This is another in my white paper audio series where I introduce you to a business and it’s Founder. I’m super keen one day for Melanie Perkins the Founder and CEO of Canva to be a guest on this show – she is super busy, maybe one day she’ll be with us – meanwhile here is her story …
You can listen to the full interview on iTunes click here.
You can listen to the full interview on Stitcher click here.
The full transcript is here.
Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams launched Canva in 2013.
Starting from her mum’s living room, Melanie has overcome countless setbacks and rejections, has never ever given up, and now Canva has become the quintessential success story in Australia.
Canva is a company now worth an incredible $458 million with more than 10 million users across 179 countries.
Canva makes it possible for anyone to log on and start making visually striking images.
When did it all start?
When she was 19 and studying her communications degree, Melanie was frustrated with the length of time it took to do simple graphic design tasks, like creating a marketing brochure.
“I was giving other students lessons in these programs outside of class and found myself writing long instruction manuals to do the simplest things. It seemed insane to me that it took 22 clicks to export a high quality document,”
It was around the time Facebook was taking off and Melanie noticed the ease with which everybody was jumping online and using the social network without any instructions.
Melanie knew that everyone has a little bit of an artistic streak inside them. The trouble was, the tools to bring that out were either too expensive or too clunky to learn. So she did what every good entrepreneur does.
She made a product that took the complex and made it simple. Her idea was an easy online tool for people to design their own graphics and images.
Instead of taking on the entire design world as a 19-year-old universitystudent, Melanie decided to tackle a smaller problem first by developing an online design platform for the School Yearbook market, Fusion Books.
Within five years it became Australia’s largest yearbook publisher, expanding to France and New Zealand.
To go on and later launch Canva, Melanie needed investment and a tech team. Finding the right people for both took nearly 3 years.
She revised the pitch deck after every meeting, more than 100 times in one year, to answer the questions or fix the reason for rejection each time.
She just kept going. Melanie said “The normal thing to do after your 100th, 80th or even 20th ‘no’ would be to stop, but you just have to persevere.”
And persevere she did – getting two big investors Bill Tai from Perth and later Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen who became instrumental in Canva’s success.
“I’ve never met a start-up that’s had overnight success,” Melanie said.
It was three years between meeting their first investor and actually landing the investment.
Canva has been 10 years in the making with many trials and tribulations.
Melanie says they are really only just getting started.
From the outside it could look as though Canva is fairly well developed. But Melanie says they have only achieved 1% of what they plan to do. Ten million users sounds like a lot, but that’s only 0.03% of the internet using population.
What a brilliant startup story!
Melanie is quite vocal in the lessons she has learned along the way – here are her 5 pieces of advice:
One: Solve a real problem that many people experience.
Two: Go niche before you go wide. She tested the idea for Canva with the Fusion Books, which was the idea of Canva but for the very niche high school yearbooks market.
Three: Hire and work with the very best people you can.
Four: Focus on the projects and tasks that are going to have the biggest impact.
Five: Just get started! Take Action
Great advice!
I recently met Melanie at the launch of a terrific movie ‘The New Hustle’.
She is one of the nicest people and I am working to have her on my podcast. As you can imagine she is a busy woman! I’ll keep trying. Meanwhile we can learn form her experience and those 5 pieces of Melanie wisdom.
https://www.thenewhustlemovie.com/
It is a feature-length documentary that follows the personal journey of three of Australia’s most successful startups.
I can highly recommend it.
The Canva story is one of the 3 success stories
Thanks Melanie and thank you Canva for making all our lives easier. If you haven’t tried Canva, check it out www.canva.com
Thanks for listening and if you are thinking about starting your own business I’ve written a book called “So You Want to start a business” and you can grab a generous excerpt and when you leave your name and email we will send you the extract and keep you up to date with publication date.
Remember: Ideas without action…. Well they are just that … ideas
Every time I think about how many rejections Melanie Perkins faced before she managed to secure funding and the people she needed to work with, I am inspired to keep taking action and I trust that listening to this you might be too
What action are you inspired to take today?
My guess is that you are here because you are curious about what it might be like to start a business?
Perhaps you’ve been wondering if you have what it takes? If your idea will work or even how much it actually costs to build a successful business?
I’ve written a book that can answer pretty much all your questions “So You Want to Start a Business” and you can download the first 20 pages at www.thestartupsteps.com
15 years of experience working with start up businesses are condensed into this book.
It’s your step by step guide to launch your business smarter and faster and I’m so excited to be sharing it with you and can’t wait to hear about your progress.
Are you ready to grab your excerpt? Click here www.thestartupsteps.com
Happy reading!