When Samantha Wong joined Blackbird a decade ago, the idea of an Australian startup reaching global scale was largely theoretical. Wong, now a partner at the venture capital firm, admitted today that she once dismissed Canva's potential, thinking in 2015 that the design platform's product was as good as it would get.
"The truth was, there actually just hadn't been that many startups who had gone beyond Series A," Wong told the audience at Sunrise Australia 2025 in Sydney. "So nascent was our ecosystem that we had no idea how much bigger you could become."
Her remarks opened the 10th annual Sunrise festival, where there's ample evidence of just how dramatically Australia's technology ambitions have expanded. The once-modest gathering has grown into one of the country's most significant tech events, mirroring the sector's overall trajectory.
Wong invoked a principle commonly attributed to Bill Gates: "Most people overestimate what they can get done in one year and underestimate what they can get done in 10 years." She illustrated this with examples of several Australian companies whose growth exceeded their founders' initial expectations.
