Yahoo Finance Aussie woman named in “Decade's Top Under 30 Founders”
Forbes has revealed the top 30 Under 30 Founders of the decade, and one Australian woman has infiltrated the mostly boys’ club, taking out ninth position with a company valuation of US$3.2 billion (AU$4.6 billion): Melanie Perkins.
Perkins, who launched graphic design site Canva in 2013, and made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia List when she was 28 in 2016, sat amongst the Pinterest, Spotify, Facebook and SnapChat juggernauts of the decade.
Canva calls Yelp and Lonely Planet clients, and saw 139 million designs made in October 2019 - contrast that with 138 million during the entirety of 2016. The company received nearly 40,000 job applications, and ended up hiring more than 400 people last year alone - a far cry from Perkins’ initial 24 employees.
Also read: Coffee shop to billion-dollar startup: Lucy Liu shares the Airwallex story
Also read: The world’s most disruptive innovator hates innovation
Also read: Will full-time work be ancient history? Freelancer.com’s CEO thinks so
Perkins and her co-founder Cliff Obrecht were valued at $1.35 billion by the AFR’s Young Rich List - a huge jump from the $177 million valuation in 2018.
How Melanie Perkins founded Canva
Perkins’ journey began in 2007 when she was a student at the University of Western Australia, and taught other students how to use programs like InDesign and Photoshop.
After coming up with an idea for an online tool to create school yearbooks, Perkins and her co-founder Cliff Obrecht took out a loan to build Fusion Books - a company that went on to become the largest school yearbook publisher in Australia.
It was that initial loan that Perkins believe drove her to make Fusion Books, and indeed all her other endeavours, a real success.
“Starting the first company, handing over the cheque – which was everything that we’d ever saved and more...I knew that it was the start of a new chapter, because it meant that we had to figure out how to pay that back,” Perkins told CEO Magazine.
“Along the way there have been some forks in the road where we could go the easy route, or we can go the route that is terrifying, and it’s the terrifying route that usually pays off in the end.”
After Fusion Books was established, Perkins knew there was more she could do. Following a search for a third tech co-founder, Perkins and Obrecht landed on Cameron Adams, who is now Canva’s chief product officer, and built Canva in 2013 - and hit the US$1 billion mark in 2018.
Celebrities take a chance on Canva
Hollywood celebrities were among the first to invest in Canva, with Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson investing in the company in its early rounds of funding.
Make your money work with Yahoo Finance’s daily newsletter. Sign up here and stay on top of the latest money, news and tech news.
