Canva’s Melanie Perkins has already started giving away her fortune

Australia’s fifth-richest woman, who first made money selling spray tattoos at a Perth trade show, now heads a multinational tech powerhouse worth more than Woodside, Rio Tinto and Woolworths.

Melanie Perkins’ DIY graphic design platform Canva is now valued at more than $48.7 billion, up from its previous valuation of $39 billion in April, making it one of Australia’s most valuable companies.

Perkins, 37, and her co-founder and husband, Cliff Obrecht, 38, each own about 18 percent of the company.

“It has been an extraordinary year for all of us at Canva, as we celebrate the remarkable growth and increasing demand for our business,” said Mr. Obrecht.

“We’re excited to provide more than 200 million people in 190 countries with the simplicity, access and power of our product.

“While we are incredibly proud of the progress we have made, we are just getting started and we look forward to much more.”

Canva’s number of paying customers rose 38 percent year-on-year to 22 million, while the total number of active users surpassed 200 million for the first time, following the introduction of generative AI features.

From humble beginnings, the ultra-ambitious Perkins is regarded in tech circles as a friendly but “intense” visionary obsessed with everyone using her website.

“We want everyone on the planet to use Canva,” she previously said.

She also told staff that the company wants to become one of the most valuable in the world, but that they don’t plan to hold on to all that wealth.

In 2022, they signed Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge, committing to give away the majority of their fortune to charity during their lifetime.

‘It never felt like our money, we always felt like we were just custodians of it. As we have previously shared, it has long been our intention to give away the wealth, and we have thought long and hard about the best way to begin that journey,” Perkins wrote in 2021.

“We have a hugely optimistic belief that there is enough money, good will and good intentions in the world to solve most of the world’s problems, and we want to spend our lives working on that.”

A recent filing with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission revealed that Canva’s founders, including Cameron Adams, contributed $38.9 million in cash to the Canva Foundation between July 2022 and December 2023, along with a further $607,416 in non-cash amounts. donations.

The Canva Foundation supports a range of initiatives in Australia, India, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Philippines, Ukraine, the United States and several African countries.

Notable contributions include $700,000 in disaster assistance for earthquake recovery efforts in Turkey, Morocco and Afghanistan, as well as support following the floods in Libya and the devastating wildfires in Hawaii.

The Foundation has also committed an initial $7.4 million to an educational pilot program aimed at improving literacy and numeracy skills in Southern Africa and India.

Ms Perkins and Mr Obrecht met while studying at the University of Western Australia, and early on they made money together selling spray tattoos at local fairs.

Before meeting Mr. Obrecht, Ms. Perkins was a dedicated figure skater who trained daily at 4:30 a.m. before attending Sacred Heart College.

After school she sold handmade scarves at markets and local shops.

While studying business studies at university, she earned an extra income by tutoring other students in graphic design.

Her idea for a graphic design company took shape in 2005, leading her to start a textbook company, Fusion, from her mother’s living room.

“My boyfriend became my co-founder and we started in my mom’s living room,” she said.

The couple started with a bank loan and a $5,000 tax credit, which they used to advertise online and send sample yearbooks to school.

In 2013, they launched Canva and purchased the URL canva.com for $2,500. The following year they moved to Sydney to expand the business.

Ms. Perkins faced numerous rejections from investors (she was rejected a hundred times) before she honed her pitch and secured $1.5 million in funding, including backing from Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps.

In an effort to connect with Silicon Valley’s tech leaders, Ms. Perkins even learned to kiteboard.

However, while sailing alone in the Caribbean Channel between Richard Branson’s Necker and Moskito Islands, she became stranded for hours and had to be rescued.

One of the couple’s first business strategies was convincing photographers to accept a 25-cent royalty per sale for images in Canva’s library, instead of the one-time fee that platforms like Getty offer.

Mr. Obrecht convinced them that as Canva grew, their photos could be sold thousands or even millions of times, leading to much higher overall revenues.

In 2019, Mr. Obrecht proposed to her before a trip to Turkey, with an engagement ring worth just $30.

“We live quite modestly and don’t really see the need to just accumulate wealth. The priority for the company is education because we really feel that educating underprivileged people gives them the opportunity to break the cycle,” he said.

The couple married on Rottnest Island in January 2021, but are still based in Sydney and live in a modest terraced house in Surry Hills, bought for $1.7 million, the average house price for the inner-city suburb.

“Mel and I are determined to give all our money away to make the world a better place,” he told The Australian.

“I think now that we’re running such a large company with such a high valuation, it’s an obligation for us to use that to be a positive force and make the world a better place, rather than just hoarding s**t.’