Filipino-Australian tech entrepreneur Melanie Perkins at the age of 32 becomes the third richest woman in Australia in 2020, based on The Australian’s Richest 250 list. She is considered as the youngest entirely self-made billionaire in Australia according to Australian Financial Review.
Youngest Filipino-Australian self made billionaire
Melanie Perkins is the CEO and co-founder of the online design platform Canva. According to The Australian publication, Melanie has a net worth of $2.5 billion. Reason why many considers Ms. Perkins as the youngest billionaire in Australia.
Tech entrepreneur Melanie Perkins is now among Australia’s wealthiest three women after it was announced her business Canva had doubled its valuation. Melanie is Australia’s youngest billionaire & told #60Mins about her journey to build her empire. Watch: https://t.co/EtIvDn7zU7 pic.twitter.com/PsNH93fTis
— 60 Minutes Australia (@60Mins) June 23, 2020
What is Canva?
Canva is a free to use online design platform for creating logos, flyers, or just about any kind of presentation. It was a joint venture between Melanie and boyfriend Cliff Obrecht. Forbes reported, since October 2019, Canva has doubled its value from $3.2 billion to $6 billion in 2020 after the company raised $60 million in new funding from Blackbird and Sequoia China and other investors.
During the time of the pandemic, Canva’s popularity has increased significantly as more people started working remotely. Design creation and sharing in Canva have increased by 50 percent according to Forbes.
One of the most successful startups
According to CEO magazine, Canva has become one of Australia’s “most successful start-up unicorns ever”. Melanie even when she was young, together with boyfriend Cliff Obrecht, had an entrepreneurial mind. The idea behind Canva could have actually started from a simple high school yearbook design business back in 2006 while she was age 19 and now the rest is history.
“To take the entire world’s design ecosystem, integrate it into one page, and then make it accessible to the whole world..”, Perkins said at an interview with CNBC. This probably sums it all up what Canva has now become and why it has appealed to millions of its users. In its first year of launching alone, it has acquired hundreds of thousands of followers already and more and more people are benefitting to this brilliant concept.
You will never know until you take the first step
Equipped with her vision for the Canva idea, she was able to get meetings with investors. She bravely presented despite knowing her start-up idea could have been easily overtaken by giants such as Adobe and Microsoft. But her will power and clear vision of what Canva is going to be attracted these investors and even Google’s tech giant minds such as Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps, became their tech advisor. Later on, they were joined by Cameron Adams as a tech co-founder and a tech developer in Dave Hearnden.
Melanie’s success story is truly an inspiration but it never stops there
In one interview she shared the main ingredient to her journey, “once you find the problem you want to solve passionately, there’s going to be so many barriers, but to have a crystal clear picture of the problem then that is step one.” Despite her current success, the company Canva with her guidance wants to do more to help the community and improve even more on design collaborations.
Sources: Canva.com / Twitter / MSN / CNBC / Wikipedia
BXDNOW is also one of the beneficiaries of the Canva idea. Thank you Ms. Melanie Perkins, you are a gift to the world.
