Liberation By Design

Australia’s Canva has become a unicorn by bringing online design tools to the masses.

- Jay Kim And Rana Wehbe

To build a unicorn, Australian Melanie Perkins had a simple insight: make it easy for those with no design experience to create material that looks like it was done by a professional, anything from a business card to an e-book. In 2013, Perkins, with cofounders Cameron Adams and CliffObrecht, started website Canva, providing digital design tools and design resources. Since then, the website has grown into a platform with 15 million users in 190 countries. Based on this success, the trio last year raised $40 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, which gave Canva a $1 billion valuation.

Perkins has another notable achievement: She was in Forbes Asia’s inaugural 30 Under 30 list at age 28. Now 31, Perkins’ motivation for Canva came from a problem she spotted while a student at the University of Western Australia, while tutoring other students on how to use design software. Many in her class were new to design and had long learning curves, even when designing something simple.

Perkins thought there had to be an easier way for people to communicate their ideas without the hassles of using Photoshop or similar software. Her first step was Fusion Books, an online tool she co-founded with fellow University of Western Australian student Obrecht in 2007 for creating school yearbooks. They built up the company to where Fusion Books now says it has been used by hundreds of schools and helped create thousands of yearbooks.