Meet: Melanie Perkins

Context

Canva is a free-to-use online design platform that makes design accessible to all, whether for logos, flyers, presentations, or other projects.

• Founded in Australia on January 1, 2013

• In its first year, Canva had more than 750,000 users

• As of today, Canva has over 135 million active monthly users

• The company’s valuation is $39 billion (October 2023)

Melanie Perkins’s story

The idea of Canva began to build in her mind back in 2006 at the university. While she spent her free time teaching design programs to other students, she became frustrated with the unnecessarily complex process of the existing design tools.

She recalls: "People would have to spend an entire semester learning where the buttons were, and that seemed completely ridiculous.” So, 19-year-old Melanie, together with her boyfriend at the time (today her husband), created a simple school yearbook design tool to test out their idea.

They used her mum’s living room as an office and started enabling schools to create their own yearbooks with simple tools. Once the school had its design, Melanie would physically print it and ship it all over Australia.

That was the beginning of Canva.

The young couple had an ambitious goal: To take over the entire design ecosystem, integrate it into one page, and then make it accessible to the whole world. With this vision, Melanie and Cliff pitched (and were rejected) to over 100 investors.

At one point, one investor was interested, but he told the couple they needed a technical co-founder. That investor introduced them to Lars Rasmussen (the co-founder of Google Maps), who helped them through a long and frustrating year-long process of screening and selecting a CTO for Canva. All that patience paid off. Cameron Adams, Canva's CTO, has proven himself to be an excellent choice over the years.

Market differentiation

It was a market that new companies had not touched for a long time. Some big players like Adobe ruled it, and Melanie and Cliff had this vision to take over this market and change it. As one of Canva's early investors recalls: "I think, really, what attracted us to the founders was this very clear vision of what Canva was going to be."

Another differentiation was that when the couple pitched to Silicon Valley investors, they personalized their decks up to a weird level. If you Google today "bizarre pitch deck", you'll find Canva's deck in the number one search result.

Career advice

1. Expect more from yourself than others expect from you: “I think I’ve always put a lot of pressure on myself… So while the expectations around our company and what we’re expected to do is sort of increasing, that’s nothing on what I've got on myself.”

2. Be willing to put in hard work: “It’s hard work, but it’s hard for absolutely everyone... It takes a lot of time and energy and effort... The other thing it’s really important to know is that it’s possible… If you work hard enough, eventually you can get there.”

If you want to watch a short coverage of Melanie Perkins from CNBC, check it out here.

A book recommended by Melanie: ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’. If you’re interested in exploring it, check it out here.

Until the next one,

– Steve