Design software used to require training and an expensive licence. Melanie Perkins co-founded Canva in 2013 to remove both, and she did it from Australia — a long way from the investors who fund this sort of thing.
They said no for years. More than a hundred times, by her own count. Then the browser-based tools found their audience, and the audience turned out to be hundreds of millions of people, from individuals making a poster to enterprises running brand systems.
She heard no from investors more than a hundred times before the idea became one of software's biggest wins.
Canva is now among the most valuable private software companies in the world, still founder-led, with a product range that has widened well past design into visual communication and collaboration generally.
She is the standard example cited for two things: that a global technology company can be built outside the usual hubs, and that rejection is data about the investor rather than the idea. The stated plan for the wealth is philanthropy at a scale to match the company.