126
LESSONS EARNT
VIRGIN AUSTRALIA DECEMBER 20172007
Perkins and Clif
Obrecht launch
Fusion Books in her
mother’s living room.JULY 2012
The pair team
up with Cameron
Adams to
launch Canva.NOV 2012 –
MARCH 2013
Six employees join.TIMELINE
CLOCKWISE
FROM TOPCanva
founders (from
let) Clif Obrecht,
Melanie Perkins and
Cameron Adams;
chief evangelist
Guy Kawasaki;
the site’s easy-to-
use interface.MARCH 2013
Canva raises $3.6
million from US and
Australian investors.AUGUST 2013
A beta version of
Canva opens to the
general public and
is instantly popular
with marketers,
bloggers and small
business owners.JAN 2014
Ater 150,000
people join Canva
during its beta phase,the site is oficially
launched publicly.APRIL 2014
Former Apple chief
evangelist Guy
Kawasaki joins Canva
as chief evangelist.AUGUST 2014
Canva opens an
overseas ofice
in Manila.OCTOBER 2014
Canva launches its
iPad app, meaning
that simple design
is now on-the-go
design as well.OCTOBER 30,
2014
Canva hits one
million users ater
14 months in
full operation.AUGUST 2015
Canva for Work
launches to four
million users, letting
teams set guidelines
and templates for
brands on the cloud-
based platform.OCTOBER 2015
Canva announces a
$21.2 million fundinground and is valued
at $233 million.SEPTEMBER 201
Canva gets a further
$20 million funding
and is now valued
at $458 million.JUNE 2017
Canva Print launches
in the US, partnering
with print services
giant RPI Print to
deliver products in
four days. There are
plans to roll this out
in other countries.(and now your business partner) Clif Obrecht and your mum
are both teachers, so are able to give you some insights. Fusion
Books is a lot of hard work and no one’s going to invest any
money, but it will slowly grow and you’ll end up expanding into
France and New Zealand. You and Obrecht will soon realise
that the technology can be used more broadly, so team up with
Cameron Adams, who will become your tech co-founder, to
launch Canva, and quickly discover start-ups come with many
challenges. You’ll have to run against the grain for a year and
there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of rejections — from
investors, potential team members and early customers. Some
people might give up after the 20th, 80th or 100th ‘no’, but you
keep going, fixing your pitch deck and building a better, clearer
business plan every time you get rejected.
It will get easier, but there are so
many diferent aspects of business you’ll
need to learn. They include developing a
concept, raising investment, hiring a great
team and getting the word out — that’s for
starters. You’ll remember to stay focused
on building a platform that solves a real
problem for people, always improving and
updating it. You’ll become a believer in on-
demand learning, where people access it as they need it — you
have to be to start a business that will transform how people
work. You’ll also learn to accept mistakes. Some are incidental
and some are big, but it won’t help to get hung up on decisions
you could have made diferently. You just have to keep going.
The Canva team will grow and you’ll eventually have more
than 100 staf from 12 nations in oices across three countries.
You’ll get some great advice about changing the team structure
every time you double in size — you take that on board.
In late 2015, with those 100 employees in place, you’ll change
from working in bigger teams to mini start-ups of two to seven
people. These smaller teams will have their own objectives,strategies and plenty of autonomy, and
that will mean you can still move as
quickly as you did back when you were
a team of 10. You’ll spend a lot of your
time supporting the staf and making
sure everyone is aligned and happy.
Remember to stay determined and,
while it’s hard to know what the future
holds, the best way to prepare for it is
to do everything as well as you possibly
can. Enjoy the journey and don’t forget
the experiences you will value the most
in life are often the most challenging.
They will push you out of your comfort
zone and help you to grow.