With the new Affinity, Canva found a way to neutralize the power user. The reason? Canva thinks it can make more money from regular users.
https://tedium.co/2025/10/30/canva-affinity-free-loss-leader-strategy/
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“Canva just flipped 40 years of design-business logic on its head, and if they pull this off, they look like geniuses. If they don’t, hopefully Affinity doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.”
https://tedium.co/2025/10/30/canva-affinity-free-loss-leader-strategy/
@ernie o think the problem in this reasoning is it assumes the non power users you want to make money from (not a bad idea) want AO, but then the post itself later admits it's investors who want AI.
Experience suggests to me that a product which makes investors happy without making objective economic sense is a product with a ticking death clock.
@mcc My piece specifically says they don’t, barring some quality-of-life features that tend to rely on machine learning. However, they put it in there to appease investors and went out of their way to bury it behind a tab you can easily ignore.
Their pitch does not lead with AI. I do not think that’s an accident.
@mcc As for Canva: From my experience, a lot of rank-and-file employees are more AI-curious than hardened professionals, because they don’t have the inherent skills.
That’s not everyone, but Canva has enough premium features that even the AI disinterested can ignore it if they choose.
@ernie okay. So you don't necessarily think non pro users go for the Affinity AI upsell, but you *do* think they go for the more substantial Canva upsell?
@mcc Yes, because the people buying those subscriptions are often not individuals, but businesses who need Canva’s collaboration features, which are well-suited to social objects and presentations. AI will appeal to non-designers, but consider it a table-stakes feature that is secondary to the workflow benefits Canva offers.
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@mcc
> it assumes the non power users you want to make money from (not a bad idea) want AO, but then the post itself later admits it's investors who want AI
"AI" is the new micropayments, DRM, crypto, metaverse, etc. The latest in a long line of white elephant technologies that everyone hates, except the techbro and VC extractors who think they'll make money from it.
Spoilers: most of them are won't, because every product based on #MOLE Training will eventually bomb spectacularly.
@SuperMoosie They’re still supporting v2 (and v1) and they’re downloadable from your account page. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/v2/
I think it is dangerous to see this as a sky-is-falling moment. It has only been out for 12 hours. It has not had a chance to disappoint us yet.
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