Melanie Perkins started working on what became Canva in 2007 from her Mom’s living room in Perth. The daughter of an Australian-born teacher and a Malaysian engineer of Filipino and Sri Lankan heritage. Perkins had wanted to be a professional figure skater enduring an adolescence of 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls. After completing High School, Perkins enrolled at the University of Western Australia.
While teaching fellow students basic computer design as part of her communications and commerce studies, she had an idea. The process of designing and printing a poster or a flyer seemed cumbersome, in the age of the internet.
This would normally involve composing it in Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word, converting it to the right size and saving it as a PDF. And then take it to a store like Staples or Officeworks to print. Perkins believed it would be much better to do it all in one place with one online tool.
“The idea of making design really simple was the first idea”
Melanie Perkins, CEO CANVA
Company name: Canva
Founder/s: Melanie Perkins, Clifford Obrecht, Cameron Adams
CEO: Melanie Perkins
Established: 2012
Location: Sydney, Australia
Main Products/Services: Canva, Canva Pro, Canva for Enterprise, Canva for Education
Number of employees: 1,157
Revenue: AU$23.5m
Web site: www.canva.com
