Melanie Perkins: Co-founder and CEO of Canva

Melanie Perkins turned a specific pain point —learning to use complex design programs— into the idea that gave birth to Canva. The Australian entrepreneur co-founded the platform with Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, and serves as its CEO. Prior to Canva, she and Obrecht had created Fusion Books, a tool for making school yearbooks. Her career path follows the progression from a product for schools to a design and publishing platform used in numerous countries. It also shows how the project has expanded into collaboration, education and artificial intelligence tools, without losing sight of the ease of use that motivated her first experiments.

Who is Melanie Perkins?

Melanie Perkins is an Australian entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Canva. She started with Fusion Books, a digital service for designing school yearbooks, and then developed an accessible design platform for people without specialized training. Canva publicly announced its launch in 2013. Perkins continues to lead the company as of 2026.

From teaching design to imagining a simpler tool

The idea came from a teaching experience. Perkins recounted in a story published by Canva that, while studying in Perth, she taught design programs part-time. To her, the effort required by desktop tools seemed disproportionate to tasks many people needed to complete quickly. She wanted a simple online service that allowed teams to work together.

Instead of trying to cover all of design on day one, she chose a specific problem: school yearbooks. Her mother was a teacher and had helped put one together. Perkins was familiar with the work of gathering photos, text, and pages before sending the book off to print. This experience helped define an initial application with identifiable users and needs, smaller than Canva's later ambition.

Her account of the beginnings is specific: Fusion Books operated out of her mother's living room, while she and Cliff Obrecht studied and worked part-time jobs. Their first customer came via the internet in 2008. The company learned to contact schools, print books, and improve the program while fulfilling real orders. The story explains the continuity between the two projects: helping people without advanced technical knowledge produce visual materials.

Fusion Books: the first project

Canva places the launch of Fusion Books in 2007. The tool allowed students and teachers to design school yearbooks online. Its reach was specific, but it gave the team an opportunity to test collaborative design, editing via a simpler interface, and the process of turning a digital file into a printed product.

Perkins explained that the team dedicated limited resources to the program's development and that they continued to improve the product every year. This was not just a presentation to investors: they had to attend to the schools and fulfill deliveries. That business experience was the practical base from which Perkins and Obrecht were able to propose a design tool for much broader uses.

How Canva was born

The next step required technical expertise and capital. Perkins traveled to the United States to pitch the idea to potential investors. According to the story published by Canva, she and Obrecht received numerous rejections before securing backing. Cameron Adams, who had worked at Google, came on board as co-founder and product lead. The three names are part of Canva's founding; attributing the project to a single person would erase decisive collaboration.

In March 2013, Canva announced an initial round of three million dollars and expressly noted that Fusion Books had been the previous venture of Perkins and Obrecht. In August of the same year it publicly unveiled its online design platform. The initial offering combined drag-and-drop tools, a library of images and typefaces, and collaboration functions. The goal was to enable a person to prepare visual pieces for the web or for print without first learning a complex professional program.

The starting point was clear, although the product changed afterwards. Canva went from being an editor for individual designs to bringing together presentations, documents, videos and other forms of visual communication. In its current communication, the company describes itself as a design and publishing platform. That expansion retains a central question from Perkins' early days: how to remove obstacles between an idea and its realisation?

Verifiable milestones of her career

• 2007: Perkins and Cliff Obrecht started Fusion Books, dedicated to school yearbooks.
• 2013: Canva announced seed funding and launched its online design platform; Cameron Adams joined as co-founder.
• 2021: Perkins and Obrecht announced they would dedicate most of their stake in Canva, then equivalent to about 30 % of the company, to social impact projects through the Canva Foundation.
• 2026: Perkins continued to publicly present herself as co-founder and CEO as Canva expanded its design products and AI tools.

These dates come from announcements and testimonials from the company itself. The figures for users, ratings and personal assets change over time, and are not used here as a measure of Perkins' trajectory.

Melanie Perkins and Canva in 2026

In April 2026, Perkins signed a presentation on the company's next stage on Canva's news portal. That same month, the company announced Canva AI 2.0 as an evolution of its tools for creating and editing content using conversational instructions. In September, Canva introduced ProSuite, which brings together products aimed at professional creative work. These are developments of the company under her leadership; they do not mean Perkins personally coded each feature.

To understand her current role, it is helpful to distinguish between founder, CEO, and author of each launch. As CEO, Perkins directs the company alongside other executives and product teams. Her public appearances maintain the idea of expanding access to design, now applied to more varied workflows than the yearbooks she started with.

Her commitment to the Canva Foundation

Perkins and Obrecht announced in 2021 their commitment to dedicate the majority of their stake in Canva, around 30 % of the company's value at the time, to social causes. The initiative is part of the plan Canva calls “Step Two”, aimed at using the resources generated by the business to support social projects. It is a commitment announced by the founders, not a statement that all of that stake has already been given or spent.

The company publishes information about education, non-profit organizations and direct aid partnerships linked to that plan. This aspect adds context to Perkins' public activity, alongside her central achievement: building, with her co-founders and teams, a platform to make design more accessible.

What distinguishes her business story

The connection between Fusion Books and Canva allows for a specific work method to be observed. First, there was a close and delimited need: to help schools create yearbooks. Then came a broader product that reused that experience for other formats. Perkins has described the initial years as learning about customers, software development, and marketing, not as an instant expansion.

It is also a story of collaboration. Obrecht was involved in the initial business and the creation of Canva; Adams brought product leadership to the broader project. Accurately portraying their roles avoids turning a collective journey into a story of individual success. Perkins' biography centers on the idea she championed, the decisions she made to bring it to market, and her continued leadership of the company.

Conclusion

Melanie Perkins' career path combines an early solution for school yearbooks with a globally-reaching design platform. Her role at Canva is best understood by looking at the decisions shared with Cliff Obrecht, Cameron Adams and the teams that developed the product. The biography will continue to be updated with verifiable facts. To learn about other entrepreneurial journeys, you can visit the section of Famosix entrepreneurs.

Sources consulted

• Melanie Perkins at Canva: a story about the beginnings of Fusion Books and Canva.
• Canva: funding announcement and founding team, March 2013.
• Canva: platform launch, August 2013.
• Melanie Perkins: The next stage of Canva in 2026.
• Canva: Canva AI presentation 2.0.
• Canva: presentation of ProSuite in 2026.
• Canva: Step Two plan and founders' commitment.