If you’ve ever needed to create a social media tile, a DIY event invite or even a resume template, the odds are that you’ve used the online design site Canva! Most recently, Canva, the marketplace for designers and creatives, hit an incredible valuation of $55 billion, which is higher than Telstra and Woolworths, putting Australia on the global tech scene.
Canva has more than 60 million monthly active users who enjoy free access to designs and images, but Canva itself makes its money from monthly subscriptions, print products, training course sales, as well as marketplace fees, with professionals able to sell via Canva’s marketplace.
Peter Switzer says “Canva is such a serious player that it has attracted internationally significant financial businesses to help raise $200 million from investors in a capital raising, including T. Rowe Price, Franklin Templeton, Sequoia and many others.”
Successful start-ups aren’t a new phenomenon, there have been a plethora of prosperous business ventures including BHP, the Nine Network, Westfield and Harvey Norman, which all started as family businesses. One reason why Canva could have shot up to success as well as it has could be due to the power of the Internet, allowing a local business to compile so many global customers in a shorter amount of time. As well as a combination of innovation, technology, thinking creatively and guts being critical to success.
However, one of the most exciting components of Canva’s success is the fact that we can celebrate CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins as an Australian, female entrepreneur. She started Canva in 2013, desiring to make design accessible as during university, she found it difficult to work on programmes like Adobe Photoshop which requires multiple steps for one task. Within only five years and at just 30 years old, Melanie was making headlines as one of tech’s youngest female CEOs. Commonly referred to as the ‘20% club’ fewer than 20% of Australian CEOs are women, exposing the consistent inequality in the workforce. The latest ASX200 senior executive census by advocacy group Chief Executive Women (CEW) lists only 10 female CEOs, despite a study by the federal Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) showing that of appointing a female CEO can increase the market value of ASX listed companies by 5%, or nearly $80 million.
The success story of Canva cannot be without the success of Melanie Perkins, who now stands as an inspiration and role model for all women striving to succeed in business who dare to dream. Due to her innovation and success she’s the youngest listed in the top 10 of the Australian Financial Review’s ‘Rich List’.
