This is a post by Jesse Pujji. Jessi a serial entrepreneur that lives in the US. He has:
- Bootstrapped to an 8-figure exist with his previous startup, Ampush
- Is currently building GatewayX, a venture studio that he plans to bootstrap to $1B+
- Executive Chairman & Founder of GrowthAssistant.com
- ex-McKinsey Consultant
Guest Author: Jesse Pujji
Two teenagers got rejected from 100+ VCs.
So they bootstrapped the startup to millions until the VCs came knocking.
Today the company is worth over $15BN.
You’ve used the app. Here’s the story
At 19, Melanie Perkins was teaching graphic design as a side job during college.
She dreamed of simple software to make graphic design easier. To start, she built it for a use case she knew well: yearbooks
She and her boyfriend, Cliff Obrecht, launched Fusion Books in early 2007 out of her mom’s house in Perth.
They picked up the phone and called schools direct, offering to send over a few samples. It worked!
Cliff began calling schools every night, while Melanie and her mom kept the printers running 24/7.
Soon the company became so successful, Melanie dropped out in her last semester to keep it afloat!
She wanted to scale beyond yearbooks but didn’t know how.
As runner up at the WA Inventor of the Year competition in 2008, they were invited back the next year for the awards dinner.
Bill Tai, VC superstar and an avid kite surfer had flown in to speak and grab some air time after.
He was the first investor they’d met. They got his card, and an offer to meet. Melanie emailed Bill several times asking for a Skype chat, but got no response. Last ditch, she sent one that said she was coming into town in a few months..
He responded that he could meet!
Melanie booked her flight and started working on a pitch deck.
It was 2010, and she had brought a printed pitch deck when Bill expected one via iPhone or tablet.
She had neither. She was on to something, but Bill wouldn’t invest without a top notch tech team.
It was a classic Catch-22.
In 2011, Perkins and Obrecht met their tech co-founder in Cameron Adams, a former Google lead designer.
It took another dozen pitches and a year before he joined them.
Tech team secured, Fusion Books pitched 100+ VCs.
Everyone turned them down.
They needed a better name. One that featured the market opportunity instead of yearbooks.
Enter – Canvas Chef. Everyone hated Canvas Chef as a name, but it took a new team member to recommend Canva – Canvas in French.
Canva raised a $3MM seed round in 2012.
$1.5MM from investors with a match from the Australian government to keep them from moving stateside.
Now it was time to take on Microsoft, Adobe, Google, and Apple.
By using gamification, they were able to build a workflow that taught and entertained new users.
Canva had reinvented the design landscape with their drag n drop interface as Fusion Books years ago, but it didn’t make waves until the general use application years later in 2013
They reached 50,000 users in their first month.
Canva is now worth over $15 BILLION. 5% is employee-owned, with the rest held by founders and investors. Their new goal is to reach 3.2 billion users.
In the process, becoming the #1 design tool for every use
Melanie and Cliff got married in Jan 2021 with a $30 engagement ring. Together, they’re worth $6.18B.
