It is one thing to launch a new business. Building a business that can compete with industry giants like Microsoft and Adobe is a whole different challenge.
However, this is just what Australian entrepreneur Melanie Perkins did when she created a design product to compete with those made by the tech giants.
Canva is a platform for an online design that anybody can use, and Perkins, who is 32 years old, is the co-founder and CEO of the company.
The young entrepreneur founded the company in Australia in 2013 with the goal of making design accessible to everyone, whether it be for the creation of logos, business cards, or presentations. She earned news as one of technology's youngest female CEOs, despite the fact that she was just 30 years old at the time.
Start of Canva
Canva, an online design company, is currently valued at $40 billion after receiving an investment of $200 million not too long ago. Because of this, Canva is considered to be one of the most valuable companies in the world that was created and is now headed by a woman.
In 2007, when Perkins was a student at a university in Perth, Australia, he had the inspiration for the project. She instructed pupils in the use of desktop-design software, which was difficult to master and expensive to purchase, as part of her part-time employment. She came up with a brilliant plan to develop an innovative online tool that would enable anybody, regardless of their level of expertise, to produce excellent drawings.
Even while venture funders first turned down Canva's proposal because they didn't believe the company could achieve its goals, those goals now appear to have been admirable in retrospect. In point of fact, it took three years for Perkins to get her very first investment.
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The new ability was beneficial to her. Within a short period of time, the young pair had won the support of significant investors and was developing Canva's design platform with a rapidly expanding staff of software developers.
However, the year 2012 marked the beginning of the company's operations in a serious manner. Cameron Adams was deemed to be a suitable candidate for the role of tech co-founder, and Dave Hearnden was considered to be a suitable candidate for the role of tech developer, by Lars Rasmussen, Perkins, and Obrecht with the assistance of their tech adviser and the co-founder of Google Maps.
Several months later, when their initial investment round came to an end, the firm was oversubscribed at that point. The first investment of $1.5 million was matched by the Australian government as part of an effort to maintain the company's presence in Australian territory.
The website went live the next year, giving subscribers the ability to create a range of different designs online for no additional cost.
A Design for a Cause
Today, Canva has assisted in the creation of close to 2 billion designs in 190 countries and has received celebrity endorsements from people such as Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson.
The firm was valued at $3.2 billion following the completion of a financing round in October 2019 that involved an investment of $85 million and was led by Silicon Valley investor Mary Meeker's Bond Capital.
Canva for Enterprise and Canva Pro are two of the company's paid services. According to Perkins, she intends to utilize the new financing to broaden the company's paid offerings while also growing the workforce of 700 employees located in Sydney, Beijing, and Manila.
Because of this technique, Perkins will get closer than she ever has before to directly compete with the professional design tools developed by technology giants such as Microsoft and Adobe.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that 85 percent of organizations on the Fortune 500 list are already utilizing her platform, the young founder insists that she is up for the challenge.
