Canva Hikes Pices by 300pc as It Readies for IPO (opens in new tab)

Yes, it is ambiguous and I frequently encounter such ambiguous language in Apple's marketing copy, as a prominent example. Here I would rather they made a substitution of preposition from "by", to "to".

Haha I’ve had this argument with friends, you have to start them out with 2x is “100% more” the way percentages are used far and wide, and then they get it.

Have they not previously learned the verb "to triple" ?

Yes, this is correct. I disagree with the other guy who said that it was ambiguous. Claiming the prices were hiked by 300% is simply wrong.

> I'm not a native English speaker

Yeah, but based on this post alone I can tell you have better English reading comprehension than the average US adult lol

Its common to dis-stinguish between different types of percentage metrics like percent, percetage point and basis point as symbols for them are not commonly used. Specifically that its easier to say, a decrease from 50% to 40% would be a decrease of 10 pp, but a decrease of 20pc (%) for example.

Paradox of choice, there are too many good percent symbols:

    U+0025 % PERCENT SIGN
    U+FF05 ％ FULLWIDTH PERCENT SIGN
    U+FE6A ﹪ SMALL PERCENT SIGN
    U+066A ٪  ARABIC PERCENT SIGN

It seems to be a bit old-fashioned and predominantly (but not exclusively) British: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/607950

Obviously Australians are somewhat more influenced by British usage than say Americans are, although not always (e.g. we say “truck” not “lorry”-although we define the word “truck” more narrowly than Americans do)

never studied mathematics to know the meanings of the symbols? (not necessarily the author, but the readers - you attract a wider potential audience)

To be fair, Canva's product is uniquely a good fit for Gen AI. Casuals who just want the end result without trying to learn all the complicated photo/video editing techniques.

Well of course, what else are they supposed to do?

Put AI tools in an optional higher tier and have absolutely nobody that consciously upgrades to that tier?

If they wanted to be ahead of the competition, they would offer "handcrafted human designs for premium customers"

What should they choose? Today's more user friendly products are just tomorrow's unreasonable price-hikers that haven't captured enough customers to start enshittifying yet. Meanwhile, even without network effects, migrating to a new product is usually a hassle; the frog has to be quite thoroughly boiled before it's worth it.

This is just capitalism though. Like, what else are you suggesting? Opt for companies whose products are more expensive in the hope that they are less likely to hike prices later on? The real issue is when these companies become monopolies and then can raise prices without paying a competitive cost for doing so. But that's not Canva.

Are you a non-solo marketing professional?

If it saves 50 hours a year, it's a bargain.

I always find it weird when someone's economic model of the world is basically "I hope corporations aren't greedy and don't raise prices too much" Surely there must be something else going on, no?

I'm no tech exec, but this seems fine to me. If your government increases the money supply, ceteris paribus the demand curve (for every product) will shift right. At that point the tech exec can raise their price along with their competitors for an easy win. They're not forced to, but it's monetary policy that made it possible.

I haven't noticed tech execs say that (the first bit).

Is that an Elon Musk thing? (Genuine question)

The made a pledge at the time:

> 1. We are committed to fair, transparent and affordable pricing, including the perpetual licenses that have made Affinity special.

> 2. We will double down on expanding Affinity’s products through continued investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite.

> 3. We will provide Affinity free for schools and nonprofits.

> 4. We are committed to listening and being led by the design community at every step in this journey.

https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/affinity-canva-pledge/

If we should trust that or not is another matter. I’m inclined not to.

I doubt they're going to work on the Affinity suite much more, it was probably more of an acquihire, where they'll get the engineers to work on the main Canva product.

Well luckily if you've bought a licence to the Serif programs then you'll be able to use it even if the next version goes subscription only.

If I could still run FreeHand, I would seriously consider it.

You kid, but this is basically where I’m at now.