It’s about what you own.

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Disclaimer: I wrote this post to build on the wonderful work Jon has shared, adding depth and nuance to his thoughtful breakdown of Canva’s positioning strategy. Jon’s insights are spot on, and my goal here is to expand the conversation. To highlight not just what Canva is doing right but why it works and what we can all learn from it. It’s not about disagreement but about enriching the dialogue. After all, the best lessons come from seeing the full picture.

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Positioning is often misunderstood as adding features, entering new markets, or tweaking messaging. But positioning isn’t about what you do but what you own in your customer’s mind.

Canva’s success in scaling from SMBs to enterprise customers offers a masterclass in doing this right. Let’s break down Canva’s approach and what it teaches us about positioning, using lessons shared by Jon and Indy Sen, Canva’s Head of Ecosystem Marketing.

1. Don’t Abandon Your Core Identity: Build on It

Most companies stumble when moving upmarket because they try to reinvent themselves. They think serving a new audience means becoming something entirely different. Canva avoided this trap by doubling down on what made it successful: simplicity and accessibility.

As Indy Sen explains:

“We don’t want to forget what made us successful and what made our brand resonate with the users who’ve helped build it over the last 10 years via a product-led growth motion.”

Instead of chasing pro designers, Canva expanded its mission to empower everyone in an organization to design easily. Its enterprise positioning isn’t separate from its prosumer DNA — it’s an evolution of it.

Lesson: Positioning doesn’t mean starting fresh. It means finding ways to scale your identity into new markets.

2. Reframe the Category: Don’t Compete

Canva didn’t try to compete with Adobe or Figma on their terms. Adobe owns power and precision. Figma owns pro-level collaboration. Competing in their lane would have been a losing game.

Instead, Canva reframed the category around team-wide visual communication, solving problems for HR, sales, and customer success. Departments that legacy tools don’t prioritize.

“Our enterprise play is about enabling every employee in an organization to communicate visually—whether it’s sales, HR, or customer success—without sacrificing brand consistency,” Sen notes.

By positioning itself as a team enabler, Canva made pro-level design tools feel irrelevant to broader enterprise needs.

Lesson: Don’t ask, “How are we better than competitors?” Ask, “What do we make possible that they can’t?“

3. Solve Big Problems, but Keep It Simple

Scaling into enterprises meant Canva had to solve for brand control and consistency — issues critical to large organizations. They addressed this with solutions like templating and Brand Kits, which provide guardrails for non-designers while keeping workflows intuitive.

As Sen explains:

“Templates and our Brand Kit offering help solve [brand control] challenges by providing guardrails without stifling creativity.”

What makes Canva special isn’t just that it solves these problems. It’s that it does so without over-complicating the experience. Most companies over-engineer their products when moving into enterprise markets. Canva made it simple, staying true to WHO they are.

Lesson: Simplicity isn’t about doing less. It’s about hiding complexity so customers feel empowered, not overwhelmed.

4. Play a Game Competitors Can’t Copy

Jon highlights an essential truth: Canva’s positioning as simple, accessible, and team-oriented is uncopyable by competitors like Adobe and Figma.

“When your brand and your business are built on selling expensive, powerful tools to pro users, it’s very hard to do anything else,” Jon notes.

Adobe can’t pivot to Canva’s lane without alienating its core audience of pro designers. Canva’s positioning forces competitors to stay in their lanes while it expands into untapped markets.

Lesson: The best positioning makes it impossible for competitors to follow you without breaking their own strategy.

5. Leverage Product-Led Growth as a Trojan Horse

Canva’s success in the enterprise isn’t just about positioning. It’s also about how it gets there. Its product-led growth (PLG) strategy allows individuals to introduce Canva into their organizations, creating organic bottom-up adoption.

This strategy complements Canva’s positioning: simplicity and accessibility make it easy for individual users to champion the product, scaling its reach without friction.

Lesson: PLG isn’t just a growth tactic. It reinforces your positioning by making adoption seamless.

6. CANVA Proves the B2B vs. B2C Divide in positioning is Arbitrary

Canva’s success shows that positioning doesn’t change whether you’re targeting individuals or enterprises. Who you are remains constant. What changes are the tactics you use to execute that positioning.

As Canva scaled from prosumers to enterprises, it didn’t abandon its identity as a tool for simplicity and accessibility. Instead, it evolved the use cases while staying true to its core: democratizing design.

Anecdotally, this works even better today as the lines between work and home blur. People who used Canva for their side hustles or personal projects at home wouldn’t find it a huge leap to use it for enterprise tasks. This seamless transition reflects Canva’s ability to unify positioning across B2B and B2C contexts.

Lesson: The divide between B2B and B2C is tactical, not foundational. If your positioning is clear, consistent, and rooted in identity, it scales naturally across audiences.

7. The Hidden Challenge of Enterprise Adoption

Having worked in management consulting, I’ve seen the inefficiencies Canva is solving firsthand. Many firms already have templated PowerPoint decks and brand collateral. But here’s the catch: 99% of those templates are rarely used as intended. Even when they are, designers still need to massage the final product to make it truly polished.

Additionally, enterprise adoption isn’t just about solving usability challenges — it’s also about overcoming IT security barriers. Many companies restrict access to external apps, creating friction for tools like Canva to become embedded in workflows.

It would be fascinating to see how Canva addresses these pain points as it continues its enterprise expansion. Will they develop tighter integrations with secure enterprise environments or build partnerships to ease security concerns? This could be a pivotal factor in winning over more traditional, security-conscious industries like consulting or finance.

Lesson: Enterprise adoption isn’t just about building features like templates. It’s also about solving for execution inefficiencies and overcoming security roadblocks.

Key Takeaways from Canva’s Positioning

1. Positioning is identity: Canva scaled its prosumer ethos into enterprises without losing its identity.
2. Reframe, don’t compete: Canva didn’t try to beat Adobe or Figma at their own game. It redefined the category.
3. Simplify the hard things: Canva solves enterprise problems (brand control, collaboration) with effortless simplicity.
4. Play an uncopyable game: Canva’s positioning ensures competitors can’t follow without breaking their own strategies.
5. PLG as reinforcement: Canva’s PLG strategy aligns perfectly with its positioning, creating bottom-up adoption.
6. B2B vs B2C is a delusion: Canva bridges B2B and B2C effortlessly because its positioning isn’t tied to its audience. It’s tied to its identity.
7. Enterprise adoption goes beyond features: it requires solving for execution gaps and navigating security concerns, areas where Canva’s positioning as “simple and accessible” could prove transformative.

Finally

Canva’s enterprise success isn’t just about its features, growth strategy, or clever marketing. It’s about owning a concept so completely that it reshapes how people think about design.

Design for everyone isn’t just a tagline; it’s a promise that permeates every decision Canva makes, from empowering individuals to enabling enterprise teams.

What makes Canva exceptional is its ability to maintain clarity of identity while scaling across vastly different audiences. This proves that positioning doesn’t need to change when moving from B2C to B2B.

Instead, it evolves tactically while staying rooted in who you are. Canva blurs the lines between personal and professional use, enabling a seamless transition for users who move from side hustles at home to collaborative projects at work.

Moreover, Canva’s positioning solved problems that competitors either ignored or couldn’t address. Where Adobe and Figma cater to pro designers, Canva carved out a unique space by empowering everyone in an organization to communicate visually. My mom loves Canva, while I love Adobe.

It tackled complex enterprise challenges, including brand control, team-wide adoption, and consistency with simplicity and accessibility.

But simplicity is deceptively hard.

Canva’s success lies in solving these problems and hiding the complexity behind intuitive, effortless tools. It redefined the category of design tools by shifting the narrative from design precision to team-wide empowerment, forcing competitors to stay in their lanes.

That said, Canva is still early in its enterprise journey.

Breaking into mature, security-conscious markets like consulting, finance, or tech services will require navigating entrenched processes, stricter security protocols, and even greater demands for collaboration at scale. These challenges present opportunities for Canva to deepen its enterprise offerings while staying true to its core identity.

In a world where most brands compete on features or pricing, Canva stands out by making competitors irrelevant. It didn’t try to be better than Adobe or Figma. It played a completely different game.

Positioning isn’t about features, comparisons, or differentiation. It’s about identity, clarity, and confidence. It’s about owning one idea so fully that alternatives cease to matter.

Canva didn’t just scale its business; it scaled its identity. Even as it navigates the challenges of expanding deeper into enterprise markets, its positioning provides the clarity and foundation to guide that journey.

That’s why it’s winning.