The First Few: Canva

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Today we’ve got the third edition of The First Few series, highlighting how Canva, the multi-billion dollar design company, acquired their first customers.

If you missed the first two, Stripe and Netflix, check those out as well.

Canva is a product I use every week and the company Melanie Perkins built has become a juggernaut in the industry.

Let’s dive in.

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When it comes to graphic design, you shouldn’t need to be an expert to put your ideas into motion.

That’s the thought that drove Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht to the creation of what’s now one of the most popular design companies in the world.

It all dates back to 2007, when Perkins and Obrecht founded Fusion Books, an online platform for students to create their own school yearbooks. In a matter of years they were the biggest suppliers of yearbooks in Australia. Turned out that with accessible, intuitive tools, anyone could dream of making their own creations.

This inspired the launch of Canva in 2013. The vision was to democratize graphic design for everyone, everywhere. No matter how unfamiliar you were with the field, if you had access to the Internet, you had access to a world of options for flyers, posters, logos and all things graphic design.

As of today, Canva has birthed over 30 billion designs from more than 190 countries all over the world-that’s 38.5 million designs per day. It’s safe to say graphic design has been democratized indeed.

Now, how is it that in just over a decade Canva went from brainstorming in Perkins’ mom’s living room, to a communication powerhouse worth tens of billions of dollars?

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