Often Entrepreneurship students are asked to think outside the box. To find pain, find the problem and brainstorm a solution. This is the exact formula the creator of Canva, and Aussie native, Melanie Perkins followed. After struggling to create her high school’s yearbook she knew there had to be a better way. She believed that in the future, publishing would be streamlined, and connected through the internet for collaborative work. Adobe and Microsoft were not accessible to high school students. “People would have to spend an entire semester learning where the buttons were, and that seemed completely ridiculous,” she said in one interview.
She told her boyfriend about her idea, and it took off from there. Transforming her living room into an office she began to research and develop her idea. The pair created Fusion Books to start. Students could collaborate online and submit them to a printer. From there they would be delivered to schools all across Australia.
Next, Melanie and her boyfriend-turned-business-partner set their sights on a new goal, Silicon Valley. During a conference in Perth, she was invited by Bill Tai to San Francisco to give a second pitch. There, Melanie had more time to go into detail about Canva, although it didn’t appear to go over well. “I thought that he didn’t really like what I had to say. He was on his phone, and I thought that meant he wasn’t really engaged in what I had to say about the future of publishing,” she said. In reality, he was busy forwarding her information to his contacts. She had great success after building relationships within Silicon Valley.
In 2012, her idea finally came to fruition. Lars Rasmussen, a co-founder of google maps, took an advisory role to help find a developer. The trio welcomed new team member, Dave Hearnden. After their first funding round, they had 1.5 million in investments- they had completely oversubscribed. The Australian government matched that total in a bit to keep the growing company along the native Aussie shores.
The site went live the following year, and revolutionized content marketing possibilities. As of today, Canva has assisted in the creation of over 2 billion designs. They are accessible in over 190 countries and continue their quest to help individuals publish anything, anywhere.
Have you used Canva before? I love using it for everything between Instagram posts and stories to staying organized with school. You can check them out on their socials or visit their website to get started!
