Page 74 - Forbes - USA (December 2019)
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least using the favored startup metric of adjusted into the consumer space. And that’s not even
EBITDA, which strips out stock-option expens- considering Canva’s ambitions in new mediums
es, financing and tax costs—since 2017. “We have like video and presentations, which could pit it
been really conscientious about not taking on too against everything from small Instagram video-
much capital because we’ve been profitable for making apps to Microsoft, maker of the block-
the last two years,” Perkins says. buster PowerPoint.
It all starts with Perkins, who onboards every It’s daunting, to say the least, but for Perkins,
new employee (now 700 in total) with a thor- who has already turned doubting Silicon Valley
72 ough rundown of Canva’s most sensitive financial players into eager supporters and mastered the
numbers and past investor pitch decks. Other Chinese market—and has built a $200 million-
unicorn founders boast. Perkins keeps receipts. plus bank account—it’s all according to plan. “I feel
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N And as Canva grows she’s trying to prove you can like we’ve done an incredible job, but we’ve done
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K build a global tech giant from anywhere. “Mel- very little compared to what we want to do. We’ve
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E anie is a rare breed of entrepreneur, the likes of done 1% of what I think is possible,” Perkins says.
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which you don’t find often anywhere,” says Mary “Our company mission is to empower the world to
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I Meeker, a seasoned internet investor whose new design. And we really mean the whole world.”
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A firm, Bond Capital, made Canva its first official
L
E investment in May. erkins started working on what
M Perkins’ family jokes that she has a 100-point became Canva in 2007 from her
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— plan for changing the world. First, Canva has a mom’s living room in Perth. The
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L much more straightforward challenge: win over daughter of an Australian-born
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F big business. Like Atlassian, Slack and Zoom be- teacher and a Malaysian engi-
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R fore it, Canva faces a classic dilemma: a freemi- neer of Filipino and Sri Lankan heritage, Per-
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um model can make you viral, but most users will kins had wanted to be a professional figure skat-
never pay a dime. And though Canva says it has Perfect Fit er, enduring an adolescence of 4:30 a.m. wake-
users inside almost every large corporation today, “The three of us had up calls before enrolling at the University of
no idea how to run
they’re typically rogue individuals or small teams, a company,” says Western Australia. There, while teaching fellow
Cameron Adams
not official corporate accounts. Moving upmar- (left), with cofounders students basic computer design as part of her
ket means increasingly brushing up against Ado- Melanie Perkins communications and commerce studies, she had
and Cliff Obrecht
be, the $149 billion (market cap) graphics giant at Canva’s former an idea. The process of designing and printing
that took in $1.65 billion in revenue last quarter Sydney headquarters. a poster or a flyer—composing it in Adobe Pho-
“When I met Mel and
from its design-focused unit alone. Then there Cliff, I could feel the toshop or Microsoft Word, converting it to the
are a host of high-flying startups like Figma and jigsaw pieces coming right size and saving it as a PDF, and taking it
together.”
Sketch that cater to pros but could easily move to a store like Staples to print—seemed cumber-
some in the age of the internet.
Wouldn’t it be much better to
do it all in one place with one
online tool?
“The idea of making de-
sign really simple was the first
idea,” she says.
The problem felt so obvi-
ous that Perkins feared some-
one else would build a solution
first if she delayed. So she hired
freelancers to build a Flash
website to target one niche she
identified as steady and under-
served: school yearbooks, typ-
ically the responsibility of stu-
dent volunteers. Obrecht and
Perkins’ startup, Fusion Books,
found a market immediately.
And with one semester of col-
lege left, Perkins put her stud-
ies on pause. In peak season,
Perkins’ mom fed the printers
ink overnight. Obrecht worked
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