Interview: Melanie Perkins, Canva
This interview is a supporting my book ‘She’s Building a Robot’.
I’m a happy customer of Canva, including my book cover, business cards and more and proud to say that three people who came through Pollenizer (Georgia, Zach and Sam) are all doing great in the Canva team.
A huge thanks to Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva for supporting my book by providing this interview. Melanie also has a great blog including this awesome post sharing more lessons learned.
What is your name, title and company?
Melanie Perkins, CEO and co-founder of Canva.
How old were you when you first started working in technology and how did it happen?
I came up with the idea for Canva when I was studying at university. I was tutoring other students in how to use the existing design software suite, but noticed it took a long time for students to feel remotely confident, even when designing something simple. I realised the future of design was going to be simpler, online and collaborative and that’s when the idea of Canva occurred to me. My boyfriend, Cliff, and I became my business partner and we launched our first business together to test the idea when I was 19. Fusion Books is a software platform that students used to design their school yearbooks. We started niche to prove our new approach to design was possible and needed. After it kept growing for a few years we decided we were ready to broaden it out and tackle the whole design space and launched Canva.
Did you face any challenges being a woman in tech and how did you overcome them?
I think everyone wanting to achieve big goals will face challenges, it’s important just to keep on persevering. Starting a startup is filled with challenges. There are hundreds, if not thousands of rejections. Rejections from investors, rejections from potential team members, rejections from early customers. To build a startup, you have to run against the grain for years.
At university, I learnt about the ‘locus of control’: a person’s belief about how much they can control the events around them: do you take control of the things you can control, or do you blame external factors for your success or failure. I think this has really shaped the way I look at the world, I spend all of my time improving the things that I can change and then don’t spend time worrying about the things that I can’t affect.
What is your favourite thing about working in tech?
Love working on huge challenges — the ability to work on a product that helps millions of people around the world achieve their goals is incredible. It’s also awesome working with really smart, talented and motivated people every day! I feel incredibly lucky getting to do my job every day.
What is one bit of advice you’d give young women thinking about working in tech?
Just get started! If you are new to coding — go online and start learning, there’s lots of great resources you can use like Code Academy. Start to tackle a pet project like creating a website, and you can get more and more complex from there, learning as you go.
Thanks again Melanie.
You can read more good blog posts and videos here;
And come and support the book here;
