Melanie Perkins is on a roll. Named one of The Australian Financial Review’s business people of the year in 2018, the 31-year-old co-founder of graphic design start-up Canva is already worth $177 million (combined with her co-founder Cliff Obrecht) and has built her business to employ 450 people.

Perkins is not a household name, but that could change if she achieves her grand vision of "empowering the world to design". Having cracked the lauded unicorn status, achieving a $US1 billion valuation in January 2018, her next big challenge is to grow the company to a $10 billion valuation, then $100 billion.