Canva: Melanie Perkins (2019)

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When she was just 19 years old, Melanie Perkins dreamt of transforming the graphic design and publishing industries. But she started small, launching a site to make yearbook design simpler and more collaborative. Her success with that first venture—and an unexpected meeting with a VC investor—eventually landed her the backing to pursue her original idea, and the chance to take on software industry titans like Adobe and Microsoft. Today, Melanie's online design platform Canva is valued at $6 billion, joining the list of Australia's "unicorn" companies.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:31.0	Okay, so for today's show, we're going to run one of our favorite episodes from the archives.
0:36.0	It's a story of Melanie Perkins, the founder of the design platform, Canva.
0:40.0	And right at the top of the show, you'll hear me say that the company is valued at a billion dollars.
0:45.0	Well, Canva is now valued at $6 billion.
0:50.0	Okay, onto the show.
0:55.0	We're not any of the investors saying you don't have a tech team, you don't have a chief technology officer.
1:01.0	Like, I don't know if I'm going to put my...
1:03.0	That was literally what everyone was saying.
1:05.0	Which that sense, right?
1:07.0	Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
1:09.0	But how are we going to get these things rolling?
1:11.0	How many people do you think you pitched over that, I guess, two months?
1:14.0	Period in San Francisco?
1:15.0	I don't know.
1:16.0	Over 100 people.
1:18.0	I was going through my rejections the other day, I was looking at some of the emails.
	...

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