The prestigious magazine Forbes stood out in his ranking of «self-made» billionaires under 40 years old, whose main requirement is to have created immense fortunes from scratch, without inheritances and with their own ideas, to Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht. He Australian marriage has a heritage combined grandson of 15.2 billion dollars.
In 2007 Melanie and Cliff met as classmates at the University of Western Australia. Both passionate about graphic design, They started a project designed for university students and had excellent results.
For their idea to expand and cross borders profitably, they needed financing. They received more than 100 rejections from potential investorsbut they were convinced that there was a profitable future ahead.
They were not wrong. Since 2013, Perkins, 38, has been the CEO of Canva, a company that in August 2025 was valued at 42 billion dollars. Together with her husband, Obrecht, 39, and a friend turned partner, Cameron Adams, they founded the popular online graphic design platform.
The founders of Canva have a combined fortune of $15.2 billion, according to Forbes’ ranking of self-made millionaires under 40. (Photo: Capture www.forbes.com)According to public statistics on Canva’s website, they have 185 million active users that create a wide variety of visual content, most of it through the infinite number of templates available that can be edited as many times as the user wishes.
The couple also occupies the sixth place of the most millionaire people in Australiaa list also compiled by Forbes. Perkins became an inspiration for many women, not only because of her heritage, but because of her philosophy of life, contrary to what some might imagine of an entrepreneur who appears in the 13th place in the ranking of the richest young self-made entrepreneurs in the world.
Melanie Perkins, the woman behind Canva: a shipwreck, a basement and 100 rejections
Born on February 13, 1987 in Perth, Australia, Perkins was curious about technology and design since she was a child. However, her dream was to become a figure skater, and she trained for many years, but then her other calling emerged.
Daughter of an Australian teacher and a Malaysian engineer Of Filipino and Sri Lankan descent, he began working on what would become Canva in 2007, from his mother’s living room in Perth.
Melanie Perkins, the CEO of Canva. (Photo: LinkedIn Melanie Perkins)She was enrolled in a business and communication degree at the University of Western Australia. While teaching his classmates some computer design tips, he had an idea.
«The process of designing and printing a brochure involved putting it together in Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word, converting it to the appropriate size, saving it as a PDF, and taking it to a specialty store to print it, which was cumbersome for the Internet age, and I wondered if it wasn’t It would be much better to do everything in one place with a single online tool«he declared to Forbes.
Composing designs in a simple way was the central idea from the beginning. «The problem seemed so obvious to me that I was afraid someone else would create a solution first if I delayed carrying it out,» he acknowledged.
Inspired by how difficult it was for people without design experience access the professional tools available on the market, and even more so learn how to use them, he hired freelance designers to create a website aimed at a niche he identified as «stable and underserved»: the school yearbooksgenerally the responsibility of student volunteers who had to invest a lot of time in that task.
She was already dating Obrecht, and together they created their first design software startup, Fusion Booksan online design system to facilitate the creation of yearbooks.
Perkins put his studies on hold and In the basement of his house he put several printers to satisfy the demand of yearbooks that users created. Her mother carried the ink at night, her boyfriend made calls all day to recruit potential clients, and they had an order queue for 400 schools, including shipments to places as far away as France.
They were doing very well, but They couldn’t grow much more without financingsomething difficult to find in Perth, a mining city, thousands of kilometers from the technological center of Silicon Valley.
Getting a meeting with the right people was difficult. Perkins acknowledges that he received rejections from more than 100 investors. Until he met the organizer of a group of venture investors who practiced kitesurfing in his native Perth.
Melanie Perkins with her husband, Cliff Obrecht, and third co-founder, Cameron Adams. (Photo: LinkedIn Melanie Perkins)He had no prior training in the water sport that combines elements of sailing, surfing, wakeboarding and windsurfing, but he started taking classes immediately. «It literally involved facing turbulent waters, something like: the risk is high, but the reward will be creating a company,» he recalled humorously.
A hot morning in May 2013 Melanie found herself adrift on a kitesurf board in the channel between billionaire Richard Branson’s private islands Necker and Moskito.
With her 9-meter sail floating deflated and useless, shipwrecked in the strong current of the eastern Caribbean, the then 26-year-old entrepreneur she waited for hours to be rescued.
That shipwreck was worth it, because its story reached the ears of the investor Bill Or, an expert kitesurfer who had sponsored TweetDeck and Zoom. Not only did he invest, but he helped her network at various meetings, and that’s how she met Cameron Adams, example of Google, who joined as the third co-founder. In a matter of weeks They had already raised 3 million dollars.
Philanthropists and austere: the founding couple of Canva will donate 80% of their fortune
Canva was officially launched in 2013 and reached 600,000 users in its first year of operation. Since then, the platform has seen continuous growth to become one of the most popular tools in the world.
Canva, the online graphic design platform created by Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht. (Photo: LinkedIn Melanie Perkins)In China, historically a failing market for Western software developers, Canva was a rare success from the start. McDonald’s China became a customer, as did a national real estate agency that offers the software to its 1,000 agents.
Obrecht opened Canva’s first office outside Sydney, in Manila, in 2014, and then hired the former head of LinkedIn’s Chinese unit to build an office in mainland China, where they developed from scratch a version of the platform with features for Chinese messaging apps and easy-to-create QR codes.
Each co-founder has clear roles and owns approximately 18% of the company’s shares. Although Perkins is one of the youngest billionaires in the world, she often says that she doesn’t feel like that fortune «really belongs to her.»
Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams in a presentation on the evolution of Canva. (Photo: LinkedIn Melanie Perkins)«If it was all about creating wealth, it would be the most boring thing I could imagine.»Perkins said. «We have achieved only 1% of what I believe is possible – our company mission is empower the world to design. And we really mean ‘everyone,'» he added in relation to the idea of »democratizing» design.
The couple said in several interviews that in the coming years they plan donate more than 80% of your shareholding to the Canva Foundation for charitable causes.
Years ago they had already joined Warren Buffet’s initiative along with Melinda and Bill Gates to make important donations. The charity sent funds to more than 13,000 people in Lilongwe Rural, Malawi, through its first pilot programme. They also donated money to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and Ukraine since the war with Russia began.
His lifestyle is in accordance with that philosophy of life. They both have private Instagram accounts, yet they never boast of luxuries or pompous trips. Their only public profiles are those on LinkedIn, and if they travel they prefer the «low-cost» style.
In 2019, when Canva was already valued at more than $2 billion, Obrecht proposed to Perkins with a $30 engagement ringin the Turkish region of Cappadocia, where they went like backpackers.
In 2021 they married on Rottnest Island, off the coast of Perth, and a year later they were parents of his only son, whose name is not even known.
Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht: their experience as parents
Perkins and Obrecht had their first child in early 2022. At the time Melanie, 35, was the second richest woman in Australia, behind mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
Despite their imposing joint assets, the couple told The Australian they were committed to a humble upbringing. «It has been a lot of fun getting to know each other as parents, at least for now, and we want to provide him with an education that is not completely influenced by wealth, just like the one we had,» they declared.
The creators of Canva today. (Photo: LinkedIn Melanie Perkins)«We don’t want to have incredibly rich children who are spoiled brats who have their feet on the ground,» they said without a filter. «We believe that by running such a large company, with such a significant valuation now, we have an obligation to use that to make the world a better place, both in our personal and professional lives,» Obrecht remarked.
Perkins is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion within the technology industry. At Canva, 41% of employees are womenand she gets involved in the selection processes herself, determined to «eliminate gender biases» to ensure that her company has a more inclusive and equitable work environment.
«I used to work seven days a week, without taking a break, thinking it was the only way to succeedbut I realized how unsustainable that was,» Perkins told Forbes so About the challenges of being CEO of Canva.
Melanie Perkins in an interview with Lenny’s Podcast in November 2025. (Photo: YouTube capture)“I certainly don’t have it all figured out; I’m still learning and my habits are evolving, but when I feel best is when I dedicate time to myself,» she revealed.
His current routine is an average walk of 100 kilometers a month in different spaces each week, to have moments where he can think, enjoy nature and recharge his energy to return to the work that changed his life.
