Sample: Knowledge Sketch - Melanie Perkins

Knowledge Sketch

How Melanie Built a $42B Company From Nothing

Melanie Perkins, CEO and co-founder of Canva · Lenny's Podcast

Framework

Column B Thinking: How to plan from a dream, not from the bricks in front of you

Column A: Look at the bricks, stack them. Limited by what is in front of you.
Column B: Imagine the castle, then figure out the steps to get there.

"Most planning is often done by looking at the bricks and trying to stack them, and then you can create only so much."

Melanie Perkins

Key Numbers

Canva by the numbers

$42B

Valuation

$3.3B

Revenue / year

~240M

Monthly active users

100+

Investor rejections

2,500

Engineers

8 yrs

Profitable straight

Playbook

Chaos to Clarity

1 Write it down

→

2 Pitch deck

→

3 Designs

→

4 Prototype

→

5 Ship

"That very first step at the far end of chaos was quite an embarrassing step actually, because you don't have mastery at that point."

Melanie Perkins

Contrarian

What Melanie believes that most don't

Myth

"Getting rich is the goal."

Reality

"Getting really rich is not a goal unto itself whatsoever. It's a means to an end."

Melanie and Cliff gave 30% of their equity to the Canva Foundation and donated $50M to GiveDirectly.

The Big Idea

Crazy Big Goals

"The thing that I love about a crazy big goal is that you feel completely inadequate before it. You want to work really hard to will it into existence."

Melanie Perkins

Knowledge Sketch: Melanie Perkins

How Melanie Built a $42B Company From Nothing