Melanie Perkins, the visionary behind Canva, one of the world’s top startups, exemplifies resilience as a successful female entrepreneur who overcame numerous investor rejections.
At just 35 years old, Melanie Perkins has already made a significant impact. Despite Canva being less than a decade old, she has graced the covers of Forbes and Fortune. Forbes dubbed her the ‘Heroine of the Billion Dollar Startup Event,’ while Fortune recognized her as the founder of the world’s most valuable female-led startup.
According to Fortune magazine, Melanie Perkins’ startup is valued at $26 billion, while Forbes estimates it at $40 billion. A few years ago, Forbes valued her startup at $3.2 billion. The company has raised 14 rounds of funding so far.
Melanie and her co-founder, who is also her husband, have a combined net worth of over $8 billion. This makes Melanie a ‘young millionaire.’ She achieved all this from scratch and did not give up despite facing over a hundred rejections when seeking funding for her new company.
Table of Contents
- The Canva Journey
- Seed of Success
- First Company of Melanie Perkins
- From Down Under to Global Success
- Adventure game
- Turning Point of Business
- Expanding Horizons
- Evalution of Canva
- Canva’s Philanthropy and Expansion
The Canva Journey
Melanie Perkins’ inspiring success story revolves around Canva. Today, it’s hard to find anyone unfamiliar with Canva and its web design services. By simplifying graphic design creation online, Canva has risen to challenge industry giants like Microsoft, Google, and Adobe. In less than a decade, Canva has attracted users worldwide and is now focused on securing paying business customers. Most importantly, Canva is a profitable startup with a healthy cash balance, not solely reliant on external funding like many other startups.
Seed of Success
How did Canva achieve such tremendous success? The answer lies in the dream and determination of its co-founder, Melanie Perkins. Hailing from Perth, Australia, Melanie’s entrepreneurial journey began at the age of 17. It was then that she met her future husband, Cliff Obrecht, who was 19 at the time. Together, they founded Canva in 2013.
Canva is actually Melanie’s second venture. Before Canva, she started a company called ‘Fusion Books,’ driven by the same motivation: to simplify web design. Melanie’s interest and skills in web design led her to help fellow students with their projects during college. It was during this time that she realized the existing software tools were not user-friendly. While social media made it easy to share ideas, creating designs and graphics was still a challenge. This realization fueled her passion to create tools that would make design accessible to everyone.
First Company of Melanie Perkins
As the first company in the market, Microsoft software and Adobe devices were complicated and expensive. Melanie Perkins wanted to provide a simple alternative, which became the seed for Canva. However, she did not start the company immediately. Coming from a middle-class family, she lacked the financial resources to start a new company.
Therefore, as a first step to implement her idea, she started Fusion Books in 2011, offering yearbook creation services for schools. The company was successful, with over 400 schools using its service at one point. However, Melanie realized there was limited growth potential in this segment. She believed that starting a full-fledged web design company would lead to greater growth.
From Down Under to Global Success
Melanie Perkins always aimed to create a world-class company, embodying the mantra ‘Ask bigger and bigger.’ Alongside her boyfriend, she sought funding for their startup. Without hesitation, Melanie moved from Australia to San Francisco to raise funds. Despite spending months in her brother’s room and meeting with numerous venture investors, she faced over a hundred rejections. Investors were hesitant due to various reasons, including the founders’ relationship, the company’s Australian base, and their lack of technical background. However, Melanie’s determination eventually led to the success of Canva.
“It’s highly likely that many young founders would feel disheartened by facing so many rejections. However, Melanie Perkins persevered. Realizing that fundraising in the US from Australia was challenging, help came from an unexpected direction due to a change in their approach.”
Adventure game
Melanie Perkins and her partner discovered that many investors were gathering near Australia. They decided to meet the group and ask for funds. Knowing the investors were fans of kitesurfing, they quickly trained in the sport and approached the group as fellow enthusiasts. Through this connection, they met Rick Baker, who had started a Sydney-based venture capital firm. Impressed by their idea, Baker offered to fund their venture, suggesting a minor change to the company’s name from “Canvas Sep” to “Canva” and advising them to add a tech-savvy co-founder.
Turning Point of Business
This is how Canva’s success story began. After an investor insisted on having a successful service, Melanie Perkins dedicated a year to developing the core service for Canva. Launched with the aim of simplifying graphic design, Canva allows users to create anything from small logos to detailed infographics without needing to learn new software. The timing of Canva’s debut was impeccable, coinciding with the rise of social media platforms like Instagram in the 2010s, which required easily shareable designs with comments.
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Expanding Horizons
Canva makes it easy to create visual content, including Facebook ads, which laid the foundation for its success. To maintain this momentum, Melanie Perkins continued to introduce advanced features and expanded Canva internationally, moving beyond the Australian market. She also increased the number of employees to support this growth.
Evalution of Canva
Canva continues to evolve, initially attracting individual users and small businesses with its free basic service and paid additional features. This growth has drawn the attention of investors and impressed trade magazines. Melanie Perkins, aiming for further growth, developed graphics services that could compete with enterprise software from Microsoft and Adobe. She focused on attracting not only small companies but also larger commercial enterprises, aiming to increase the number of paying customers.
Canva’s Philanthropy and Expansion
Despite having a personal net worth exceeding $8 billion, Melanie Perkins and her partner have pledged to donate 30 percent of it through the Canva Foundation. Last year, Canva launched a video editing service, and now they have introduced Canva Docs as an alternative to Google Docs. Canva aims to become a go-to service for businesses, a challenging goal that Melanie and her team are confidently working towards.
