Today is a big day for all of us at Canvas GFX as we officially launch our brand new visual communication and collaboration solution, Canvas Envision, along with our new website.
As with all product launches, the introduction of Canvas Envision is both a culmination and a first step: The culmination of a tremendous amount of hard work, and the first step of a journey filled with excitement and opportunity.
I would like to thank every one of my team for working flat-out to make this happen. Start-up life is rarely less than hectic and I’m proud of the team’s commitment and stamina. I must also thank our investors, whose support for our vision has enabled us to bring it into reality.
Just as importantly, I would like to thank the customers who have been such an integral part of this process, and who have become true partners as a result of it. More about them in a moment.
If you look around the new site you’ll see one of our recurring themes is that Envision has been developed to “empower everyone” to communicate, share, and understand complex information, whatever their background or role.
So, what do we mean by that? Well, based on what our customers told us, we established the two fundamental tenets which led to today’s launch of Canvas Envision.
The first was that the number of people within manufacturing-based organizations who need or would benefit from the ability to visualize 3D CAD models far exceeded the number of people who were currently able to do so.
This includes people whose job it is to create marketing collateral, sales materials, executive presentations, maintenance documents, installation instructions, work instructions, RFPs, spec sheets, and other forms of predominantly visual communication. Direct access to those 3D models would make their lives easier, in turn benefiting the business through efficiencies born of greater autonomy.
The second tenet was that if the far, far broader audience for all of this documentation — across the organization and out into the ecosystem — was able to interact and collaborate with these visual assets then these benefits would extend and multiply.
So this is where Canvas Envision slots into the market. A uniquely powerful combination of capability and ease of use, of technical and graphic functionality, of creativity and collaboration. A product with a breadth of applicability which we don’t yet understand. Our customers are uncovering new use cases all the time.
But I would say that, right?
Whenever you’re launching a product to market, you really need two things. First, you need it to do what you say it can do. And second, you need third party validation that it does what you say it can do.
One of our launch customers for Envision is the AI-powered drone manufacturer, Anduril. Founded by the inventor of Occulus Rift in 2017, Anduril was recently valued at $4.6bn. This is a company that is fundamentally restructuring the way that defense manufacturing is done. They treat hardware like software. They experiment, they learn fast, and they act decisively on what they learn.
As one of their founders told me recently, the core of their success is the ability to get to market faster than anyone else.
By cutting the time it takes them to create essential documentation, Envision supports them in that aim. Here’s what they say about it:
“You really don’t have any competitor for what Envision does. The amount of power this unlocks for us as a business is unbelievable.”
For us that’s a huge statement. We aim to deliver innovation – in both technology and workflow – that powers other innovators.
This is just the first release of Envision and the next two are coming fast down the pipe. A host of additional functions and capabilities are imminent. We intend to create so much possibility that the product really just asks the users the question: “What do you Envision?”
