How a 34-year-old made $13 billion last year

Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins, 34, has rocketed into the top 10 richest Australians for the first time.

Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins, 34, has rocketed into the top 10 richest Australians for the first time.

The co-founder of the popular graphic design platform, together with her husband Cliff Obrecht, 36, has been crowned as one of the richest Australians.

The millennial duo's wealth has increased by a whopping $13.39bn in only a year, moving them into 8th and 9th position on The Australian's survey of the nation's wealthiest people.

And if you're wondering just how much their wealth has increased by in the past year while most of us were stuck at home in our tracksuits, their $15.89bn fortune is similar to the GDPs of countries such as Brunei or Kim Kardashian's spiritual homeland, Armenia . 

The Rich List's deep dive into people's pockets shows more money is being made more rapidly than ever before, but even the youngest duo in the top 10, Perkins and Obrecht, had to do the hard yards early in their career.

“We pitched to almost every VC (venture capitalist) in the world,” Obrecht said. 

“There were some really dark moments. You have a spreadsheet with 100 investors, and then you cross them off 10 or 20 at a time, because they’ve all rejected you, and then you have to build the pipeline again. And you get rejected again."

Perkins and Obrecht persevered and have been raising huge amounts of money ever since.

But despite rolling in coin, the pair seem somewhat uncomfortable with their wealth, describing themselves as merely "custodians" of Canva's cash that intend to give their fortunes away.

Last year when Canva became one of the most valuable companies in the world, Perkins wrote about their discomfort about people discussing their wealth.

She wrote that the plus side of the influx of cash was enabling “step two” of their company's plan to ‘do the most good we can’.

(Step one was to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, which they have clearly ticked off the list.)

“As we’ve previously shared, it’s long been our intention to give the wealth away, and we’ve been thinking long and hard about the best way to start that journey," she wrote. 

And it's not just lip service. Perkins still makes her own coffee and lunches with her staff each day and in 2019 Obrecht proposed to her in Turkey’s backpacker-friendly Cappadocia region with a $30 engagement ring.

Perkins’ humility comes from her roots. The daughter of an Australian-born teacher and a Malaysian engineer of Filipino and Sri Lankan heritage, she started her first business at the age of 15 from her mother’s living room, creating handmade scarves to sell at shops and markets in Perth.

Then, at the University of Western Australia, where she taught computer design as part of her communications and commerce studies, she confronted the difficult reality of navigating graphic design software, and Canva took off.

The company is also breaking new ground with their workplace policies. Last year, during the height of the Covid pandemic, the company unveiled a new workplace policy that asks workers to come to the office at least “twice a season” or eight times a year once restrictions lifted.

According to a staff survey, 79 per cent of Canva employees feel productive working from home and that 81 per cent would like to continue balancing this flexibility while having regular opportunities for in-person collaboration.

The full 2022 edition of The List will be published on Friday in a special issue contained in The Australian, and will reveal how new industries such as technology and online fashion in Australia are thriving alongside older ones such as manufacturing and property development.

For the first time, there are also four technology leaders in the top echelons of The List – including Canva - with each considerably younger than the billionaires in other industries.

Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar are 4th and 5th with wealth of $26.20bn and $25.99bn respectively for the 42-year-olds.