Canva Founder Melanie Perkins Is Latest Tech Billionaire

Canva founder, Melanie Perkins, is the tech industry’s latest billionaire. Canva, a company which offers web-based design tools for people who aren’t professional graphic designers, has just raised a $40 million round of funding, which makes its value $1 billion.

Here are a few things to know about Melanie Perkins:

Perkins is only 30 years old and her startup claims it has 10 million users. It has raised a total $82 million from investors like Sequoia China, Blackbird Ventures and Felicia Ventures.

Perkins started the company in 2006, when she was 19. She was a commerce and communications student at the University of Western Australia at the time

She was frustrated with how long it took to use mainstream design software. So she and her boyfriend decided to test her business idea in school yearbooks. They founded Fusion books, which is a website that allows students to design their yearbooks online.

"It could take a whole semester to learn the very basics," she said. "Even the simplest tasks, like exporting a high-quality PDF file, could take 22 clicks."

They set up in her mother’s room and borrowed money from relatives to build the software. Fusion soon grew to becoming a huge player in yearbook publishing. It expanded to France and New Zealand. Perkins left her college to focus on it.

She soon started Canva, using the same ideas from Fusion. In 2010, she pitched it to investors in Silicon Valley. It took her three years to get investment and she got $3 million in 2013.

"But I think that process was really helpful for us, because it meant that we had to refine our pitch, and really get our strategy down before we started. So when we landed that investment, we were able to execute quite quickly and effectively," she told the BBC.

Now with the 12th round, she is running a billion dollar company.

Headquartered in Sydney, Canva has 200 people working for it. It is used in 179 countries. As many as ten designs are created via its website every second.

She wants the whole world to be able to design, Perkins says.

Also Read: Tech A Boon For Entrepreneurship, Say Bizwomen

Picture Credit: news.australia