35-year-old Canva founder Melanie Perkins got rejected by 100 VCs. Now her $26 billion design startup is ready to take on Microsoft and Google
Originally published on Fortune.
Perkins, who is Australian, founded the design platform with zero Silicon Valley connections. It's now the world's most valuable startup founded and led by a woman.
On a September morning in Sydney, Melanie Perkins peers through the double doors of Sterling hair salon in the city’s Surry Hills neighborhood. It’s now bustling with customers in highlight foils and black capes, but 10 years ago the space was where Perkins and then boyfriend, now husband Cliff Obrecht spent nearly every waking moment. It housed the Sydney office of Fusion Books, the yearbook publishing business the couple founded prior to launching Canva, a visual communications company. Today their second business is valued by one estimate at $26 billion, the most of any female-founded and woman-led startup in the world and a sum that has grown the couple’s combined net worth to an estimated $7.8 billion.
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