20 Facts About Melanie Perkins

Melanie Perkins was born on 1987 and is an Australian technology entrepreneur, who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Canva.

Melanie Perkins was born in 1987 in Perth, Western Australia.

Melanie Perkins is the daughter of an Australian-born teacher and a Malaysian engineer of Filipino and Sri Lankan descent.

Melanie Perkins attended Sacred Heart College, a secondary school located in the northern Perth suburb of Sorrento.

In high school, Melanie Perkins had aspirations of becoming a professional figure skater and would routinely wake up at 4:30 am to train.

Melanie Perkins noticed the difficulties students had in learning design programs such as Adobe Photoshop: it would often take students a semester at university to be introduced to basic features of these complex design programs.

Melanie Perkins thought there was a business opportunity in making the design process easier.

Melanie Perkins's idea was to make a design platform where no technical experience was required.

Melanie Perkins dropped out of university at age 19 to pursue her first business with Cliff Obrecht, Fusion Books.

Originally, Melanie Perkins wanted to develop software that made the entire design process easier but due to the competition with large companies and her lack of resources, she concluded 'it did not seem the logical thing to do'.

Melanie Perkins's mother was a teacher who would co-ordinate the school yearbook.

Melanie Perkins saw how much time was required to design a yearbook and thought the high level of consumer friction would make yearbooks a good niche to test the idea for Canva.

Adams was in Silicon Valley trying to raise funds for his start-up when Melanie Perkins sent him another email asking if he wanted to join the business.

Melanie Perkins is the CEO of one of the few 'unicorn' start-ups that are profitable.

Melanie Perkins was named to the Financial Review Rich List of 2023.

Melanie Perkins is amongst the 2 percent of female CEOs of venture-backed companies.

Melanie Perkins wrote an article for people who feel like 'they are on the outside' and discussed her journey as a young entrepreneur in order to encourage people from diverse backgrounds to pursue big dreams and concentrate on their goals.

Melanie Perkins has implemented policies at Canva that eliminate bias in the hiring process, that has resulted in Canva obtaining 41 percent female representation, significantly higher than the industry average of 28 percent.

Melanie Perkins took an interest in kite surfing when she discovered many prominent venture capitalists use this as a way to network with founders.

Melanie Perkins has travelled the world extensively and credits a trip to India as a life-changing experience.