With a company evaluation of over $40 billion, Canva Co-Founder & CEO Melanie Perkins’ story exemplifies how unwavering dedication and forward-thinking can turn bold ideas into reality.
By Nichola Marie
‘Working with an incredible team to empower the world to design with Canva’ – reads the LinkedIn bio of Melanie Perkins, Co-Founder & CEO at Canva. A large chunk of the world has indeed been empowered to design thanks to the widely popular online design platform Canva. Globally, Canva reportedly has over 220 million monthly active users in more than 190 countries, speaking over 100 languages. Over 24 million users pay for Canva, and the company churns out more than $2.5 billion annualised revenue on year-over-year basis. Impressive is an understatement!
The woman behind it – 1987-born Australian technology entrepreneur, who owns 18% of the company, and one of the youngest female CEOs of a tech start-up valued at over A$1 billion. With a personal net worth exceeding $5.8 billion, Perkins is also one of Australia’s richest women, ranking 89th on the ‘Forbes’ list of the ‘World’s 100 Most Powerful Women’ and 92nd in ‘Fortune’s’ list of Most Powerful Women.
And to think that the company, now valued at a staggering $26 billion, had its roots in the time the 19-year-old Perkins had an idea to solve a fundamental problem in design software…
Entrepreneur At 14 Born in Perth, Western Australia, the daughter of an Australian-born teacher and a Malaysian engineer of Filipino and Sri Lankan descent, Perkins attended Sacred Heart College. While in high school, she aspired to become a professional figure skater, routinely waking up at 4:30 a.m. to train. She was 14 when she started her first business, selling handmade scarves at shops and markets in Perth. This experience would give her a taste of the “freedom and excitement from building a business” – an experience she would not forget.
Majoring in communications, psychology and commerce at The University of Western Australia, Perkins also privately tutored students in graphic design. Noting the difficulties students experienced in learning design programs such as Adobe Photoshop — often spending entire semesters simply figuring out where the buttons were — she sensed a business opportunity in simplifying the design process. Her plan: To create an online all-in-one design platform that required no technical experience or long tutorials, “where design was not just easy, but intuitive, and collaborative.”
In 2006, aged 19, she dropped out of university to pursue her first business with her boyfriend and later husband, Cliff Obrecht – Fusion Books.
Slow & Steady
Taking the gradual route — given the scarcity of resources and lack of business experience, Perkins and her partner Obrecht started off with a modest pilot run, so to speak, building Fusion Books. Launched in 2007, this was an online platform that enabled students to create and design their school yearbooks using a simple drag-and-drop tool.
Her mother, a teacher who also coordinated school yearbooks, had served as a key inspiration for the platform. Watching the time-consuming process firsthand, Perkins recognised the high level of difficulty involved and identified yearbooks as a niche market with strong potential to test her design platform concept. In fact, her mother’s living room in Duncraig was where Fusion Books began, as Perkins and Obrecht worked to develop the platform whose software featured a library of design templates that users could customise with photos, illustrations, and fonts. As schools came on board, Fusion Books found favour, growing, over the next five years, into Australia’s largest yearbook company.
Dreaming Bigger
As the business took off, Perkins returned to her earlier dream, which had been impractical at the time due to the combination of limited resources and the presence of dominant players: To build a broader design software solution.
Embarking on a fundraising journey, the big leap forward came in 2010 when she chanced to meet Silicon Valley investor Bill Tai at a conference in Perth, where he was judging a start-up competition. Tai was impressed enough by what he heard to invite Perkins to pitch her idea in San Francisco. In an exclusive interview with CNBC, Perkins revealed that she thought the meeting was a failure, given that Tai seemed distracted by his phone and disengaged from the conversation about the future of publishing. In reality, the reason Tai seemed preoccupied was that he was actually reaching out to key contacts to help turn her vision into reality.
Perkins and Obrecht met investors and start-up founders at gatherings hosted by Tai. Eventually, in 2012, after securing a tech advisor in Google Maps Co-Founder Lars Rasmussen, she and Obrecht found a tech Co-Founder in Cameron Adams, an engineer with strong technical know-how, who once worked at Google. Though initially hesitant to join the business due to his focus on launching a start-up aimed at disrupting email, Adams reconsidered and took up Perkins’ offer.
In 2012, following several months of intense effort, Canva secured more investor interest than expected in its first funding round. The company raised $1.6 million from private backers, along with an additional $1.4 million in matching funds from the Australian Government, which saw promise in Melanie’s vision and its potential economic impact.
The following year, the website was launched, allowing users to generate diverse online designs at no cost. Conceptualised by Perkins in 2007, Canva eventually launched in 2013, an online resource hub, free to use, delivering everything from presentation slides to custom logos. The aim: To put the power of design in everyone’s hands. In a single decisive action, Perkins and Co-Founder Obrecht revolutionised the design game, impacting millions of users across the world.
Global Success
Canva’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, combined with a vast collection of templates and design assets, quickly caught on. In just a few months, the platform had drawn in millions of users across the globe. It also secured multiple investment rounds from investors such as Felices, Blackbird Ventures, Sequoia Capital China, and T Rowe Price, among others.
Perkins believes that Canva’s remarkable growth stems from a long-term vision and years of focused, strategic work. At the heart of this success is the platform’s massive community of enthusiastic users, who not only rely on Canva but also actively promote it to their networks — friends, co-workers, and family. This grassroots advocacy has been a powerful catalyst for Canva’s rapid expansion.
A significant contributor to Canva’s growth is its thoughtfully designed product ecosystem. By offering a robust, free version alongside premium and team-oriented plans, the platform appeals to a wide range of users. This inclusive approach ensures value at every level, fostering user loyalty and encouraging organic promotion through a smooth and satisfying experience.
Canva’s growth strategy also leans heavily into virality. According to Perkins, each new feature is crafted with the intent to be shared, maximising visibility and reach.
Looking Forward
Today, with millions of monthly active users, the company has a valuation of over $40 billion. Canva has also been honoured with numerous industry awards, such as Overall Design Collaboration Company of the Year at the 2021 RemoteTech Breakthrough Awards; ranked 3rd on the ‘Forbes’ Cloud 100 list; ranked 4th on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list in 2022; and was recognised as the 10th most innovative company in the world by Fast Company, joining other top companies like SpaceX, Microsoft, and Stripe.
But Perkins isn’t slowing down. As she said in a conversation with Goldman Sachs’ Ryan Nolan, “We want to empower literally every person to design literally everything with every ingredient in every language on every device. And that’s what we’re going to be working towards for the decade to come.”
The company is actively growing its workforce, launching innovative features, and strengthening its position as an essential part of users’ daily routines across the globe. With an expanding range of creative tools and a broad international presence, Canva is reshaping the way people design, work together, and bring ideas to life.
Beyond The Boardroom
A strong voice for gender equity in the tech industry, she serves as a role model for women pursuing their own ventures. Under her guidance, Canva has embraced a mission-driven approach, supporting social good by offering free access to its tools for nonprofits and educational organisations.
Through its 1% Pledge, Canva contributes 1% of its product, time, profit, and equity to global causes. This initiative is championed by Perkins and Co-Founder Obrecht, who have also committed 30% of their personal equity in Canva to help eradicate extreme poverty.
Among their more impactful efforts is the provision of direct cash transfers to individuals in Malawi, enabling access to essential needs such as healthcare, food, and education. As Perkins notes, “Cash gives people the freedom to choose what matters most to them,” emphasising the importance of autonomy in driving meaningful change. As Canva continues to grow, the company hopes to use its success to fight poverty on a global scale, launching a $30 million pilot programme to uplift communities.
Did you know?
Obrecht proposed to Perkins while on a holiday in Turkey’s Cappadocia region in 2019. Worth of the engagement ring: $30. They married in 2021 on Rottnest Island. They are said to reside in Sydney, living in a modest home in Surry Hills, a trendy innercity suburb known for its design scene.
