20VC: Start Niche, Move Broader & Become Profitable Quickly with Melanie Perkins, Founder & CEO @ Canva

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2016

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Melanie Perkins, Founder & CEO at Canva the disruptive online platform allowing anyone to create professional quality designs. They have over 10m users from 179 countries and have funding from our friends at Shasta, Felicis and upcoming guests Blackbird Ventures and Airtree in Australia. Prior to Canva, Melanie was the Fusion Yearbooks which she grew to be the largest Yearbook publisher in Australia.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Melanie come to found Canva, what was the a-ha moment for her?

2.) How has Melanie looked to scale the team whilst maintaining the same core startup values and company ethos? What are the strategies at play here?

3.) What does it take to grow in international markets? Where were the benefits of founding Canva in the isolated tech ecosystem of Perth??

4.) What did Melanie look for in her investors? As a newbie to the VC scene how did she approach the fundraising process and what would she like to improve on?

5.) How can products that have both a free and a paid model offer enough in the free version to entice users, whilst retain enough for the paid to justify the price?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:

Melanie’s Fave Book: Designing The Obvious

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Melanie on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What a week it has been here on the 20 minute VC and a huge hand to Bijan and Nabil at Spark Capital
0:05.4	for giving us such a brilliant Spark week. But today we're heading across the other side of the world
0:10.0	and to what I have concluded to be one of the most impressive founders I've spoken to in recent times.
0:15.6	So joining me today, I'm delighted to welcome Melanie Perkins, founder and CEO at Canva,
0:22.5	the disruptive online platform allowing anyone to create professional quality designs. And they have over 10 million users from
0:27.9	179 countries and have funding from our friends at Shasta, Felices, and upcoming guests,
0:34.3	Blackbird Ventures and Airtree in Australia. But before we dive into the show
0:38.2	stay with Melanie, did you know in Pennsylvania it's illegal to sleep on a refrigerator?
0:43.5	But only outside. So head inside and jump into your Lisa mattress. Not only is it better than
0:48.9	getting arrested in Pennsylvania, but the embrace of the memory foam combined with the cool latex
0:53.7	light foam that keeps you cool at night.
0:56.0	It's just too good to resist.
0:57.7	Even better though, you won't even have to leave your house to buy it as Lisa have built a fully online experience guiding you through the process of finding your perfect mattress with it being delivered to your door in just a few days.
1:09.4	Also, all Lisa mattresses are made in the US and the UK
1:12.2	and can be delivered to the US, UK and Canada. So check it out on Lisa.com forward slash VC
1:18.5	and then enter the promo code VC-75 at checkout for a wicked $75 off. That's L-E-E-S-A.com
1:25.9	forward slash VC. And also, if you haven't signed up for the Matamark Daily,
1:29.6	then that really is a must,
1:30.9	all the best VC and startup articles
1:32.9	curated by my good friend Nick Frost at Thinker on Twitter.
1:36.8	However, enough from me,
1:38.2	and I'm thrilled to hand over now
	...

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