A Big Idea From a Dorm Room in Perth
Melanie Perkins didn’t come from Silicon Valley. She was a university student in Perth, Australia, when she first noticed a recurring problem: students struggled to learn complex design tools like Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. Many just wanted to create clean, professional visuals—without having to study design for months. Perkins believed that design should be simple, accessible, and online. That idea became the foundation for what would later become Canva.
Starting Small With a School-Based Product
In 2007, long before Canva launched, Perkins and her co-founder Cliff Obrecht started a company called Fusion Books. It was an online tool that allowed schools to design and print their own yearbooks. They ran the business from her mother’s living room and learned the ropes of digital publishing, customer service, and user experience. It was small-scale, but it validated their belief: non-designers wanted better tools.
Rejection After Rejection in Silicon Valley
With early traction from Fusion Books, Perkins set her sights on something bigger—an all-in-one design platform for everyone. But getting support wasn’t easy. In 2011, she flew to Silicon Valley with Obrecht and began pitching the Canva vision to investors. Most weren’t interested. They thought design software was already dominated by giants like Adobe. Over the next year, Perkins estimates she was rejected by more than 100 venture capital firms.
Persistence Overcomes Skepticism
Perkins refused to give up. She refined her pitch, listened to feedback, and continued networking. Eventually, she connected with investor and former Google executive Bill Tai, who saw potential. Tai introduced her to a network of entrepreneurs and engineers, including Cameron Adams, a former Google Maps developer. Adams became Canva’s third co-founder, and with a stronger tech foundation, the startup finally secured early funding and development support.
Launching Canva to the World
Canva officially launched in 2013. The product allowed users to drag and drop elements, collaborate in real time, and choose from thousands of templates—all through a browser. It caught on quickly with marketers, small business owners, teachers, and students. Within its first year, Canva had over 750,000 users. The platform’s simplicity and focus on non-designers helped it grow without relying on aggressive sales tactics or paid advertising.
Scaling Globally With Quiet Focus
While many startups pursued fast growth through high burn rates and PR hype, Canva took a more deliberate approach. The team focused on product quality, customer feedback, and global accessibility. They expanded into dozens of languages and continued reinvesting in their core mission—making design accessible to everyone. By 2021, Canva had surpassed 60 million monthly users and reached a valuation of over $40 billion, becoming one of the most successful tech companies founded outside the U.S.
Conclusion
Melanie Perkins built Canva not through luck or connections, but through relentless clarity and persistence. She pitched her idea over 100 times, adapted when necessary, and never let rejection derail her mission. Today, Canva empowers millions of people around the world to design confidently—proof that even the most world-changing ideas can start in a small apartment, far from Silicon Valley, with nothing more than belief and grit.
