- Company
- Canva
- Role
- Co-Founder & CEO
- Est. Net Worth
- $4 Billion
- Stage
- Elite
- Industry
- Tech & SaaS
Melanie Perkins
Co-Founder & CEO at Canva
About
Melanie Perkins co-founded Canva in 2013 with a mission to make design accessible to everyone. She has grown it into one of the world's most valuable private software companies, used by millions of people and teams to create visual content without specialized tools.
Current Company
Canva — Co-Founder & CEO
From Perth to a Global Design Platform
Melanie Perkins co-founded Canva in 2013 from Perth, Australia — about as far from Silicon Valley as a tech founder can get. The idea for Canva came when Melanie Perkins was a 19-year-old university student teaching design software and realized that tools like Photoshop and InDesign were unnecessarily complex for everyday users. She started with Fusion Books, an online yearbook design tool, before expanding the concept into what would become Canva.
Melanie Perkins famously pitched over 100 investors before securing Canva's first round of funding. The persistence paid off. Canva grew into one of the world's most valuable private software companies, used by over 170 million people in 190 countries. Melanie Perkins built Canva on the principle that great design shouldn't require specialized training — a democratization thesis that turned a niche tool into a mainstream platform used by everyone from students to Fortune 500 marketing teams.
The Anti-Silicon-Valley Founder
Melanie Perkins has built Canva with a distinctly different philosophy from typical Silicon Valley startups. She and her co-founders — including her partner Cliff Obrecht — have committed to giving away the majority of their wealth, pledging most of their equity to charitable causes. Melanie Perkins has spoken openly about the responsibility that comes with building a highly valuable company and has made Canva's social impact mission a core part of the company's identity.
Under Melanie Perkins' leadership as CEO, Canva has remained headquartered in Sydney, Australia, building a global company without relocating to San Francisco. Melanie Perkins has proven that world-class technology companies can be built anywhere, provided the founder has the right vision and the persistence to see it through. Canva's workplace culture under Melanie Perkins emphasizes collaboration, creativity, and a genuine commitment to the company's mission of empowering the world to design.