Silicon Valley spent years rejecting Canva. Now they’re eating it up
On the start-up scene, Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins is famous for actually achieving the revenues that she projected in her first-ever pitch deck to investors.
Canva’s story so far is the stuff of legends; it’s told by its early investors to impress start-ups with their foresight, and by start-ups to impress on investors that they know what it takes to hit the big time.
The company’s genesis is when Melanie Perkins figured she could build a cheap, web-based graphic design program that would undercut the expensive software sold by the likes of Adobe and Microsoft. In 2008, she and her then-boyfriend, Cliff Obrecht, build Fusion Books from a Perth living room, targeting school yearbooks.
Jessica SierNorth Asia correspondentJessica Sier is the North Asia Correspondent for The Australian Financial Review. She is based in Tokyo, Japan. Jessica has previously written on technology, global capital markets and economics. Connect with Jessica on Twitter. Email Jessica at jessica.sier@afr.com
