Affinity

Affinity is the suite of professional creative software (Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher) built by Serif, a UK software company that had been making design tools since 1987. When Adobe switched from one-time purchases to Creative Cloud subscriptions in 2013, Ashley Hewson and the Serif team saw an opportunity: release a one-time purchase alternative that matched Adobe's quality at a fraction of the price. Affinity Designer launched in 2014, Photo in 2015, Publisher in 2019. Affinity grew to £31M in annual revenue with 53% profit margins and over 3 million professional users, funded entirely by customer sales. The business ran with extraordinary efficiency: no paid advertising, no VC board, no growth-at-all-costs pressure — just exceptional software that spread through professional design communities via word of mouth. In March 2024, Canva acquired Affinity for approximately A$580M (~£300M), giving Serif's founders one of the cleanest bootstrapped exits in creative software history.