FORBES.COM DECEMBER 31, 20 1970
PROFILE—MELANIEPERKINSOn a steamy May morning in 2013, Canva CEO
Melanie Perkins found herself adrift on a kiteboard
in the channel between billionaire Richard
Branson’s private Necker and Moskito islands.
→
egant restaurant menus. Besides an impossible-
to-beat price (millions of users pay nothing at
all), Canva’s key advantage over rival products
from tech giants like Adobe has been its ease of
use. Before Canva, amateurs had to stitch togeth-
er designs in Microsoft Word or pay through the
nose for confusing professional tools. Today, any-
one, anywhere, can download Canva and be cre-
ating within ten minutes.
The company’s revenue comes from upselling
to a $10-a-month premium version with snazzier
features or, more recently, from sales of a stream-
lined corporate account option. High-quali-
ty stock photos—of which Canva has millions—
cost another $1. It adds up. This year the com-
pany expects to more than double its revenue to
$200 million; its most recent $85 million funding
round valued it at $3.2 billion. Perkins, an alum of
the 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list, has an es-
timated 15% stake, valued at $430 million. Throw
in her 34-year-old cofounder—and now fi ancé—
Cliff Obrecht’s similar stake, and the Aussie power
couple are likely worth more than $800 million.
In an era of billion-dollar checks from Soft-
Bank and high-profi le profl igacy at WeWork,
Perkins and Obrecht do things diff erently. They
are couch surfers who prefer budget trips to pri-
vate jets. (This summer, with Canva already val-
ued at more than $2 billion, Obrecht proposed
to Perkins in Turkey’s backpacker-friendly Cap-
padocia region with a $30 engagement ring.)
Rarest of all: Canva says it’s been profi table—atHer 30-foot sail fl oating defl ated and useless be-
side her in the strong eastern Caribbean current,
the 26-year-old entrepreneur waited for hours
to be rescued. As she treaded water, her left leg
scarred by a past collision with a coral reef, she
reminded herself that her dangerous new hobby
was worth it. After all, it was key to the fundrais-
ing strategy for the design-software startup she’d
cofounded with her boyfriend six years before.
Canva was based in Australia, thousands of
miles from tech’s Silicon Valley power corridor.
Getting a meeting—much less funding—was
proving tough. Perkins heard “no” from more
than 100 investors. So when she met the orga-
nizer of a group of kitesurfi ng venture capitalists
at a pitch competition in her native Perth, Per-
kins got to training. The next time the group met
to hear startup pitches and potentially write cru-
cial early-stage funding checks, she’d have a seat
at the table—even if it meant having to brave
treacherous waters. “It was like, risk: serious
damage; reward: start company,” Perkins says. “If
you get your foot in the door just a tiny bit, you
have to kind of wedge it all the way in.”
Such perseverance has long been a necessity
at Canva, which began as a modest yearbook-de-
sign business in the state capital of Perth on Aus-
tralia’s west coast. From those remote origins,
Canva has grown into a global juggernaut. Twen-
ty-million-plus users from 190 countries use the
company’s “freemium” Web-based app to design
everything from splashy Pinterest graphics to el-