Canva, a popular visual design tool, went viral in 2015 due to its simplified, template-based approach to graphic design and user-friendly interface. It quickly became a formidable competitor to Adobe and Microsoft, revolutionizing graphic creation. 

Today, Canva is valued at approximately $26B, with over 170M users and generating $2.3B in annual revenue. In this article, we will discuss how this Australian company, founded by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams, disrupted content creation and made graphic design accessible to everyone. 

Seeds of Innovation: How Melanie Perkins Developed a Game-Changing Idea

To understand why Canva became such a disrupter, we have to peep into the background and early days of its founder, Melanie Perkins, a Perth, Australia-based millennial of Sri Lankan descent. 

Entrepreneurship and technology were ingrained in Melanie early on, with her father being a professional engineer. By the age of fourteen, she launched her first business, selling handmade scarves in various shops and markets across Perth. 

After high school, Perkins enrolled at The University of Western Australia, majoring in communications, psychology, and commerce. In 2006, she also worked as a private tutor for students learning graphic design. 

She observed firsthand the challenges students faced with design software like Adobe Photoshop, often requiring a full semester just to grasp the basic functionalities of these intricate programs.

Recognizing a business opportunity to simplify the design process, Perkins envisioned a platform that wouldn’t demand technical expertise. At the age of 19, she decided to leave university to co-found her first venture, Fusion Books, with Cliff Obrecht, whom she met at University. 

Finding Fusion Books: The Foundational Startup That Preceeded Canva

Fusion Books, the first venture by Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, was their initial step toward simplifying design. This application aimed at students and enabled them to create their yearbooks by using drag-and-drop visual elements and templates. 

The venture kicked off in Perkins's mother’s living room in Duncraig, where Obrecht cold-called schools to acquire new clients for Fusion Books. 

They created an 80-page deck of how this application would look and used that to secure a $50,000 loan from friends and family. They further pitched this idea to software developer companies, and after getting rejected by almost all Australian software developers, they finally convinced one company, called InDepth, to work with them.

Fusion Books eventually launched after six months and was an instant hit! It gathered 16 schools as customers in the first year itself. Their families often assisted with the yearbook printing process.

Over a span of five years, Fusion Books emerged as Australia's largest yearbook provider, extending its reach into markets in France and New Zealand.

Arriving at Canva

After having tested their idea with Fusion Books for over five years, Perkins and Obrecht had gathered sufficient proof of concept and now wanted to scale things up. 

In 2011, Bill Tai, a notable investor, visited Perth to judge a start-up competition. The couple spoke to Bill for a few minutes and cleared their intentions of taking over Adobe and Microsoft. 

They got a chance to fly to Silicon Valley for an hour-long lunch with Tai. During lunch, Perkins and Obrecht pitched their preliminary idea for Canva to Tai and other venture capitalists, including Rick Baker from Blackbird Ventures. 

Although they did not secure funding that evening, they became regular attendees at networking events hosted by Tai for entrepreneurs and investors, some held in Silicon Valley. 

At one of these events, they met Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps, who expressed interest in their concept but advised them to halt progress until they found a technology team with the necessary expertise.

So, Melanie spent the next three months finding investors and a programmer who would help her develop her vision, but the rejections kept piling up. Even when there was any engineer that Melanie found, Rasmussen kept rejecting them. 

While Perkins was networking and trying to find a team that would help them build Canva, Obrecht was steadily working on Fusion Books, successfully expanding it beyond Australia. 

Securing First Investment

In 2012, Perkins had a breakthrough when Bill Tai, an avid kite surfer, invited her and Obrecht to his kite surfing and startup conference, MaiTai, in Maui.

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After a few days at the conference, she persuaded Tai to let her pitch Canva to all the attending investors. Once he agreed, they spent the night rehearsing their presentation. The outcome of their pitch was transformative, attracting multiple investors who showed interest and led to increased funding.

The search for a technical team also progressed positively when Perkins recruited Cameron Adams as the technical co-founder and found an accomplished developer named Dave Herndon. 

By the end of 2013, Canva had successfully raised $1.6 million from angel investors, including Bill Tai and Lars Rasmussen, along with venture capital firms such as Blackbird, Matrix, and InterWest Partners. 

Additionally, they received a grant of $1.4 million from the Australian government, pushing their total seed funding to over $3 million.

Launching Canva

In August 2013, after years of developing their first version, Canva was finally ready for launch, and growth skyrocketed—reaching 1M users in 2014 and 6 million in 2015. By 2023, the user count had climbed to 125M. 

Today, Perkins and her partner Cliff have a combined worth exceeding $7B. This success story hinged on four crucial elements: an outstanding concept that addressed user needs, the foresight to build Fusion Books as a proof of concept, the patience to find the right technical talent to create the product, and the bravery to travel to Silicon Valley, pitch their idea, and pursue their dreams. 

Every entrepreneur aspiring to establish a successful business can draw valuable lessons from this narrative.

Final Thoughts

Canva's story is one of resilience and unwavering belief in an idea. Despite facing countless rejections from investors who doubted her because she wasn’t from Caltech or MIT and was based in Australia, Melanie remained determined to create something extraordinary.

Melanie could have easily lived a comfortable life in Australia as her yearbook business was doing just fine, but she was driven by something greater than comfort and wealth. She found a gap in the industry and believed in her vision.

It was also very smart of Perkins and Cliff to develop a solid proof of concept that also gave them a cushion of steady revenue while they hustled in Silicon Valley. Another great move was to seek mentorship from experienced investors and apply their feedback. 

Finally, giving Cameron Adams the co-founder status and significant equity gave Canva a strong tech advantage and Cameran skin in the game. When you talk about the product, Canva is a flawless and ground-breaking design tool that has mastered simplicity in product design and user interface. 

Today, Canva is evolving in every way and has even integrated video editing, AI, and many other features into it. That simply proves the entrepreneurship and team-building skills, and the laser-sharp vision of its co-founders.