Melanie Perkins was 19 years old when she was faced with a problem. She was fed up with the long amount of time that was required to do simple graphic designs. She didn’t understand why design had to be so confusing and technical. When Facebook was taking off, she realized how easily people were jumping into the social network and how they didn’t need lessons on how to use it, people just picked it up. A decade later Canva came into existence. It is a simple online design tool. This company is based in Sydney, Australia and is currently worth $458 Million Melanie is a university dropout whose company has over 10 million user in over 179 countries.

Her idea of Canva has allowed people with a range of design knowledge, from none to expert, be able to create beautiful and professional works.

She lists little pieces of advice for entrepreneurs

• Start niche
  • Don’t go after the huge problem, you might get lost. Start small and build your way up
• Get uncomfortable
  • Put yourself out there, get nervous. People can and will help you but you have to bare it all for them to care
• Overnight success is a lie
  • It took her 10 years to create her “perfect” company
  • There are many trials
  • It takes time to build great things
• Keep it simple
  • When everything and everyone is on the same page, decisions are easy and so it progress
• Keep it fun
  • Create a company that you want to work in
  • Make people want to achieve all they can

Melanie thinks that she is successful because she didn’t have any experience. So many people feel like the need to be experienced in the area that they are creating a business in, but what if sometimes it is the lack of experience that means the most. She wanted an easy design tool and if she had too much of a technical background the tool she created could have been too complex. She was her own target market and her target market didn’t have experience. She now owns 2 multi-million dollar software companies