Canva is the kind of story that startup myths are made from. But as staff and early backers bask in their newfound riches, the challenge ahead is that the graphic design software company is still very much an outlier for the Australian startup ecosystem.
The deal has brought the kind of validation that Australian VC has long been chasing in the broader financial markets community.
Blackbird, Canva's single biggest investor, returned $800 million to investors in its early funds from selling into the Canva secondary, a return of some 2,600x the cost base for its initial investment.
The secondary is also a win for super funds, which have become the golden goose for our biggest VC funds including Blackbird.
