Australian entrepreneur Melanie Perkins, 32, is the co-founder and CEO of Canva, a free online design platform. Melanie Perkins (b. 1987) is an Australian technology entrepreneur, CEO and co-founder of Canva.
By now, most people have heard of online design tools, but little is known about Perkins’ life, how Canva’s founder grew the company, and his plans to continue innovating in the industry. A few years later, while she was still a student at the University of Western Australia, Perkins established her first company. Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins part-time teaches students how to use desktop design software, which is difficult and expensive to learn.
Australia’s second richest woman got the idea to go into graphic design in 2005 and founded Canvas’s predecessor, a school yearbook business called Fusion, in her mother’s living room. Canva, the second richest female graphic design platform for women in Australia, is now worth over $55 billion, of which she and her co-founder/husband Cliff Obrecht own 30%, or over $16.4 billion. The Australian just placed Perkins, who is only 34 years old, among the ten richest people in Australia along with her husband, co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht.
Two years later, SYDNEY is now worth $3.2 billion and Australian entrepreneur Melanie Perkins and her co-founder and now boyfriend Cliff Obrecht have a personal net worth of $900 million. For Australian entrepreneur Melanie Perkins, the release of school yearbooks was just the first step towards what she called her “crazy big dream” of a one-stop design website, so she started looking for investors. With her next company, Melanie Perkins succeeded, albeit on a smaller scale, in realizing her vision of simplifying future design.
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Perkins founded the company she co-founded after feeling frustrated that design software was too difficult to work with. Perkins and his team have always been generous to charities, so after conducting an evaluation, Canva decided to donate 30% of the company’s shares to a charity that aims to eradicate poverty. The founder of Canva attributes Canva’s success to meeting these people, as they were a big influence on her vision and helped her realize it.
Melanie Perkins was born in Perth, Western Australia, in the year 1987. She is the daughter of a Malaysian engineer of Filipino and Sri Lankan ancestry and an Australian-born teacher. She completed her secondary schooling at Sacred Heart College, in the northern Perth suburb of Sorrento, where she lived. Melanie went to the University of Western Australia after high school to study communication, psychology, and commerce. She also worked as a private tutor for graphic design students at this time.
Melanie became aware of the problems students encountered using design applications such as Adobe Photoshop while working on this project. She even claimed that learning the fundamental features of these difficult design programs took pupils about a semester at university.
Melanie is ranked No. 17 on the Australian Financial Review’s 2018 Young Rich List, which features the country’s richest young individuals, from supermodels to entrepreneurs. Perkins is allegedly valued $177 million as the CEO of Canva.
She has managed to improve her revenue stream from Canva and Fusion books as a software entrepreneur. Although there is no current information, some sources indicate that she has a net worth of $128 million or more. That makes her one of Australia’s wealthiest young ladies. Cliff Obrecht has been her boyfriend for nearly 14 years (as of 2019).
Cliff Obrecht is her business partner, and the two co-founded Fusion Brooks. He is presently the Chief Operating Officer of Canva. They’ve been dating since their freshman year of university.
Canva has over 60 million monthly active users, across 190 countries. Melanie Perkins, from an average family, backed this world-level platform. Her mother was a teacher who would also co-ordinate the school yearbook. In 2013, Canva officially launched Canva after two rounds of seed funding.
