How Melanie Perkins Built a $40 Billion Design Company

Guy Kawasaki, one of America's renowned marketing specialists and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, once said, "Great companies start because the founders wanted to change the world…not make a fast buck."

Melaine Perkins, with her great vision and success, proves this right. But just like any business, she had to compete against the existing big giants of her field.

With a huge existing competition in the field, many people won’t even dare start a company in the same niche.

But that wasn’t the case with the star of this article. Melanie Perkins' Canva is a design software that is giving tech titans like Microsoft Publisher and Adobe a run for their money. 

Canva: Making Everyone A Designer

Canva, a graphic design platform based in Australia, allows users to create social media visuals, slideshows, banners, documents, and other photorealistic images.

Canva earned A$60 million in June 2020 at a capitalization of A$6 billion, nearly tripling its 2019 valuation. Canva raised $200 million in September 2021 and declared a valuation of $40 billion.

A Teenage Dream That Became a Tech Reality

Melanie Perkins' story started when she and Cliff Obrecht were at University in Perth. 

Canva, as mentioned, is already competing with tech giants like Microsoft and Adobe, but the roots of the billion-dollar company go back to 2006, when the idea first struck Melanie.

Melanie used to supplement her income by teaching design programs to other students. However, students regarded Microsoft and Adobe's systems as "extremely hard," and she believed there had to be a better approach.

She stated in several appearances that students had to spend a whole term memorizing where the keys were, which she thought was absurd. That inspired her to make the future far less complicated than these difficult tools.

So she and Obrecht set about bringing that concept to life.

As Melanie Perkins quotes, "Solve customer problems and make sure that the customer represents a large market, and then you will have a pretty good formula." Canva did just that.

The Start: Smaller Steps, Bigger Ends

With limited resources and no prior industry knowledge, the couple started small, founding Fusion Books, a digital training yearbook design business, to explore their concept.

They created a website where students could participate and create their profiles and articles. The final yearbooks would then be printed and delivered to institutions across Australia.

When asked about her circumstances, she said that her mother's lounge room became her workplace, and her boyfriend joined as her strategic partner, and they began allowing schools to print yearbooks in a very simple manner.

The company was a triumph, and it is still in operation today. However, for Melanie, it was only the beginning of her "crazy, enormous dream" of a one-stop-shop design platform, so she set out to pursue it.

Landing Investors: A Pitch to The Silicon Valley

Melanie earned her first major break a few years later while attending a conference in Perth.

She was invited to San Francisco to propose her idea after a chance meeting with Silicon Valley financier Bill Tai. 

After only a few hours, the famed venture capitalist started associating her with his contacts, apparently impressed.

She added in her interviews that she thought Bill Tai didn't like what she had to offer when discussing her proposal. 

He was always on his mobile, which she assumed indicated he wasn't paying attention to what she was saying about the “direction of publishing."

When Melanie returned home, she realized that he had been introducing her to other potential people.

And that was how Melanie realized that her dream had taken its first root.

Creating a Stir

Melanie quickly learned that forging new ties with Silicon Valley was not easy.

Tai, a skilled kitesurfer, was eager for Melanie and Obrecht to socialize at MaiTai, his one-of-a-kind retreat for financiers and kitesurfers. As a result, she needed to learn the sport quickly.

When she was talking about how her days were at the time, she noted that whenever Tai asked how her business was going, he'd also ask, "How's your kitesurfing?"

When questioned whether she would have participated in the sport under ordinary circumstances, she said no!

But then she explained that she chose to try it since when you don't have any contacts or network, you just have to wiggle your way through.

The corporate world is a struggle and a growth machine. Melanie's early days in her quest were real-life examples of people having to do activities they wouldn't typically do to achieve success.

And the new skill proved fruitful for her. With a rapidly expanding staff of IT engineers, the young couple quickly attracted large backers and began building up Canva's design platform.

The company began to take off in earnest in 2012. Using the help of their tech advisor, Lars Rasmussen (co-founder of Google Maps), Melanie and Obrecht recruited their tech co-founder, Cameron Adams, along with the tech engineer, Dave Hearnden.

The company was oversubscribed months later, towards the end of its first fundraising round. To retain the company on Australian soil, the Australian government matched the first investment of $1.5 million.

Today, Canva has already assisted in creating around 2 billion designs in 190 countries, with celebrities such as Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson lending their support.

The Story of Empowerment and Creation

Only 23 of the world's top 500 firms are led by women, but entrepreneurs like Melanie Perkins show why investors should consider twice before deciding not to invest in women. 

With a total wealth of $6.5 billion, the Canva co-founder, who came up with the concept in college, has become one of the wealthiest self-made women in tech in just eight years.

Canva became one of the largest private digital startups globally, thanks to her strong passion for empowering everyone to design. Melanie Perkins' achievements prove to be the most inspiring startup tale globally. 

The startup that started by making yearbooks in their living room has now created some of the world's most successful and imaginative design software.