The Ecosystem Growth Playbook That Works for Canva/Indy Sen - Cha-Ching, Zen, Batman ~ Spark of Ages Ep 41 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Rajiv Parikh (00:05):
Welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
Today we're joined by Indy Sen,the ecosystem marketing lead at
Canva.
Indy's got one of those careersthat reads like a who's who of
tech giants.
He started on the ground floorof Salesforce AppExchange Back
then when they were trying tofigure out how to make
developers actually build ontheir platform.
From there he went to Box totake on SharePoint and literally

(00:29):
had billboards that saidSharePoint sucks, led developer
relations at MuleSoft, did atour of duty at Google Workspace
and even helped WeWorkcompletely overhaul the product
marketing before helpingMatterport go public.
What makes Indy reallyfascinating is his unique
approach to product marketingand messaging.
He has a quote messaging as anAPI quote philosophy, basically

(00:52):
treating company messaging likeclean code that's clear, concise
and repeatable.
It's that blend of technicalmindset and marketing expertise
that makes Indy such a greatguest.
Indy grew up in France, studiedeconomics and international
relations at Brown and got hisMBA from MIT Sloan.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode

(01:15):
innovative approaches to productmarketing and messaging,
lessons from practicalgo-to-market strategies and
ecosystem building experiences,insights into strategic career
development and the importanceof having skin in the game
within the technology industry.
And, finally, the enduringsignificance of human
connections in an increasinglyAI-driven technological

(01:36):
landscape.
Indy, welcome to the Spark ofAges.

Indy Sen (01:39):
Rajiv, thank you so much for having me.
I'm so pumped to be here andI'm looking forward to this
conversation.

Oh yeah, indy, it's going to be great.
I'm really excited to have youhere.
My team does a lot of work inbuilding creative for companies
and building content forcompanies, and so they were
super excited when I wasbringing in this leader from
Canva, because our team manytimes will do their creative
design work in Adobe, but thenwe'll move to Canva as part of

(02:08):
driving adaptations, because wego after middle market and above
companies, and so Canva is agreat way to, once you get that
initial design in, to then giveit to the client and say make an
adaptation here, make anadaptation there, change the
language here, and like they'veeven done that for me when I was
doing some stuff for HBS club.
They're like here's all this,you can change stuff yourself,
you don't have to know Photoshop.

(02:29):
I'm like, oh, this is awesome.
So really excited to have youand learn about what you've done
with ecosystem marketing.
We had Bobby Napoltonia, who wasat Salesforce AppExchange, one
of the creators, right, so wegot this great combination.
Just to let folks know, canvais still a private company.
It's one of those Australianwonders, kind of like Atlassian.
You guys have built a massiveaudience, going from PLG all the

(02:51):
way up.

Indy Sen (02:52):
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I'm reading things like 220 million monthly
active users, up from 200million in October, probably
higher now.
Slightly higher yeah, we're at240 million now.
The last time we kind ofreported that figure, which was
just at VivaTech a couple ofweeks ago, so yeah, yeah, and
really I think when I thinkabout what you guys have done at
Canva, it's taking what used tobe difficult or what people

(03:16):
thought was somewhatapproachable with Adobe products
, and making it super easy touse, making design available for
everyone.

Indy Sen (03:22):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think our mission at Canvahas always been centered around
empowering the world to designright.
So it stemmed from this notionthat you know there's a lot of
people who in this, especiallyin this day and age, at Canva is
what only like 11, 12 years oldright Like I think we had a
10th birthday two years ago was.
You know, it all came from thisnotion that, as you were
mentioning, rajiv, right, likepeople everywhere you know,

(03:43):
visual communication is now moreand more of a thing right
Between.
If you think about in business,obviously you transact in, like
you know, presentations andlike one pagers and, like you
know, visuals, emails, thosekinds of things, right.
But even in your personal life,as more and more people are
distributed geographically andit's easier than ever to keep in
touch with friends and family,like friends and family, like
even anything as simple asdesigning like a birthday card

(04:04):
or like a holiday greeting,right.
That's something where initiallyand ironically, that's really
where Canva first started wasempowering the consumers to be
able to have the latest andgreatest design tools and make
to make design easy, so that youdon't have to like, pay an arm
and a leg to get like designsoftware where you only use like
maybe 5% of the features and soon.
Right, and also to remove thecomplexity of like using that

(04:26):
software.
So, you know, I think we reallysaw a sweet spot and
opportunity to empower the worldto design.
And now, you know, fast forwardto today, you know, taking that
ease of use as well as thatsimplicity, right, like we have
a value at Canva call which islike make the simple things,
make the complex things simple.
Right Is to really kind of likeabstract all the complexity out

(04:47):
of like the design process andreally think about what the job
to be done is.
And as we have gone moreupstream and selling it to the
enterprise, we're seeing tons ofpockets of opportunity to kind
of enable these teams, whetherit's like marketing, sales, to
work, design better.

Yeah, you've gone to so many places from that
original route of being veryconsumer oriented, and that's
not easy to do, right?
So and I think that brings meup to the conversation we're
going to have I mean, you and Ihave a whole bunch of good
things in common.
Before we get started, I'll say, like, we love products.
We're both product marketers atheart.
We are from companies thatcreate a lot of content, we both
have run marathons, and youwent to Brown and my brother and

(05:26):
all of his close friends wentto Brown.
So we got a bunch of that goingtoo.
We'll get to that.
So let me ask you spent thelast couple of years at Canva.
You have a deep experiencearound ecosystems.
You've said, quote a strongproduct marketing organization
acts as a standard bearer formessaging that then serves as a
multiplier for the entirecompany.
How does this multiplier effectspecifically manifest when

(05:47):
nurturing and growing a platformecosystem?
So how should strategic productmarketing work with partners
and developers instead of justhighlighting product features?

Indy Sen (05:56):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I love that.
I love that question because Ithink it really goes to the
heart of what the heart andpulse of a great ecosystem can
do for a company.
You know, at Canva one of thethings that we did early when I
joined was come up with, likeour own messaging framework for
what the ecosystem could do,both internally for Canva right
as well as externally for ourbusiness.
And we started internallybecause you know, if you think

(06:17):
about and I've seen this beforeright where, both at Salesforce
or even at Box, where theplatform play was not the main
thing, even though you couldargue now that it totally is,
both at Salesforce and even atBox right Is how do you make
that solution more extensibleand integrated with everything
else that you know a company orteam may use in their
organization right Before, like,crm was a monolith, before

(06:38):
content management was amonolith, but now all these
solutions need to work inconcert and work together.
So with ecosystem, you know, ouropportunity was to really come
and think about, like, what themessaging would be internally.
And the first thing that theword that really came to mind
after doing a couple ofworkshops with our team was that
ecosystem is a multiplier rightBecause it's a multiplier for
the business.
It helps engender brand newinnovations, source them from

(07:00):
like third party innovators,like developers and technology
partners.
It's also a multiplier for thebusiness right the minute we our
users see more value coming outof like you know a myriad of
apps now that we have in theecosystem.
I think we're probably clockingclose to like 700 apps now
right From like.
You know zero about like almosttwo years ago.
You know, the innovation comingout of the ecosystem is just

(07:21):
insane right, and I think it'sanything from like that.
You know, canva may have aplatform to kind of like
showcase that functionality, butmay not have the it's not
something that we had on ourroadmap or we didn't have this
like sort of spark of like anidea to, like you know, say like
hey, you know what, what, what.
What really marketer reallyneeds is easy access to like
logos, because, as a productmarketer, you need like company

(07:42):
logos, like, instead of going toGoogle and doing an image
search and doing a five-stepprocess to get a SVG version of
like a logo of a random company.
What if you just had an app forthat right, like within Canva,
and so that's an app calledBrandFetch, which is, you know,
maybe not the sexiest app thatwe have, but so damn useful as a
marketer, right oh?

incredible.
I mean I don't know how manytimes we'll sit there and we'll
be like we won this new client,let's get its logo up there, and
we can't find it on the webpage.
And I go do a search and I tryto find the transparent version.
So now I could just take it andsay you know, I'm sure there's
some agent.
Somebody will create an agentthat literally says grab logo,
put it in SVG, drop it here,make it transparent, you know.

(08:22):
So the whole thing, yeah.

Indy Sen (08:23):
Yeah, I'm smiling because that's yeah, I can't
talk about that yet, but youknow that's certainly something
we've been thinking about.
But you're, you're absolutelyright, rajiv, right Like, I mean
, I think, if you think aboutthe pain point.
So, going back to, you know theanalogy of the multiplier and
you know what it means to.

(08:43):
I think you know, if we justthink about looking externally,
right, I think where we've seenso much success in working with,
like partners and developers isthat we're in the age of, like
agentic AI, as you mentioned,right like, where all this
innovation is coming so fast andso hard as an innovator, as a
developer, to kind of like haveyour product as innovative as it
is.
There's so many agents outthere, right Like how do you

(09:05):
separate the wheat from thechaff?
How do you like pierce thesignal through noise ratio?
Right To like be front andcenter in front of the users
that you want.
And, I think, where we've seen alot of success, thankfully, as
Canva is like, with this appsmarketplace that we have.
We're, like you know, bar nonelike one of the best
distribution mechanisms forthese innovators to get
discovered, right Like we have Ithink I mentioned close to 700

(09:25):
apps now and your app is just asearch term away from being
found by, you know, 240 millionactive users.
Right, and we've seen a lot oflike great success stories of
like you know, we have this guy,kai, who lives in Singapore.
He's a serial Canva app builder.
He's now probably working onhis fifth or sixth app and he
has an app called Image Upscaler, which just overnight shot up.

(09:47):
We looked at this in ourdashboards as like one of the
most used apps that we have.
Right, Just in terms of likeyou know, larry Page and Sergey
Brin had this analogy at theearly days of Google being like
you know, you have a greatcompany.
You know you have a greatproduct when it's quote unquote
a toothbrush product.
Right, like something that youuse at least twice a day.

Got it, got to use it.

Indy Sen (10:05):
The American Dental Association recommends that for
sure, right.
But for image upscaler, thinkabout the use case that it helps
solve is like you may have likea low res image that you're
trying to add to like a design,and what image upscaler does is
that it uses AI to kind of fillin the gaps and upscale that
image as this name.

And that's great.
So you came in as the person tonow say, hey, we have this
system that originally was aconsumer tool that eventually
became part of a business tooland then it started to move to
become a platform and as part ofbuilding that platform, there's
an ecosystem component to aplatform and so now you need to

(10:44):
establish all thoserelationships and measure all
this right.
So that leads me to thisquestion.
So for a horizontal platformlike Canva right, vast array of
you have diverse user bases,individual creators.
You have large enterprises.
How do you segment and collectactionable, qualitative consumer
insights that inform yourecosystem strategy?
How do you ensure that thevoice of the developer or

(11:06):
partner for a niche, complex usecase like some of the upscaling
company you know, like theupscaler example that you use
doesn't get lost amid broader,high volume user feedback?
How do you foster and grow thatcommunity?

Indy Sen (11:19):
So I think if I start with that initial example of
like an image upscaler, rightLike, that's one of the things
where that's the power of havingan open ecosystem right Like I
think if I start with thatinitial example of like an image
upscaler, right Like, that'sone of the things where that's
the power of having an openecosystem right Like I think it
was, there's a guy he wrote oneof the first early books, at
least for me as someone comingin and marketing and embracing
the field of like technology andplatforms.
He wrote a great book on API.
So the guy's name is Kim Lane.

(11:40):
He's like this famousevangelist in like the API field
.
And Lane, he's like this famousevangelist in like the API
field and one of his axioms wasthat you know, done right APIs
is like self-serve businessdevelopment, right.
So everything that we put outthere as a company and I've seen
this at other companies likeBox and you know, mulesoft and
so on right Like, if you do itright, your APIs should be
accessible enough where it'seasy enough for anybody to, by
virtue, by dint of like you know, great documentation tutorials,

(12:02):
by virtue by dint of like youknow great documentation
tutorials, to kind of getstarted with them Right.

And then it just, it just unlocks the creativity
of people of things that youhaven't even thought about.
Right, If you build things asAPIs.

Indy Sen (12:12):
Yeah, yeah, so that's the.
That's the first leg of it,right?
It's, like you know, like let'smake our tools so easy to use
to enable developers, to enableour users to design, right, and,
and I think that's where we'veseen like some success stories
from like the grassroots levelright Now.
I think that's one piece of it.
The other piece of it is likelooking back at and you know,
canva does a lot of likeresearch around, like you know

(12:33):
what we call like closingcustomer loops, right.
So we see, you might've seen aCanva Create back in April.
You know the whole theme ofthat conference.
It's kind of like our own dreamforce, right?
For those who know enterprisesoftware and Salesforce's annual
hoopla, canva Create is likeour annual customer conference
and the theme that we had forthis year was really around
saying, like you know, we are sograteful for all our customers.

(12:54):
Here are some of the wishes thatyou had, right, and obviously
they were anchored in like somekey things that we were building
and looking to build for yearsnow, but that we're saying like,
hey, the reason we reallywanted to build this was for you
, right, we're listening to whatyou want to do, right, and I
think, a lot of research donearound, like what are some of
those customer loops that we canclose?
And when I first came on board,I think it was very clear that,

(13:15):
out of all those customer loopsthat we wanted to close, there's
only so many that Canva canbuild right.
So what we try to do is we tryto like share with our partners
and the ones that you know wekeep close to to our ecosystem,
especially like the ones that wetap to, like use some new
frameworks early and those kindof things.
We'll give them a sense of likeyou know what we're looking for
people to build, or what arethe jobs to be done that canva

(13:36):
by itself is not going to beable to do right, or what are
the things that we're hearingfrom customers where they're
saying we see so much value ifCanva can help connect the dots
between this workflow and theone that we have.

So one of the things you do to make sure you
don't compete with the folksthat are in your ecosystem, you
give them.
Nvidia actually is known forthis right, where they said this
is our space and this is notour space, and we'll build the
chip, we'll build CUDA and thenyou can build the rest.
Right, and I think you?
guys are saying.
You're saying something verysimilar where you're saying

(14:09):
we're strong.
This is where my app is.
These are the features we'regoing to build.
Here's APIs.
Now.
Here's a place for you guys toplay.

Indy Sen (14:15):
Yeah, as much as we can, we try to carve out that
white space for developers andgive them that guidance.
Now there are inevitably, youknow like, sometimes where
there's something that's just somuch so core, you know so core
that we have to bake it into ourproduct right, because it's
almost like table stakes.
And you know like, I think westill believe that a solution
that's of value, that'sintegrated with us, and if a

(14:38):
customer is already a customerof that solution, who are we to
get in the way of that right?
Who are we to get in the way ofthat right, Like, if they've
built in, if the ISV, if thepartner has built an integration
and you know the customer'salready a paid customer of that
thing.
We just want to make sure thatwe can meet our customers where
they are right and I thinkthat's at the core of like what
you're seeing in enterprisesoftware for the last like 10
years, I would say right Is asmuch as you believe that you

(14:58):
have this mon and you know one.
That's like you know the bestin class right.
At the end of the day, we're nowlike so much of the computing
is done not just on your desktopbut on mobile and now soon, via
agentic frameworks.
All these systems need to talkto each other, right?
So I think, going back to thatfirst principle of, like you
know, let's make sure that wecan meet our customers where

(15:19):
they are and also provide thatvalue that you know, like you
know all and also provide thatvalue that you know.
Like you know, all we careabout is for you to go from
point A to point B in terms ofwhat you want to design and what
you want to put out into theworld, and we know, recognize
that there might be somefeatures that we don't have
ourselves, that you can, andthat are augmented by what our
partners do as well.
As you know, one of our biggestplays now, right now, is to
bring data from third-partyservices into Canva as well.

(15:42):
Right, because at the end ofthe day, it could be competitive
intelligence, it could be salesdata, it could be marketing
product metrics right, but atthe end of the day, like, the
reason why people come to us isbecause we're that presentation
layer, right, that visualcommunication layer that is the
heart of every business, teamand organization.

So, then, a smart move there is that you're
bringing data to help informpeople about what content they
should be building, and that'swhen you're pulling in data from
other places or helping thempresent that about the content
that they're creating.

Indy Sen (16:10):
You're absolutely right.
I think there's a wholeupcoming wonderful use case,
right Like when we announcedcanvas sheets, for example,
where you could basically use aspreadsheet form factor to then
inform and you know like,collect data from like
third-party sources and then sayand create content as easy as
like almost like you knowcopying a cell and dragging it

(16:31):
over, right Like.
And that's the thing where, youknow, my first career was in
management consulting and Ispent so much time in
spreadsheets, right, so when Isaw that happen right Like you
do, the fact that you couldgenerate content just based on
like columns of parameters andthen Canva would do the rest of
it, my mind was blown right,because I'm like, hey, this is
this gives, like that, that,that mindset of, like you know,
being in a spreadsheet and themental model of a spreadsheet,

(16:52):
but into like design workflows.
And that, to me, is such agreat opportunity because, again
, spreadsheets can be veryintimidating and you know, we
still are working our waytowards making like sheets like
a more actionable and friendlykind of like you know, user
interface, right, becauseworking our way towards making
like sheets like a moreactionable and friendly kind of
like, you know, user interfaceright, because all of a sudden,
people are saying hey, canva,why are you doing spreadsheets?
It's like, well, it's not aspreadsheet, it's more like a
canvas for you to kind of dowork that requires a lot of,

(17:15):
like inputs and parameters.
But then you know, we take careof like that last mile kind of
production, right?
So I think that's where, to yourpoint, rajiv, like there's
metadata around the content thatyou have to create, right,
saying like, hey, you know,here's my customer list, here
are the formats, the channelsthat my campaigns build on.
One is an Instagram Reel, theother is, like you know,
linkedin posts.
We have all the templates forthose kind of things, right, but

(17:37):
in the old days and even for us, like even six months ago, you
would have to go to a LinkedIntemplate, pop your designs in.
You'd have to go to InstagramReels template, pop your designs
in.
Now, with the advent of AI and,like you know, bulk creation,
that's all facilitated by ourtechnologies you're just only
minutes away from, like you know, going through that whole set
and knocking that punch list up,all those content and creative

(17:58):
that you have to do.
So, yeah, so hopefully that'sgood news for everyone.

That is great, because then you're providing
more value when people aretrying to do all those
adaptations, exactly.
So how do app developers standout on a visual-first platform
like Canva?
So how do you tell developersand builders how to cultivate
authentic stickiness beyondtechnical functionality?
What are some non-obviousstrategies for developers to
differentiate and resonateeffectively?
You're speaking to a diverseuser base.

(18:23):
You have individual creators,you have large enterprises, so
are there trends that you seearound some of the top
categories of these popular apps?

Indy Sen (18:32):
Yeah, you know, I would say one of the things that
we try to do for any developerwho's building an app within
Canva right so, using an app SDKis that, you know, we tell them
you may have amazinginnovations and like a great
piece of technology, but try toabstract it in no less than,
like you know, five steps in theuser workflow, right?
So if you look at most of theCanva apps, you, within like two

(18:54):
to three steps of clicks, youactually get the output from
that app that you want.
Right, and that really comesfrom, like, our design
principles that we try to, likeyou know, help developers frame
their innovations.
But in the context of, likecanvas, ease of use, and I think
it's it's funny because atfirst, you know, when we didn't
have, when we only had like what?
Like 30 apps at first, we werelike, well, should we be that

(19:14):
have such a hard line on whatthose design principles are to
these partners, right?
Like, I mean, who are we totell Asana how to build their
app?
Like it's such a richfunctionality?
But in many ways, even thefeedbacks we got from Dasana all
the way to some otherinnovators one of my favorite
partners is a partner calledCrikeyai.
It's like two sisters whograduated from Stanford.
They are building like an AIavatar, kind of like you know

(19:35):
platform.
But Canva was a greatdistribution framework for them,
right, because they overnightthey had tons of signups and
activity over there.
With Quaki in particular.
The feedback we got was they'dsay, hey, your design guidelines
were so crisp that we actuallyincorporated them into our own
web and mobile app.
Because they say that, hey, youmust be doing something right
from a design standpoint interms of making things easy to

(19:58):
use and grokkable for afirst-time user and I think
there's an acronym first-timeuser experience, fitui.
I think that's one of thethings that we really try to
inculcate in, like any developer, no matter how big they are,
when they're building anapplication with us.
Now, that's with apps, right,and you know I think you know so
many platforms you know appsand integrations.
Those terms are usedinterchangeably, but what I just

(20:21):
described are like apps andCanva With integrations that are
powered by APIs.
I think, at the end of the day,we just want to make sure that
Canva's workflows can be asseamless as possible within the
context of another company'sapps, right?
So we have recent integrationswith MailChimp, with HubSpot,
there's not so much we can do tokind of tell them what the look
and feel should be like, right,but that's where our job for
the API is to be seamless, forthe APIs to be seamless, to make

(20:46):
those things look almost likenative-like experiences in those
third-party platforms.
And if you know, fast forwardto today.
You know, like our firstintegrations a little clucky,
you know it was like a Canvabutton that was like an iframe,
like it was very clear that youwere going to Canva to do
something and then come backright, which is not a bad
functionality, right?
Ultimately, you're stillhelping people make the most out
of those two solutions thatthey love, whether it's like
HubSpot on one side and Canva onthe other.

(21:06):
But fast forward to today.
Even the HubSpot integration isway more seamless than it has
been.
Right, and I think that's likethe APIs.

We see the same thing with our platforms that
we're building If it looks likeI'm taking you to a different
spot like we would do five-tranintegrations for our data
visualization capabilities,right, yeah, so we pull data
from all these different placesand then force the person to go
into a different user experience.
Yes, it did the job, but itreally sucked because it's that

(21:33):
first time user experience, thefirst time they're experiencing
the product, they are using aparticular interface, then
they're going somewhere else andthen they're coming back and it
does the job, but really youwant to refine it so that it
feels like it's part of yourproduct.
So it's cool that you'retalking about this and this is
really happening in real time.
And that takes me to wherewe're going next with the Gentic
right, the Gentic era, wheretruly things are being done

(21:56):
across multiple platforms,across multiple places, across
multiple workflows, and soyou've talked about that.
Human connection will be theultimate moat for technology
companies even for developers.
So, from your vantage point, theecosystem marketing lead at
Canva, andy, how are youactively building and nurturing
these deep human connectionswith developers and partners,

(22:18):
particularly when many of themand many of their interactions
with a platform is increasinglydigital or AI mediated?

Indy Sen (22:24):
At the end of the day, you know, I think the analogy I
sometimes use right with myteams is that you know, when you
fly an airline, right, like atthe end of the day, the
equipment is exactly the same.
Right, like, the job to be doneis exactly the same.
You're going from point A topoint B, you want to go
somewhere and you have afavorite airline.
I probably do too, Right, andpart of it I have to do is
probably the customer experienceyou get right, like, the, the,

(22:46):
the, the, the feels you get likewhen you're boarding the plane.
It could be by virtue of yourstatus or it could be by virtue
of, like, where you're, you knowwhere you're going, that kind
of thing, right.
So I would say, at the end ofthe day, when you're building a
platform, if's a big deal forthem to make a decision being
like hey, we're going tointegrate with Canva first
versus integrating with thisother.
You know big design platform,right, there's not so many out

(23:09):
there, but you know, I will notname the ones who did not need
to be named.
But the reason I bring that upright and like and not to be
facetious right, is theexperience.
The developer experiencematters deeply, right.
What I've tried to do and whatI've also seen, like other
companies where I've been atwhere we've ultimately been
successful, is that if we canput our own imprint on how we
transact with developers right,because it can't just be about

(23:31):
the technology, right, or thefact that we have we're like an
up-and-comer or even beyond thatright, like with 240 million
actives, we're definitely aplatform that a lot of the
partners if I think about someof the conversations I have with
some of the biggest technologycompanies out there they've come
to us to build an integrationright.
So obviously the play is clear.
The technology is there, but Ithink what really differentiates

(23:53):
you as a developer brand isthat care and attention you put
to a developer experience right.
So obviously the technology hasto work right and it has to be
innovative enough and easyenough.
Where you're minimizing, you'rede-risking somebody's decision
whether they're a smalldeveloper or like a big company
to be like hey, how much time isit going to take?
How much non-recurringengineering work is it going to

(24:13):
take?
I mean, I have a business torun.
This is going to be adistraction.
How do you assuage thoseconcerns?
You do it by having easy to useframeworks, well-documented
APIs and so on.
That's one piece of it.
So I like to think of that aslike the technical enablement
right.
But then I think whereplatforms really earn good,
platforms really earn theirreputations.
If you've coupled thattechnical enablement with

(24:36):
commercial enablement and so,for example, fast track to
Salesforce back in 2015, ohsorry, in 2009, when Bobby was
there, I think we overlapped bya little bit.
I think actually he was part ofthe guard that was moving and I
was part of some of the newguard on the marketing side.

Your job was to take it to the next level, right
.
Yeah, hopefully right hecreated the framework and you
guys were there to take it tothe next.

Indy Sen (24:59):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, bobby's a legend.
He Bobby's a legend.
He launched the AppExchange andI think at that stage we needed
to figure out, like okay, nowwe have this thing, how do we
get our users to use it?
How do we get our salespeopleto point people to these
solutions?
Right, because there was a lotof like channel conflict and
there's probably a book thatcould be written about all this
stuff.

Anybody that does enterprise anything is going to
deal with some conflict of allkinds that you have to work out.

Indy Sen (25:20):
And so, going back to spreading the needle on the
initial question, right is wherecommercial enablement comes
into play is that we have tomake it Sesame Street simple for
partners, as well as our usersand our own company, to see the
value that comes out of thisecosystem.
Right, so you know, I think, if, for example, one of the early
metrics that we had at Canva wasaround monthly active users,

(25:40):
right, like can we prove that byvirtue of having some great
applications and integrations,that we can bump up the usage
rates of specific doc types atCanva?
Right so, doc types at Canva,so if you think about Canva as
the platform presentations,social media, those are all that
doc types, those are all thedifferent types of file formats,
so to speak, that we support.
Right so we have productmanagers for every doc type.

(26:01):
And we've seen with ImageUpscaler that, like you know,
photo editing has gone throughthe roof.
Right, we've seen with, like,you know, like, and hopefully
with, like, other applicationsthat we see, right, that apps
and integrations make theseindividual doc types more sticky
.
Right, so that you know, eachof them has the potential of
maybe becoming a toothbrushproduct in buying themselves.
Right, part of it's technical,but the commercial enablement

(26:22):
piece of it goes into showingthat.
How do we expose some of thesenew things early to trusted
partners to say, hey, we'regoing to launch this new
framework that's going to putyou right within a button, a
click away from our users, asopposed to finding the app in
the left-hand rail andactivating it.
This is actually going to bevery much more in context of

(26:42):
what a user is actually doing,where it's almost going to feel
like a native-like experience.
So I think that's the otherpiece of it is, how do we put
together the apparatus to tellthese developers and engage them
early, right?
Like?
So we have a great team ofhardware development managers
who almost like I call it likehand-to-hand combat right,
because they take meetings theylook at like we have like a
punch list of partners we wantto talk to and we go reach out

(27:03):
to them.
Sometimes those partners go outto reach out to us directly.
Sometimes we got to like knockat their door and it doesn't
matter how big or small they are.
We try to have an informed viewon like who are the people who
would be the best candidates forthese upcoming frameworks, and
so that's where, even thoughit's ultimately to build on
technology.
That's the whole commercialside of things, and you got to
mount up as a go-to-marketorganization, right.
It's like you've got to be veryjudicious in terms of like

(27:25):
reaching out to partners, andyou can't have an ego there.
It's not because you're biggerthan this partner that they're
going to build for you.
Sometimes we spend some time onlike some small partners that
we're making big bets on, right.
And then sometimes we alsoobviously knock at the doors of
the sales forces, the hubstartsof the world, but typically they
want to talk to us as well,right.
So I think I talked abouttechnical enablement.
I think commercial enablementis another piece of that.

(27:47):
So I think in our early days ofCanva, it's been around like
finding ways in which we can getpeople interested in building
on things that are going todrive monthly active users on
both sides, hopefully right.
And then I think this nextphase and I think this is
something where I've seen it atSalesforce, I saw it at Box
MuleSoft was obviously part andparcel of what we did was the
monetization piece, right.

(28:07):
And I think that's where, atCanva Create, we had our first
partner day, where, you know, Ithink we hinted at what our
plans are for, like co-marketingand co-selling.
We're still figuring out a wayto do that in ways that that
scale, but that's obviously thenext frontier right.
I think.

(28:36):
To me, a good platform rests onthree pillars.
One is the technology right youhave to have the right
technology that people want tobuild on.
The second is you got to helpthese developers be successful,
these partners be successful,and that comes with usage and
growth, but it also comes havinga strong community where, if
you tap them on the shoulderbeing like, hey, you know, rajiv
, I would love for you to talkto me about the experiences you
had building with Canada thatthey will drop everything or
they'll be like 100%.
Tell me when and where and I'llbe there to be able to talk
about what you're doing.

Because you don't want to be in a spot where you
get someone to do something.
You reach out to them, they doall this work and then they get
nothing, and you referenced thatearlier, right.
It has to feel like a win-winand I got to tell you what
you're doing.
What you're talking about isactually really hard.
I've seen so many conversationswith folks where everybody
wants to partner.
They have really great folksthat enable the partnership, but
then they get you trained up,you do a bunch of work and then

(29:16):
they don't follow through right.
They don't enable you to becommercially successful with it.
So I think what you're talkingabout is really important.
I want to go back.
You mentioned earlier, actually, that one of the issues you had
at Salesforce was orchestratingthis internal sales team to say
how do I get them to buy intoAppExchange, right?
Yeah, with incentives, right?

(29:41):
So think about going to thattime.
So, beyond direct salesincentives, how do you cultivate
a company-wide ecosystem,muscle memory where product
engineering, customer successand other teams instinctively
understand and contribute topartner go-to-market success?
Are there specific internal?
You have some great frameworksyou laid out, so specific
go-to-market playbooks,communication rhythms,

(30:03):
cross-functional enablementprograms that are essential for
this partner first mindset.

Indy Sen (30:08):
Yeah, yeah.
So I would say, you know, likeall of the above right, and it's
very hard to figure out atfirst, like how, what's the
alchemy that's going to help youaccomplish those goals?
Right, Like we tried so manythings at Salesforce.
Right, like we we tried basketsof like tchotchkes and candy
and stuff to the sales floorbeing like, hey, you know, and
like you know, I had thiscolleague who put a lot of time
and effort into, like you know,creating high calorie snacks

(30:30):
with like partner logos in themor a great idea, super sweet,
like the intent was there.
But sales people in general,you know, they're pretty
conscious of appearances andthat kind of stuff and they're
like you know, hey, I don't wantto have this calorie bomb
before I go work out and thosekind of things, right.

So so.
But it was good for awareness,but in the end it's great.
Yeah, ok, I know about thispartner, but that's not what I'm
getting paid on.

Indy Sen (30:55):
That's not what I'm getting paid on, yeah, so I
think you know it goes back tofor you to activate sales and,
as tried as this sounds, right,like it has to be about, like
you know what's in it for me.
Like, what's the value for meas a salesperson to even pay
attention to this partner, right, no-transcript, like, how do we

(31:30):
let people know that this ishappening?
Right?
And then how do we get peoplemore invested the minute you
have like like a rock star, ae,who's well-respected by their
peers to kind of say like, hey,this partner stuff works.
You need to like really thinkabout it.
How do we do that scale?
So you know, like I did thisroadshow with our executive at
the time.
He was basically the executivewho you know came after like
Bobby and others, called RonHuddleston, who was this great
gentleman who came from Oracle,just visionary.
Like you know we called him boygenius internally because he

(31:50):
looked really young, but youknow he's he's been around the
block and like, but he just camein with like a very strong view
that it had to be about themoney actually right, like the
incentives, and unfortunatelyhe's passed away, but one of the
things that he really helpedset the course for was to really
say how do we meter and measureand showcase the value of this
ecosystem by the numbers, right?

(32:11):
And so one of the things thathe and I brainstormed this is
going to date us, but if youremember when Salesforce Chatter
launched, right Like socialmedia within your CRM.

It was everywhere.
I remember going to Dreamforceand it was just everywhere.
I'm like what?

Indy Sen (32:23):
Chatter, yeah, yeah.

We even had a Super Bowl.
It was the second coming.
I remember Exactly.

Indy Sen (32:28):
Yeah, yeah, so just to land the plane on, this story
is basically we knew that thiswas like circa 2010, 2011.
Chatter was a thing internally,right.
And we're like, hey, well, whatdo people follow on Chatter?
They're not just followingpeople, they're following
accounts and opportunities,right?
What if we could use chatter asa mechanism to kind of
communicate that when a partnerlanded a deal in an AE's kind of

(32:52):
like account, that, whether theAE was involved or not, if that
deal landed, that that AE wouldget compensated on it.
So that was the model that wecreated.
Like I helped create that modelwith Ron around, like what that
percentage compensation plan wasand those kinds of things.
But the way we communicated itwas something that you know I
worked with our marketing opsteam was like, twice a week we
had to have a list of all thedeals that came into partners

(33:13):
and then I manually went in andlike tagged that AE and said,
hey, it's a Ching, right,because it was like chatter,
right, so chop.
And then Ching is just you know, money, right.
So I even came up with like a Ihave this designer, steven
geraldo, who created this verysalesforce-esque kind of logo
with chiching written on it.
And you know.
So you got the visual.
Then you have like a reallypithy sentence being like hey,

(33:35):
because job science sold 40seats, you just got paid, right.
And then click here for moredetails.
And then I created like atwo-sl slide deck that could
again be previewed in theSalesforce chatter format, right
?
So this is early social mediamarketing for an internal social
media platform.

It's kind of the original emoji.

Indy Sen (33:53):
Yeah, it kind of was yeah, exactly, exactly yeah.
And then what I did is, at thevery early days, I tagged Ron
and then I tagged our otherexecutive, mike Rosenbaum, right
, who was like our head of likeplatform at the time, and, I kid
you not, within a week and ahalf, they both asked me, being
like hey, this is going greatbecause everybody's taking
notice.
Like Benioff, within like fivedays, like Mark Benioff, our CEO

(34:15):
was like what is this Like?
Who did this, you know?
Like, is this real, like peopleare really getting paid.
And because we, you know, weknew that like, especially once,
like an AE, especially one thatwas respected by their peers,
they're being followed by allthe people that are under them
that look up to them, right, theminute they saw that.

(34:36):
What I love about the story isthat we turned a reporting
requirement into a viral effect,company-wide right, and within
a week and a half, everybodyknew that they could make money
with partners.
Our partners were ecstaticbecause all of a sudden, they
were like holy shit, this ADthat I never talked to is now
calling me.
Being like how do I get myCha-Ching, you know, and that
kind of.

Thing.

Indy Sen (34:51):
And so Cha-Ching actually became a verb at
Salesforce and you know, I knowthe business has probably
changed a lot.
I don't even know if we stillhave that internal kind of
moniker.
But overnight like and I was sothrilled to see this is because
, like we had this guy, amarketing ops guy, shea Casey,
like very tacitturn, kind oftypical marketing ops person,
like he would just kind of crankthrough the numbers and give me
the data that I would put inCha-Ching on the feeds, but

(35:13):
overnight, like you know, hewould buy him drinks and, like
you know, send him stuff.
You know be, like you know,shay, give me the Cha-Ching, you
know that kind of thing.

So fast forward to today there's so many other
ways in which you cancommunicate right, Like Slack
and so on, right, so, yeah, sothat's a great example.
So how would you take that fromwhat you did at Salesforce?
How would you do that today?
Because I'm assuming that atCanva you have enterprise
salespeople too, right, and youhave these folks that you're
more than PLG.
You're doing multiple levelsright of sales and marketing.

(35:44):
So can you take that tosomething you're doing today to
drive that ecosystem?
Because you basically haveenabled the building of this?

Indy Sen (35:52):
Yeah, absolutely so.
It's still early days, you know,like I said, like on the
monetization front, right.
But I think where we're alreadyseeing, and without going into
too much detail, where we'realready seeing some traction and
some nods to what partners canbring to the table is the fact
that you know, a lot of ourlarger enterprise deals now are
coming in because APIs are afundamental selling point, the
fact that we can integrate witheither a built-in solution or a

(36:16):
set of integrations that thecustomer wanted, being like, hey
, we really are interested, butyou have to work with this or
you have to work with that,helping them build like a custom
application using APIs thatthen basically takes a five-step
workflow and turns it into likea button that they have that
they can disseminate, like totheir teams, right?

(36:36):
So one big use case and we'vedocumented this publicly so I
can share it is, you know, inreal estate, right?
If you think about any use casewhere we're seeing some
traction is and where people arebuilding custom integrations
and apps and workflows, iswhenever you have a use case
where you have a high frequency,high velocity need for like
content assets, right?
So in real estate, it's thinkof it like a flyer right.

(36:57):
You have a property, you have alisting.

Yeah, it comes right out of your Matterport,
yeah.

Indy Sen (37:00):
Exactly yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, yeah, so yeah, and
that's honestly something thatI would have loved to have at
Matterport as well as at WeWork,honestly Right.
But where I'm going with this isthat that's something where,
you know, slowly but surely,we've knocked out and gotten
deals at some of the biggestcommercial real estate companies
out there, right, becausethey're saying holy shit, like
you know, with this integration,like you know, we know that we
work in a very specific way, butthe canvas, interoperable

(37:22):
enough, where you can talk tothe systems that we work with so
that we can then, like you know, kind of create these, these
workflows and help our teamself-serve to generate assets
like the, the creation of, likehyper personalized content at
scale right, is is, you knowwhere it can enable any like
real estate agents at like Ingleand Volkers, for example, to

(37:42):
kind of say like, hey, I'm, youknow, I have these five
properties that are, like youknow, aaa kind of properties and
in this kind of market and Iwanted to start marketing this
right, like before they had towork with an internal marketing
department and kind of be-.

Create the listing , do all these things.

Indy Sen (37:58):
Yeah, yeah, and now they can do it themselves in
Canva, right, because they knowhow to use Canva, or they will
learn how to use it fairlyquickly, right?

It takes no time to learn.

Indy Sen (38:05):
Like they have, like all this on-brand stuff, because
at the end of the day, it'slike we have the ability for
companies to, with the brandkits, to generate templates that
are always going to be on brandright.
But then it's only theinformation that changes, right,
it's the pictures, the fivepictures of the property, it's

(38:29):
the price of the property, it'sthe location, it's the little
headshot of the real estateagent that you pop in on the
bottom right right.
Those are all things where youcan now do that at the touch of
a button.
That's when we we can.
We know that we're punching atour above our weight in terms of
like contributing to thesuccess of like sales.
Right, it's like in the lastthree months, especially a
non-negotiable amount of likeyou know, sales-wide kind of
slack posts of like wins rightin the win library, right, so
it's almost like cha-ching,because this was before like we
didn't have like a wind channel.
Like back then there was noslack, but now you could imagine

(38:51):
that there's going to bereferences to what partners and
ecosystem is bringing to thetable on a fairly regular basis.
Right, so it's not quite aslike guerrilla marketing as like
Cha-Ching was.

Well, yeah, but but you're talking about it.
You're talking about it, right?
Yeah, you're making ittechnically straightforward,
you're providing commerciallevel of success.
And then there's a communityaspect and it's highlighted by
the marketing around it.
Right?
So it's all coming.
It helps bring all thattogether.
All right, this has been, thishas been awesome.
So now I'm going to take you tothe Spark Tank.
So today we're thrilled to haveIndie Sen join us, a marketing

(39:25):
mastermind who spent 20 yearsbuilding platforms at places
like Salesforce, google Box,mulesoft and now Canva.
Indie, your career reads like asuperhero origin story from the
ground floor of Salesforce'sapp exchange basically the bat
cave of B2B programs to nowCanva, where your democratizing
design faster than Bruce Wayneburns through sports cars.

(39:46):
Your proof that great marketingisn't about having superpowers,
it's about making everyone elsefeel like they do.
So today we're putting youthrough the ultimate Batman
trivia challenge.
Here's how it works.
All right, I'm going to hit youwith a Batman trivia questions
ranging from the obvious to thewholly obscure comic book
reference.

(40:06):
Batman Okay, no Googling, nocalling your inner Robin for
help, just pure Dark Knightdevotion.
So, indy, are you ready toprove you are the Batman trivia
champion that Gotham needs?

Indy Sen (40:21):
It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that
defines me.
Let's do it.

That's so good.
All right, great way to startit.
All right, here's questionnumber one In which comic book
did Batman make his firstappearance?
A, action Comics, number one.
B Detective Comics number 27.
C Batman number one.
So in which comic book didBatman make his first appearance

(40:48):
?

Indy Sen (40:49):
The answer is B b.
Detective comics you'reabsolutely sure about this?
Oh uh, I am, because actionnumber one is superman, if I
believe, if I'm not mistaken,and then there was no batman
comic before batman'sintroduction, so I will do you
nailed it.

That was awesome all right, I love it this great.
You're right.
Batman debuted in DetectiveComics number 27 in 1939-12.
I'm assuming that means 1939.

Indy Sen (41:19):
Oh nice.

Yeah, all right, I love that you were so confident
about it.
This is great, okay.
In 1978, comic Batman 295,batman faces a villain who uses
a rather unconventional weapon,a giant mechanical version of
which household item.
Here we go A toaster, b vacuumcleaner, c typewriter, c

(41:48):
typewriter.
Oh, that's good, dude, you gotit again.
They used a giant mechanicaltypewriter as part of an
elaborate death trap.

Indy Sen (41:57):
Yes.

It's a classic example of the era's outlandish
version of storytelling.

Indy Sen (42:01):
So yeah, and I'll just add that since then that
typewriter by many writers hasbeen featured in the Batcave in
like Batman's trophy case.
So whatever death trap heescaped he ended up.
Probably Robin helped him, youknow, move it to the Batcave,
but yeah, maybe Alfred, probablyalso.

So that?
So it's now in his Batcave.
There we go.
It's, that's how you knew.
That's why you knew the answer.
This is awesome.
Here's the third one.
Which of these three Batmanvillains was originally
introduced in the 1960s TVseries before appearing in
comics?
So it appeared in the TV series, then it came to the comics A
Egghead, B, King Tut, C Calendarman.

(42:39):
That's a tough one.

Indy Sen (42:42):
I'm going to go with King Tut just because I remember
him in the series and I waslike this is kind of of crazy,
but let's go with it.
So yeah, let's go with king tutyeah.

So my team says I thought we'd have you on this,
but apparently no, you got itright king, tut is the answer
king tut was created for theshow and later adapted into
comic continuity.
Here we go um so egghead wascreated for the tv show but did
not transition to comics untilmuch later and less prominently.

Indy Sen (43:16):
And then calendar man originated in the comics but not
the tv show right, yeah, yeah,I think calendar man, if I'm not
mistaken, is a later eravillain.
Uh, julian dave is his name.
So, yes, yeah, yeah, you areblowing it away.

Okay, you're three for three.
Usually we stop at threebecause you know you won't get
it all right, but I'm gonna.
I have two more.

Indy Sen (43:37):
If you want to go, keep going all right, I can do
this all day, but you know,let's go with it all right.

In the animated series batman beyond, what is
the name of the gang thatidolizes the joker?
Do I, do I even need to giveyou choices for this?

Indy Sen (43:54):
uh, I want to say it's just the jokers, right with a z
maybe, but uh, I'm not surethat's it.

Maybe we'll go dude, you nailed it okay, that's
it okay, I didn't even need togive you that other two.
B was jokesters and c clowns.
It was jokers with a, z,exactly yes, I love it, the
jokers oh god it's.
It's like very boy bandish.

(44:19):
Okay, now here's the.
Here's the last one.
In the 1960s comics, batman androbin once encountered a
villain whose criminal theme wasbased on which of the following
competitive activities A chess,b stamp collecting, c kite
flying.

Indy Sen (44:36):
You might be stopping me here.

A villain, a 1960s comic encountered a villain
whose criminal theme was basedon which of the following
competitive activity, so A chess, b stamp collecting and C kite
flying.

Indy Sen (44:50):
Wow, I'm trying to visualize how stamp collecting
would be a threat to Batmanrather than you know I'm going
to go with kite flying justbecause there is a villain
called Kite man, but I don'tknow.
So, yeah, let's go with kiteflying.

This is ridiculous .
So you're right again, Indy.
Yes Even on a pure shit luck,guess, you get it right.
So today's your day, as my dadwould say, go buy a lottery
ticket.
Yeah, because you got five outof five.
Okay.
So chess has been used as amotif by several villains, like

(45:25):
chessmen and other comics, butnot in this particular Batman
story B.
Stamp collecting is a realgolden age plot.
Superman fought a stampobsessed villain comics, but not
in this particular batman storyb.
Stamp collecting is a realgolden age plot.
Superman fought a stampobsessed villain, but not batman
.
Oh okay, and c, you totallynailed it.
Batman and robin battled thekite man, a villain whose crimes
involved kites long before hebecame a cult favorite modern

(45:46):
comics.

Indy Sen (45:47):
So yeah, he is a cult.
Yeah, so he came back in likethe the tom king.
Uh, series like this isprobably like five, six years
ago and his catchphrase is justkite man, oh yeah.
And then he always typically hedoes that when he attacks
batman.
He typically just gets punchedin the face and then he's out.
But I guess people like that.
So, uh, yeah, you'll probablycome to some movie or series

(46:09):
adaptation soon.

That's ridiculous.
Okay, so my first questionafter this is what made you such
a Batman fanatic?

Indy Sen (46:19):
So I will say this is probably in 1989.
I remember seeing the TimBurton Keaton movie in the
theaters and my mind was justblown.
So, like, I think it's alsocoincided, like if you think
about movies, so I love movies,I am Batman, yeah, exactly.
It's also coincided like if youthink about movies, so I love
movies, and like and that would,yeah, exactly so.
So I think like that was kindof lives rent free in my head.
But like, I think the reasonwhy I just, for some reason, I
just gravitated towards isbecause two things I would say.

(46:41):
One is I've always been aprince fan.
So the soundtrack, the factthat he was across, it was just
I was like this is fuckingawesome, you know.
And then, and still to this day, a really good prince album.
Right, like, people don't thinkof it that way, but it's, it's
just amazing.
And then I think the secondthing was the car, the.
That car just blew thebatmobile that was awesome 89
batmobile, so freaking cool.

(47:01):
So today I'm actually speakingin my, in my basement, like
because I'd be nodding, but uh,I'm just kidding my whole life.

Your wife kicked you to the basement, yeah she's
like.

Indy Sen (47:09):
She's like, stop reading so much batman comic
books and actually go do somework.
You know, no, uh, we have aguest and I and my office
doubles as the guest room.
But if, if we were to speak inmy office, you would see a lego
version of the 1989 batmobile,because that's probably if I, if
I, if I could lay a magic wandand say, like this, this would
be my dream car, that would beit.
So I think between that.
And then you know, this is jacknicholson, kim basinger like oh

(47:33):
, that was, that was genius.

Yeah, it was.

Indy Sen (47:35):
Uh, yeah it was an apex moment for for, like, what
a, what a cool summer movieshould be right.

And you know, I think I'm old enough to remember
batmania, so yeah yeah, so yougot obsessed from that point, so
you were probably what like 11,11, 12 good guess was it was
the summer of 89.

Indy Sen (47:51):
So I think I was 11.
There we go.
Very impressionable age rightit's a perfect age to get into
it.

Yeah, yeah, awesome, okay, so let's get back
to work.
Yes, you've talked passionatelyin the past about watching
Steve Jobs keynote when Applewas launching the iPhone as the
moment you knew you wanted towork in technology, because it
brought together your love ofstorytelling with technology.
Tell us more about it.

(48:18):
Can you bring that moment tolife?

Indy Sen (48:20):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I think for me, like, I do
remember and, as you know, ascliche as it sounds, I do
remember where I was when I sawit.
Like I was still living inBoston.
I was about to start businessschool, right, because this was
2007.
You know, like the world feltlike your oyster.
You're like, oh, you know, I'minvesting myself, like what am I
going to do?
You know, like what?
What's the type of?
Like there's so much you can donow, like potentially with,

(48:40):
like like this degree in in yourhands.
But as I was about to go in, Ithink I had it, like I had a Mac
mini at the time that I'veconnected to my TV.
So this is how much of a nerd Iwas.
I found a very contrived way tokind of like watch the keynote,
like on my big screen TV, whichback then was like a 30 inch TV
, you know that kind of thing,but still pretty big.
I was very proud of that, thatthat TV purchase.
So, anyway, long story short,like so I watched the WWDC.

(49:04):
Oh no, it was an Apple specialevent, I think, if I'm not
mistaken.
So I remember where I was.
I was sitting on like thisfuton couch that I had in my you
know part of my bachelor's inBoston, and I just saw this and
like there was so much rumors,right, and I was already early,
kind of like I was a PC user mywhole life until then, but I got
the iPod and I was like thisthing is so cool, right, like,
and and I was, so I was verymuch in the market for what the

(49:26):
next iPod will be.
The rumors is there was goingto be a video iPod and this was
before, like you know, the earlylike 5G bandwidth and all that
stuff right.
But I had a lot of like moviesthat I could download and rip
from my DVDs, those kind ofthings.
So I was in the market for that.
So I remember kind of sittingdown and, like, you know,
watching it and I just see this.
You know Steve Jobs had thislegendary way of kind of going

(49:47):
about presenting things and Iwas like you know so one, I just
wanted to see it because I waslike it's always going to be a
show.
But then he did this reallylike very clever thing where
he's like today we're going toannounce you know, three things,
right.
So I'm like, oh, here we go.
Minto principle, you know, likelet announce, like a

(50:09):
breakthrough communicationdevice.
And then what was the thirdthing I'm trying to remember?
Now, a new portable videoplayer or something like that,
right.
And then he's like, do you getit?
Like this, this and that, aportable video player, a
breakthrough communicationdevice, a video iPod, right.
And he's like these things areall the same thing, right, like
it's the iPhone.
And just the way he went aboutit, right, like talking about

(50:29):
why they decided to build thisthing that you know if, if you
know, if they had just listenedto market analysts, they would
all they would have done wouldbe have been a widescreen video
iPod, right, but they decided tokind of converge all those
technologies.
And I think what I really lovedabout that story was the fact
that, you know, he kind of ledyou through the way, like the
technical insight for them beinglike hey, look, there's a
reason why we wanted to do itwithout any buttons, right, it's

(50:52):
because your finger is theultimate pointing device.
Right, we've done our research.
Here's what the market hasright now.
Like all of these things arevery good at one thing, but not
good at everything, right, andlike they're either a great
phone or they're a great emaildevice, but they suck, they
can't do both.
And I think he kind of justthreaded the needle from a

(51:14):
storytelling perspective, right,like that, pulled that red
thread, being like, look, thisis why we built this thing the
way it was.
And you know, I think it wasn'tjust what he announced, right,
because I was already like, wow,when can I get my hands on this
?
Right, but it was how they didit, right, and I think, for me,
blending that, that art ofstorytelling, even the
showmanship that Steve Jobs wasso famous for, right, like you
know, people were just eatingout of his hands, right, like
when he announced that thing was, I was just like I don't know
what job that is, right, like,and not the Steve Jobs jobs,

(51:36):
right, you know, like I knewwhat job that was, but it was
who helped him put that storytogether.
Right, and even like analysis,with so much theatrics, right,
and like cleverness and likekind of storytelling and what,
taking each to the hand, so that, like, the end result was like
I think everybody thereafterwards was like, like you
know, and was like I have to getthis device.
Like this thing is going to belike the greatest thing

(51:56):
literally since sliced bread,and just that storytelling, the
way of like, identifying thisunmet need and showing how, with
this device, you can not justmeet those three unmet needs but
you can meet all of them andmore by virtue of, like you know
, using this device.
I thought that was justmasterful, right, and I think I
was like you know, it'sstorytelling, it's showmanship.
These are things that I kind ofgravitate towards, you know I

(52:18):
geek out on, and then it wasalso amazing technology at that
time, right, the fact that youknow touchscreen.
I remember I don't know if yousaw, like there's definitely a
great plane movie, but theBlackBerry movie, right, Like
when BlackBerry executives sawthat announcement.
Like in the movie they do itreally well, but they were like
we are so right, so screwed yeah, yeah.
So that that for me was like.
I was like, hey, you know, letme cater my business school

(52:40):
experience to figure out as muchas I can Like what do I need to
know to, you know, get a jobthat helps me tell those stories
?
Right?
And I didn't know it then, butit was product marketing, which
obviously Apple is super famousfor as well.
But that's what got me into mycurrent career, I think.

That's beautiful.
I appreciate the story and howit really captured the moment
and I think one of the otheramazing aspects of it that we
talk about the product so much,but it was also the ecosystem.
Talk about the product so much,but it was also the ecosystem.
This was the app store.
This was the ability for peopleto to innovate using the
capabilities of of the iphone.

(53:17):
Now other firms had that, likein the nokia.
You had a.
You know, you had it.
There's brew and some otheroperating systems where you
could build apps, but it was anightmarish process and you had
to fight to get on deck, whereasapple created a way to create a
whole app ecosystem Is thatpart of what got you to?
Yeah, maybe that was later.

Indy Sen (53:35):
So I think that was later because, if memory serves
right, the iPhone SDK right andthe whole third-party ecosystem
that I think came a little bitafter.
So I think that actually cameat WWDC right Like, because
initially when they launched itit was just portrayed as a phone
.
It has built-in apps thatyou're going to love, that we've
built ourselves our ownfirst-party apps, and it has all
the content that you want froman iPod and that kind of stuff.

(53:56):
So I think that first startedoff as almost like a walled
garden and I think, having readsome books about and some
articles about that launch, itsounds like later on.
I think Steve Jobs himself hadto be convinced that they needed
to open it up to third-partydevelopers to kind of launch the
ecosystem.
So I think they had an SDK inthe wings but it sounds like
they-.

But it wasn't there.
Yeah, yeah, but obviously theybuilt it as a platform and
they've been able to take itfrom there.
So now let's talk about you asa leader.
So, indy, you've been describedas a Zen leader who balances
flawless strategic thinking withthe dynamic ability to navigate
ambiguity with compassion, joyand enthusiasm.

Indy Sen (54:35):
That's very kind, that's very kind.

Yeah, how do you, as a Zen leader, approach
decision-making and teammotivation with the urgency
required for the rapid scalingand continuous innovation that's
occurring at Canva today?

Indy Sen (54:48):
Yeah, I think, over time, I would say I think I've
learned not to take thingspersonally right, like I think
that you know business isbusiness, right, and I think at
the end of the day, especiallyas I've grown into the shoes of
like a leader, it's like it'sall about enabling the team.
At the end of the day, that'syour job, you know, in Hinduism
you have like.

(55:08):
Your job as a leader is to makesure that you can lead your
teams with clarity, right, likegive them the right direction,
give them clear direction onlike what the goals are, the
stakes of like everything thatneeds to be done.
But then try to removeobstacles because if you've done
your job right as a leader, youeither are surrounded by great
people or you've recruited thosepeople that yourself right, and
you want them to be successful.

(55:28):
You've brought them in for areason Right, and I think, as my
kids would say, right like letpeople cook.
Right, like you know, like letpeople do what they've come to
do.
And I think your job as aleader, especially as you start
building greater and greaterteams where you're a little bit
more removed from the action,right, and I think at Canva
we're a startup, so I am kneedeep in, like my IC work.
I'm also like helping steer.
Like you know some of my Just asmall multi-billion dollar

(55:50):
startup.

Yeah, but you're in a startup as part of a large
yeah, so you know.

Indy Sen (55:56):
So the struggle is, quote unquote, real in terms of,
like advocating for resources,getting setting the tone, that
clarity Right, and I think so inmy mind, what it really boils
down to is can you like leadwith clarity, right?
And, and I think you know,sometimes you don't get that
clarity because maybe thatclarity does not exist right In
terms of what our goals are,what our priorities are, right,

(56:17):
how do you put your best footforward to try and fight for
that clarity or at least dealwith ambiguity, right?
Because I think what I'velearned over time and this is
applicable both at Canva butalso like many places I've been,
and I'm sure Rajiv, like this,will resonate is I think
ambiguity is okay, I thinkindecision is not, and so I
think ambiguity.
I think your job as a leader isto help your team navigate that

(56:38):
ambiguity, give themalternatives or ask them for
alternatives and kind of then,with your mind of like or your
knowledge of like where thebusiness is going, try to like
help arrive at a decision.
But I think it's indecisionthat I think is just fraught
with like peril, right, becauseI think to me, like indecision
is the cancer you have to.
Your job as a leader is to helpyour team make a decision, and
I think you may not have all theright information, but if your

(56:59):
team like no matter howexperienced they are see that
you're not making up your mindor you're kind of like going
back and forth and havingendless meetings about meetings,
about meetings, about adecision that needs to be made,
you're going to lose trust.
Right, I had this greatexecutive at Google called Carol
Carpenter who was like our headof product marketing at the
time, and I think she rightfullykind of brought this model
being like look, you know, Ithink, as a cross-functional

(57:21):
leader and which productmarketing is you know, I think
you have to do your best to makesure that you're operating at a
level where you can, because ofthe vantage points, do what you
can to enable trust.
Right, like create trustbuilders and minimize trust
busters.
Right, and I think, to me,indecision is the ultimate trust
buster, because no matter howsmart you are or no matter how
big your team is, or if anybodystarts getting an inkling that

(57:44):
you do not know what you'redoing, or those kinds of things,
I think that's an automatictrust buster.
Right, and it's not on you,it's just more like how do you
make sure that people areinformed in real time of like
decisions that need to be made,the obstacles that might be in
the way and sometimes it may notbe in your purview or your
ability to set that clarity, butat the very least advocate for
it, yeah, and I like thatbecause you put it together with

(58:07):
trust building, helping yourfolks make decisions.

So you're not saying, hey, bring everything to
me, I'm going to make thedecision.
So Zen leader doesn't have tomake all the decisions, but it
creates an environment to enabledecision-making Exactly.
And I think one of the thingsyou've talked about, too, is the
notion of psychological safety,right?
So and we've had this with Udi-Lergaard right of Gong, right.

(58:32):
So he'll talk about how do Ihelp my folks take big risks by
offering them the ability tocreate an environment where they
can take those risks and speakout of turn and take big swings.
And so you talk about that aswell.
Right?
How do you innovate unless youcreate that notion of
psychological safety where youopen yourself up to radical
candor or constructive dissent.

Indy Sen (58:52):
Yeah, absolutely, you know.
I mean I think I can think ofmany examples, right, but I
think there's one in particularis like I remember at my time at
WeWork.
Things happened very quickly atWeWork, both the good things
and the bad things.

Everything happened at high speed.

Indy Sen (59:04):
But you know, like the talent density at that company
was insane, right, Like when Ileft Google to go to WeWork,
there was a form leaving Googlewhere I had to pick a drop list
of like companies.
I was going to right, andthere's, you know the usual.
You know Amazon's, facebook,that kind of stuff, but at the
very bottom.
Wework actually made that listbecause at the time WeWork was
just hiring like great talentleft and right.
Now where I'm going with thestory is that at one point, you

(59:26):
know, I joined into thetechnical product marketing and
then, very quickly, theleadership team determined that
you know, we needed to kind ofbuild out global product
marketing, not just fortechnology but also like
actually our physical propertiesand everything that we did
there.
And so overnight I ended uplike inheriting a bunch of folks
who are almost like, who areproduct marketers in name but
really brand managers for, like,wework.
And there was this reallytalented woman by the name of

(59:47):
Julia who was, you know, hadbeen at WeWork for a couple of
years but was kind of strugglingbecause she just saw like
indecision everywhere, right,and she had big ideas, right,
and she was not really thatjunior, but she was experienced
and she was motivated and I sawthat in her, and.
But then, at the same time,some people said that you know,
quote unquote, she might've been, like, you know, hard to work,

(01:00:07):
was not empowered to do things.
I had my first meeting with her.
She was one of my directs andyou know, she told me what her
desires were and she's like, hey, honestly, I want to do things
because I want to have an impactand I want to get promoted, and
I was like you know, that'sinteresting.
You know, like I've just metyou, so that's not a
conversation we can have today.

(01:00:28):
Occasion, right, like we gaveher, like by the time, what was
called AAA property marketing.
So these were, like you know,the big skyscrapers in New York
where we work had all of asudden, like you know, eight, 10
, 12 floors, at least on thosewhere we know that those things
would be super desirable.
But they have needed to movefast and they were a big whale,
so to speak, in our inventory.
And she just availed herself ofthat because she had the right

(01:00:48):
relationships.
In many ways she made myselfand our CMO look great because
she just sunk her teeth into itand did not relent, right, and
so what I was really happy was,within four or five months, our
CMO did marketing all hands andrecognized her in front of
everybody and actually broughther up to stage and be like hey,
this is the type ofdetermination and great and just
ideas.

(01:01:08):
Great ideas can come fromanywhere, but let's make sure
that you all feel empowered todo the best work of your lives,
right?

Rajiv Parikh (01:01:15):
And I think that's really awesome.

Indy Sen (01:01:16):
It was like an early lesson and like how do you help
people get to the highest pointof contribution?
Right, and I think, like Iwould say, it's on employees or
even myself, right, I report tosomeone.
It's my job to tell somebody ifI don't feel I'm working
towards my highest point ofcontribution, and it's also my
job and my employee's job totell me, or for me to tell my
manager, these are the things Iwant to do, I believe I can do,

(01:01:37):
and where you'll get the mostbang out of your buck, out of me
, so to speak.
But I do think it's a manager'sresponsibility to know when
somebody's clearly punchingbelow their weight.
I call that the lowest point ofcontribution.
Right, if you know, especiallyyounger employees might just do
that because they're asked to doit and they're like, hey, you
know, like I mean, this is not agreat job environment, I'll
just do what I'm doing.
Right, but it sucks to havesomebody really talented do just

(01:01:58):
stuff that literally willliterally be replaced by AI at
some point.
Right, like market research,even some messaging.
Right, like you can get 90, 80%of the way there with messaging
by providing like a templatefor the frameworks and saying,
hey, look at this website andtell me how what the messaging
tree would be for the hierarchywould be for this AI can I did
it a couple of weeks ago likecloud open AI, they'll get you

(01:02:18):
80% of the way there and then,of course, that's where you keep
the as a human in the loop.
You produce that output.
So I would say, you know, to meit's really a manager's job and
I think maybe this is part ofthe Zen.
Leadership thing is like createthat environment where it's
very clear that everybody can beworking towards their highest
point of contribution, becauseotherwise you know what's the
point of hiring great people inthis job environment especially,

(01:02:38):
you know there's so much talentout there.
Ai is not going to replace thattalent, but it's going to help
them maybe even better right andhelp you get things more done
faster.
So I think the key to that isreally making sure that people
are motivated right To do thebest work of their lives, and I
think for me that's like anearly kind of like management
lesson I had, especially at thatstage when I had this ability
to kind of like steer a sizableteam.

(01:03:00):
All these people were great.
Like some of them, I have nodoubt that some people were
smarter, no doubt younger.

But I mean, but that is great, that is great
leader.
Great leadership is you don'thave to be the smartest person
in the room, but you have torecognize how you can get the
best out of people.
And part of that ispsychological safety and taking
that employee that you had whohad a great idea, and enabling
her to to get it out Right.
And at the same time, though,I'd say that part of also what
you're doing is that I thinkyou've talked about this too is

(01:03:25):
that Steve Jobs will say focusis not saying yes, it's saying
no to really good ideas.
So you have this really toughbalancing act right when you're
saying I have a whole bunch ofgreat ideas, I want to foster
those great ideas, offer peoplea psychological safety of that.
But you also have to say no torandom acts of marketing Random
acts of marketing.

Indy Sen (01:03:43):
Yes, exactly.

Thinking about servant leadership at its core.
You're thinking about enablingcourage.
How do you balance those?

Indy Sen (01:03:50):
Yeah, and I think it goes back in my mind too, and
it's not always easy, becausesometimes you yourself, as a
leader, are so like submerged inall this busyness.
Right, like with the why Is that?
You have to kind of every nowand then pick your head up and
kind of see like, hey, are weall working on the highest
impact work that we can, right,or are we just doing things
because we've done it before?
Right, and I think you know I'mseeing this at Canva and I've

(01:04:11):
seen this at other companies tooright, when you're in hyper
growth mode, especially at thecompany, it's very clear that
what you've done six months agomay not be what you need to do
to get to the next level.
Right, like, what got you hereis not what's going to get you
there.
Exercise of kind of like youknow, maybe reinventing yourself
or as the business then all ofa sudden has more channels.

(01:04:32):
Right, instead of having onedeveloper event and you then
have like piggyback on like yourfield marketing and just invite
developers to those events, asopposed to having like a proper
standalone developer conference.
You know, it's still early,we're still trying to figure out
, like, what are ways in whichwe can target developers.
But one of the signals I got at, like Canva Create, was that
for the first time, we actuallyinvited developers to kind of
showcase their wares on thefloor right, like you know,

(01:04:53):
table stakes for many largeconferences, but this was the
first time actually invitingpartners and having them sponsor
and it probably got the secondmost foot traffic.
I saw the metrics right thesecond most foot traffic across
the whole conference outside of,like you know, our main
activation points for, like, thenew product announcements that
we had, and nobody expected that.
But people like you know whowere MailChimp customers were
walking around Canva Create andthey see MailChimp and they're

(01:05:14):
like I did not know you had anintegration with Canva.
Like, tell me more.
And MailChimp was super happy,because that's more people who
are happy and probably morelikely to stay activated on
MailChimp now that they knowthat it integrates with Canva.
So you need to think about thattype of thing very
opportunistically, being likejust because something worked
for us in the past is notnecessarily gonna work for us in
the future, right, or maybethere are bigger bets that we

(01:05:36):
can make across new channelsthat let us do the job we need
to get done, but knock it out ina way that's gonna set us up
for success for the next coupleof operating quarters, right,
and I love to say years.
But next, like you know, likecouple of operating quarters,
right, and I love to say years,but you know, the truth is that
nobody knows where they're goingto be like six months from now
and that kind of thing, or wherethe business is going to take

(01:05:58):
us.
But I think your job as a leader, in my mind, especially in
marketing and it's not becausemarketing is necessarily easier
to kind of like course correct,but if you think about
engineering, tech, tech, deathand that kind of stuff, there's
some things that are going totake literally months to change.
Right, with marketing, ifyou're not oversubscribed in
certain activities, it's prettyeasy to kind of navigate new
channels right, or at least trynew things and establish

(01:06:19):
channels and then experimentwith others, right, you can
mount a campaign, especiallyhopefully with Canva, right,
like you can do, do a campaignand, like you know, like know,
like months of work and, likeyou know, weeks, if not days.
In my mind, marketing is thequintessential like situational
leader, right, like, I think youhave your finger on so many of
the pulses, right.
You work with product marketingespecially.
You work with product, you workwith sales, you work with

(01:06:40):
marketing.
If you're a senior leader,you're kind of plugged in into
what the business cares aboutand you can kind of like think
about like hey, you know what ifwe were to do this right,
instead of like why are we doingthis?
Like what if we were to do that?
I think it's really about liketrying to lead with like ideas
on the table, and then alsodon't think that the
responsibility is for you tohave all the ideas.
Keep your nose to the ground,right, like, listen to either
people on your team or, I wouldsay, as a product marketer.

(01:07:08):
Yes, you do have to spend a lotof time with product, clearly,
but at the end of the day, ifyour product team is not
spending time with customers, bethat person to get channel some
of those, those asks and stresstests, what you're building and
those kinds of things.
So I would say, sometimescustomers can not only give you
like some good ideas, but alsomessaging right.
What I really love aboutbuilding ecosystems is that
their success is going to beyour success right.

(01:07:28):
So if you do your job right, ifyou enable them technically, if
you enable them commercially,like the minute you have and we
saw this at Salesforce, I sawthis at Box MuleSoft, you know,
god knows like when people kindof took off like with their
solutions, that was the breadand butter of the business.

I mean yeah, mulesoft is ultimately all about
connecting.

Indy Sen (01:07:44):
Exactly right.
It was basically partnership asa product.
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
It was integration as a service, partnership as a product,
because no one company would useMuleSoft the same way.
But when they did, it was likeone, it was sticky as F, right,
and then two, it really createdlike magical experiences for
these companies, right, likewhere it was really creating a

(01:08:04):
process out of their secretsauce was what most companies
that were really successful inMuleSoft were able to do.
So I think leadership to me it'sall about creating that clarity
, enabling the people, makingsure that everyone's operating
at the highest point ofcontribution, and then also
keeping your nose to the groundto being like, hey, what are the
things where not just in my ownvantage point, my metrics, the
things that I have to hit, whatare ways in which I can help,

(01:08:27):
especially at startups?
Right, what is that point ofview I can inject to kind of
help people really seize theopportunity that we have,
especially with ecosystem.
Like you know, I think wetalked earlier about API as a
self-serve business development,but I think, really think like,
if I look at Salesforce's 10 Kstoday, those kinds of things,
right, every quarter, like youknow, platform.
There was one point like maybetwo years ago a platform was the
biggest piece of Salesforce'sbusiness.

(01:08:48):
I don't know if that's stillthe case, but between and I keep
on changing the platform name,so I don't even know what the
latest greatest name is, butlike Salesforce One or the
Salesforce platform, right.

In a way, what they're doing now with
AgentForce is putting togetherwhat they did with AppExchange
and all the differentapplication environments they
were building.
Agentforce now brings all thoseelements together, along with
outside applications, so itreally is truly binding them
together with so many othercapabilities.
So you're right, I mean,there's this providing safety.

(01:09:16):
You're enabling folks, you'rehelping them to shine, enabling
them to have metrics so they canmake better decisions about
what to keep and what to drop,and you're really propelling it
forward.
So very cool way of describingthis.
So let's talk.
I have a few quick things tothrow at you, so we're going to
do quick Q and A things aboutyou.
Okay, what's something you'recurrently learning or trying to

(01:09:37):
get better at?
That has nothing to do withadvancing your career, ooh um
great question Beyond readingBatman comics.

Indy Sen (01:09:43):
Yes, there's only so much on a big market for people
who can nail Batman trivia right.
I would say so.
I'm a runner.
I think you mentioned you alsoran marathons.
I think one of the things thatI do is that I've enjoyed what
running has brought to my life.
It's brought me a lot ofperspective.
You know, like as a parent, youprobably know like four kids,
right, like I have two.
They're younger but like theystill take a lot of time, and

(01:10:04):
for me, running is my, my outlet, right, it's almost like moving
meditation.
As I get older, obviously,everything hurts more, it takes
more work to do what we want todo, but I'm trying to just take
care of my health, like morestretching, more flexibility.
So I want to stay in therunning game, but I recognize
that it's going to be more workthan it has been in the past.

Yeah, I hope you do, because I had to give up
long distance running, but Iwill say it was a great.
My wife was not going to getangry at me about leaving to go
run 12 miles, so she was I.
You know, if I was going out tosome you know to walk the beach
or play golf, she'd be reallyannoyed.
But you know you're going toput yourself in pain for the

(01:10:45):
next two hours to run 12 miles.
Go for it, yeah.

Indy Sen (01:10:47):
Yeah.
So for me, I think, what I wantto get better at just because
so I do have a bucket list is, Ithink in the marathon circuit
there's this six marathons thatI call the majors right.
So it's Boston, tokyo, london,berlin, new York and now Sydney
is now the seventh.
But that's that's.
That's a little crazy.
So I've done four out of six sofar.
So the only ones I've left areBoston and Tokyo.

(01:11:08):
So ideally I would like, by theage of 50, to have been able to
run like all six of them.
If it goes a little beyond 50,like that's fine, the later the
better, because that just meansI'll stay on top of my running
game.
But yeah, I would say thatthat's probably a personal
pursuit.

Yeah, I think it's an awesome way of doing it and
it's like.
It's like you set a goal andkeeping your body in shape as
part of it, you can run forever.
I probably could have too, hadI taken care of myself a little
bit differently as part of doingthis stretching or more yoga,
all that.

Indy Sen (01:11:36):
So I hope you can still go on the occasional run
or like just shorter runs, rightor?

I can do short runs, I can do a lot of hiking.
So there's that.
What's a historical event orperson or movement that inspires
you, and you mentioned SteveJobs.
Is there someone in particularabout that movement or event
that lights you up?

Indy Sen (01:11:53):
Yeah, you know.
So I think we talked aboutSteve Jobs quite a bit and I
feel like any movement that'shad some staying power to me is
a definition of a movement rightLike so it could be cultural
movement, political movement,those kinds of things.
Right Like something where youcreated something, where people
are, you know, still talkingabout it to this day.
Like I think, as a marketer, Ihave a fascination, so I'm a
sneakerhead also, which that'sactually my midlife crisis,

(01:12:17):
other than reading Batman comicsand keep on reading them is
collecting sneakers.
But I remember and again, maybethis is the impressionable age
of like 11 or so, like 1989,right when Nike came up with
just like nike air as like acampaign, as a piece of
technology.
They had like air in theirshoes and many other companies
did too, but that was the firsttime where they exposed the air

(01:12:38):
through like that window.
Right, and there's thisdesigner called tinker halffield
who's just like a legendarykind of like sneaker designer.
He designed all the most of thefirst air maxes.
So the air max one was thefirst one that exposed that
bubble.
And as a kid, you know, like I,I liked sneakers, but I saw that
as like every kid in ourschoolyard was, like you know,
and especially in france, likenikes were way more expensive,

(01:12:59):
so some kids had nikes and thenthe rich kids had nike airs.
It took me a while to be thatkid who had a nike air, you know
like, but I I really it livedrent free in my head.
But what I like about that isthat still to this age and this
goes back to the movementscreating staying power, and
maybe it's not a movement, it'smore like a campaign or brand
coup, if you will, right, butGen Z, right, they're still

(01:13:20):
wearing Jordans, they're wearing, like, air Maxes.
Those things are timeless,right, and I think, to me,
anytime you can create like formarketing, especially to me,
anytime you can create like formarketing, especially, everybody
looks at like Nike as, like youknow, masters in marketing.
Like you know, I think I ran, Iran the London marathon, right,
like New Balance was the sponsorand New Balance had great
creative.
But Nike, you know, they werejust like, okay, we're not, we

(01:13:41):
didn't win the sponsorship, butwe're going to plaster the fuck
out of London with, like youknow, like some great creative
that inspires people and remindsthem that and actually, Nike is
like a brilliant guerrillamarket, yeah, and.
I think you probably saw somebillboards, like I had to.
The only time I stopped duringthat race was to take a picture
of the billboard and I was likethis is so freaking cool, you

(01:14:01):
know, like.
And then I kept on because Iwas like, because you know, and
you probably remember this frommarathons is, you know, you only
stop if you have to get yourand to get things back, but
anyway.
So I think, with like with meand like like I remember, you
know, and again, maybe it wasbecause I was at an
impressionable age but it juststuck with me and like I was
joking about my midlife crisis,but I I think at this stage I
probably own at least onesilhouette of every shoe that

(01:14:24):
tinker have feel created, andmost of them have the nike air
bubble.
But there's just some otherstuff that he did where we're
just so innovative and if youthink about sneakers, it's such
a like disposable, kind ofthrowaway item.
You cycle it, but that's one ofthe things that kind of help
create the culture aroundsneakers and you know, I can
walk on the street there'sthere's like old sneaker heads,
there's like younger sneakerheads, but you just kind of you
create that community rightbecause you're all like real,

(01:14:46):
real nose, real.
You see someone wearing a pairof Air Max 1s, the infrared Air
Max 90s, and you recognize it.
You just kind of have thisknowing glance and then you go,
but you're part of a communityand so to me, I think it's
always great when you can createsome kind of movement that gets
people together.
It doesn't have to beworld-changing, it doesn't have
to be lucrative Nike probablymakes money, or maybe sneaker

(01:15:08):
resellers make all the moneyaround this now these days,
right, but the fact that there'sthis almost brotherhood and
sisterhood of people who justappreciate that type of thing,
like to me, like that'ssomething where and again, maybe
that's what in my back of mymind as an 11 year old is like
man, marketing is awesomebecause it creates this sense of
kinship between people.

Creates this movement and the sense of
community, sense of community,sense of community.
So yeah, so that's one thatstays with me.
That's awesome if you had tochoose a theme song that plays
every time you walk into a room.

Indy Sen (01:15:36):
What would it be?
That's a good question would it?

would it be the batman opening theme from
michael keaton's versionoriginal?

Indy Sen (01:15:42):
yeah, I think people I would just get physical looks
because there's some people whowould know it and some people
are like what, what the hell ishappening here?
I would probably think about,like I love hip hop, too many
artists who speak of, yeah,maybe like De La Soul or
something like that, like Me,myself and I or something like
you know that still like bops,that still slaps, as the kids
would say.
Randomly, I'll just say MeMyself and I by De La Soul.

You'll know if people listen to this podcast,
if they play that for you everytime you walk in, so here you go
.
I'll ask you one more questionwhat's something you believe
that would be a huge deal inyour life that turned out to be
completely forgettable?
And vice versa something smallthat ended up being surprisingly
important?

Indy Sen (01:16:21):
I think something that felt huge at the time but that
was just like clearly in thereview now, is like I think, you
know, when we got laid off atWeWork, that sucked right, like
I think and it wasn't I didn'ttake it personally because there
was literally 2,600 otherpeople who overnight, through no
fault of their own, were kindof sent packing Right and that's
ultimately like organizationalfailures, like when you run out
of money and of course the CEOleft before I had money.

(01:16:43):
But I think that felt, you know,like devastating, because you
know one like devastatingbecause you know one felt like
the end of the world yeah, youput so much into it, your heart
was in it and absolutely, like Imean to this day, you know I
talk about like some colleaguesthere and even just people in
the different walks of life thatI run and sometimes I ask
myself like where was I the youknow, the happiest or for a
little amount of time when Ifirst started?
We work like like the sky wasthe limit and you know, I know

(01:17:04):
that the company's taking allkinds of beatings like people
just just pounding on it, thatkind of stuff.
But I will stand by what I said.
The talent density was great,the opportunity was huge.
It really sucked when we allgot laid off and like I was like
hey, you know I left Google forcrying out loud.
You know, like my Indian momyou know how Indian moms are she
never forgave me for leavingGoogle.

So to this day, right.
How could leave?

Indy Sen (01:17:26):
Google.

It's like you're a doctor.
You hit doctor status when youwere in Google, that's so true,
so true, yeah.

Indy Sen (01:17:35):
So, like you know, that felt like it was going to
be something.
Oh, you know this sucks.
What am I going to do?
Do I go back to Google?
Does Google even have a job forme?
But I think now, clearly, we'veseen layoffs happen, right, and
, like you know, all kinds ofthings happen just because you
know something happens.
Like you know your job is notyour identity, right, and like I
think it's very hard, like I mycmo like, who I worked with
very closely.

(01:17:56):
His name is robin daniels greatguy, maybe somebody you should
have on your podcast.
I would definitely recommend it,but love to like he's like I'm
the batman to his robin, ormaybe sometimes I was a robin to
his batman.
But you know, like I saw, likehe took it very hard because his
identity was very.
He was such a public figurethere that you know he took it
hard.
And you know, when you see agood friend and even yourself,
like you know you were workingon towards something that felt

(01:18:16):
so purposeful, it does suck toall of a sudden be, you know,
shut out of that or like themarket shutting you out of it,
so that that was big, but itturned out to be not as
important as you thought.

What's the other way around?
Something small that ended upbeing surprisingly important.

Indy Sen (01:18:31):
Yeah, yeah, random acts of kindness cost you
nothing, but people remember itRight and I think you know it
could be in a professionalsetting, it could be in personal
settings.
But you know, just the otherday I caught up with somebody
who's like navigating like thejob market and he reached out to
me.
It had been like like some time.
He's like you know, indy, likeI remember when we first worked
together you were one of thefirst people who were just so

(01:18:52):
kind to learn about mybackground and that kind of
stuff.
You know we had coffee and thatstill sticks with me and I
would love your advice onsomething.
And I'm typically empathetic bynature and I love, I like, I
enjoy connecting obviouslydidn't cost me anything, but I
just did because of who.

(01:19:12):
You know how I perceive thisperson and, like you know, being
a newcomer to the company, Ijust welcomed him.
That has a different payoff,right, so completely different
scale of measurement of thosekinds of things.
But I think in this day and ageand you know, I think we're
seeing it left and right herebut kindness costs you nothing
If you can help someone have abetter day or better onboarding,
treating everybody with grace,I think goes a long way and
people remember it, and I think,unfortunately people also

(01:19:38):
remember when the oppositehappens.
Right and kindness doesn't costanybody anything and it can
change someone's trajectory.

But it can change the world for them.
I think so, yeah, so, indy, Igot to tell you I really enjoyed
this.
It was so much fun to talk withyou.
You have so much insight andperspective that we kept you
going.
I deeply appreciate your timewith us.
This was super enjoyable on myend.

Indy Sen (01:19:54):
Thank you so much for taking the time.

That was so much fun to have Indy with us.
He produced like it was like aninsight machine.
It was like almost every 30seconds there was another one,
and I think the one thing I willtake from him as an ecosystem
person he remembers everyone'sname.
So whether it was the person heworked with back at Google or

(01:20:22):
the people he worked with atSalesforce, he remembers
everyone's names and theimpression or the insight or the
boost they may have offered tohim or he was able to offer to
them, and I think that's soimportant when you're building
your career and when you'rethinking about how to connect
folks together.
You put that together with hisnotion of the product being the

(01:20:47):
partnership, the notion of APIsand how they cleanly connect and
how they need to be seamless.
I think these are amazinginsights that Indy was able to
bring to us as part of hisspectacular rise across so many
of the tech giants in SiliconValley.
So love having him on and,frankly, I never thought that he
would do so well at Batman.

(01:21:08):
My team just couldn't believethat he nailed the King Tut one.
So great to have you on, indy,and I'm glad everyone had a
chance to enjoy this.
So thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this pod, pleasetake a moment to rate it and
comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
The show is produced by AnandShah and edited by Sean Marr and

(01:21:31):
Laura Ballant.
I'm your host, rajiv Parikhfrom Position Squared, an
AI-centric growth marketingcompany based in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at position2.comand definitely go download our
arena offering.
This is an effing funnyproduction and we'll catch you
next time.
And remember folks be evercurious.

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The Ecosystem Growth Playbook That Works for Canva/Indy Sen - Cha-Ching, Zen, Batman ~ Spark of Ages Ep 41

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Ecosystem Growth Playbook That Works for Canva/Indy Sen - Cha-Ching, Zen, Batman ~ Spark of Ages Ep 41