At only 32 years old, Filipina-Australian techpreneur Melanie Perkins has become the youngest billionaire and the third richest woman Australia.
Melanie is the co-founder and CEO of the accessible and user-friendly graphic design platform Canva where users can easily create banners, logos, social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content.
In a report by Forbes, her Sydney-based design company has now added a $6 billion valuation after it raised $60 million in a new private funding amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canva, which first started as a highschool yearbook business, was co-founded by Melanie and her fiancé Cliff Obrecht. It was joined by Cameron Adams back in 2014.
In an interview with 60 Minutes Australia in 2019, Melanie said she wanted to delve into something where one can “create professional and quality graphic designs online no matter your level of experience.”
According to Melanie, starting a business is like looking for a problem you wanted to solve passionately.
“I think that’s the most important thing because once you find a problem you want to solve passionately, there’s gonna be so many barriers — every single barrier you can possibly imagine,” she said.
She added, “I think that once you get a crystal clear picture of the problem you want to solve, that’s sort of step one.”
According to Forbes, Canva currently has an average of more than 30 million monthly users.
