Melanie Perkins

Melanie Perkins, Co-CEO and co-founder of Canva, transformed a dream into a $42 billion reality despite facing over 100 investor rejections and a challenging two-year technical rewrite. She discusses her unique 'column B' thinking, which focuses on bold visions rather than limitations. Listeners learn about the importance of setting 'crazy big goals,' maintaining team morale during tough times, and her strategic approach to fundraising. Melanie’s forward-looking vision for 2050 emphasizes the power of imagination to inspire positive change.

Melanie Perkins, Co-founder and CEO of Canva, shares insights on transforming design accessibility. She discusses Canva's evolution into a competitive platform against Adobe, focusing on user-friendly tools and AI integration. The conversation highlights their commitment to philanthropy and how trust and transparency can reshape market dynamics. Perkins also reveals the challenges of maintaining local experiences while scaling globally and the innovative strategies behind the company's enterprise launch, emphasizing creativity's role in business growth.

Melanie Perkins, the innovative Co-founder and CEO of Canva, shares her journey from a college student frustrated with design software to leading a $6 billion graphic design revolution. She discusses her small beginnings with a yearbook design site and the pivotal meetings that helped secure crucial funding. Perkins candidly opens up about the challenges of leadership, emotional highs and lows in entrepreneurship, and how unexpected opportunities shaped her path. Her story highlights how Canva is democratizing design and fostering creativity for everyone.

Melanie Perkins, the CEO of Canva, traces her journey from a university project to co-founding a global design platform in her mother's living room. She shares the challenges of securing funding, facing over 100 rejections before finding success. Melanie discusses the benefits of building a tech company outside Silicon Valley, the importance of intuitive design, and how the pandemic amplified remote collaboration. She also highlights the significance of company culture and the hurdles women face in venture capital, emphasizing resilience and authentic self-promotion.

Melanie Perkins, the Australian billionaire and co-founder of Canva, shares her inspiring journey from being rejected by over 100 VCs to leading a $26 billion design startup with 170 million monthly users. She emphasizes the importance of solving familiar problems, the value of persistence, and learning from failures. Perkins also discusses the need to challenge industry norms and focus on gradual, strategic goals rather than trying to achieve everything at once. Her insights provide a roadmap for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make their mark.

Melanie Perkins, Co-founder and CEO of Canva — built a global design platform used by hundreds of millions. She recounts her early hustle from school yearbooks to flying to San Francisco to fundraise. She discusses scaling vision, setting concrete team goals and values, balancing big-picture impact with day-to-day execution, and Canva’s 1% pledge and giving strategies.

When she was just 19 years old, Melanie Perkins dreamt of transforming the graphic design and publishing industries. But she started small, launching a site to make yearbook design simpler and more collaborative. Her success with that first venture — and an unexpected meeting with a VC investor — eventually landed her the backing to pursue her original idea, and the chance to take on software industry titans like Adobe and Microsoft. Today, Melanie's online design platform Canva is valued at over $1 billion, joining the list of Australia's "unicorn" companies. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That," how Tristan Corriveau collected used bars of soap from a hotel and recycled them into liquid soap with The One Gallon Soap Company. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva, discusses the transformative power of onboarding. She emphasizes how her platform's success hinges on engaging newcomers swiftly and simply. With over 40 million monthly users, Perkins shares strategies for onboarding not just customers, but also investors and employees, ensuring alignment with company values. Memory expert Ron White adds insights on enhancing memory retention, linking it to effective communication. Together, they showcase how thoughtful design and onboarding can foster long-term loyalty and innovation.

We meet Melanie Perkins, the CEO and co-founder of graphic design platform Canva, which has hundreds of millions of users and a valuation of nearly $40 billion. Despite her immense wealth, Melanie Perkins says the label “billionaire” has never felt quite right. Instead, she plans to give away most of her fortune during her lifetime. She also tells us why she believes young people should be educated differently to adapt to the growth of AI.If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Zoe Kleinman Producer: Philippa Wain Sound mix: Toby JamesBusiness Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.Each episode is a 17-minute deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.Recent episodes explore the weight-loss drug revolution, the growth in AI, the cost of living, why bond markets are so powerful, China's property bubble, and Gen Z's experience of the current job market.We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders - like Melanie Perkins - and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Starbucks, Brian Niccol.(Picture: Melanie Perkins speaking at a conference in 2024. Credit: Getty Images)

Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva and a key figure in redefining design processes, joins the discussion to tackle listener questions. They dive into Disney's bold expansion plans, including its significant cruise investment and the innovative 'Taylor Swift era' experience. The conversation navigates the complexities of scarcity in entertainment, reflected in both Taylor's concert tours and Disney's evolving business strategies. Additionally, they explore the competitive landscape for Canva, particularly against emerging players in the design market.