Have you heard the take of Melanie Perkins?
She is the founder of Canva, a simplified graphic-design tool worth over $3.2 Billion!
It’s what we in the business world call a unicorn.
Her story will help me highlight some of the steps you need to take to become a successful entrepreneur.
Back in 2006, when she was a 19-year-old commerce and communications student at the University of Western Australia…
she got frustrated by how long it took to learn how to use the mainstream design software available at the time.
On an interview with BBC news, she said:
“It could take a whole semester to learn the very basics.
Even the simplest tasks, like exporting a high-quality PDF file, could take 22 clicks.”
So, what did she do? She turned that problem into a business opportunity!
Her idea was to build something to do designs an online, but make is be as easy as possible for anyone to use.
She said:
“I realized that in the future design was all going to be online and collaborative, and much, much simpler.”
Here’s where she did that a lot more new entrepreneurs should do!
She decided to test her idea by starting small, but starting right away!
She created a company called Fusion Books which was just a website that allows high schools to design their yearbooks online.
So, it’s taking design elements, but niching down
(something I talk about a lot in my Get Off the Bench challenge, where I show you how to start an online business quickly)
She didn’t need a fancy office, she set up shop in her mother’s living room with borrowed money from relatives.
She’s not a tech person, so she used that borrowed money to pay for software designers to build the platform.
It wasn’t long before Fusion grew into Australia’s largest yearbook publisher and expanded to other markets.
It got so successful that Melanie decided to leave college to focus on it full-time.
At that point, she was ready to go for her original dream and have something more general purpose for design and have it be easy to use.
To grow into her vision, she knew she needed more cash…
So, with Fusion as a working proof of concept (AND ACTUAL SALES!) Melanie flew to California in 2010 to pitch the idea for potential investors.
Again, she did what a lot of people dont do…
Melanie says “It was three years between first pitching to an investor and actually landing investment”
“This is an incredibly long period of time, and we had hundreds of rejections along the way”
She continued “But I think that process was really helpful for us, because it meant that we had to refine our pitch, and really get our strategy down before we started.
So, when we landed that investment, we were able to execute quite quickly and effectively.”
Anyway, in 2013 Canva was launched, backed by $3 million and with former Google executive Cameron Adams joining Melanie and her boyfriend Cliff as a co-founder.
As you may know, Canva grew a lot more since those early days.
But she would not have gotten to that level if she gave up after 1 year of rejection.
She would have a 3.2 billion dollar company if she decided to play it small after 2 years of rejection.
How many people would quit before those long 3 years?
How many times did she hear the word “No” before she got the funding she needed?
So, here’s the take away…
• Whatever business you start to help you quit your job needs to solve a real problem.
- Test your idea with actual sales…or build a minimal viable product (MVP) that can help you get customer Validation and testimonials while employing the minimum effort in terms of time and money.
- Find the right people to help you, support you, and later on work with or for you.
- If you ever need to raise cash or borrow money, you will now be at a much better position to do so.
- Success hardly ever comes overnight. It takes hard work, sacrifices and time. Be patient. NEVER give up.
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Learn from your failures.
That’s the tale of Melanie Perkins! Learn from it young padawan!