roles into broader ones and removing layers of management.

This is a model other app companies will be watching closely. If it works, expect to see:

• Fewer standalone growth teams sitting alongside product, and more growth responsibility built into product squads

• Demand shifting from narrow specialists towards generalists who can own outcomes end to end

• More work routed to agencies, tools and automation where specialist depth is still needed

  
  

For UA and growth professionals in particular, this raises a real question about where their expertise sits in the org chart of the future.

The office makes a comeback

Canva is also bringing more product teams together in Sydney and asking most hybrid staff to be in the office two to three days a week from January. The reasoning: complex problems are easier to solve when the right people are in the same room.

It is another signal that large app companies increasingly see co-location as a speed advantage, which may narrow the pool of fully remote roles for senior product and growth talent.

A wave of talent and new startups

More than a thousand experienced product, growth and platform people are about to enter the market. Canva is also launching the Canva Collective Fund, offering US$10,000 grants to departing staff who want to start something of their own, with no equity taken.

For smaller app companies, this is a rare hiring opportunity. For the wider ecosystem, it could seed a new generation of startups built by people who have seen hypergrowth from the inside, and now know what happens when it stalls.

Setting a new bar for how layoffs are handled

The support package has drawn praise: a minimum of six months’ salary regardless of location, removal of the one-year vesting cliff for recent joiners, twelve months of healthcare and EAP coverage, career coaching, LinkedIn Premium, an alumni talent directory shared with investors and partners, and departing staff keeping their laptops. Some coverage has gone as far as calling it a masterclass in how to handle layoffs.

Whether or not others follow suit, Canva has raised expectations, and companies announcing cuts in the months ahead will be measured against it.

What it means for the apps industry

Canva’s restructure is not a sign that the company is in trouble so much as a sign that the rules of the next chapter are different. Slowing growth, AI-driven shifts in user expectations, and a move towards leaner, more integrated teams are pressures that apply across the apps industry, not just to design tools.

The companies that adapt fastest will likely be the ones asking the same question Canva did: what do we need to succeed in the chapter ahead, and are we structured to deliver it?