Canva lands a $6B valuation to make everyone a design professional

Channeling Bob Ross vibes... Start with a blank Canva for your DIY masterpiece. The Sydney-based startup wants to make graphic design accessible to all. Think: aesthetically pleasing flyers and social posts for non-design pros. That drag-and-drop attitude just helped Canva nearly double its valuation (it's still private, so we're SUMO'ing):

• $6B: Canva's value after a $60M fundraise, up from $3.2B just nine months ago. Canva can now update its LinkedIn headline to: Most valuable private tech company in Australia. And it's profitable.
• 30M: Canva's monthly users. Instead of paying for pricey Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions or trying to make a Word Doc look like a poster, millions turn to Canva's free templates. But it's not just college kids making flyers for random student org events...
• 1.5M: Paid users on Canva Pro. Canva also has paying enterprise customers like Warner Music and American Airlines, and around 500K smaller orgs/businesses. That's the premium side of Canva's "freemium" biz model. Lure them with the "free," monetize them with the "mium."
• BTW: Professionals-geared Adobe just released a free photo editing app to attract the Instagram generation ("Reverse Freemium" move).

Collaboration is (extra) key... in the corona-conomy. In addition to doubling its monthly user base, Canva saw a 50% jump in shared designs over the year. The WFH life increased our reliance on real-time collaboration tools. Canva is planning on using its fresh $$$ to expand its design collab features (and lure in more money-making business accounts).