The Visionary
The future, and what is barely possible, reads round the next corner.
Melanie Perkins fits The Visionary archetype because her leadership of Canva has always been anchored to a long horizon rather than incremental wins. She began with Fusion Books, a small yearbook design tool built in Perth, and treated it as proof of a much larger idea, that design could be simple enough for everyone.
“So, column A would have been nothing, frankly, because the reality was when I was a university student with no company and no business or product or software experience, the reality would have been not very much. And so it was all Column B. It was all thinking about the wild future that we wanted to create.”
“You are in a company starting a company, try and do the 1% pledge, try and figure out your own version of the two step plan, and try and build products.”
“You kind of think about it in the very early days, which is just a few of us, or just two of us in Fusion, and then three of us and just a little tiny group. And you kind of wear 100 hats. And then you have to be able to give away those hats to other people that can then do that way better than yourself.”
“It was really clear in my mind that it was the future, and I thought the investors were wrong, frankly, but investors also gave really helpful feedback and feedback often in the form of rejection. They would say, oh, your market's not big enough. And I would say it's going to be huge.”
Dustn.tv: “Interview: Canva CEO, Melanie Perkins”
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