MELANIE PERKINS (A Brief Biography)

 MELANIE PERKINS

A Brief Biography:

Melanie Perkins is a technology entrepreneur who has been listed among Australia’s richest people as of the year 2021. She is the Chief Executive Officer of graphic designing software company Canva and has been mentioned in Forbes “Top under 30 of the decade” tech founders of 2020. Born in Perth, Western Australia on January 1st, 1988, she attended Sacred Heart College. Her journey of designing software started at the age of 14 from crafting handmade scarves to sell in Perth. During her graduation in commerce at the University of Western Australia, Perkins was teaching graphic designing as a private tutor where she felt that students were fighting tooth and nails to master Adobe Photoshop and other famous designing software.

Melanie Perkins took up kite surf as a hobby and she developed a profound interest in kite surfing after Bill Tai invited her to a kite surfing gathering. She took lessons for skating even at 4:30 am. Her aim of becoming a professional skater cleared the way for funding for her business idea, as her first investors were from her skating group.  While they were on a trip Perkins got married to Cliff Obrecht, her long-time friend, and the co-founder of Canva, on his proposal in Cappadocia, Turkey in 2019.

Business Ideas and Information:

Perkin is a passionate entrepreneur adding her perseverance made her built a successful business. She started her journey with a motive of a yearbook design startup called Fusion Books with her future husband Cliff Obrecht in 2007. They launched a website for untrained students to “collaborate and design their profile pages and articles”. They tried to make the website as simple as possible provided by several fonts, illustrations, and photos. They would then print and deliver the yearbook throughout Australia. The business was a success and is still active but it was just a first step, according to Perkin.

The notably weak point of Fusion Books was low funding. Perkin and her friend were in search of venture capitalists for Fusion Books as well as for their new idea of a simpler web-based app which is now in hands of over 55 million designers. The capital for Canva was a big deal for Perkins. She persisted even after hundred rejections. The opportunity would arise in Silicon Valley when one former Google executive associated with her. Cameron Adams, who had the right expertise, helped Perkins get the funding. After two rounds of initial investments, the company was officially launched in 2013.

Starting amount of capital for Canva was a $1.5 million investment in 2013. The net worth of the company in 2019 was $3.2 billion on a funding round given by Silicon Valley investor Mary Meeker. In 2020 the valuation of Canva was raised to $6 billion on its 85 million funding round. At that time Perkins turned out to be the third richest woman in Australia with a net worth of $1.3 billion. Recently, in April 2021 Canva announced a $15 billion valuation following a $17 million investment.

Currently, Canva is working worldwide in 190 countries including Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, France, and India, with its headquarters in Sydney, Australia. It has its branches in Manila and Beijing.

Reasons for Success:

Canva is one of the simplest graphic designing web-based applications which assists you to design almost everything from a resume to a webpage. One can design posters, social media posts, logos, magazines covers, presentations, and a lot more. Mentioning the reasons for the success of Melanie Perkins in her world-famous tech startup company Canva following points must be included.

1.      Perseverance behind the Startup:

 Perkins encountered a hundred rejections to get funding for her startup but she stood firm with perseverance and determination until she got it. Even she took 4:30 am pieces of training for skating because there was a chance to have the initial funding from the skating team. “It was like, risk: serious damage; reward: start company,” Perkins says. “If you get your foot in the door just a tiny bit, you have to kind of wedge it all the way in.”

2.      Canva is User-friendly:

Anyone can be a designer with Canva. Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to access all templates and tools with marketing and advertising material. A background remover tool is its flair. Canva is easily accessible, variable, and unbeatable. Canva does the work for styling and designing and the user can focus on content which ultimately boosts up productivity. Automated saving after every change in design should never be missed to appreciate.

3.      Canva is Media-friendly:

Canva designs can smoothly be shared with many social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr, Linked In, etc. Users can directly share the designs without downloading and re-uploading. In addition, the post can be scheduled to be shared automatically.

4.      Canva has a Diversified Team:

The workplace of Canva Company is inclusive and assorted. Its personnel include 41% women, notably greater than the industry average of 28%. The team is expected to be expanded to 700 in Sydney, Manila, and Beijing. Also, it has announced partnerships with Tailwind, Agora Pulse, Tabsite, GoDaddy, and Post Planner. Expanding and diversifying the workforce of Canva has since been proved to be a success to compete directly with the professional design tools developed by Microsoft and Adobe.

Limitations:

Although Canva has worked it earnestly in this era of incongruity between advertising and real product, it has some limitations. Modernization demands constant improvements and a company requires sinking deeply into little things to remain standing in the market with the competitors.

1.      Data Breach:

A single-time data breach can be a stigma leading to destroying a well-developed image of a company. In May 2019, the data of around 140 million users of Canva was hacked. The leaked data revealed the real names of the users with their emails and addresses. A security-conscious person finds it a cause of hesitation to join Canva. Well, it is not the case only with Canva, versatile media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have also experienced it.

2.      Functional Drawbacks:

Joining a graphic designing application stating the potential to make everyone a designer creates endless expectations in mind. If a user is having a lot of simple clicks, he wants more ease when he gets used to it. Placing items outside the working area is an indispensable demand for every artist. But Canva deletes everything outside the board. Editing a previous work to create a new design saves it as an updated file rather than a new file. Its new features like Website and online presentation are needed to be improved. Moreover, the users have found it hard to export files in the “going to the web” option.

Suggestions for Improvements:

Canva should introduce another side of it to grab the attention of expert designers where they have more control over things. Many times the photo frames or the shapes cannot be edited whole manually. The alignment of objects is not supported in Canva. The user is restricted if he is a professional designer. Well, an opportunity to collaborate in image editing in real-time would also be a suggestion for improvement. More business categories should be added to the templates. If an industry wants to have its own specific design template it will not prefer designs that are being used by millions of people throughout the world.

A bunch of great templates is available which all look flawless and can be selected in the first glimpse but not each of them should be selected in the eye of a professional designer. Novices still need some good opinions to do well out of so many options. Some fundamental features like “background remover” should be free for all. Although businesses do not focus much on science like biology and chemistry, Canva should turn its hand to focus on creating more images related to sciences. It must be whole handy software if a biologist wants to present a virus in the background and vice versa. However, Canva users had a whale of a time enjoying such amazing features. Canva has taken it one day at a time with the increase in expectations.  As Perkins said, “So while the expectations around our company and what we’re expected to do is sort of increasing, that’s nothing on what I’ve got on myself!”

 

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