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Presentation Slides: Melanie Perkins

Swipeable slide deck. All content verified against the episode transcript.

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From the episode

How Melanie Built a $42B Company From Nothing

Melanie Perkins, CEO and co-founder of Canva Lenny's Podcast, November 2025
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Ladder to the Moon

Crazy big dream at the top. Rungs working their way up, step by step. The first step can be small, even inconsequential. What matters is that you start climbing.

"It doesn't matter how small that first step is or how seemingly inconsequential."

Melanie Perkins
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Column B Thinking

Column A: Brick stacking

Look at what you have. Stack the bricks around you. Most planning works this way. You can build something, but the ceiling is set by the materials you already hold.

Column B: Castle on the hill

Dream of the perfect future first. What do you actually want? Then work backward to make it real. The ceiling is set by your imagination, not your inventory.

"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
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Chaos to Clarity

Every idea at Canva starts at the chaos end. Each step adds structure until it ships.

01
Chaos
Raw idea in your head
02
Write it
Put it on paper
03
Pitch deck
Others see your thinking
04
Prototype
Designs take shape
05
Ship
Real and visible

"How do you go from chaos to clarity? You add clarity."

Melanie Perkins
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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

A Canva value from day one. Timing is never reliable: what you think will take six months might take two years. They celebrate reached goals with smashed plates, released doves, and a La Tomatina festival.

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The 2-year dark tunnel

The estimate
6 mo
How long the front-end rewrite was supposed to take
The reality
2 yrs
How long it actually took. No new product shipped in that time.
What it unlocked
2,500
Engineers who can now work on the editor simultaneously

"A product company not shipping product is not really a recipe for fun."

Melanie Perkins
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By the numbers

$42B
Valuation
$3.3B
Annual revenue
~240M
Monthly active users
100+
Investors who said no
8 yrs
Profitable, straight
100M
Presentations per month
All figures stated in the episode by Melanie or Lenny.
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The PodKnowledge

The Two-Step Plan

Step 1

Build one of the world's most valuable companies.

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Step 2

Do the most good we can do.

Melanie and Cliff gave 30% of Canva equity to the Canva Foundation. $50M donated to GiveDirectly, another $100M committed over four years.

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