Canva: How Melanie Perkins Built a $40 Billion Design Empire
Table of Contents
1. The Lightbulb Moment (Simplifying Design)
2. Canva’s Early Success
3. Meeting Bill Tai
4. Securing Funding & Tech Talent
5. Wrapping Up Canva’s Success Story: Vision to Reality
Melanie Perkins, 36, is the founder and CEO of the wildly successful design tool Canva. Likely, you’ve heard of it.
If you need to create a quick brochure, social media post, or even infographic, you don’t have to hire someone, or even invest time into upskilling to learn complex design apps — you can just use Canva.
In 2021, Canva was valued at $40 billion and now has a huge user base of 170 million active monthly users worldwide.
But things weren’t always all smooth for Perkins. She was only 19 years old, with no tech know-how and zero financing. She wasn’t prepared to compete with giants like Adobe and Microsoft, so Perkins had to start from a smaller scale.
Perkins decided to focus on Australia’s market for high school yearbooks.
Read on to learn how she conceived this successful idea, hear about the challenges that she faced, and how she transformed her company into the giant it is today. Her story really shows that no matter how small you start, success truly is possible.
The Lightbulb Moment (Simplifying Design)
Back in 2006, Mel Perkins used to teach design part-time at the Design University of Western Australia. While teaching, she noticed how frustratingly complex it was to create simple visuals.
Her teaching job gave her an outsider’s perspective on how steep the graphic design learning curve was.
You had to have Adobe Photoshop on your computer; for newbies, all those buttons and settings could be overwhelming. And that’s not even considering the design side of things.
Everything was done offline back then. If you were collaborating with a team or needed approval on a project, you’d save the file, email it to your boss, and wait for their feedback.
Melanie Perkins had this lightbulb moment: Why can’t designing be as easy as working on Google Docs, where everything’s online, and multiple people can edit in real-time from anywhere?
She saw the potential for convenience there. But she also knew she was stepping into a ring dominated by big players like Adobe, Google, and Microsoft.
Rather than taking on the whole industry at once, she decided to start small. Her idea was to create a tool specifically for designing yearbooks.
Why yearbooks? Her mum was a teacher, so she understood how much effort teachers put into those yearbooks. Plus, teachers often don’t have design experience but are still expected to make professional-looking yearbooks.
Her plan was to offer a web app for free yearbook design and charge users for printing the final product. That’s how Canva kicked off.
Back in those early days, they weren’t calling it Canva just yet. The business started as Fusion Books and then evolved into Canvas Chef.
But when they settled on “Canvas Chef,” Clifford Obrecht, Perkin’s then-boyfriend, now husband, and Canva’s co-founder, wasn’t a fan at all. Then a French engineer pointed out that “canvas” is pronounced “canva” in French, and that’s how they ended up with the name Canva.
Canva’s Early Success
Melanie Perkins and her boyfriend Clifford borrowed fifty grand from friends and family. They also received five grand from the government for their marketing budget. With their funds in hand, they started looking for a software development company to bring their idea to life.
What’s impressive is that Melanie had this detailed 80-page plan outlining precisely what the software should do. She even sketched out how each page should look and what each button should do. However, as happens in startups, the project ballooned to five times its original size during development. It took about six months to build their first version.
While the program was in the works, they struck a deal with Fuji Xerox to use their hefty printers. Fuji Xerox saw the potential in this project, so they provided the printers as long as Melanie and Clifford covered the ink costs.
Finally, they launched, and within a year, they had 16 schools using their yearbook design software. By year two, that number grew to 50 schools, and by year three, they had 100 schools onboard.
Meeting Bill Tai
The yearbook business was already doing pretty well, but Melanie Perkins knew it was just the beginning of something bigger. That’s when she met Bill Tai. Bill’s a venture capitalist from Silicon Valley and has made some big investments in Zoom and Wish Shopping.
When Melanie heard him talk, it got her thinking about startups. Running a business is good, but startups are shaking things up. Melanie Perkins, a true introvert, said in the ‘How I Built This’ episode that she pushes past her introversion when she has a goal.
After the conference, she gathered her courage and talked to Bill about her idea, and he was like, ‘If you’re ever in San Francisco, let’s meet up.’
She knew it was a big deal, so she messaged Bill, ‘Hey, I’ll be in Silicon Valley, wanna catch up?’ She kept it casual, even though meeting Bill was the main reason for her trip. Bill said yes, so Melanie flew over, stayed with her brother, and planned to sort things out in two weeks.
So, she got to work on her idea. Her business plan wasn’t a PowerPoint presentation; she actually printed it out. She joked about how uncool that seemed nowadays. The title of her pitch was “The Future of Publishing,” and she really made it happen.
When she pitched to Bill Tai, she felt a bit down because he seemed more focused on his phone than her pitch. But it turns out he was lining up a tech team for her project.
He introduced her to Lars Rasmussen, a Google Maps co-founder who became one of her first advisors. The good news was Lars was interested in investing, but he wanted Melanie to find a solid tech team first.
Securing Funding & Tech Talent
Melanie Perkins pitched to everyone she met, trying to rope in developers for her tech team. Unfortunately, after three months, she hadn’t found anyone.
It left her feeling pretty down as she flew back to Australia, reflecting on her trip where the only achievement she could think of was just surviving it.
Her boyfriend Clifford was holding down the fort back home, running their yearbook printing business, which made her feel like she wasn’t pulling her weight.
But then she got another shot. Bill Tai, who’s into kitesurfing, had this kitesurfing event and startup conference in Maui. He invited Melanie, even though she knew nothing about kitesurfing. Still, she said, “Sure, I love it!” and took lessons with Clifford.
They saw this as their chance to meet potential investors, so they asked to pitch their idea at an event the next day. They spent all night prepping and it paid off — they got a lot of interest, though no commitments or checks just yet.
After Maui, they headed back to San Francisco for round two. They kept pitching, refining their pitch deck with each objection they faced. Melanie said the rejections forced them to really know their product inside out.
Driven by her confidence in their idea, she pitched to over a hundred investors in a year. She believed in the future of online design without a doubt.
The main issue with investors was not having a tech team. But things finally fell into place when Lars Erasmus, their advisor, sent Cameron Adams their way. Cameron loved their idea and joined them, bringing the needed tech expertise.
They were set to disrupt the industry with Melanie’s design skills, Clifford’s business savvy, and now Cameron on board. Dave Burson joined, too, completing their dream team.
Melanie even included some funny pics from Dave’s Facebook in her pitch, which sealed the deal.
Once these guys were on board, investing in Canva was a no-brainer, and funding came pouring in — almost $3 million after a year of hustling and facing rejection.
Wrapping Up Canva’s Success Story: Vision to Reality
After putting in years of work on their V1 Canva, they were finally ready to launch, and their growth took off like wildfire. They hit one million users in 2014 and six million users in 2015. By 2023, they reached an impressive 125 million users.
Perkins and Clifford Obrecht weren’t programmers, didn’t come from wealthy families, lacked connections, and weren’t based in the US. They simply recognized a need that had to be met.
Today, Perkins and her partner Cliff are worth more than 8 billion dollars. None of this would have been possible without four key ingredients:
- A solid concept that addressed user needs
- The vision to prioritize Fusion Books early on to validate their ideas
- The patience to wait for the right tech talent to join and develop the product.
- The courage to pitch in Silicon Valley and pursue their dreams.
Every entrepreneur aspiring to build a successful business should draw valuable lessons from Melanie Perkins’s success story.
