Melanie Perkins (born on May 13, 1987) has been launching creative and successful businesses ever since she was a teenager; her entrepreneur spirit has led her to become one of the youngest female CEO of Canva and also one of the wealthiest Australian women, she currently has two flourishing business under her name, Fusion Books and everyone’s favorite Canva.

Most of us are familiar with the designing app, and recently Canva launched a $26 billion productivity suite to compete with Google Docs and Microsoft Office. Still, few have an idea about the struggle its CEO had to face trying to launch the app, so let’s get to know Melanie Perkins a little more.

Melanie Perkins’s Parents & Siblings

Perkins was born in Perth, Western Australia, into a big family, where her father, a Malaysian who worked as an engineer, came of Filipino and Sri Lankan descent, and her mother, Late Beverly Tracey Perkins, was an Australian-born teacher who supported their all their 6 children in all of their ventures. Melanie has a long list of siblings, Chablis (Johnny) Perkins, Sequita “Tori” Perkins, Olivia (Terry) Crittenden, Johnathan Perkins, and Bryan Reed Perkins, and they all do their own things; she hasn’t revealed much about them at the moment.

Melanie attended Sacred Heart College, a small secondary school located in the suburb of Sorrento; at this early stage, she had aspirations of becoming a professional figure skater and would wake up every day at 4:30 am to train. However, her goals changed when she turned 14, as she sold handmade scarves to local shops and markets throughout her hometown; at the success of her first ever business, she fell in love with the freedom and excitement of being her boss and creating a company from its roots.

As soon as Melanie completed high school, she enrolled at the University of Western Australia, where she studied communications, psychology, and commerce; while still in college, she began providing technical support and tuition to students, helping them to learn designs through Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash and iMovie, it was here when she realized how complex, inaccessible, and expensive, these design programs were. Perkins saw this as a business opportunity and went for it; at 19, she dropped out of college and ventured into the real world.

How did Fusion Books Happen?

Melanie was clear in her vision, but before she launched her business, she had 2 months of work experience at Weber Shandwick; it was an internship in public relations. She wanted to establish a simple, virtual, and collaborative design that all could use without much technical knowledge.

Perkins got together with business panther Cliff Obrecht and founded Fusion Books in 2007; this allowed students to design their yearbooks; it had a simple drag-and-drop tool equipped with several design templates, and students could easily customize it with photos, illustrations, and fonts.

Melanie wanted to make the design even more straightforward, but she didn’t think it would be logical due to excess competition and fewer resources; her mother, however, helped her in coordinating this online publishing system, and being a teacher, she used this to design a yearbook and increased the high level of consumer friction, Fusion Books became a test run for Canva.

Obrecht brought in new customers, and over the next 5 years, Fusion Books grew into the largest yearbook company in Australia; the duo has also now expanded this in places like France and New Zealand; they spent 15 years of their in this company helping it to reach its heights, they are still a part of it, along with Canva.

How was Canva launched?

Canva happened in the late 2000s when Perkins and Cliff had a light-bulb moment in her mother’s lounge room, and it had the initial concept of enabling anyone to design anything, but it was easier said than done; Perkins had her fair share of struggle during the early days she had to sleep on the floor in her apartments across Silicon Valley, she later moved to Sydney to find investors, she faced nearly 100 rejections, but never gave up on her dream, she pitched her idea serval more times.

It finally hit the right spot on the 101 tries. She caught the attention of Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Maps, Ken Goldman, and Paul Bassat; they all invested $1.6 million in the seed-funding amount, which was more than enough. Canva was launched in September 2013 and went to another level, and investments came in from Hollywood stars Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson.

Currently, this online graphic design platform has 250 employees and is used by more than 10 million people in 100 languages to create high-quality logos, resumes, posts, posters, and even school presentations. Canva managed to get its unicorn status in January when Sequoia Capital joined its share register with $40 million in funding, making Melanie the CEO of one of the few ‘unicorn’ start-ups that are profitable.

Who is Melanie Perkins’s Husband?

Melanie Perkins has managed to keep her relationship private for quite some time, but she opened up about her love life in 2019 when Cliff Obrecht, also her long-term business partner, proposed on one of their trips to Turkey; they tied the knot 2 years later in January 2021 on Rottnest Island, both have the same mindset and are critical of materialism, they don’t believe in hoarding stuff.

They have expressed their desire to donate most of their fortune to charity. They joined the Giving Pledge and committed half their wealth to philanthropic purposes.

Melanie Perkins Q&A

Que: How old is Melanie Perkins?

Ans: Melani is 35 years old.

Que: What is Melanie Perkins’s net worth?

Ans: 6.5 Billion.

Que: When was Melanie Perkins born?

Ans: She was born on May 13, 1987.

Que: Who is Melanie Perkins married to?

Ans: Cliff Obrecht.

Que: What is Melanie Perkins’s height?

Ans: Perkins’s is 5 feet 5 inches tall.