[pavanlimo]

I just gave it a go and it didn't really look like a Photoshop replacement, more like a really trimmed version of Photoshop. But for the usecases it serves, it's probably enough. Not an expert in this domain but I'm struggling to see its value at $1B. May be the community is high quality and large?

[adventured]

Some of it surely has to do with the hype around Adobe and their switch to recurring revenue, SaaS style products.

It has thrown their stock through the roof. Their stock was essentially dead in the water from 2000 to 2012. $30 to $185 since then. Pull back on their chart to the max time frame, and it's hilarious looking in the spike versus the past.

They've been given a ~60 PE ratio, for 15%-20% growth and a rather old-fashion boring product. But it's cloud! Recurring revenue! Throw enough of that together with a stock market bubble and you get a 80% jump in the stock in one year.

That's the most plausible argument in favor of Canva getting their crazy valuation, it matches the insanity of Adobe's valuation. It's obvious what happens on the back side of that insanity too.

[JauntyHatAngle]

It does seem like the tech industry has a particular culpability for market valuations not matching actual technical potential.

Cloud was the old (but still functional) blockchain when it comes to buzz words.

[nkkollaw]

I'd rather value Canva 1B than many more Snapchat--which does nothing useful (to cite 1 of them).

It is definitely not a replacement, but people often use Photoshop for touching up photos and create small banners and stuff like that, which Canva does wonderfully and helps you out with templates.

[adventured]

You don't think a communication device used by hundreds of millions of people should be or potentially be worth billions of dollars? There are few things more important to people than communication.

I don't particularly like Snapchat, I do however entirely get why it's valuable. There's room to debate whether it's worth $5 billion or $15 billion, I don't believe there's any room for debate on whether it's worth billions. It has had its market value validated at or above those levels for years now, from VC to public investors. It has maintained a large userbase for years as well.

Snap also has 30-40 times the revenue of Canva, which makes the point about how lucrative those hundreds of millions of users can be.

[nkkollaw]

I think it's a little crazy how much it's valued.

These things come and go. I remember using Yahoo! Messenger...

[fastball]

Snapchat isn't a communication device, it's a communication service. Very easy for consumers to replace with the next fad that comes along, as it costs nothing up front and the opportunity cost to switch to a competitor is almost negligible.