‘This is a new bar’: Cliff Obrecht sparks Canva job cut fears in since deleted Slack note
Canva has moved to allay fears of job cuts after a since deleted internal post from co-founder Cliff Obrecht sent alarm bells ringing inside the company.
Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht had an urgent message for staff at the design software giant last week. “This is the new bar,” Obrecht wrote in a Slack message viewed by Capital Brief. “If we are not working at this velocity we are not going to be competitive.”
In his message Obrecht had linked to a viral social media post highlighting AI market leader Anthropic’s rapid product development velocity ‒ it had shipped 73 releases in just 52 days between February and March.
He also attached a screenshot of a Google search showing the company behind Claude employs between 2,300 and 2,500 people, with the figure highlighted. Canva’s workforce is roughly double Anthropic’s.
Staff took the note to imply that half the workforce could be doing the same job — and that cuts could follow.
