Many of you must have heard about Canva, but have you heard the inspiring story of Melanie Perkins, who founded it.
Let’s look at how.
Meet Melanie Perkins, the CEO and co-founder of Canva. At the age of 14, she started her 1st business, selling handcrafted scarves. At the age of 19, during her college years, she became aware of the difficulties faced by students. Despite ignoring these issues, she recognised a business opportunity and decided to drop out of college in order to deal with them. Melanie has now become an Australian billionaire technology entrepreneur.
About Canva’s founder, Melanie Perkins
Western Australia’s Perkins was born in Perth on May 13, 1987. she is the daughter of a Malaysian engineer and an Australian teacher. Perkins enrolled at the University of Western Australia to pursue studies in psychology, commerce, and communications.
Why inspired Melanie Perkins to start Canva?
During college, while Melanie was working as a private tutor for graphic design students, she noticed that students were struggling with difficulties in learning complex design programmes.
Her entrepreneurial spirit saw a business opportunity here and thought, Why didn’t solve this problem by developing a design platform that didn’t require any technical expertise from individuals?
Melanie started her entrepreneurial journey with her business partner, Cliff Obrecht, and, in 2007, founded their first startup, Fusion Books, that provided drag-and-drop tools for students to design yearbooks. Fusion Books became the largest yearbook company in Australia, expanding to France and New Zealand. The business was a success and remains active today. However, challenges were still there.
Melanie Perkins’ challenges?
Melanie, at the age of 19, dropped out of university to pursue Fusion Books with Cliff Obrecht. However, Perkins and her business partner, Cliff Obrecht, didn’t have enough resources and technical expertise to develop complex design software, so they decided to start with a specific product category and started Fusion Books in her mother’s living room. After that, she turned a high school year book idea into Canva; during her pitching time for Canva, she was rejected over 100 times by local investors in Perth.
What is Canva?
Young founder Perkins launched Canva in 2013 to make design accessible to everyone. With over 100 million active users, Canva is now one of the most popular design tools worldwide. Canva has expanded to provide services in more than 100 languages, with almost 175 million users across 190 countries.
Melanie Perkins: Awards & Achievements
Melanie’s efforts in the IT industry have earned her multiple honours and recognitions.
- In 2020, Forbes listed her as one of the “Top Under 30 of the Decade.”
- Forbes estimated Perkins’ personal net worth at a $9.21 billion (US$6.5bn) as of January 2022.
- In 2020, with a $3.43 billion net worth, she was listed on the Australian Financial Review Rich List.
Melanie Perkins’ entrepreneurial spirit saw a business opportunity, dropped out of college, and got +100 rejections. Despite all these rejections, she built an empire with her US$6.5 billion net worth.
