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Cliff Obrecht

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66
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2023-01-27
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2023-01-27
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  1. “Company like a year, and we're like, fucking hell, you're not really smart at all. Like, these ideas you're coming up with that we've been listening to are stupid and they're taking us on a massively wrong direction. We've come full circle there and realize that actually we're not bad at some of the stuff we do. Amel, I think she's the best product person in the world and her product vision is just impeccable. She's seeing around corners 10 years into the future that no one else is. We've really learned to trust each other and trust our judgments a lot more, which has been a huge kind of U-turn from where we were before.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “So, short answer yes, absolutely, and still have a very much to this day when we meet sort of fancy people. One thing you realize, though, and so I used to have it tremendously, sometimes it's crushing. And that's why I would often go to some of these social events, have a couple of drinks, because you'd need...”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Most things are just a game, really. We're fortunate, we live in Australia, we have a social safety net. If you have no job, you can go on the dole and get enough money to live and eat and have a roof over your head, which is a great system, by the way, that many other countries should follow that can with business. We've just always treated it like a game and it's a serious game. Like I'm very competitive. So when I play a game, I play to win. I absolutely play to win. But at the end of the day, the business doesn't define me. I would be just as happy if I was a fisherman. I would be my dream job. going out fishing every day i was in the construction industry before i started teaching i think i'd be happy out on site digging holes every day often i long to dig a hole and not have to think about things and manage people”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Getting a job is like the distance traveled from being a child soldier to getting a job. One guy I met on the street years after he said, I'm a roof tiler. And he was so proud of that. And I was so proud of him because coming from being a child soldier to actually having a full-time job being a roof tiler, probably being paid really well. That's distance traveled. I really look out for that in the hiring process. And so if you have come from a obscure background like non-traditional tech or whatever and have taught yourself the tools, I find those people once they figure out the game because this all is just one big game. Once they figure out how to play the game, they are some of the best people we have.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, I actually think I heard this from someone on your show a long time ago and it really resonated with me. Distance traveled is if you grew up in a privileged family went to an Ivy League school and you end up as an investment banker, that's great. I'm sure you worked really hard. I was a school teacher before I couldn't use computers before we started our first. I hated computers, to be honest, before we started our first business. But I used to be a school teacher and I taught at one of the most underprivileged schools in Western Australia, a lot of the students there were refugees from Africa, Middle East and parts of Asia. These people ex-child soldiers, they'd been through the most horrific things. They started life with a really big disadvantage. They had everything stacked against them. They had often spent years in a refugee camp. Then they'd traveled to a new country they couldn't speak our language. To see these kids evolve, educate themselves, learn a new language.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Mel and I completely. So, Mel is my wife and the CEO of Canva, so my boss, and definitely the worthy boss. But we have totally opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to trust. So I trust by default and you can lose that trust. Mel, it takes a lot of time to build her trust. But once you build it, it's, wow, it's there and it's there for a long time. So that's how I think about it. I fly by the seat of my pants a little bit where my heart on my sleeve and I'm quick to love. That's my style”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I think it was very much used to be lead by example. Work hard and accomplish things, and hopefully people would follow. I think now it's just like honesty. And how it's changed is I used to just have high expectations of people and used to wilder me when people weren't good. And I used to think a lot of things like, this is just common sense. Why don't you get this? As I've grown, you realize I'm really frank and transparent feedback and coaching is really important. Sometimes people just don't know. And just being really transparent around, hey, you did this way, have you thought about doing it this way? Really helps people. And also understanding personality types. I'm pretty just straight up with things. And some people are more sensitive. So you need to adapt the way you communicate to the people receiving that communication.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “That's a really deep question. It's changed a lot over time. So I used to, for the longest of times, have this philosophy of work hard, play hard, grind it out, everyone else is just being weak. Why wouldn't you go out for 20 beers after work and then rock back in to work at 7 a.m. and just grind it out again and just get through it? As you get older, you realize that's not quite sustainable. So you need to start looking after all the things that really matter, like actually getting sleep and having just had a kid. I've never appreciated sleep so much in my life and then exercise and all the good things. They really do matter. Through your 20s, you can get away with pretty much anything I feel. But as you get into your mid-30s, I'm turning 37 in a couple of weeks. You need to start looking after yourself a bit better. And then constantly learning when it actually comes to the career side, the best performers I know at is constantly learning and they feel they don't know everything and they're constantly on a journey striving to increase their knowledge.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Bond. I don't need a term sheet. I don't need a legal document. And I think that integrity over time hopefully pays off as people start to recognize that you're a straight shooter.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “We'll firstly persistence pays off. You need to have some semblance of a good idea, but persistence really pays off. And then what I was saying to you before the show was it's really a marathon, not a sprint. The amount of times we've been rejected from candidates and it's broken my heart because you know what it's like. You spend so much time investing, taking these people out, and you know how good they're going to be and what impact they're going to have on the business and getting rejected by those people really hurts. But I've been in the game long enough now where if you leave a nice taste in those people's mouths and you always be the good human and be the honest, honorable person and speak truths, people come back and they remember you and when they are ready for that career change or when an opportunity does arise they often come back and I really think about business as a really long game and one of my biggest philosophies is just be honest and if you say something stick to your word there's nothing I can't stand in business more than people that go against their word. If I say something and make a commitment to something then my word is”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Someone pull out, that's why we got invited, and that's how we made a bunch of connections, and we're talking before the show started about just grinding it out. We just grounded out. And there was one point in the journey where we'd been rejected by everyone in Silicon Valley. When you're pitching, everyone that's pitching, especially for early stage rounds, they have this spreadsheet.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So that was our ticket into Silicon Valley, and it was really fortuitous. Bill Ty is a venture capitalist in the Bay Area. You should have him on the show. He's awesome guy. But Mad King Kite Surfer and Perth being the most isolated city in the world, is amazing for kite surfing. So I think he just made an excuse to have a junket in Perth where he could kite surf and he called in a tech event and we had our fusion books company at the time. So we sort of rocked up and went in this pitch competition for fusion books. We lost. He rejected us as the winners in that competition, but we got to know him over time and then we got invited over to a conference in Maui. And that was at the time it was quite funny. So we were super, super green. I was listening to Tony Robbins at the time and one of his philosophy is you are who you hang out with. We couldn't afford to go to Maui, but I'm like, fuck it, there's a huge opportunity. We're going all in with all our money from our Fusion Books bank account. We're going over there and we stayed in. We've got to stay in this house with some really cool people. I think they must have...”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Thing with me is, I just don't think too much, and I don't think through how hard things are going to be, and that naivety probably plays well because I'm just like, oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Let's go for it. What do we need to do? Let's unpack this problem we need to solve. Okay, we need some money. Where do we get money from? Silicon Valley's got heaps of money. Let's go to Silicon Valley. And then we went to Silicon Valley. We spent over a year there back and forth still trying to run our other business. And we got rejected over a hundred times by VCs before we finally convinced some people to invest in us. And that was a journey.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Did that and we created a company called Fusion Books, which became Australia's largest school yearbook company. For a while there, we were kings and queens of the Australian yearbook market, which is a small kingdom to be overseeing. And then it was about four or five years into that business, we realized, hey, people are using our yearbook software for all kinds of different things. They're creating newsletters. They're creating posters. The world needs this. Maybe we can scale this idea and take it to the masses and really solve visual communication as the web and the world were becoming increasingly visual places. The world needed this tool to be able to allow people to express their creativity and turn it into a design.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Oh, it probably goes back earlier than Canva. Mel was teaching design at university and realized that it sucked. It was really complex. It took about six months to learn the professional graphic design tools at the time. Whilst at the same time, people were using, I think it was MySpace at the time, Facebook. They were collaborating, they were sharing content. And she gets all the credit. She was like, in the future, creation is going to be totally different. It's going to be online. It's going to be collaborative and it's going to be easy. We're based in Perth, Western Australia, which is, I think, the most isolated city in the world. And there's no such thing as venture capital there. We had no idea. We didn't know what a startup was. We're like, we should create a small business around this. And I was studying school teaching at the time. And so I was like, well, why don't we do school yearbooks? And so we took the idea. It was the idea from Canva. Mel had this 15 years ago, but we said, we can't create this big global thing. Why don't we solve a real problem people had? And I'm like, I've seen school yearbook coordinators really struggled to create a yearbook.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Where do we get money from? Silicon Valley's got heaps of money. Let's go to Silicon Valley. And then we went to Silicon Valley. We spent over a year there and we got rejected over a hundred times by VCs before we finally convinced some people to invest in us.”

    2023-01-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Canva Co-Founder, Cliff Obrecht on The Journey From 100 VC Rejections to a $40BN Company, Why Good Enough is Not Good Enough, The Secret to Hiring Non-Obvious Talent and Relationships to Money and Why They Are Giving Away Billions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source