After a great head start, Canvaspop almost went bankrupt from the team spreading itself too thin. Coming back from the brink required five years of hard work, but it ended in a $30 million exit. Speaking with TechExit.io, Canvaspop Co-Founder & CEO Nazim Ahmed shared the 4 decisions that transformed Canvaspop —and why he gets frustrated with people who balk at “small” 8-figure exits.
Key takeaways:
- In your first growth phase, keep your focus strong—don’t spread yourself too thin across multiple projects.
- As you scale, bring discipline first around your growth plans and leadership structure.
- Canadian entrepreneurs should not be afraid of racking up an 8-figure exit to set themselves up with the financial security, network, and experience to build a significant, meaningful, billion-dollar company the second time around.
Catch Nazim speaking at TechExit.io in Vancouver next Wednesday, May 8th!
By 2016, Canvaspop had lost its pop.
After its founding in 2009, the first-move leader in physically printing digital photos had fallen behind more well-funded competitors. Co-founder and CEO Nazim Ahmed saw the writing on the wall if he didn’t act quickly—the company was staring toward bankruptcy.
Fast forward five years, and the company exited to Circle Graphics for $30 million.
Speaking with TechExit.io, Nazim shared more about the successes and missteps on his journey to a successful sale.
1. Recognizing the problem
When Nazim and his team launched Canvaspop, its novel technology allowed people to print digital photos. At the time, digital photo sharing was starting to take off on Facebook and Instagram would soon be founded, creating a perfect niche for the company.
But as the company started to grow, the team lost some of its focus.
“When we hit our growth phase, we started spreading ourselves a little bit too thin across many different projects,” said Nazim. “Competitors started catching up and we lost that head start.”
Switching between building multiple products created a bad situation—Nazim realized the company was beginning to seriously falter.
2. Pulling back from the brink with discipline
By 2016, Nazim realized he had to refocus or risk bankruptcy. Looking back on the experience, he calls it his era of “discipline.”
In particular, Nazim took the organization through BDC’s Growth Driver Program in order to bring “discipline” to their work. The program focuses on three core elements:
- Creating a multi-year growth outlook based on your organization’s circumstances;
- Executive and CEO guidance to help with decision making and prioritization, and;
- Strengthening overall management skills to ensure vision alignment and accountability flows from leadership through to individual contributors.
For Canvaspop in particular, this meant paring back to the initial core product and rebuilding from there.
3. Bringing creativity back with structure
In 2017, the company raised $3 million in VC funding—it was previously bootstrapped—to fuel growth. For the next two years, Nazim rebuilt, focusing on “reigniting growth” for the core product before thinking about additional offerings.
In mid-2018, Nazim built out a technology offering that would help Canvaspop’s business operations; indeed, Canvaspop became the new “company’s” first customer. He said he took inspiration from Amazon for this structure, which built out AWS first for its own needs but spun out the company into its own behemoth.
“We created technology that Canvaspop could use to create a differentiated product in the market,” said Nazim. “I always treated Canvaspop as my first customer for this product.”
At first blush, this looked like repeating the same mistake twice; spreading the team too thin and managing multiple products. But this time he was strategic about it—rather than keeping everything under one roof, he separated out each product into its own business unit with dedicated teams, P&Ls, and go-to-market approaches.
“I separated every single solitary expense for the team and the resources that were put into the technology that powered some of those new products,” said Nazim.
4. Building relationships rather than looking for a buyer
From 2018 to 2021, Nazim focused on growing Canvaspop, which included both innovative product development but also deepening customer relationships. Circle Graphics, the company that ultimately acquired Canvaspop, started as a supplier. Over the years, he’d spoken with the Circle Graphics team multiple times and built a relationship with their CEO.
During one conversation, Circle Graphics’ CEO mentioned he saw Canvaspop as a great plug-in for the company’s manufacturing operations. Sharing candidly, Nazim said he had a vision for Canvaspop that included not just physical manufacturing but also a technology play.
To Nazim’s surprise, “the CEO said, ‘Why don’t you just do that full time—and we’ll purchase Canvaspop?’”
That conversation continued and ultimately became an acquisition, closing in July 2021. Nazim said his growth and discipline efforts paid off in the sense that Canvaspop’s direct to consumer e-commerce business was clean and separate from its technology products, making a split relatively easy. At the same time, both companies made a commitment to use each other’s services where appropriate, so the relationship would continue into the future.
“[The CEO of Circle Graphics] knew what his business was,” said Nazim. “And then I knew that my interest lied in this new piece of tech that we built … it was a win-win scenario from an extremely healthy relationship built over a few years.”
Don’t balk at the first win
Nazim had ambitions to build a global company, but realized early on that Canvaspop likely didn’t have the structural capability to be that business; indeed, he noted that many more well-funded competitors failed to grow into their valuations. He still has those ambitions and is now building remx.xyz, a web3 startup that enables creators to use digital collectibles as lead-gen magnets, then sell physical versions of the same creation.
Despite Canvaspop not being his global success story, he’s grateful for the experience—and he wants other Canadian entrepreneurs to stop balking at the idea of a small exit first.
“We need to be ambitious and we need to grow global companies,” said Nazim. “However, sometimes your first company is a first-win stepping stone to something bigger. Now I’m able to grow this company in a much better financial position, so that’s better for the business. And then my network is very strong, so I’m using that as an opportunity to build something bigger.”