back in 2007, a girl in perth, australia named Melanie Perkins was teaching design to her classmates.
problem?
design tools were painful. photoshop, illustrator — steep learning curve, clunky, expensive af.
she thought:
“what if design was as simple as drag-and-drop?”
💡 idea unlocked → first startup: fusion books.
basically canva v0. it let schools create yearbooks online. no downloads. no pain.
fusion books took off in australia.
but mel wasn’t stopping there.
she was like → “if this works for yearbooks, why not for everything?”
enter canva.
2012 → mel + cliff (her co-founder/bf) fly around, pitching investors.
fun fact: they got rejected by over 100 vcs.
everyone thought → “design is solved. adobe owns it.”
but mel was stubborn af.
kept refining, kept pitching, until she met bill tai (legendary investor).
he introduced her to some silicon valley folks, plus a
techie named cameron adams (ex-google).
boom → founding team complete.
2013 → canva launches.
day 1: 50k signups.
people loved it.💙💙💙
fast-forward → canva is now a $25B+ company, profitable, used by 100M+ users, from students to fortune 500s.
all from that simple insight: design shouldn’t feel like coding. it should feel like lego. 🧩
✨ why it hits
mel turned her pain (teaching design) → product.
ignored the 100+ rejections.
focused on simplicity in a world obsessed with “pro tools.”
stayed bootstrapped mindset even when scaling.
🔥 takeaway for us builders:
your “silly little idea” that makes something 10x easier can be worth billions.
don’t sleep on it.
ship. iterate. get rejected. repeat.
the world might laugh → until they’re using your tool daily.
I’m also building one ai reels
generator SaaS app and sharing my ups & down with my audience
we’re opening beta tester for our app :
Follow :→ @nirajsheladiya to get early access asp