Entrepreneurship Series #3: Melanie Perkins, Cofounder of Canva

Written by Irene Jiang (W’25); Edited by Basma Enany (W’26)

Many Penn students are probably familiar with Canva. You might have used Canva to create Instagram stories for a club or implemented one of its templates to create a slide deck for a class. Personally, it has become one of my favorite platforms to use. I find it to be a very user-friendly tool that provides a wide range of options in its offering of free templates. Even though a lot of us utilize Canva, how many of us can say that we know anything about the founders? 

I would like to spotlight Melanie Perkins, an Australian female entrepreneur and one of the co-founders of Canva. She launched Canva in 2013 with her now-husband, Cliff Obrecht. Perkins first came up with the idea of Canva in 2006 while studying at the University of Perth. As a part-time job, she would teach other students design programs such as the ones offered by Adobe. However, she felt as if the tools for those programs were unintuitive and difficult to learn–leading her to create what is known today as Canva. In September 2021, Canva was valued by investors at $40 billion. 

Despite Canva’s immense success now, Perkins struggled to get investors to see her vision. One of Melanie’s most well-known perseverance stories is that she pitched to over 100 VC companies and was rejected by all of them. But she kept trying and it paid off. This year, Perkins was featured on the Forbes “30 Under 30 Hall of Fame” in 2022 and she is known as one of the youngest female CEOs in the technology industry. 

In 2021, it was announced that both Perkins and Obrecht were joining the Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge was created by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffet to encourage philanthropy among the uber-wealthy. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald in September of 2021, Perkins said “Billions upon billions of dollars is more than anyone needs in their entire lifetime by a longshot.” 

Sources: 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/09/canva-how-melanie-perkins-built-a-3point2-billion-dollar-design-start-up.html

https://www.forbes.com/profile/melanie-perkins/?sh=72cd6c21265d

https://fortune.com/longform/melanie-perkins-canva-founder-ceo-interview/

https://www.smh.com.au/business/entrepreneurship/bigger-than-telstra-canva-s-valuation-doubles-in-five-months-to-55-billion-20210915-p58rq1.html