Melanie Perkins: The Woman Behind Canva

This article explores the entrepreneurial journey of Melanie Perkins, the co-founder and CEO of Canva. It highlights her innovative mindset, the challenges she faced, and the lessons that can be learned from her success. Discover the story behind Canva, a graphic design company that offers simple online designing tools and editable templates.

Running head: MELANIE PERKINS, THE WOMEN BEHIND CANVA
MELANIE PERKINS- THE WOMEN BEHIND CANVA
Name of the student
Name of the university
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The project’s aim is to include the characteristics of an entrepreneur, Melanie Perkins.
She is one of the youngest female Australian business entrepreneurs. She is the co-founder and
CEO of Canva (Zipkin, 2019). The company headquarter is in Sydney, Australia. The project
throws light on her entrepreneurial skills and the challenges she faced during the journey of her
startup that I got to know through a personal interview session. It consists of the factors that
show the analysis of creative thinking and innovative mindset of her (Bujor & Avasilcai, 2016).
It highlights the learnings and the entrepreneurial skills that I can leverage for future. It reflects
her entrepreneurial journey, which relates to the theories of entrepreneurship.
Canva is as a graphic design company, which uses simple online designing tools for
creating professional designs and editable templates. Today, around 10 million users are using
Canva. Melanie Perkins, passionate entrepreneur has an online structure for school for designing
their yearbooks, Fusion Books previously. Today, it is Australia's biggest yearbook publisher
(Perkins, 2015). Melanie Perkins was passionate and determined towards overcoming the
entrepreneurial challenges she had on her path to success. She always wanted to own the
business and personified the freedom of being a boss. Her story represents her entrepreneurial
journey. At the age of 19, Melanie was a student of digital media. As a student, she faced several
issues in creating simple graphics and templates online. After her classes, she used to help her
classmates with the current designing tools and extensive manuals created by herself. Melanie
wanted to become an entrepreneur, so she designed and founded Fusion Books at the age of 22.
Fusion Books, a cloud-based platform, is the largest Australian yearbook publisher for the
schools. Through the entrepreneurial journey of Fusion Books, she learnt the different strategies
adopted to frame a successful business (Zipkin, 2019). The challenges faced by the students
during the graphic designing templates gave her the idea of creating her online platform of visual

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designer tools. At this time, she introduced Canva, for students as well as for professionals with
her co-founder, Cliff Obrecht. She started with this specific problem in the niche market and
decided to grow.
Nevertheless, as an entrepreneur, she waited for several months for investors to invest in
her project. It took almost three years to get the first investors to invest in her plan, Canva. As an
entrepreneur, she knows that one cannot get success overnight and did not lose hope. She
believed that her work would have significant implications worldwide in the graphics industry.
After the completion of a decade, former Apple employee and the technology proficient, Guy
Kawasaki join the company Canva as the chief evangelist. One year later after the launch, Canva
had around one million users using the platform for designing templates. They now have 200
people employed, in both Australia and the San Francisco office (Zipkin, 2019).
The art of creating the butterfly effect of making a connection with the high profile
people for the investment purpose of the business is considered as one of the strongest factors
(Abdullah, Hadi & Dana, 2018). Another strong element is designing a platform, which contains
the graphics-oriented tools, and is the first online graphic designing industry. This idea was very
innovation as Melanie starts the plan, which caters the niche market (Frederick, Connor &
Kuratko, 2018).
Determination and passion for work are the strongest traits of Melanie Perkins. It requires
proper commitment because there will be a time where one has to face hurdles, rejections and
long duration to establish a company. It almost took three years to meet the first investor for the
investment of their project, Canva. Creativity is required for innovation. Melanie has this
attribute of ability to create, as she took a challenge of creating a graphic designing platform
online for the students and the professors. The ability to take risk is an essential attribute of an

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entrepreneur. Melanie has the risk of investors. There was a risk where an idea there but nobody
believes it. Different investors rejected the plan of Canva but, later on, when the company has
completed one year, many investors thought of investing in her project. Melanie believes in the
idea of staying focused on the idea. There will be people who will reject the idea and demotivate
you, but one should remain focused. A great idea needs a trustworthy team. Canva has the best
marketing and technical support team that includes Bill Tai, Guy Kawasaki and Lars Rasmussen
who believes in the concept and vision of Melanie Perkins. Since Canva is a startup company, it
is necessary to make social connections (Bikse, Rivza, & Riemere, 2015). AngelList is used as a
networking platform in writing testimonials and endorsement.
An entrepreneur must have an attitude towards the acceptance of both successes as well
as failures. In the journey of building a startup, Melanie Perkins had learned some of the biggest
and the essential lessons. She believes that it is essential to start from somewhere and then the
path will become clear (Perkins, 2015). The main reason for Perkins becoming successful is the
guts and determination she had. She had guts, and she believes in herself as she spoke to several
people before having the proper plan of the business. It took almost three years when she got her
first investor (Lee et al., 2016). Another learning is the butterfly effect; which Perkins had
created herself. It is a diagram where a connection with one person is linked with the respect of
another. She tried to convince Bill Tai, the high profile, and from him, she decided to make a
connection to other high profile people. As successful people are ambitious and challenging to
the world. Melanie states that one should learn to say no to the pessimist. In the journey of
starting, people will either reject your vision or complain about your idea being vague. One
should not focus on this and continue the work (Chan, 2016). Another learning to leverage from
her is that of raising capital. The startup should not put raising money as a benchmark. Instead, it

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should focus on building the startup. Once the startup runs, there will be several investors for
funding the capital. These learnings from her can help an entrepreneur in the future.
It can be concluded that the entrepreneur is ambitious and goal-driven. They are
ready to take the risk at every step and are very determinant towards achieving the purpose and
vision of the company. Melanie Perkins have several qualities of becoming a successful
entrepreneur and have an innovative mindset. Her journey of becoming a successful
entrepreneur reflects her personality and attitude towards work. Her creative mindset of thinking
out of the box demonstrates her entrepreneurial skills. To become successful, one needs to focus
on innovation and implementation. The entrepreneur is essential for the country as well as for the
business for the further growth and advancement.

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References
Abdullah, N., Hadi, N. U., & Dana, L. P. (2018). The nexus between entrepreneur skills and
successful business: a decompositional analysis. International Journal of
Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 34(2), 249-265.
Bikse, V., Rivza, B., & Riemere, I. (2015). The social entrepreneur as a promoter of social
advancement. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 185, 469-478.
Bujor, A., & Avasilcai, S. (2016). The creative entrepreneur: A framework of analysis. Procedia-
Social and Behavioral Sciences, 221, 21-28.
Chan, N. (2016). 8 Million Users, The Canva Story with Melanie Perkins - FP76. Retrieved from
https://foundr.com/melanie-perkins/
Frederick, H., O'Connor, A., & Kuratko, D. F. (2018). Entrepreneurship. Cengage AU.
Lee, H., Lee, J., Shim, K., & Lee, H. (2016). Entrepreneurial characteristics: a Systematic
Literature Review. In PACIS (p. 81).
Perkins, M. (2015). Five Lessons From My Startup Journey - Inc42 Media. Retrieved from
https://inc42.com/buzz/five-lessons-from-my-startup-journey/
Zipkin, N. (2019). She Was Told 'No' 100 Times. Now This 30-Year-Old Female Founder Runs
a $1 Billion Business. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/310482

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Appendix
The interview questions asked are given below:
1. What was your motivation or vision that you had for your entrepreneurial pursuits? How
did you identify and validate your entrepreneurial opportunity?
2. What are the skills that contribute to your success as an entrepreneur?
3. What challenges have you encountered as an entrepreneur?
4. What steps do you take to overcome any personal shortcomings that might impact your
venture?
5. From your perspective, what are the benefits and risks of entrepreneurship?
6. Did you feel prepared to run the venture at the time that it launched?
7. As an entrepreneur, what process do you follow when making decisions? How does this
differ from the decision-making process you might have used in previous careers?
8. What is the long-term plan for your venture?
9. What are some essential questions an aspiring entrepreneur should ask before pursuing a
venture?
10. What was the thing that motivated you and why?
11. What strategy did you use to keep focused?
12. What were the challenges did you face in your butterfly strategy?
13. What was your previous business idea before Canva?
14. How did you connect socially to promote your business?
15. What is the best advice you can suggest to an aspiring entrepreneur?