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The now 37-year-old Australian entrepreneur has come a long way since high school when she dabbled in design. In 2013, Perkins co-founded Canva, a tool that promised to take the complexities out of design. And despite her meteoric rise, she never found herself in the spotlight, unlike many of her peers in Silicon Valley and beyond. As of May 2024, Canva is a $26 billion worldwide brand , with a total funding of $560 million according to a CNBC report .
The origin story of Canva
The story dates back to 2006 when Perkins was just a teen studying at university in Perth. She happened to spot a gap as traditional design software from giants like Adobe was so complicated that students spent entire their semesters simply figuring out where the buttons were.
Frustrated by the complexity of these tools, Perkins envisioned a future where design was not just easy, but intuitive, and collaborative. She saw an online platform that allowed users to create designs effortlessly—no long tutorials required. And that’s where the magic started.
From Yearbooks to the Big Leagues
Instead of jumping straight into her dream of an all-in-one design platform, Perkins took the gradual route. With few resources and no real business experience, she and Obrecht launched Fusion Books- an online platform where students could create and design their school yearbooks. Think of it as a small-scale test run. They built the platform, got schools to use it, and soon enough, the business was a success.
But Perkins had grander ambitions, so she set out to find investors. The real breakthrough came in 2010 when, by chance, she met Silicon Valley investor Bill Tai at a conference in Perth. After a brief conversation, Tai invited Perkins to pitch her idea in San Francisco. Though she initially thought she had blown it.
“I thought that he didn’t really like what I had to say. He was on his phone, and I thought that meant he wasn’t really engaged in what I had to say about the future of publishing,” Perkins told CNBC in an exclusive interview
Turns out he was actually connecting her with key contacts to help get Canva off the ground. As part of her efforts to network with Tai, Perkins had to pick up kitesurfing- a hobby Tai was passionate about. Imagine being a young entrepreneur with no tech background, trying to impress investors while struggling to stay afloat on a surfboard. But Perkins, ever the go-getter, dove right in. Kitesurfing wasn’t her thing, but breaking into Silicon Valley was.
It started as a free online platform, offering everything from presentation templates to logos, with one goal in mind: making design accessible for everyone. And just like that, Perkins, along with husband and co-founder Cliff Obrecht, was about to change the game for millions of users worldwide.
In 2012, after securing a tech advisor in Lars Rasmussen, who was the co-founder of Google Maps, Perkins and Obrecht found a tech co-founder in Cameron Adams, and Canva was officially on its way.
By the end of their first funding round in 2012, the business was oversubscribed. The Australian government even matched the $1.5 million investment, recognising the potential of this local startup. And just like that, Canva was born.
Fast forward to today, Canva’s global community has expanded to more than 220 million monthly active users across over 190 countries, with designs created in more than 100 languages. And since its launch in 2013, users have created over 30 billion designs on the platform. Canva’s meteoric rise means it has got its sights firmly set on competing with industry titans.
“I think India could be huge, it’s our fourth biggest market at the moment”, says co-founder Cameron Adams in an exclusive conversation with CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan on Young Turks.
(Catch a glimpse of the exclusive conversation here)
So, what’s next for the design platform that has already revolutionized the creative world? Canva is far from slowing down. The company is focused on expanding its team, rolling out new features, and solidifying its place as a daily go-to for users worldwide. With its ever-growing suite of tools and global reach, Canva continues to redefine how the world designs, collaborates and creates.
