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How to become an owner of a $15B tech design business not being a techie, nor a designer
She started at 14 with selling hand-made scarves. Now she is a CEO of one of Silicon Valley unicorns. With no business degree, and no coding skills whatsoever
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Melanie Perkins, a founder of Canva, started her entrepreneur’s career by selling hand-made scarves out of her mom’s backyard. When she was 19 and was studying in the University of Perth, Australia, she and her boy-friend Cliff Obrecht decided to start a business. But they were not sure what to begin with. Melanie, who was doing a degree in communications and psychology, suggested the best approach: do some research and find out what the audience they had access to (aka students) were struggling with. They did some inquiries here and there and found out that students were struggling with design programs that they had to use to do the presentations or the handouts. Photoshop was soooo complicated — sometimes they had to spend months just trying to figure out what buttons to push.
Melanie and Obrecht instantly saw a business opportunity (they were not design experts but they have already gone through this learning curve) and started to offer tutor services to…
