When one hears the term big tech, it is easy to picture giants such as Google and Facebook, but there are some companies founded by young founders who identified a real-world problem and worked on it. Among them is Melanie Perkins’ story, beginning at the age of 19. She is the Founder of Canva in Australia, a wonderful resource that simplifies the designing process and makes it enjoyable for all. At such a tender age, she developed one of the world’s best-loved graphic design software.
All About Melanie Perkins
Melanie Perkins grew up in Perth, Australia. As a student at university, she observed how difficult and expensive graphic design software was, especially for ordinary people. Also, it required a lot of skills to work on these software programs, like Adobe Photoshop.
These small observations gave her the idea about building a tool that can be used by anyone easily and design various things even without any prior experience.
The Beginning: From Fusion Books to Canva
When she was just 19, she launched her first online tool named Fusion Books. It was created for students and schools to create yearbooks easily. The success of this tool encouraged her to dream big.
Later on, she teamed up with Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams to create Canva. She wanted it to be simple for the users, something as easy as drag and drop. Their journey was not at all easy; they faced a lot of rejections from the investors, especially because they were too young and inexperienced.
She travelled around the world pitching for Canva and asking for feedback, after which she would make changes accordingly. Gradually, the platform started growing.
The Magic of Canva
Canva was officially launched in 2013. It quickly became the go-to design tool for people who enjoyed creating stuff. It also offers 1000+ free templates to use, be it for PPTs, social media posts or stories, posters, invitations, and much more.
As of today, Canva has over 220 million active users worldwide and has revenue of around $3 billion. Moreover, it has approximately 21 million paying users. In order to maintain its efficiency and creativity, more than 1 billion designs are created each month.
Melanie Perkins: A Role Model for Young Entrepreneurs
Her journey has been inspiring for every young person dreaming of becoming something in the future. She just started with an idea. She had to face a lot of hurdles and struggles, but still she never gave up and continued to turn her vision into reality someday.
Her success teaches us important lessons of life:
- Solve Real Problems – You must have a real problem to solve that could help other people, just like she noticed a genuine problem around her.
- Be Persistent – Despite so many rejections, she stayed consistent and never gave up on what she decided.
- Start Small, Think Big – She began with Fusion Books and then scaled gradually to Canva and then aimed for global impact.
For every young entrepreneur, her journey is proof that with consistency and a firm dream in mind, one can make anything possible. You just have to think of a problem you can solve.
